Here's an Idea

Recently a rash of assaults against young women has hit Indiana University in Bloomington.  Apparently the goblin or goblins involved have smartened up a bit, since all of the reported assaults have occurred away from the well-lit, easily found emergency phones.

IU has responded by upping the number of police patrols and holding several self defense classes for students and faculty.  If I'm not wrong, and that has been known to happen, these self defense classes will boil down to

• Avoid poorly lit or empty areas of campus after dark
• Travel in groups
• Walk assertively
•  If attacked, yell "Stop!", kick them in the balls, run away, and call police.

Remember, I'm not a woman, and didn't attend university in the traditional manner, so I don't know for a fact that this is what is going to be taught.  But when a civilian goblin decided to take advantage of our open post at Monterey and started attacking lone, unarmed female soldiers as they walked along the non-sanctioned Ho-Chi-Minh trail, our leadership held classes that had these as the main tenets of the course.  The attacks continued until Mr. Goblin decided to attack my then-girlfriend, a 5'1" Marine Lance-Corporal who used Thai kick boxing as an additional workout because Marine PT wasn't good enough.  After beating the snot out of the guy, she stood with her foot on his neck and yelled her head off at him until someone came along to save the poor bastard.  My guess is he would have continued his assaults for a much longer time if he hadn't stumbled upon one of the physically toughest women I have ever met.

Suffice it to say that I have little faith in what these classes will accomplish in the IU situation.  These things are a good start, but the women who attend and work at IU deserve better.  Since IU is a victim disarmament zone, I'm guessing there will be little to no discussion of the tools that a woman can use to equalize the force equation with a male attacker, namely firearms.

If IU leadership truly cares about the women on their campus, they should drop their irrational fear of effective defensive weaponry, and hold defensive training that will actually teach these ladies the tools and methods that they can use to protect themselves.  But what will probably happen is that the attacks will continue until either the attacker moves on, the campus police gets extraordinarily lucky, or he makes the mistake of messing with one of the women in the IU population who have made personal defense a personal decision.