Well, I’m not definitively certain that the slight drop in alumni funding is unrelated to the fraternities — it’s possible that it is. My point, though, is that Scott greatly exaggerated the figures in the article; he made it seem as if the 20+ percentage-point gap between Wesleyan and other NESCAC schools was due to the “anti-frat campaign.” That’s clearly false. At best you have a small drop in revenue due to the “anti-frat campaign” — I concede that this small drop in revenue is possible, but to claim that this is a significant worry when considering the greater overall budget is clearly disingenuous.

Second, the fraternities haven’t integrated women and/or been disbanded yet. Your question about “has there been a decrease in reported sexual assaults since fraternities were made to bear the brunt of the feminist rape hysteria” is really off-point here; these policy changes haven’t even gone into effect yet. How could they have led to a drop in sexual assaults before they were even implemented?

Point-by-point:

First: On the Clery data, look at how they define “On-campus Student Housing Facility.” Their definition is: “Any student housing facility that is owned or controlled by the institution, or is located on property that is owned or controlled by the institution, and is within the reasonably contiguous geographic area that makes up the campus is considered an on-campus student housing facility.” So even if the house itself isn’t campus property, it is considered an “On-campus Student Housing Facility” so long as it is “located on prober that is owned or controlled by the institution” — and aren’t all the fraternities, except Beta, ON CAMPUS PROPERTY? Yes, the actual edifices may not be owned by the university, but they’re on property. And the definition of “On-campus Student Housing Facility” is so broad that it covers not only the building on the campus property, but even facilities “within the reasonably contiguous geographic area” of the campus — I’d be shocked if this didn’t include the fraternities. Even Beta, it seems to me, would most likely fall under the “contiguous geographic area” part of the definition, since it’s surrounded by Wesleyan property on all sides.

It’s also worth discussing a little bit exactly how to interpret statistics. It doesn’t matter where the “majority” of sexual assaults occur — all that matters are the PROPORTIONS. For example, if you lived in a country that was 5% Nazi and they committed 45% of all the murders of Jewish people, presumably you wouldn’t look at that and say, “well, gee, the majority of Jew killings are committed by non-Nazi…there must not be a link between Nazism and anti-semitism!” Well, no: if you take a group that is only 5% of the population, then it should only commit 5% of the crimes if there is no link between its character and its actions. The 50% threshold is irrelevant. You could even have, say, the 5% of the population that was Nazi committing, say, 10% of the murders of Jews — in that case, you could talk about the “vast majority” (your phrase) of Jew killings being committed by non-Nazis. But there would still be clear link between Nazism and antisemitism, as the Nazis would be twice as likely (compared to their percent of the population) to kill Jews. Fraternity members are a small percentage of the student population, but anybody who has followed the sexual assault issue at Wesleyan can tell you than they far outweigh their number in terms of assaults committed.

The trick to good data analysis is to isolate a given variable and see how changes in that variable affect another variable. In this case, we’re looking at whether or not living in an all-male house makes one more or less likely to commit assault women. And fraternity members are disproportionately likely to commit sexual assault.

Now, you could argue that perhaps the higher rate of rape committed by fraternity members owes itself purely to the nature of men who choose to join fraternities — that is, the type of men who disrespect women are the men who are most likely to join fraternities. If that were the case, fraternities themselves would actually be off the hook — it wouldn’t be that joining a fraternity made future assaults more likely, it would just be that the people who were going to commit assaults regardless of whether or not they joined a fraternity were the same people who happened to join a fraternity. This would be a classic case of “selection bias.”

