Campus Sex, Campus Security

In a pointed and deliberately fragmented book-length essay, Doyle explores how modern U.S. campuses are policed, delving into the "discourse of campus rape" along the way. She demonstrates how well-intentioned bureaucratic procedures can transform a campus into a "conflict zone" where students are soaked with pepper spray, a professor is thrown to the ground for jaywalking, and non-white students are singled out to produce ID, among other abuses. Doyle, a Professor of English at UCLA-Riverside, names the 2011%E2%80%932012 school year the "year of risk management" for American colleges, due to new Department of Education standards for Title IX compliance. These new standards associated a discrimination-free campus with one that felt safe, noted the frequency of sexual assault using now-disputed statistics, and put colleges on notice regarding their responsibilities toward potential victims. Doyle describes how the campus is now viewed as a "hunting ground" to be protected from the "non-affiliate" outsider. While analyzing stories of campus rapes (Penn State), suicides (Rutgers), and pepper sprayings (UC-Davis), Doyle tars administrators with a rather broad brush, saying they are "the last people one would actually trust to know what it means to support a robust... equitable sexual culture." She challenges readers to see abuses of power as forms of sexism on college campuses, and to imagine a more open campus community. (Oct.)