George Will defended his disputed column on sexual assault in an interview with C-SPAN recorded Thursday, arguing that efforts from colleges to address sexual assault were trivializing the crime’s very definition.
The Washington Post piece that started all the ruckus had attempted to debunk the White House’s claim that one in every five women in college experiences sexual assault. Will wrote that efforts to address rape on campus have made “victimhood a coveted status.”
“This is my job, is when dubious statistics become the basis of dubious and dangerous abandonment of due process,” he said in the C-SPAN interview. “To step in and say, ‘take a deep breath everybody.'”
Will explained that he took issue with the practice of adjudicating campus sexual assault cases by a “preponderance” of evidence, rather than hitting the bar of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. That flies in the face of due process, he argued, and ultimately harms young men’s future prospects.
“What’s going to result is a lot of young men and young women in this sea of hormones and alcohol, that gets into so much trouble on campuses, you’re going to have charges of sexual assault,” he said. “And you’re going to have young men disciplined, their lives often permanently and seriously blighted by this — don’t get into medical school, don’t get to law school, all the rest.”
Four Democratic senators reached out to Will after his column was published to torch the conservative columnist’s “ancient beliefs.” Will said he wrote a letter back to the senators and laid out his rebuttal in the C-SPAN interview.
“What I say is that: A) I take sexual assault more seriously than I think they do, because I agree that society has correctly said that rape is second only to murder as a serious felony,” Will said. “And therefore, when someone is accused of rape, it should be reported to the criminal justice system that knows how to deal with this, not jerry-built, improvised campus processes.”
“Second, I take, I think, sexual assault somewhat more seriously than the senators do because I think there’s a danger now of defining sexual assault so broadly, so capaciously, that it begins to trivialize the seriousness of it,” he added. “When remarks become sexual assault, improper touching — bad, shouldn’t be done, but it’s not sexual assault.”
Watch below:
His concern for the potential thwarting of young men’s ambitions is duly noted.
I do not recall a time in which George Will was so concerned with women’s take on rape.
I don’t want to ready anything else GW says about sex-- felonious or otherwise.
George Will: “When remarks become sexual assault, improper touching – bad, shouldn’t be done, but it’s not sexual assault.”
No, George, improper touching is not sexual assault in any courtroom in the USA. Improper touching? Are you serious?
George: do you have some “improper touching” that went on in your past days at whatever Ivy League college your parents paid to send you to? Did you fondle a young woman, (or man) half drunk and you are afraid of the justice system convicting you of “sexual assault” for wrestling your college roommate one night when drunk ? C’mon George, fess up!
Rest easy, George, if you fondled a young woman or man after one too many beers or glasses of wine, you’re in no danger of being convicted of anything. Setting aside the statutes of limitations that applied up until the child-sex-abuse scandals revealed in and after the 90’s for the Catholic church, no one in his 70’s or 80’s can go on trial for wrestling their college buddies back in the 1950’s.
When George conflates “improper touching” with criminal sexual assault, and makes protests over sexual assault reporting, charges and convictions, a guilty conscience? I think perhaps the lady doth protest too much.
… young men and young women in this sea of hormones and alcohol, that gets into so much trouble on campuses
sounds like George let his mind wander off into some fantasies for a moment …