Sexual assault is a public health issue

After liberating this book from the enthusiastic amount of packing tape diligently keeping it safe, I stared at its subtitle, muttered a swear word under my breath, and promptly spent the next five weeks avoiding it. More precisely, I was avoiding the sickened, helpless rage and despair that I assumed I would feel, yet again, while reading about, presumably, a particular brand of young, White, entitled, toxic masculinity.

I was wrong.

The book titles itself as a landmark study, and it’s not kidding. Undertaken over five years at Columbia University, Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan’s study began with nine months of preparation and involved 18 months of research: 1,600 undergraduate surveys, 427 daily diaries kept for 60 days by students, 151 in-depth student interviews, 17 focus groups, various advisory boards meeting weekly, and 600 hours of community and participant field observations. They did their homework.