It has now been 4 or 5 years (?) since campus rape training and affirmative consent rules were implemented on many college campuses. I have been unable to find any statistics about the effectiveness of campus rape training and affirmative consent rules. Women's Studies programs should investigate this.
In particular:
- Is there a graph or table as a function of time showing the reduction in sexual assault on college campuses that instituted affirmative consent and rape training?
- Are there comparisons over the same time period between colleges that did and did not institute affirmative consent and rape training?
In the absence of reliable statistics, one can only speculate about both the effectiveness of the training and any possible negative side effects of the training. From a skeptics point of view:
- It seems unlikely that the type of men that commit rape are going to be deterred from rape simply because of this training.
- On the other hand, men who would never commit rape, with or without the training, may get far more cautious about dating in general because they believe that there is no way to prove they obtained continuous affirmative consent. Probably the dating pool of men on campus shifts toward more aggressive and less risk averse men and away from less aggressive and more risk averse men. (Note that this risk averse behavior has been seen in the response to the #metoo movement. Men are becoming increasingly more careful dealing with women at work. Unlike the workplace where men need to work with women despite the perceived risk, men do not have to date campus women if the perceived risk is too high. There are plenty of off campus women to date.)
- Given item 2, has overall sexual activity decreased on campus?
- Given items 1 and 2, has the fraction of sexual assaults (per say in every 100 dates) increased?
- Does hookup culture increase because more cautious men reduce their dating?
Possible secondary side effects for study:
- Men's enrollment in higher education is declining. Does the training cause men to feel unwelcome on campus? The decline could be simply coincidental. Perhaps men, both those that did go to college and those that did not, should be interviewed to determine what part, if any, the perceived atmosphere on campus played in their decisions.
- Do women want the training to continue even if it is not effective?
- If the atmosphere on campus is partly responsible for fewer men on campus, does it matter?
