Ban frats for safer campuses?

So if most sex offenders aren't skulking, drooling horror-movie monsters, who are they? Well, in almost every respect, they are just ... guys. Or, less frequently, gals.

Guys (or gals) you know and hang out with; who have wives or girlfriends (or boyfriends), jobs and hobbies other than hiding in bushes.

Sex offenders cross the spectrum of race, age, income - you name it. For the most part, in every respect but one, they're just like you and me and everyone we know.

And while it's true that there is a subset of sex offenders who reoffend at alarmingly high rates, most don't. In fact, recidivism rates for most types of sex crimes are pretty much in line with those for people convicted of other crimes.

But if sex offenders aren't monsters who crawl fully formed from underneath some rock somewhere, where do they come from?

Fraternities, according to writer Caitlin Flanagan. At least on college campuses. That's why schools across the country should shut the organizations down, she argued in a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal.

Maybe it's not such a terrible idea. It certainly would be in keeping with our strategy of sweeping, ineffective gestures toward reducing sex-related crime (see Wednesday's column).

After all, college-aged women are at greater risk for victimization than any other age group, and studies have found that fraternity men are more likely to be assailants - some say significantly so.

And there is no shortage of scandals involving fraternity brothers joking about rape, singing about rape (you stay classy, Yale) to show that at least some fraternities don't seem to have a good grasp of their role in the problem.

You can see why Flanagan and a few others would argue that sexual violence is so ingrained in fraternity culture that we should just kill the whole system.

But if the myth of the monster sex offender keeps us from thinking about sex offenders as people who choose to engage in violent criminal behavior, maligning the frat house keeps us from assigning responsibility where it belongs: With the people who live inside it.

Do some fraternities breed a toxic culture that reinforces predatory sexual behavior? Yalies' chants of “No means yes,” etc. should answer that question.

But frats don't have that market cornered. Just ask the victim who tries to report a rape to police, only to be told “yeah, but you used to date the guy, right?”

That's the attitude that needs to change - whether it's in the frat house or any house.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net