According to a new study by RTI published in the Journal of American College Health:

• 20% of undergraduate women are sexually assaulted during college and an additional 10% experience attempted assault
• Over half of  assaults occured when the women were “incapacitated and unable to provide consent”

In sheer numbers, that means more than 97 thousand students  are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault EVERY YEAR, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.  And the problem is getting worse, with binge drinking having risen now to 45% of students.

Many colleges are implementing aggressive education and intervention programs focused on reducing drinking, but the RTI study authors call for more focus on the sexual assault aspect.  Dr. Christine Lindquist, second author on the report said:

Our research suggests that limiting alcohol intake and not taking drugs are important sexual assault risk reduction strategies, especially within the context of campus social situations.  Developing programs that teach women and men how they can protect themselves and their classmates is an important part of preventing sexual victimization.  We believe our research contributes some knowledge on this front, but much more also needs to be done to educate men about what constitutes sexual violence perpetration, when having sexual contact with women is and is not okay, and what they can do to discourage perpetration by their peers.

As Sarah M. says on safercampus.org:

I’m all for getting kids to drink less, but let’s simultaneously make sure that they understand what consent is and isn’t, and what kind of behavior isn’t acceptable, drunk or not. Perhaps I’m being a naive optimist here, but truly understanding how your behavior harms your classmates, and wanting to avoid being the cause of that harm sounds like something that would disuade students from getting drunk out of their minds. But as things are, I don’t think that drunk assault is taken seriously enough for many students to really understand the harm.

For concerned students and parents, here are resources from the NIAA.