Women are not safe on campus. Perhaps you’ve heard: There’s an epidemic of rape in higher education.
But the administration at New York University does not appear worried — at least to judge from its announcement last week that applicants would no longer be subject to a criminal background check.
“We believe it’s important to look at the person, and what they’ve done before and after incarceration,” MJ Knoll-Finn, the vice president for enrollment management told The Wall Street Journal.
The school still reserves the right to look at a student’s criminal past before a final decision is made, which is certainly comforting. But why wait? The NYU administration believes, says Knoll-
Finn, that “the system doesn’t always seem to work very well for people of color.”
Is anyone offended by the idea that in order for New York University to admit racial minorities they have to lower their standards for criminal behavior?
NYU isn’t alone. Last year New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman started pressuring area colleges into dropping the requirement. “Once prisoners have paid their debt they should have every opportunity to re-enter society — and that includes seeking a higher education.”
No doubt they have a right to re-enter society, but whether a private college (or even a public one) should be pressured to admit violent offenders is another story entirely.
While it’s true that much of what activists classify as “sexual assaults” on campus are really unwanted sexual encounters fueled by too much alcohol, there are real offenders in every environment — indeed, serial offenders.
In a recent column reviewing Jon Krakauer’s new book on campus rape, Nicholas Kristof describes some of the research:
“Scholars have found that many sexual assaults are carried out by a small number of men who strike repeatedly — often without realizing that they are rapists.
“The way this research is conducted is astonishing: Men were simply surveyed and asked whether they had ever had sex with someone who didn’t want to. Remarkably, men repeatedly said, yes, they had.”
In other words, recidivism is a serious problem, and if you ignore prior criminal behavior, you do so at your own risk.
This small number of men can create a serious problem in any community. But it’s worse on college campuses.
Not only do they have no sense they’ve done anything wrong, but they appear untouchable.
After all, the only consequences they’ll face will be from Keystone Kops and kangaroo courts on campus. It’s not like anyone is actually hauling them off to jail.
Which brings us back to the question of how to ensure the safety of our campuses.
The best answer this week comes from Texas, which just passed a law allowing students to carry concealed weapons on campus. There are seven other states that already allow them.
Perhaps it seems counterintuitive. But the truth of the matter is that when law-abiding people carry guns, they deter bad actors.
If you look at the places where mass shootings have occurred in recent years, they’re much more common in places — schools, movie theaters — where guns aren’t allowed.
But for women, the issue of guns is even more significant.
If you go to college in a dangerous neighborhood, if you are attending classes in the evening or coming home from studying or socializing late at night, the campus safety phones posted every few hundred yards seem woefully inadequate.
The Texas bill, of course, was opposed by plenty of professors. Lynn Tatum, a professor at Baylor, told The New York Times that “the perception in academia will be that Texas is a free-fire zone with yokels in the classrooms packing heat.”
Unlike at NYU, though, Texas lawmakers didn’t allow political correctness and silly liberal sensibilities to override common sense.
For better or worse, college administrations have managed to persuade students and parents that their campuses are places where students can let their guard down, that they can trust the people they encounter in their classes and their dorms.
Now it’s time for colleges to live up to their promises.