One in Four Women Raped on Campus?

I just finished reading Allison Blakeney's diatribe against her alma mater's Philosophy Department and its "rape culture."  Retired CO Boulder philosophy professor Wes Morriston sensibly replies here.  The whole CO Boulder situation is an excellent example of the left devouring itself.

Ms. Blakeney makes the oft repeated claim, by the President/VP, Huffington Post--the usuals-- that 1 in 4 women on college campus are raped/sexually assaulted.

Is that statistic surprising?  It sure was to me!  ONE in FOUR??

I have found that a good rule of thumb is that, when a statistic is thrown out that sounds too good (or bad) to be true (especially from ends-justify-means-liberals), it probably is.

Heather MacDonald tries to set the record straight in a long but well argued piece.  It is definitely worth the read.

Here is just a brief snippet:

If the one-in-four statistic is correct—it is sometimes modified to “one-in-five to one-in-four”—campus rape represents a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. No crime, much less one as serious as rape, has a victimization rate remotely approaching 20 or 25 percent, even over many years. The 2006 violent crime rate in Detroit, one of the most violent cities in America, was 2,400 murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults per 100,000 inhabitants—a rate of 2.4 percent.

Of course, conservatives will agree that any rape culture is too much rape culture.  Where they disagree is with the notion that the right way to go about lowering the number of rapes is by throwing vast amounts of tax money at the sort of "education" and policies envisioned by the left.