It’s flawed. As in, not at all correct. Yet the people who are pushing a climate of fear in “rape culture” cite the statistic all the time.

Stephen Edwards writes at the College Fix.

The Truth Behind that 1-in-5 College Women are Raped Statistic

OPINION

The oft-cited statistic that “one in five women is sexually assaulted by the end of her college career” has become a battle cry for those pushing for strict and severe sexual assault campus policies.

The statistic that 20 percent of all coeds will be sexually assaulted or raped before they leave college was taken from a 2007 study conducted by the Justice Department, and it paints a truly horrifying picture.

The problem is, the statistic is flimsy and unsubstantiated at best – and maliciously manipulated as a means to an end at worst.

The study was a web-based survey of 5,446 undergraduate women at two large public universities. Yes, the survey pulled from all of two universities, both of them large public schools.

To hear Vice President Joe Biden and others promulgate this statistic, one would think that it applies equally to all colleges across the land, regardless of size, geographic location, or any other factor. Indeed, many scholars have pointed out that the statistic suggests America’s campuses have a higher violent crime rate than urban cities across the nation.

Clearly the study does not represent the experience of every woman at every college or university in the nation.

Yet it was the basis for sweeping new federal mandates that allow campus leaders to prioritize sexual assault claims above students’ civil liberties and due process rights, and lowers the bar for finding guilt in such matters.

Adding to the hysteria, feminists eager for reform and patriarchal retribution have taken this data and run widely with it. A particularly disturbing outgrowth has been a “Schools of Shame Map.”

According to Fembot, the site at which the map is hosted, the project uses Google Maps to lay out every college in the U.S. that “needs help addressing sexual violence,” adding that “all of them” are in need of help.

The map compares the actual number of reported sexual assaults at each college with what the number would be if the 1 in 5 statistic was applied to its female student population. In other words, the authors of the map multiplied the number of female students at universities by .20, and made a conclusion about how many sexual assaults they believe are probably occurring on these campuses.

They intend to “shame” schools with low numbers of reported assaults, because in their minds low numbers only mean not all the victims have come forward.

Dr. Carol Stabile, one of the map’s authors and the director of the Center for the Study of Women in Society at Oregon University, said “if you have really low reporting, then you know there’s a problem at that institution.” She made the comments for an article on Jezebel.com headlined: “45 percent of colleges report zero rapes on campus, which is bullshit.”