Since last Tuesday’s Take Back the Night, the college campus has been plastered with a single ratio: 1 in 4.
According to www.oneinfourusa.org, the national organization is named after the statistic that one in four college women have survived rape or attempted rape. The signs around campus help to depict this shocking reality: “What if the one was your best friend? Your sister? Your lab partner? A girl who lived in your hallway?”
What if it was you?
One in Four aims to prevent that. “One in Four is a group composed entirely of men who seek to advocate and educate other men about issues of sexual violence against women,” said Alexander Owen ‘12, current president. “Adam Lalor, current Admissions Officer and former director of the national chapter of One in Four, brought a chapter to Conn about two years ago.”
Unlike other organizations that work to prevent sexual assault, One in Four targets a specific audience: males. Through “The Men’s Program”, which, according to Owen, “is designed to reach out to other men… in it, we talk about how it feels to survive a rape, how men can avoid being in situations where things can get out of hand, how men can help a female friend who has survived a rape, and also how men can foster better social attitudes towards women by not using language that puts women down and makes them inferior.”
This all-male focus—as unusual as it sounds—works. In an article published in the Journal of American College Health, the Men’s Program was shown to “decrease men’s belief in rape myths and significantly lower men’s self-reported likelihood of raping for an entire seven-month academic year,” says their website.
Owen, who joined the organization during his freshman year after a Dessert and Dialogue discussion, believes that the Men’s Program is successful. “Given that men are usually the perpetrators, it is effective to reach out to other men and stop the violence at its source.”
Though the organization is named after the nationwide statistic, it raises an important question: is this the reality at Connecticut College?
“I do not know the actual statistic at Conn, but unfortunately one in four is the national statistic. I think the hook-up culture plays a part in that statistic, but I think that the alcohol culture actually affects it more,” says Owen. “One of the things we try to explain in our presentation is that while stranger rape occurs far too often, the notion that most rapes occur when a woman is running by herself late at night and is attacked by a man who jumps out of the bushes is false. In most cases, a man who the woman knows carries out the assault. It could be an acquaintance, a friend, or even a boyfriend. Because alcohol is so prevalent on campus, its disadvantages—loss of judgment, particularly—are taken advantage of.”
Later this month, the CC chapter of One in Four will be holding the White Ribbon Campaign, as April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The men will be wearing white ribbons, handing them out to other men on campus as a way for them to take a stand against sexual assault. They are also issuing pledge cards, allowing men to vow to never commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women and girls.
I run the world’s leading site that gives voice to persons falsely accused of rape, The False Rape Society. The one-in-four stat has been thoroughly debunked so often that it is astounding advocates continue to cite it. If that stat were accurate, and if all the males were properly punished for rape, we would need to build multiple times the number of prisons we currently have and your college would see it’s male population plummet. One of the rape myths we challenge at my website is the myth that false rape claims are rare. In fact, false rape claims are extremely common, but because the persons who dominate the public discourse about rape deny their existence, it is a subject too politically incorrect to discuss.
As a member of One in Four, I’m really pleased to read this article. After attending Take Back the Night and the Speak Out afterwards, I am even more convinced that sexual assault is a significant problem on campus that needs to be addressed. The more articles that bring attention to this issue, the better.