A Mar. 28 column in American University’s student newspaper, The Eagle, has sparked controversy and incited anger beyond AU’s campus by arguing that a woman who consumes alcohol and walks with a man back to his room is implicitly consenting to sex.

As you might expect, students on campus responded quickly. Our sponsored magazine at AU, American Way of Life (AWOL), wrote:

The response from the university community against [columnist Alex] Knepper and the Eagle was swift and unforgiving; Eagle newspaper stands were vandalized, some labeled with signs reading “NO ROOM FOR RAPE APOLOGISTS.” Various parties from the Women’s Initiative to Student Government representatives immediately decried Knepper’s statement as offensive and appalling [...] The comments section on the online verison of Knepper’s column was eventually frozen after death threats and personal attacks overtook any sane dialogue that had been occurring.

But AWOL points out that critics outside the university might not be aware of the bigger picture here: In fact, the problem at The Eagleisn’t simply related to this one column.

In November 2009, the paper editorialized that students’ tuition shouldn’t go toward the campus’ women’s center because the center benefits a “special subgroup.”And in an earlier column, Knepper argued that the women’s center was merely a front group for feminist activists on campus.

AWOL concludes: “This latest controversy over Knepper’s disavowal of the existence of date rape seems to be the logical trajectory of several articles’ worth of increasingly provocative content.”

[AWOL: Why is The Eagle so hostile to feminists?]

(Cross-posted at CampusProgress.org)