Want Less Campus Rape? Lower the Damn Drinking Age Already

In
the pages of The New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat
bemoans that activists on all sides of the debate over the
so-called
“epidemic of rape” on college campuses have failed to put forth
sensible solutions. Stricter adjudication under campus courts is
unlikely to result in justice for victims or the accused, he
writes.

Douthat does, however, offer an under-explored proposition for
lessening instances of campus rape: Lower the drinking age from 21
to 18. This would discourage the sort of black out drinking most
likely to lead to sexual assault, he
writes:

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.

Undoing the federal government’s Reagan-era imposition of a
higher drinking age is probably too counterintuitive for lawmakers
to contemplate. And obviously it wouldn’t eliminate the lure of the
keg stand or tame the recklessness of youth. But it would create an
opportunity for a healthier approach to alcohol consumption — more
social and relaxed, less frantic and performative — to take root in
collegiate culture once again.

Many campus rapes happen because one person takes advantage of
another’s inebriated state. Subsequent accusations involve fuzzy
memories and blurry definitions of consent. The current drinking
age facilitates this by encouraging college students to drink a lot
in a short period of time, since drinking is illegal for them
at all times, regardless. (And thanks to the drinking age,
intoxicated students who become victims of a crime or serious
accident are less likely to seek help from the proper authorities,
since they have broken the law themselves.)

Lest anyone think Douthat is on some sort of roll, he also
proposes a solution that would be pretty much anathema to
libertarians:

Finally, colleges could embrace a more limited version of the
old “parietal” system, in which they separated the sexes and
supervised social life. This could involve, for instance,
establishing more single-sex dorms and writing late-night rules
that apply identically to men and women. Bringing a visitor to your
room after 10 p.m. or midnight might require signing in with an
adult adviser, who would have the right to intervene when
inebriation seemed to call consent and safety into question.

I’ve written that the state of California is
inviting itself into the bedrooms of college students under its
latest anti-rape legislation. This proposal is even more direct
than that.