Avoiding Campus Rape

I remember flying across the country and depositing my almost eighteen-year-old daughter on a small college campus in upstate New York.

Besides setting up a local bank account, campus meal service, and an Ethernet connection, I gave her absolutely no life-saving information should she truly need it.

What was I thinking? Did I imagine that the small community she’d live in would be as safe as my own? Did I expect that ALL her new friends would consider her as special and worthy as I did?

As I flew home, I never imagined she could be raped in a dorm room, or be abducted as she walked home from the library in the dark. Thank God she wasn’t. But many young women have. Read more

If you are involved in campus ministry to young women; have college students in your congregation, ministry team, or small group; have a daughter, niece, or granddaughter in college or know someone who does, or have friends in college, share this article with them. If you are in college yourself, share it with your friends, roommates, and sorority sisters. I live on the outskirts of a college town and frequently have college students living as my neighbors. Young women often take risks that they should not take, particularly when they are intoxicated, such as going to the apartments of people that they do not know. Every college town has its share of predatory males who will take advantage of an intoxicated young woman and will not take "no" for an answer.