No More 10 Minute Breaks: Study Links Big College Football Games to Spike in Rape Reports

Reported rapes of college-aged victims spike on the days of college football games, suggesting that alcohol-fueled partying on college campuses tied to the contests may lead to more sexual assaults, according to new research.

The study, published in January by the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, analyzed crime data from police agencies covering 96 U.S. colleges with NCAA Division I football programs. It found reports of rape involving victims aged 17 to 24 surged 41% above average daily levels on the day of a home football game, with a 15% increase when there were away games that likely entailed less partying on campus.

The researchers studied football games because they wanted “an event that very clearly intensified partying and drinking, so we could use that event to estimate the causal effect,” said Montana State University economist Isaac Swensen, who co-authored the paper with fellow economists Jason Lindo of Texas A&M University and Peter Siminski of Australia’s University of Technology Sydney.

More broadly, Mr. Swensen said, “this does provide new information on some of the nonmonetary costs and benefits – costs in particular – of these big football programs.”

The economists extrapolated from their sample that football games appear to drive 832 additional rape reports each year across all 253 schools with Division I football programs. Such crimes often go unreported, according to the researchers, which may mean the actual number of sexual assaults could be far higher.

The issue of sexual assault on college campuses, and how universities handle those cases, has gained growing national attention. Researchers have long linked violent crimes with alcohol consumption, finding that many assaults are committed by perpetrators who have been drinking and many victims are intoxicated. An estimated 97,000 college students each year are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

The three economists who did the study, in their analysis of data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation from local law-enforcement agencies, found reports of rape involving college-aged victims increased on the day of and early morning following a college football game. They said the increases were larger for home games, higher-profile teams and games, and on campuses ranked as well-known party schools by the Princeton Review.

The study acknowledges that it “cannot say with certainty that the estimated effects on reports of rape are driven by the increase in partying associated with football games.” But Mr. Swensen said the economists assembled much circumstantial evidence supporting the idea that “alcohol and partying are the causal mechanism.”

He said the study should prompt campus policy makers to think about how to make partying safer, and how to avoid or mitigate spikes in partying that appear to drive alcohol-related crimes, as well as consider whether the benefits of large football programs outweigh their costs.

“Researchers are very much still in the thick of trying to figure out what works to reduce sexual assault,” he said.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association in 2016 created a “Commission to Combat Campus Sexual Violence” and last year adopted a policy requiring all college athletes, coaches and staffers to complete annual education on preventing sexual violence. “There can be no room for this scourge anywhere in higher education,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said in January.

Reports of Sexual Assault Rising Sharply on College Campuses (May 4, 2016)

More Than 1 in 4 College Women Report Sexual Assault by Graduation (Sept. 21, 2015)

Dartmouth Banning Hard Alcohol From Campus (Jan. 29, 2015)

Campus Sexual Assaults Draw Greater Scrutiny (Sept. 29, 2014)

from Real Time Economics http://ift.tt/2G1iY3U