1 in 5 Does Not Equal 6.1 in 1000, Prayers for Hokies, and a Jeopardy! Question

Recently, I was speaking with a sorority woman who was ready to graduate from a large midwestern state university. We began chatting about that 1 in 5 women statistic which has been bandied about in Congress and throughout all sorts of media. She said that never once in her four years in college had she felt in any danger when she was in a fraternity house. If you listen to media reports, fraternity houses are dens of iniquity; you enter at your own peril. The whole Rolling Stone rape allegation debacle happened, in my opinion, because the writer and editors were thrilled to have the opportunity to strike out against the fraternity system. They were so thrilled, in fact, that there was no effort to substantiate any of the claims, except for a phone call to the fraternity president with a nebulous question.

One recent attention grabbing headline touted “30 Frats Shut Down In The Past Month As Colleges Respond To Misconduct More Aggressively.” While 30 sounds like a big number, please note that there are more than 12,000 chapters on more than 800 campuses in North America. Moreover, most of those chapters were closed by the GLO itself. Again, I am in no way condoning the actions of the chapters which were closed. The vast majority of fraternity and sorority chapters are behaving themselves; they are trying to be good students, contributing members of the college community, while doing philanthropic service, living up to their fraternal values, and managing all the other things that come with GLO membership. Membership is a choice, and last I checked, no one is forced to join a Greek-letter organization. Those who make that decision do it of their own free will. Membership means extra responsibilities and expectations. But the haters, and there are people who HATE everything about GLOs, are out there and they are very vocal. Read the comment section of anything having to do with fraternities and sororities only if you want to get your blood boiling.

The two studies which came up with the 1 in 5 statistic have some inherent problems including small sample size, internet questionnaire with the carrot of a $10 amazon card for completion, and ambiguous questions. A 2014 U.S. Department of Justice Report, Rape And Sexual Assault Among College-Age Females, 1995-2013, puts the number of rapes of college women at 6.1 in 1000. Please know that I feel that one is one too many. In my ideal world that statistic would be zero.  Here is the synopsis of the DOJ report (available at http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5176):

Compares the characteristics of rape and sexual assault victimization against females ages 18 to 24 who are enrolled and not enrolled in college. This report examines the relationship between the victim and offender, the involvement of a weapon, location of the victimization, reporting to police, perceived offender characteristics, and victim

demographics. Data are from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects information on nonfatal crimes, reported and not reported to the police, against persons from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households. The report also discusses methodological differences between the NCVS and other surveys that measure rape and sexual assault victimization and the impact of these difference on rape and sexual assault estimates.