In a recent Letter to the Editor published in the Badger Herald, University of Wisconsin-Madison junior David Hookstead outlined his feelings on the increased crime around campus. He proposes three steps to take to help lower crime: prioritize police attention, allow students with conceal-carry permits to carry guns on campus and for people to travel in groups specifically for women to travel in groups with a man. The latter two steps he offers are ridiculous proposals. Although I agree with him regarding the prioritization of police attention, his thinking on access to guns will likely create more problems than they solve and his assertion that travel in groups with men is what will protect us ignores the reality of circumstances around lots of crimes being alluded to.
The problem with proposing students be allowed on campus with their weapons is that the university would be allowing guns into campus spaces when there is no conclusive evidence that conceal and carry policies actually are effective methods for lowering crime. The research that the National Rifle Association often cites as evidence that conceal carry laws lower crime have on multiple occasions been debunked by additional readings of the material. It has been shown clearly that conceal-carry rights neither decrease nor increase crime. This is reason enough to realize guns shouldn’t be allowed on campus. My feeling is that if society can’t trust people between the ages of 18 to 21 to drink than we can’t be trusted to wield guns. Hookstead goes on by advising student to travel in groups. Although there is an amount of validity in his proposal, it does nothing to solve crime at its roots; it’s just a risk reduction strategy. What this means is responsibility is put on the potential victims to not become victims, rather than looking for ways to prevent perpetrators from attempting to carry out crimes. I use this terminology specifically, because Mr. Hookstead uses highly sexist language in his letter. In addition to advising students to travel in groups, he suggests that female students need to travel in groups with at least one man to lower their risk of becoming victims of crime. At this point he blatantly reiterates the age-old stereotype of women needing men to get through life; it is the damsel in distress who needs the gallant prince to help her, or a stereotype that is far from reality and reinforces gender stereotypes. I can’t help but think Hookstead had sexual assault in mind when he referred to women being more vulnerable than men, but even the recent spike in crimes appear to be affecting men and women students equally.
Not only does he offer no more than risk reduction, but he fails to see that potential victims of sexual assault are unlikely to be assaulted by somebody they don’t know on the street. This is because most sexual assaults occur at the home of either the victim or perpetrator, and the vast majority of victims know their assailant personally or they are at least acquainted. This is a valid point to bring up, because this argument at least inadvertently touches on quite a few points we Badgers need to continuously discuss. Whether this crime is coming from people outside of the UW-Madison community or from people within it, the search for solutions should be continuous. That doesn’t excuse the promotion of tactics that merely make us feel comfortable. These will do nothing to find the root cause of crimes. Hookstead obviously doesn’t see how various crimes intersect with each other. He publishes sexist thoughts and simultaneously advocates for increasing access to guns for students, yet it doesn’t seem he realizes guns are also tools for intimate partner violence with about a third of all UW-Madison students have reported experiencing it in some form. We also don’t want these crimes to allow us to justify extreme tactics to solve them.
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