By shifting the focus from the one individual ("She shouldn't get so drunk! She'll put herself in danger!) to the community ("It's our responsibility to help our peers when they're in potentially dangerous situations."), this method of risk reduction alters the paradigm. By extension, bystander intervention has the potential to shift from blaming the victim to blaming the community at large: "How could she let this happen?" morphs into the far more accurate and damning "How could we let this happen?"

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Another important thing that college administrations can do: listen to their students. For instance, earlier this month a Swarthmore fraternity handed out a booklet to its pledges. On the cover was a mosaic of hundreds of naked women's bodies (no heads included, naturally). A group of students complained to the administration — and the administration listened, banning the handouts and requiring members of the frat to attend "special training sessions." As someone who has been to a "special training session" after I was FALSELY ACCUSED of smoking pot in college, I know that they're not epicenters of learning and open-mindedness. There's a fairly big chance that someone sent to an involuntary How Not To Be Sexist training course might scoff and feel bored the entire time.

But the session has the potential to be eye-opening. Casual sexism is powerful because it's insidious and very easy to overlook — taking an hour or so to talk someone through the effects of their behavior could galvanize them to change. And, regardless of the class's efficacy, the message sent by the punishment is powerful. It says that the college will not tolerate a climate in which women are casually denigrated and objectified. For the same reason, it's important that colleges "encourage more victims to report to police and agitate for prosecution," as Berkowitz puts it. Berkowitz notes that it's important to keep rapists off campus. It's also endlessly important to let students know that they're protected and that their mental, physical and emotional safety matters; conversely, it's important to send a message that no student will get away with rape (or with any display of sexism), under any circumstances.

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As Soraya Chemaly argues at Salon:

Young men are going to colleges and universities way too comfortable expressing themselves in exploitative, sexist ways that denigrate their female peers and are corrosive to the academic environment. In addition, the notion that rape is a serious crime for which they can be held responsible seems not to have entered their heads... sexist media and humor results in greater acceptance of rape myths, trivialization of rape, an increased inclination to blame victims and a lack of desire to either punish rapists or assign responsibility to them for their actions.

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Marian Firke, who led the protest, told Chemaly, "Swarthmore has been a place where this would not have been taken seriously in the past. I would have had to make an argument as to why this was hostile and misogynistic." If more college administrations strove to understand their students' perspectives, instead of contributing to a culture of sexist gaslighting through negligence and inaction, it's likely that campus climate would be at least a little friendlier towards women. Something like this is a small step — but a small step is better than nothing. A small step is also better than an intangible ideal.

Another example: following public outcry about the rape cheer at Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, the school's president Stephen Toope pledged $250,000 toward funding a new position at the university meant to combat sexual violence and misogyny on campus. “I am extremely sorry that our first-year students at the Sauder school were subjected to completely inappropriate FROSH activity,” said Toope. “I am not sorry, however, that this has come to light. I think we are given an opportunity to seize this moment to strike at the casual indifference to sexual violence and intolerance.”

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Robert Helsley, the school's dean, said that three steps were taken in the aftermath of the cheer: first, student leaders were held personally accountable and made to participate in Sexual Assault Support Center training as well as community service related to sexual assault. Secondly, the administration worked with the student council to restore "community trust," taking steps to ensure that the cheer would never be allowed again. The last step — changing Sauder culture — would have been facilitated partially through the new campus sexual assault awareness program. Unfortunately (and predictably), 70 percent of the student body voted against the referendum. Had it passed, a mere $52 of each student's tuition would have gone towards the sexual abuse services.

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Even if it was all a publicity stunt, it was a partially effective one. Students were made to go to counseling. The rape cheer will never happen again. College administrators thought of — and seemed to have seriously considered — a costly but extremely necessary sexual violence resource. And Helsley did implement some useful measures, including a new orientation program and the introduction of curriculum changes that promote ethics, gender and cultural sensitivity training (I personally think that all colleges should have students take a mandatory intro-level women's studies and/or critical race theory course in their first year).

The unwillingness of Sauder students to part with $52 in order to create a safer environment for themselves and their peers only serves to show how far we have to come. Colleges need to spend less time spouting platitudes about promoting a safe environment and more time taking actual action to facilitate that environment. They need to directly respond to displays of misogyny, sexism and rape culture because they have the authority to force students to re-think their callous and thoughtless actions. In other words, instead of penalizing colleges for allowing rapes to occur, we should pressure them to focus on prevention and changing the campus climate. That shouldn't be immensely difficult to do: seriously endeavoring to ensure that all students are safe always looks very good for a college administration, PR-wise.

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As for binge drinking: yes, colleges should crack down on it. But not simply because it makes students more likely to rape or be raped — because binge drinking is terrible for you in general. As Mr. Berkowitz so gently stated, "After a certain point, drinking is unhealthy for you for a variety of reasons. Rape is just one concern." The opposite is true as well: when it comes to sexual assault on campus, binge drinking is just one concern. It's true that rape culture is a nebulous idea, but it has manifold manifestations. In order to promote sexual health and safety, we must address all of them equally.

Photo via Flickr.