Ex-College President: Women Should Drink Less To Stop Men Who ‘Misbehave’

The former president of The George Washington University on Tuesday joined the chorus of individuals telling college women to simply drink less in order to avoid sexual assault.

During a discussion of Greek life at U.S. colleges on The Diane Rehm Show, Dr. Stephen Joel Trachtenberg weighed in on the issue of sexual assault, Jezebel noted on Wednesday.

Trachtenberg tried to hedge his remarks on drinking and rape by first noting that sexual assault victims should not be blamed, but he still asserted that women really need to learn to drink less.

“Without making the victims responsible for what happens, one of the groups that have to be trained not to drink in excess are women. They need to be in a position to punch the guys in the nose if they misbehave,” he said. “And so part of the problem is you have men who take advantage of women who drink too much and there are women who drink too much. And we need to educate our daughters and our children in that regard.”

Sexual assault on college campuses came into the spotlight this spring when the federal government launched an effort to compile better statistics and the Education Department announced an investigation into the way 55 schools handled sexual assault complaints. As Washington City Paper noted, GWU was not one of the 55 colleges.