Douthat: Stopping Campus Rape

[angus]

First, our lawmakers could reduce the legal drinking age to 18 from 21. The key problem in college sexual culture right now isn’t drinking per se; it’s blackout drinking, which follows from binge drinking, which is more likely to happen when a drinking culture is driven underground.

I wholeheartedly agree that the legal age to purchase alcohol is artificially high, and that lowering it would be wise.  I'd definitely vote to lower it in a binding popular referendum.

That said, I'd also vote to raise the legal driving age to about 30.  And the voting age while we're at it.  We seem to have some of that completely reversed as a society.  We'll let folks take command of dangerous machinery and decide the next generation of legislators while they're still pimply-faced adolescents more concerned with their next lay, even as we tell them they can't order a shot and a beer in a bar.  If you want to avoid drunk driving, then raise the driving age, not the drinking age.  

As for rape, I'm not as convinced.  I know that it happens, and that there are some who will commit that crime no matter what you try to do about it, but I don't know whether the drinking age has anything to do with it.  Possibly lowering it would make sense based on the article you posted, but I already support lowering it for many other good reasons.  My guess is that legalizing prostitution might decrease the frequency and intensity of rape, but I have no stats to back that up.  Your best bet is probably to teach your daughters some common sense.  Don't make them man haters, but do teach them not to go alone into certain places.  Frat parties are pretty notorious.  I agree that administrators need to take such charges seriously.  Starting quarterbacks and well-heeled legacy admits should not be exempted from the rules.

[angus]

Angus, you want to driving your kid around town until he's 30?

I'll take him to be tested once he turns 16, just like my mama did for me, but I wouldn't complain if they raised the driving age.  My wife didn't get her license till she was 29.  She was perfectly fine on buses, subways, and taxis till then.  For example, you can walk to a bus stop 500 meters from my crib, take that bus ten minutes to a train station and there board a train for an hour ride to philadelphia.  Get off and take a subway from there to the philadelphia international airport.  From there you can be anywhere on the globe within 12 hours, provided you have money, a passport, and are willing to remove your shoes and be probed, prodded, and scanned.  (Thanks Obama.)


  

[angus]

From there you can be anywhere on the globe within 12 hours….

You severely overestimate how fast commercial jets fly.  I've been on the Dallas to Brisbane flight, which is 16 hours flying time...

Not really overestimate, but perhaps forget.  I haven't been on the Dallas to Brisbane, but I've been on the Tokyo-Minneapolis flight, and on the Shanghai-Chicago flight as well.  Both of those are about 15 hours.  12 hours, 15 hours, whatever, you get the point.  Picking the details apart in my post is rather like not seeing the forest for the trees.  My point is that I don't know much about rape, not ever having been raped or never having raped anyone, but I do know a great deal about being a 16-year-old kid with a driver's license and far, far too much to drink.  The solution to getting drunk kids from behind the wheels is easy:  the wheel is much more easily removed than the bottle. 

Getting back to the OP, I suppose that it's worth a try.  Since there are many other good reasons to lower the artificially-high age of majority, and since at least some people make halfway decent arguments regarding its benefits with respect to preventing some rapes, then why not give it a try?  Also, as simfan points out, we should focus on preventing sexual assaults and bringing rapists to justice, an effort that loses focus when one attempts to throw in "rape culture".  I'm not sure how to do all that, but I have noticed that the mention of the "rape culture" that is currently fashionable in the news magazines probably doesn't really get to the root of the problem.

[angus]

My SO is 28 and still doesn't have her license.  Though, to be fair, she grew up in Manhattan, which is not a luxury that most folks have.  (I wish it- or something like it- was a luxury that more folks could have, of course.)

Yes, that's probably part of the equation.  My wife grew up in a city which, if it were in the United States, would be the second most populous, between NY and LA.  In her own country it isn't in the top 20.  There's a subway system there, buses, really cheap taxis, and, before the economic bubble, lots of bicycles as well. 

For me, a suburban kid from the USA, it would have been tough without a car on my 16th birthday.  But it was probably even tougher on all the cops who pulled me over during those first few years.  Bastards.  Now I realize that they were just doing their jobs.

[angus]

I live in a quasi urban area and there is literally no bus that could get me to my job. At best I'd still have 4 miles to walk. I could do that, by upon arrival my appearance would hadrly professional if it was raining or it was a really hot day.

Yeah, it'd be a bitch for me as well.  I did it once just to see what it was like.  It's a 30 minute ride from my place to the central bus station, where I had to change to another bus for another 30 minute ride.  Taking into account the 15 minute wait at the station, that's an hour and a quarter compared to the 25-minute trip by car, and it might involve getting a little cold or wet depending upon the weather, whereas my car is in a garage at home and parks on the low level of a garage at work.

I'll leave off the driving stories now, since as simfan points out it's a little off topic.  The problem we're talking about is rape on campus.  There may or may not be validity in lowering the drinking age.  I'd lower it anyway for a whole bunch of other good reasons but I'd also raise the driving age (which of course gets us off topic again...)

I mentioned legalizing prostitution earlier.  No one commented.  Is that way off the mark?  I like Douthat's second point as well, but I'm not sure that the third one will solve any problems or is even workable.

How do you say his name?  "Do that!"  "D'oh, tot."  "Dutatt."  I kinda like "Do that!"