The rise of rape reporting during game weekends was collaborated by LSU’s Lighthouse Program, a program that offers services to survivors of sexual assault as well as abuse. The program, which accepts reports that have not necessarily been filed with LSU’s police department, said that they have also seen an increased number of reports during home football games.
The news is not necessarily surprising. As the Reveille points out, LSU’s statistics follows recent research by Texas A&M Economics professor Jason Lindo—research that found a correlation between rape reports and Division I football games (LSU is a D1 school). Lindo and his colleagues estimate that rape reports increased some 28 percent during gameday weekends.
LSU acknowledges the problem and, in a statement to the paper, reiterated that the university had “no tolerance for sexual assault.” But at least one person isn’t so sure that campus sexual assault is a real thing. There’s always that guy. And in this case, it’s the LSUPD’s Lt. Kevin Scott.
When asked about their findings, Scott told the Reveille that alcohol consumption was partly to blame, calling gameday an “energetic weekend.” He added that all crime goes up during gameday weekends, something that’s likely unsurprising to anyone who went to a D1 school. But then Scott kept talking, questioning whether or not the statistics—that one in five college women have been sexually assaulted—were really true:
Scott said he suspects national research identifying sexual assault as underreported is factual, but said he is not sure about the commonly cited statistic alleging one in five female college students experience sexual assault at some point during their college career.
“If you surveyed 100 girls, or 1,000 female students on LSU’s campus, will you really see one in five that say they’ve been sexually assaulted, if they’re really being honest?” Scott said. “Is that accurate? I mean, look at the numbers.”
Scott said he is skeptical of whether it is accurate to “rubberstamp” a national statistic on every individual community, and the number of sexual assault reports received by LSUPD do not support the one-in-five statistic.
If we’re being really honest, maybe this is one of the reasons that women underreport rape and sexual assault.
Image via Getty.
