It took “weeks of careful analysis of statistics, tests and linear regressions” to come up with a “definitive list” of the top 10 sluttiest colleges in America, but BarstoolU.com did it and it’s just in time for the end of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
The list ranks Rutgers University — also referred to as “Slutgers” by the list’s unnamed writer — at No. 1 and the University of Kansas at No. 10. It also has Arizona State University at No. 4.
Criteria considered in the list’s compilation included “slutty Twitter accounts,” “appearances in porn and sex tapes,” “kinky sex among students” and “single mothers.”
Reading through the entire list takes some time — there are a lot of photos of boobs to get through first — but the farther up the list you get, the more problematic the article becomes.
Basically, BarstoolU’s list is everything that is wrong with what is considered “masculine” in typical college male culture.
Take, for example, the reasoning behind including KU on the list: “If you’re the originator of a Twitter account specializing in gigantic boobs that gets a billion submissions and eventually spreads across the nation, you’ve got a lot of sluts in your student body. Plain and simple.”
There are probably real adjectives to describe this list, but only one word comes to mind in describing writing like this: Rape-y. Plain and simple.
That’s a loaded charge, for sure, considering it’s just another dumb list on the Internet written by a writer who knew it was so stupid that it didn’t even merit a real byline. But April marks Sexual Assault Awareness Month, a time to educate communities and individuals on sexual violence prevention.
So let’s start with some basics. Statistics collected by the National Institute of Justice found that 13.7 percent of undergraduate female students were victims of at least one sexual assault since starting college.
Of those, 7.8 percent were attacked after voluntarily drinking or doing drugs. Another 0.6 percent were sexually assaulted after being given a drug without their knowledge.
A National Institute of Justice study on drug-facilitated, incapacitated and forcible rape found that of nearly 6 million women in college, 673,000 had been raped. Of those cases, about 12 percent were reported to law enforcement.
The list might soon be forgotten in a dusty corner of the Internet, but it represents a frightening, careless attitude toward women that is all too common among colleges.
For example, Occidental College is facing a 250-page federal complaint filed by attorney Gloria Allred with the U.S. Department of Education, alleging the school failed to protect women.
The complaint alleges that 37 students were “raped, sexually assaulted, battered, harassed or retaliated against for speaking out against sexual violence” since 2009, according to the Los Angeles Times. It also accuses the college of discouraging victims from reporting sex crimes and taking criminal or administrative action against their attackers.
One college and 37 victims in four years — and that only includes those who came forward.
Lists of “the top 10 sluttiest schools in America” do nothing to lower the statistics. These lists only further the idea that women “ask for it” when they dress a particular way or when they party in particular places.
Lists like these do nothing to make college women feel safer.
— Kristina Bui is the editor-in-chief of the Arizona Daily Wildcat. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu or on Twitter via @kbui1.
