Casey Criticizes George Will’s Column on Sexual Assault

caseyFour senators, including Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, authored a letter that denounces Washington Post conservative columnist George Will’s recent article that addresses sexual assaults on college campuses.

Will’s column, “Colleges become the victims of progressivism,” uses what he calls the “epidemic of rape, a.k.a. ‘sexual assault’” to illustrate the liberal victimization of college students.

As an example, Will uses a report from Philadelphia Magazine to point out the ambiguity of sexual assault on college campuses.

He concludes, “Academia is learning that its attempts to create victim-free campuses — by making everyone hypersensitive, even delusional, about victimizations — brings increasing supervision by the regulatory state that progressivism celebrates.”

Senators Casey, Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) issued a response to Will’s column.

“Your thesis and statistics fly in the face of everything we know about this issue,” the letter reads. “More egregiously, you trivialize the the scourge of sexual assault, putting the phrase in scare quotes and treating this crime as a socially acceptable phenomenon. It is in fact a spreading epidemic, and you legitimize the myths that victims and victim advocates have worked tirelessly for decades to combat.”

“Your column suggests that we – including some of us who have worked on this issue for many years – all have missed a subculture on college campuses where survivors of sexual assault are inducted into a privileged class,” they continue. “The culture you described is so antiquated, so counterintuitive and so contrary to anything we heard that we hope you will make an effort to hear the stories survivors bravely shared with us about the struggles they face in addressing what has happened to them – often with little meaningful assistance from authorities expected to help them.”

Although the Senators sharply criticize Will’s column, others have called for him to be fired. A group called UltraViolet has collected 87,000 signatures in a petition to remove Will from the Washington Post.

12 Responses

  1. Who woke Casey up? Go back to sleep Bobby before you do something positive.

  2. Yea fire George Will. Only people with whom we agree, should be allowed to have their comments published. The nerve of him challenging our data. It clearly shows he’s in favor of sexual assault. Thank God for Senator Casey; when it doesn’t matter he’s always there.

  3. Dems know that 2014 will be a bloodbath for them, so they’re retreading the old “War on Women” nonsense.

    I believe this is the first time I’ve seen Bob Casey actually do something since he took office. What you get for electing someone just because he’s his father’s son.

  4. Through your spit and rage you’ve all allowed yourselves to misread or read into the article what’s been suggested to you.

    Even the Senators’ letter admits he did say what’s got you so angry, only going so far as writing, “Your column suggests…” They know darned well to state as fact what they want to whip everyone up for would land them on the short end of a big fat lawsuit.

    The brownshirts would be proud.

  5. Free speech is not the issue. The inhumanity of the remarks is what is significant.

  6. George Will should spend some time with the male victims of sexual assault and rape by Jerry Sandusky. Perhaps then he might have a different perspective about the “privilege” of going public when folks like George Will condemn you for it. In my true crime book, “KONDRO – The Untold Story of the Longview Serial Killer,” Joe Kondro was able, for many years, to get away with molesting, raping and murdering his neighbor’s young daughters because the whole community helped keep the secret. What we are seeing are not bids for “15 minutes of fame,” but an era when diverse groups –gays, adoptees, rape victims–have come of the closet of secrecy, shame and hypocrisy. Shame on you, George Will, for trying to lock them back in..

  7. The First Amendment protects you from government censorship of your speech. For example, a public park cannot prohibit you from holding a Hillary rally while allowing a Ted Cruz rally. The First Amendment has nothing to do with what George Will says in a privately owned paper and what thousands of people say back to him and that paper. Reread that first amendment you posted.

  8. Although they seem to all have the same talking points, I think they read from a different article to reach their conclusions.

  9. Please reprint the letter these Senators wrote asking for Ward Churchill’s firing.

  10. The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution as far as I know has not yet been amended. Freedom of speech must be protected. George Will’s free speech and even Bob Casey’s free speech.

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

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