"An Arc of Outrage"

Article here. Excerpt:

'The statistics defining the problem became a source of debate. The "one in five" researcher called that finding, from two campuses, not nationally representative, and its definition of "sexual assault" turned out to include offenses some people might not have put in that category, like "forced kissing" and rubbing up against someone over clothes. Reliable evidence was hard to find. "Researchers have been unable to determine the precise incidence of sexual assault on American campuses," a report by the National Institute of Justice had concluded several years earlier, because results depend on "how the questions are worded and the context of the survey." The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found a rate of six in 1,000, although underreporting, widely recognized as a problem, seemed substantial there.
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The conversation about campus sexual assault is dominated by two poles: One declares it a crisis, the other dismisses it as a panic. In fact, it has become both. And as long as candor and nuance remain elusive, so will progress.
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While there are no more chaperones, expectations for moral guidance and institutional control have emerged in "affirmative consent" standards in students' sexual encounters. The old norm was "no means no," but on a growing number of campuses, it's now "no unless yes." Colleges are interceding in students' private lives to set stricter rules than exist in the wider world, and some students are clamoring for it.
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When it comes to sex, college women expect both freedom and safety, and why shouldn't they? But tensions arise between erotic agency and vulnerability, Michelle Goldberg writes for The Nation. "The politics of liberation are an uneasy fit with the politics of protection."

That's a subtle balance to strike, or even discuss. And it's hard to negotiate in a tinderbox.'