This Is Not The Solution To Campus Rape

Attention, students! Some brilliant mind has figured out how to stop this whole "sexual assault" epidemic on college campuses. I know that the White House, students, educators, and researchers have been struggling with this issue for a while, but it turns out it has been sitting under our noses the whole time. Are you ready?! The Eckerd College president says drinking and casual sex causes sexual assault.

Good, glad we cleared that up.

Donald Eastman III sent an email to the student body on Sunday urging them to "do their part" in preventing sexual assault. But doing their part does not include education and awareness of rape culture, or apparently any thoughtful contribution from key leaders at the college. No, just do yourself a favor and stop exercising sexual freedoms and imbibing.

Eastman mapped out his two main points in the email:

1. By limiting your own consumption of alcohol, and encouraging your friends to do the same. Socrates included wine at his Symposium, but he did not get drunk.

2. You can be thoughtful about the dramatic and often negative psychological effects that sexual activity without commitment can have. Virtue in the area of sexuality is its own reward, and has been held in high esteem in Western Culture for millennia because those who are virtuous are happier as well as healthier. No one’s culture or character or understanding is improved by casual sex, and the physical and psychological risks to both genders are profound.

Well, you know that since he included Socrates in there then it must be a well-constructed argument! Yes, because the equation for rape must include both alcohol and an antiquated opinion on what constitutes promiscuity. No rape has ever happened without it.

When fuming students addressed the letter, Eastman rebutted comments that kindly asked him not to blame victims or alcohol with this gem: "But so far they haven't told me what you really ought to blame it on."

Later, Eastman told news channel WTSP that he regretted his comments. "What I was trying to do was to encourage our students to think more deeply about these issues," he added. Bustle has reached out to Eckerd for comment.

Well, President Eastman, despite your thorough analysis on the campus rape epidemic, I also have a few ideas on how we should stop it:

1. Upset the power structures that have allowed men and women to embrace the idea that they are entitled to another person's body without their consent. bell hooks brought visionary feminism to the world, but didn't resort to solely blaming one sex or the other in imagining an upheaval of our existing framework.
2. Stop treating sexual assault as if it is something that the victim should seek to prevent rather than perpetrator. The psychological effects that this has allows rape assailants to continue believing that because victims put themselves in a perceived vulnerable state that it is perfect OK to take advantage of them. Not raping people has been vastly ignored in Western Culture in lieu of figuring out how not to be raped. No one's character is increased by teaching people to be constantly vigilant against attackers rather than teaching rapists not to rape.

Again, while I'm sure Eastman's thought is rooted in extensive research originating from the same tired spiel that we've heard for years about why rape happens (remember, he used Socrates!), these are just a few thoughts from the 21st century.

Images: Giphy