Dormless Community Colleges to Get Government-Imposed Rape-Survivor ‘Advocates’ Instead of Goddamned Security Guards

California
has 112 community colleges,
serving an estimated 2 million students. In physical set-up and
geographical vibe, they share much more in common with public high
schools than four-year universities. The two-year institutions are
typically plopped on quadrangle-shaped plots in the middle of the
neighborhoods they serve, rather than sprawled across some
hopefully quarantinable stretch of occasionally remote land, ringed
by dormitories and student ghettoes. You don’t live at your local
CC, nor do you move away from home to go to one, generally
speaking. They’re for high school grads looking to transfer or pick
up a work-ready certification; 9-to-5ers seeking to improve their
brains or job prospects at night; primary care-givers getting out
of the house a bit.

Given these distinguishing features from four-year schools, much
of the behavior associated with the collegiate “rape
culture” we’ve been hearing
so much about these past couple of years just does not apply to
community colleges. There aren’t thousands of straight-oughtta high
school kids learning haphazardly how to be grown-ups while sleeping
in close proximity to their fellow experience-seekers. The campus
mood tends to be sober and adult, not binge-drinky and
experimental. You don’t go to Long Beach City College (one of three
CCs I have attended over the years) to meet people and blow your
mind, you go there to get what you need and move on.

That’s why this news
is so pointless and infuriating. In July, Sen. Barbara Boxer
(D-Calif.) and Rep. Susan Davis (D-San Diego) co-sponsored the

Survivor Outreach and Support Campus Act (S.O.S. Campus
Act, because our colleges and universities are apparently in
emergency distress), which would require “each institution of
higher education that receives Federal financial assistance under
title IV” to hire “an independent advocate for campus sexual
assault prevention and response.” (In case you were wondering, the
bill spells out that “the term ‘sexual assault’ means penetration,
no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or
object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person,
without the consent of the victim, including when the victim is
incapable of giving consent.”)

In August, Boxer followed up the legislation with
a letter
to the heads of the University of California, California State
University, and California Community College systems, urging them
to “voluntarily
implement” the bill’s provisions right away, because “our
students cannot afford to wait another minute.” In return for their
support, Boxer would “ensure the public knows about your leadership
on combatting sexual assault.”

Well, California Community Colleges Chancellor Brice W. Harris
knows which
side his bread is buttered on:

“Providing for the safety and security of our students is an
essential responsibility of our colleges and voluntarily complying
with the provisions of the SOS Campus Act will ensure our students
receive the services, guidance and support they need when they need
it,” Harris wrote in a letter dated Sept. 24. […]

“I thank Chancellor Harris for his leadership in doing
everything he can to help protect the 2.1 million students at
California’s 112 community colleges,” Boxer said in a statement
Thursday.

“Everything he can to help protect…students,” that’s
the claim. Think again about how community colleges are more like
high schools than four-year campuses (only without the fences, at
least in my experience). Recall that many people from the
community, including quite a few adult women, use these colleges to
attend night classes, alone. We’re not talking about a petri dish
of intoxicants and STDs here, but adults walking solo to their cars
through darkened quads at 9 p.m. Let’s see, how would you
protect students from sexual assault in such an atmosphere?

YOU WOULD HIRE SECURITY GUARDS AND INSTALL BRIGHT LIGHTS AND
SECURITY CAMERAS, THAT’S HOW.

A victims’ advocate is by definition doing after-the-fact
triage, with the only real preventative stuff coming through
helping obtain punishment against perpetrators, plus whatever
marginal gains can be made at this late date by anti-rape publicity
campaigns. Security systems and personnel make dark places less
scary, and less inviting to the bad guys who rape.

And lest anyone pretend that we don’t live in a world of
tradeoffs, consult this 2012 L.A. Times series called
“Fading
Dreams,” which is basically one story after another about how
budget shortfalls are forcing the California Community College
system to make a series of very difficult choices (sample headline:
“California’s
community colleges staggering during hard times“).

So because you have highly publicized
national panic about campus rape, because national politicians
think Title IV is a perfectly good reason to tell any institute of
higher education what to do, because nobody wants to be portrayed
as a moral monster by opposing something billed as “combatting
sexual assault,” a college system facing perpetual budget
shortfalls is “voluntarily” spending money it doesn’t have on
personnel who will almost certainly do less to make these commuter
campuses safe from real-world rape than would better lighting and
security on the same budget. This is public-policy liberalism in
the 21st century, and it’s embarrassing.