NAS Blog

If you’re feeling confused about the boundaries of sexual conduct on campus these days, that’s more than understandable. In February, you’ll recall, we noted here the observance of Yale’s freewheeling, everything goes Sex Week festival. Let it all out, the message seemed to be, no holds barred. You’d better be careful about that and a lot less if you happen to attend Duke, however. Now, from the same folks who gave us the lacrosse team fiasco four years ago, predicated on false allegations of rape, we have a new sexual misconduct policy which seems intended to convert that entire farce into a comprehensive and repressive new regime which aims at enforcing some bewilderingly vague notions of what exactly constitutes rape. No one has to convince me that rape is a horrific crime which merits severe punishment; I wonder, though, what it takes to convince some other people that false allegaions of rape also occur, carrying lasting consequences of their own. Two long-time friends of NAS, journalists Cathy Young and John Leo, provide some helpful perspective.