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posted by CoolHand on Saturday November 21 2015, @07:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the hi-tech-smackdown dept.

According to a recent study of 27 schools, about one-quarter of female undergraduates said they had experienced nonconsensual sex or touching since entering college, but most of the students said they did not report it to school officials or support services. Now Natasha Singer reports at the NYT that in an effort to give students additional options — and to provide schools with more concrete data — a nonprofit software start-up in San Francisco called Sexual Health Innovations has developed an online reporting system for campus sexual violence. One of the most interesting features of Callisto is a matching system — in which a student can ask the site to store information about an assault in escrow and forward it to the school only if someone else reports another attack identifying the same assailant. The point is not just to discover possible repeat offenders. In college communities, where many survivors of sexual assault know their assailants, the idea of the information escrow is to reduce students' fears that the first person to make an accusation could face undue repercussions.

"It's this last option that makes Callisto unique," writes Olga Khazan. "Most rapes are committed by repeat offenders, yet most victims know their attackers. Some victims are reluctant to report assaults because they aren't sure whether a crime occurred, or they write it off as a one-time incident. Knowing about other victims might be the final straw that puts an end to their hesitation—or their benefit of the doubt. Callisto's creators claim that if they could stop perpetrators after their second victim, 60 percent of campus rapes could be prevented." This kind of system is based partly on a Michigan Law Review article about "information escrows," or systems that allow for the transmitting of sensitive information in ways that reduce "first-mover disadvantage" also known to economists as the "hungry penguin problem". As game theorist Michael Chwe points out, the fact that each person creates her report independently makes it less likely they'll later be accused of submitting copycat reports, if there are similarities between the incidents.


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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2015, @08:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2015, @08:38AM (#266121)

    Sometimes I think one lives a damned risky life messing around with the opposite sex. Very risky for the male (financially vulnerable) as well as the female (physically vulnerable). One wrong touch can wipe out the male's net worth, however an angered male may well wipe out the female as well - once her cellphone is smashed.

    I often think it is prudent to practice a gay lifestyle. While it is true that no offspring will come of it, it isn't like this world is in need of any more people. Actually, I am of the belief we have way too many people already.

    Maybe all this gender law is the elite's way of breeding the middle class out, as they will soon exhaust their resources on lawyers, leaving only the poor servant welfare-mom class and the ultrarich 0.1% ownership class, and a few obedient engineers and police forces to keep the peasants at bay with high tech obedience-compliance monitoring and enforcement technologies.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2015, @09:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2015, @09:44AM (#266126)

    It's true that relationships are risky business.

    "Domestic disputes are some of the most common calls for police service."
    http://www.popcenter.org/problems/domestic_violence/print/ [popcenter.org]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2015, @02:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2015, @02:10PM (#266168)

    > I often think it is prudent to practice a gay lifestyle.

    What an utterly bizarre thing to say. Weekends really bring out the loonies here.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2015, @02:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2015, @02:18PM (#266171)

    I often think it is prudent to practice a gay lifestyle.

    Or stick to DIY ;).

    How about using "services" by _professionals_? Is that as risky or more risky?