It seems like we are always hearing about things like on campus rapes and assaults at either dorms or fraternities.
Here is a solution. What about colleges giving up control and jurisdiction of ALL housing? Privatize dorms and Greek houses so any issues that happen there would be considered a local police problem not the problem of the college.
Consider:
Already at most colleges most students over junior level live off campus anyways.
Many students already take courses online.
Most community colleges already have no housing and they do fine.
Such a move would eliminate a major budget item the colleges would no longer have to spend money on.
Living in a dormitory gives college students (particularly underclassmen, the vast majority of whom have never lived on their own before) a structured living environment, simplified access to meals, and access to experienced mentors / upperclassmen (i.e., resident assistants) if they need it.
Moving 18- and 19-year-olds out of dorms, and into private rental housing, where there’s even less supervision, isn’t likely to do anything positive to address the sexual assault issue.
Most college campuses of a fair size have their own police force. Not security guards, but fully state-certified officers who have had academy training and have full powers of arrest and do proactive patrolling on the campus
Many universities already privatize certain aspects of dormitories, such as food service. And it’s not as if they’re free; students who live in dorms do pay for those rooms. This is not the massive drain on resources that you seem to think it is.
There are privately-owned dormitories at many major universities. They tend to be more luxurious than the university dorms, and consequently are much more expensive. I don’t know why you assume a private dormitory would be safer than a campus dorm under the jurisdiction of a dedicated university police force. The private dorm would likely have rent-a-cop security or none at all; it’s not as if the local police would be patrolling the halls.
The reason community colleges don’t have dorms is because they’re community colleges. They are established to meet the educational needs of local residents; people generally don’t move across the state, or the country, to attend a particular community college.
Sounds like a recipe for increased assaults and crimes. The only difference is that it technically won’t be on the hands of the school. But the school’s reputation will take a hit nonetheless.
So, now, instead of blaming the perpetrator, we’re blaming the housing?
While it’s original, it’s also beyond silly. Rape is about the lack of morality of the rapist. Every time. Every location. Any solution that doesn’t address that is just foolish in my opinion!
No, what I am saying is colleges are having all these problems with reporting issues and then you have the issue of if someone does report a crime to the campus, then a student gets put before a campus judicial system which can be quite different than regular police.
I am mainly going off this article in the Atlantic “The Murkiness of Sexual Consent on College Campuses” where the author discusses several cases where students, mostly black males, have been brought up on charges and the colleges are dealing with issues of racism vs. protection. It gets further complicated because of Title 9, a woman can charge a man with rape with a much broader definition than one would outside of college.
One of the problems is the lack of oversight of the student courts and their decisions and many students suing the school for their rights being violated. For example a student being suspended or expelled but not actually charged with rape as would happen if the incident occurred off campus. Another example is a charged student being denied due process.
So its NOT that we are not saying crimes are being permitted, the issues is taking it out of the hands of college administrators and putting it where maybe it should belong, with local police.
So I ask again, if colleges clearly cannot deal with these issues that are fair for everyone, should they just eliminate their jurisdiction over housing and have cases handled by local police?
Or, maybe, should colleges go back to the old days with single gender dorms with strict rules where nobody of the opposite gender is allowed inside and students have a tight curfew?
The big difference though is the rules they enforce and what courts they answer to. Also in the cases of sexual assault there are NO police involved. Basically what happens is a student is issued a summons to appear before a administrators and they might or might not hear both sides of a case and might or might not allow attorneys, witnesses, or other aspects of due process.
Of course. Every college is different. There are reasons for providing dorms and reasons for not providing dorms. Simply moving the rape problem off campus shouldn’t enter into the calculation.
Back in the 1970’s I went to two different colleges – one a mid-size urban campus and the other a giant state university. They both had trouble with students who lived off-campus being raped, robbed and otherwise assaulted.
My wife went to a school with a pizza place just off campus where so many women were assaulted that even the servers warned, “don’t go to the rest room alone.”
I’ve seen nothing that suggests the local police are more effective than campus security.
It isn’t the housing. At my school, we had several thousand students living in dorms. All that kicking them out would do are making the off campus rents skyrocket, leave some perfectly good buildings unused, and deny employment to a ton of students. All because of an imaginary correlation to rape.
And all that privatizing them would do (which it sounds like is what the OP is suggesting) would be to raise the room-and-board costs for living in the dorms.
and these days most 4 year colleges make you live on campus themselves …my nephew is going to uc san diego starting this weekend and the freshman cant take their cars (because they wont sell them parking passes and its 200 a week with out one (
And also making them live on campus the first year or so the reasoning being that there going to get all the money they can before the normal attrition sets in …
If a student believes he’s been denied due process, he can and should take the university to court. There have been a number of such cases lately, at least one of which has gone to federal court. Even when the case does go directly to the police, however, if it involves students enrolled there, the university faces liability issues and will therefore conduct separate proceedings to determine whether or not the alleged perpetrator is to be expelled. The expulsion issue won’t go away just because the campus police aren’t involved. Campuses who don’t expel students face charges from not only the alleged victim but subsequent rape victims as well.
You haven’t raised this as a concern, but in case it is, the percentage of reported rapes that turn out to be false is about the same as other reported felonies–about 2%. That figure is probably not accurate, however, as only 40% of rape victims report the crime. When you understand the trauma followed by the humiliation, the public scrutiny, the frequent nasty repercussions from friends–and, in the case of athletes, fans of the suspect–it’s not hard to see why. I find it interesting that people are more likely so suspect false reports of rape than they are false reports of robbery, even though the likelihood is about the same.
Not valid, most community colleges host local students who already were living in the community and are small in enrollment numbers not enough to cause a shift in town demographics and need for housing.
I know a large high school. (No dorms) where rapes happen 3 or 4 times a year…and a multitude of assaults…not to mention…bullying and other student on student crime…shoving the problem down the street does nothing to solve the problem. My daughter was stalked for 4 years at her highschool…“If he was gonna hurt you he would’ve already done it” was the standard reply Every year we went the same crap in the front office…He never bothered her in the summer months…go figure! Anyway you can not legislate bad or criminal behavior…The bad guys are out there!