But that’s where the findings presented in the CNN article come into play. Here’s the key paragraph from the article: “What we found was highly instructive. Before they got to college, fraternity men were no different from other male students. They committed the same number of incidents of sexual assaults before college. But here’s the difference. Guys who joined a fraternity then committed three times as many sexual assaults as those who didn’t join. It is reasonable to conclude that fraternities turn men into guys more likely to rape. Our study confirmed that fraternities provide the culture of male peer support for violence against women that permits bad attitudes to become treacherous behavior.” Because of how the study was set up, we can actually isolate the effect the jocular, all-male nature of fraternities has on rates of sexual assault — after all, if it were just the case that men who joined fraternities were by their nature more likely to commit rape or other forms of sexual assault, then they would’ve also committed rape at disproportionate rates BEFORE they joined a fraternity. Instead what has happened is that we have taken two groups that were equally likely to commit sexual assault before they got into college; once they got into college and had to choose whether or not to join fraternities, those who did join fraternities committed rape at three times the rate as those who didn’t. Clearly fraternities make rape more likely.

So, to sum up the different statistical analyses presented by each of us. In your favor, you have data on the location of sexual assaults which doesn’t clearly demarcate fraternities from the rest of the campus, and doesn’t provide any data on whether or not incidences of sexual assault are disproportionately committed by frat bros. What I have in my favor is a careful statistical analysis which tracks men over time and has determined that, even though they were no more likely to commit rape BEFORE joining a fraternity, frat bros were three times as likely as other men to commit sexual assault. If one of us has been ignoring statistics and going with “conformity to the dogma of feelings trumping fact,” it isn’t me.

Also, I’m not opposed to anti-assault training, but it seems to me to be a separate question from whether or not fraternities should admit women. I think all parts of Wesleyan’s campus — not just DKE, but everyone on campus, including members of the other fraternities — should have to undergo this type of training. But other things equal, does the presence of all-male houses make assaults more or less likely? More likely, as the CNN article clearly shows. I’m glad that DKE is willing to undergo training (after all, they need it), but assault would be reduced to an even greater degree if they underwent this training AND began admitting women.

Second: Yes, “seriously.” I work at an economic policy think tank. Scott’s claim that we have a booming economy that should’ve led to greater donations from alumni — and that therefore a slight decrease in donations reflects not just its own drop-off, but also any foregone increases that we should’ve expected to see in the face of a booming economy — is absurd.

Third and fourth: It’s clearly not THAT significant. You can read some of my earlier responses which you may not have seen. Also, I’m not sure where Scott got his numbers from, but it looks like overall alumni donations are UP rather than DOWN: http://thisiswhy.wesleyan.edu/news/item/fy14update And even if they are down over the past few months, they’re only down from the RECORD-HIGH YEAR. In comparison with the best year of fundraising ever, then yes, it may be the case that donations are down, but that’s a faulty starting point. (And my guess is that Wesleyan’s FY2014 ran from July 1, 2014, to June 30, 2015, so this past year probably WAS that record-high year; but if not, a decrease from “record-high” is to be expected.)

Fifth: To be clear, I doubt that women’s rights supporters are donating significantly more because of Roth’s actions. The increased funding coming from them is probably quite slight — BUT SO IS THE DECREASE FROM FRATERNITY BRO ALUMNI. That’s the whole point — Scott apparently decided that an unproved insignificant increase in donations from women’s rights supporters didn’t deserve mention in his post — yet he decided to focus his entire piece on unproved insignificant decreases in donations from frat bros. Just as you aren’t jumping up and down on your couch with glee about the thought of women’s rights supporters dramatically improving university funding, I’m not exactly breaking a sweat about the possibility of fewer donations from frat bros.

Finally, on the trade-off. Just ask yourself, how much would you be willing to pay to stop someone from sodomizing you? It’s a brutal question, but people who are prioritizing alumni donations over rape have clearly answered that question in their own heads — but it’s a slightly different question, because, in truth, they know they won’t be the victims. How you like it, as a parent, if you knew that Wesleyan could take actions to decrease the chance that your daughter would be raped at college, and the response was “sorry — we could take such actions, but that would mean accepting fewer donations from fraternity brothers. We have to keep our priorities straight.” Well, I know how I’d respond. How would you?