When you change your school's alcohol policy months after an assault happens on your campus, you become part of a culture that works to blame the victims of rape. You become a part of the system that thinks that innocent victims are at fault, and guilty perpetrators "didn't mean to". To change the alcohol policy on your campus is to say that you buy into the belief that rapists don't cause rape, but alcohol does. That if you consume alcohol, you become partially responsible to anything that happens to you. When you become a part of a culture that blames victims, you are not placing the blame on the attacker.

When you don't place the blame on the attacker, you have victims who are afraid to come forward. You have victims who won't report a rape or an attack because they would blow a .08% on a breathalyzer. You end up being hypocritical: Well, it's her fault that she was drinking! Oh, but he can't be held responsible, he was too drunk to know what he was doing! When you have victims who don't come forward, you have perpetrators who don't get put away.

When you have a perpetrator who doesn't get put away, you have a survivor who is terrified. A person who has gone through the terrifying, unexplainable reality of being sexually assaulted has to see her attacker skate past jail time, or get out in less time than someone in on a small drug charge. You have a court system to sympathizes with the attacker, oh, poor guy! This is going to ruin his life!, which, alternatively, has to be a court system that doesn't sympathize with the victim. When you have a survivor who is terrified, you are actively punishing the victim for a crime done against them.

When you punish the victim, you fall backwards. You lose all progress women have made. Because it doesn't matter if we can own land if we are terrified to walk off of that land at night. It doesn't matter if we can vote when we are voting for people who do nothing about us being punished for crimes against us. It doesn't matter if we can get into an accredited university when someone at that school can brutally attack you and get their 6 month jail sentence cut in half.

When you punish the victim, you buy into the idea that somehow, some way, her job is to prevent rape. That if she drinks alcohol, well, sorry! Anything thereafter is your own fault. You tell her that her ability to have fun has to be hindered by her fear of something happening to her. You tell her that when a man chooses to take her body and use it for his own gratification, it could have been and should have been prevented by her.

When you punish the victim, you give abusers a pass to do whatever they want. You let them know that they can do whatever they want and nothing will happen.

When you change your school's alcohol policy after a sexual assault, you become part of the culture that blames victims for their own assault. When you become part of the culture that blames victims, you don't place the blame on the attacker. When you don't place the blame on the attacker, you have victims who are afraid to come forward. When you have victims who are afraid to come forward, you have perpetrators who don't get put away. When you have perpetrators who don't get put away, you have survivors who are terrified. When you have a survivor who is terrified, you are actively punishing the victim for a crime done against them. When you punish the victim for a crime done against them, you tell her it is her fault.

It is not. End this cycle.