Sexual assault on college campuses has become one of the defining issues of the mid-2010s. Discussion of the problem is widespread, and at this point it has become impossible to ignore. The president launched an initiative to combat it. Sen. Marco Rubio is sponsoring legislation against it. As a community, we were forced to deal with it during last year’s spree of yet-unsolved attacks against women.
Late last year, the University of Virginia became a flashpoint for the problem. The university was subject to national attention after Rolling Stone broke a story about a student by the pseudonym “Jackie” who was the victim of a brutal rape at a fraternity house. The story describes the night she was raped, the repercussions on her life and the administration’s failure to take action. The story seemed too horrible to be true.
And, in fact, Rolling Stone’s story did not hold up. An investigation into the fraternity accused in the story, Phi Kappa Psi, concluded yesterday. Her case isn’t yet closed, but whatever happened to Jackie did not happen in that house, according to police.
Almost as soon as the story was published, discrepancies arose. It seemed the subject of the story, Jackie, had contradicted established facts. Rolling Stone, in accordance with her wishes, hadn’t interviewed her would-be perpetrators. In doing so, Rolling Stone lapsed on one of the fundamental ideals of media ethics — get all sides of the story. Rolling Stone apologized and sent the story to the Columbia Journalism School for review.
Because of shoddy reporting, Rolling Stone made a mockery out of itself and cheapened a national crisis.
Phi Kappa Psi’s reputation is bruised; Rolling Stone’s is tarnished. But Jackie and victims who would speak out have been inadvertently taught a lesson: Keep your mouth shut.
There are those who are opposed to taking action against the prevalence of sexual assault; even the idea of its existence is suspect to them. The belief is fueled by mistrust of the government’s established one-in-five statistic, cultivated by sites like NewsBusters.org, reiterated by slightly more mainstream columnist George Will. People who reserve the same sneer for the word “progressive” as when they say “Marxist,” who spend their lives hounding sick “libs” believe the whole thing is either overblown or deliberate and malicious propaganda.
The fact that this story turned out to be false — insofar as Jackie wasn’t raped at that frat, on that night — delights these critics. To them, it’s proof of the pattern: A leftist magazine falsifies horrific rape accusations against innocent fraternity gentlemen, begging Barack Hussein Obama to intervene in higher education. Rolling Stone’s irresponsibility in this story validates their warped worldview, taking away from the issue at hand. Instead of an endemic campus-rape problem enabled by apathetic college administrations, the nation’s outrage turned to a publication whose principal contribution to the last decade has been as an archive of Bob Dylan photos.
Whatever develops from the UVA story, know this: Sexual assault still plagues us. Detractors can use the UVA story to argue otherwise, but that’s Rolling Stone’s problem, not ours. In the meantime, we urge responsibility and integrity in dealing with this very real and important issue.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 3/24/2015 under the headline “UVA frat exoneration does not invalidate sexual assault”]
