Stopping campus rape

Undoing the federal government’s Reagan-era imposition of a higher drinking age is probably too counterintuitive for lawmakers to contemplate. And obviously it wouldn’t eliminate the lure of the keg stand or tame the recklessness of youth. But it would create an opportunity for a healthier approach to alcohol consumption — more social and relaxed, less frantic and performative — to take root in collegiate culture once again.

Second, college administrators could try to break their schools’ symbiotic relationship with the on-campus party scene. This is not an easy task, mostly for financial reasons: The promise of Blutarskian excess often attracts the kind of well-heeled kids whose parents pay full freight, and the “party pathway” through academe involves two intertwined phenomena — big-time sports and wild Greek life — that basically define college for many deep-pocketed alums.

But what Murray Sperber has dubbed the “beer and circus” atmosphere around college athletics, combined with what Caitlin Flanagan’s recent Atlantic article terms “the dark power” of (some) fraternities, are the deep forces shaping the vulnerable trajectory of many campus nights. Weaken those forces, rein in their often-misogynistic excesses, and what’s lost in alumni dollars would probably be gained in lower rates of sexual violence, and a safer campus over all.