A safe space

Amherst is evidently one of several elite colleges incapable of properly dealing with sexual violence. Going by what I've read and my own anecdotal evidence, it's the same story all over the place, at least at the more elite schools: young women are given the impression that the school has replaced somehow both parents and police, and when problems arise, the obvious authority figures are campus administrators. Who are not, in fact, police, and who do not necessarily do whichever basic things would be necessary to remove whichever imminent threat. (Does it build character to keep a girl in the same dorm as her rapist?) Schools may have some infrastructure or bureaucracy aimed at reassuring victims, but they may not want to or have the authority to meaningfully address the problem. I'd be curious if anyone's anecdotal evidence doesn't match this, but I understand that it's a sensitive topic, so I'm not necessarily soliciting comments.

Anyway, I think that "holistic" once again enters into the equation. Schools first admit not an applicant but a whole person. This, in turn, gives admitted, matriculated students the impression that they don't merely attend a residential college, taking classes for credit while living with fellow students. They are an intentional, hand-picked part of a community. It seems inconceivable that something scary could happen on campus. It seems straightforward, then, if something does come up, to deal with campus authorities, or with deans, when maybe the regular ol' police would be the way to go. (Or maybe not. Eep.)

There's even such a cliché of the liberal-arts-college male, the guy who's so hyper-sensitive that he will apologize profusely if he says transgendered rather than transgender, and will beat himself up over this for weeks to come. How could such a Nice Guy, one who's had seminars on the significance of holding a door open for a woman, do anything wrong? He should be posting earnest pleas to be a good person on Facebook, not, you know, raping his classmates. And yet. All of these carefully selected individuals, whom experts have picked to balance harmoniously, are nevertheless fallible, at times seriously criminal, human beings. Maybe - and I'll admit to cynicism here - what needs to happen is, rather than beefing up on-campus façades, we need to remember that students are members not only of a campus community, but a broader one, as well as a jurisdiction of some kind.