Telling someone “Drink Responsibly” s apparently victim blaming, and the Justice Department will have none of it.

Greg Piper at the College Fix has the story:

Federal Policies ‘Censor’ Colleges From Talking About Alcohol Role In Rape

Former George Washington University President Stephen Tractenberg found out the hard way that you shouldn’t tell college women to watch their alcohol intake if they want to protect themselves from sexual assault.

Apparently that’s also been Justice Department policy – for the entire 21st century.

Robin Wilson writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education that schools can get in trouble if they include alcohol’s role in federally funded sexual-assault prevention programs:

Campus efforts considered “out of scope” for the grants include programs that “focus primarily on alcohol and substance abuse,” the grant program says online. It points administrators away from an emphasis on “changing victim behavior.”

Kathleen A. Bogle learned that alcohol could be off limits when she tried to deliver a talk several years ago called “Hooking Up, Alcohol, and Sexual Assault: Understanding the Connections and Reducing the Problem.” It was for a meeting sponsored by the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women, and federal officials asked Ms. Bogle, an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University, to remove the word “alcohol” from the title. Focusing on how much students drink, they said, leads to blaming victims.

“This starts to censor how we can talk about the issue,” says Ms. Bogle. “I don’t think you are doing young women any favors by saying, We’re not going to tell you that this happens—and be careful about it.”

There’s actual research that shows how rare it is for women to be assaulted after they have unknowingly consumed alcohol or drugs, Wilson says – in most cases, they have voluntarily imbibed.