"I want to be emphatic about the fact that alcohol is not a mitigating factor" in cases of date or acquaintance rape, she said.
Date rape policies are even stricter at the University of California at San Diego, said Nancy J. Wahlig, coordinator of that school's Student Safety Awareness Program.
California law specifically states that a person who is "unconscious of the nature of the act" of sex cannot legally give consent. Thus, said Wahlig, anyone who has sex with an intoxicated person in effect commits statutory rape.
But Wahlig said that despite the strictness of the state's law, and despite the university's own "very broad" definition of rape, no U.C.--San Diego student has ever pressed legal charges of acquaintance rape.
One possible explanation for this apparent apathy, she suggested, is that "most students don't even know about the policy."
Noting that students need to be educated about the legal rights of rape victims, Wahlig said that colleges must conduct serious campus-wide campaigns to inform students about the nature and consequences of rape.
Wahlig said that many people are already far more educated about rape than they used to be and that courts have grown more severe in their treatment of rapists.
"The tide is turning," she said. "They're taking rape more seriously now."