Crying Wolf in the Gender Wars

by Adam Lusthaus

According to the FBI's “Crime in the United States” survey, the number of reported crimes on college campuses, notably incidents of rape, has dropped significantly over recent years. Other studies show similar findings. There's a problem with the FBI survey, though, as well as most of the others; participation is not only voluntary, but campuses may, through a loophole, omit from their records certain crimes that occur off-campus.

Another salient problem confronts researchers in determining the true number of campus crimes. Increasingly, fabricated reports are being uncovered across the country. What's even more shocking is that school administrations are doing little to stop the hoaxes.

A false accusation of rape recently shook the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Last November, the university was plunged into an atmosphere of terror due to a string of rapes on campus—perpetrated possibly by the same man throughout the month. The police presence on campus grew as the university expanded its campus escort services, installed additional outdoor emergency phones, and distributed 1,500 hand-held shriek alarms that send out a high-pitched deafening noise in case of attack.

Only a couple of months ago, the fourth woman who reported having been assaulted in November admitted to police that she had fabricated her story in order to further campus response to issues of women's safety. She had told authorities that on the afternoon of November 16 at a public location in the middle of campus, a man grabbed her from behind, slit her face with a knife, and ran away.

Ironically, her rape was supposed to have taken place near to where 500 students were participating in a rally to combat violence against women.

The episode is made all the more disturbing by the fact that the young woman cut her own face to make her story more believable.

David Angier, Hampshire County's first assistant district attorney, has not taken any criminal actions against her, however. Angier is hiding behind a Massachusetts statute that only allows for the punishment of a false accusation or behavior that “willfully disrupts law enforcement.” The woman in question did not name a perpetrator, but her conduct does seem to have expanded an already-extensive criminal investigation. According to Barbara Pitoniak, a spokeswoman for UMass-Amherst, “$21,000 was spent on overtime for police and campus security” during the first two weeks.

Angier, though, expressed concern that “If anyone is prosecuted for filing a false report, then victims of real attacks will be less likely to report them.” Carol Wallace, director of the Everywoman's Center at UMass, told the Boston Globe, “One of the myths about sexual assault in particular is that women do make false reports.” Prosecuting a woman for making a false report might just lend some credence to this “myth,” she worries.

The false report is only the most recent in a series of incidents on college campuses around the country in which a student lied about an attack or slur in order to advance a political agenda. Last October, Jennifer Prissel, a senior at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, told police that two men had attacked her in a parking lot, while shouting anti-gay slurs. Because Prissel's report came only two weeks after the murder of the gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, the campus response was overwhelming. In fact, “almost $12,000 was raised in reward money for information about the attackers,” reports The Chronicle of Higher Education. Nearly two months later, Prissel admitted that she had made up the whole episode. “Gay students were horrified by Prissel's account,” reads the Chronicle, “but thrilled with the public response.” One junior at the school explained, “It was a giant step forward in bringing the community around to respecting gay students.”

The St. Cloud incident followed a similar occurrence at Duke University. A black doll was hung on a noose from a tree on campus outside an inn where the Black Student Alliance was meeting. A few days later, after students and the administration had become preoccupied by the “hate crime,” two black students admitted that they had hung the doll themselves. Their stunt was actually defended by Duke students and faculty, who claimed that it “highlighted the problem of race relations on campus.”

Similar institutional support was apparent after a white student at Guilford College in North Carolina falsely claimed to have been assaulted by someone who wrote the words “nigger lover” on her chest. The president of the college spoke glowingly of “the important conversations” that had resulted from the fictional report. “We should carry them forward regardless of the reality of the initiating events,” he said.

Students nationwide increasingly realize that they can advance their ideology regardless of the reality of events on campus. “Because these fibbers have a ready supply of supporters searching for any opportunity to galvanize the campus against racism, sexism, homophobia, or what-have-you,” writes Naomi Schaefer, assistant editor of Commentary magazine, “they will more likely end up local heroes than subject to prosecution by district attorneys, let alone punishment by college administrations.”

The UMass case is more than just another incident in a larger trend, explains Schaefer. “It marks the new lengths to which students are willing to go to make a point.” At UMass, a student disrupted an investigation into actual cases of assault to further highlight the particular issue of violence against women. What's even worse, Schaefer asserts, is “they succeed, because it's not only college students who are so politicized that they see virtue in such made-up attacks, but college administrators as well.”

As long as educational institutions reward rather than punish this behavior, student radicals will continue to contrive fictions to further to make a political statement.

The words “frats rape” periodically appear scrawled in chalk on Dartmouth's sidewalks, for example, even when no accusations—let alone evidence—exist. Crying wolf, of course, threatens the safety and well-being of others. But no one seems willing to condemn the liars.