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In a widely publicized incident last fall, a female student at the University of California, Berkeley, filed a complaint saying she had been gang-raped by a football player she once dated and three of his teammates. The case was dropped, partly because the victim had been drinking. Said Detective Greg Folster of the University of California, Berkeley, police: "I have no doubt that this was a sexual assault, but I don't think the judicial system is quite ready for acquaintance rape."
Researchers compiling profiles of both victims and victimizers find that date rapists are more sexually active than other males and more likely to have a history of antisocial behavior. The rapists and their victims are usually in the 15-to-24 age group. The women are often alone in a new environment, like a college campus. Compared with other women, the victims generally suffer from lower self-esteem and are not very good at asserting themselves. One woman, raped by her date at a fraternity party, said she decided not to scream for help because she did not want to embarrass the rapist.
One theory of date rape is that men and women tend to misread each other's signals, particularly a soft-spoken no that many males assume means yes or at least maybe. Says one student at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.: "There are different kinds of nos. 'Noooo . . .' is one thing. 'NO, get your filthy hands off me!' is another." Some feminists argue that the U.S. has a "rape culture" in which males are encouraged to treat women aggressively and women are trained to submit. Some surveys back up that dark ideological view of male sexual behavior. In Koss's study, one male in 13 admitted attempting or committing at least one rape. In a 1980 report at UCLA, half the male students admitted that there could be some circumstances under which they would force a woman to commit a sexual act if they were sure of not being punished.
Many campuses and rape crisis centers sponsor speeches and programs aimed at preventing date rape. At Cornell, student actors play the roles of date rapists and victims, then stay in character to restage the scenes along new lines suggested by members of the audience. An increasing number of college campuses now have anti-rape programs. However, as Bernice Sandler of the Association of American Colleges, points out, "many schools are still unsure about whether date rape is rape or not. Schools just don't know what to do about it." But times may be changing. Pi Kappa Phi fraternities around the country now put up posters of The Rape of the Sabine Women saying TODAY'S GREEKS CALL IT DATE RAPE. Underneath in smaller type it says, AGAINST HER WILL IS AGAINST THE LAW.