SACRAMENTO, CA - The University of California at Davis, just a few miles from the state capital, provides the latest evidence that political correctness reigns on campus, and that the Watergate dictum of “follow the money” applies more than ever.

In 1999, UC Davis applied to the U.S. Department of Justice for a grant of $543,000 to fight crime on campus. The application claims that, every year, rapists victimize as many as 700 UC Davis students. That amounts to more than two rapes per day during the school year, a claim that would surprise the police, students, and even federal officials.

Federal law requires universities to report crime statistics. In its report for 1998, UC Davis reported the actual number of rapes--zero. But their grant claimed 700. Both claims cannot be true and UC Davis provided some entertaining responses.

Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, doubtless scraping the egg off his face and perhaps checking the balance in his retirement account, declined all comment. He surely knows the 700 figure is complete nonsense. Steven Drown, counsel for UC Davis, said the 700 figure was only an estimate, and blamed the discrepancy on victims’ reluctance to report crime.

Jennifer Beeman, director of the Campus Violence Prevention Program, wrote the grant application, which referred to an “invisible epidemic” of sexual assault on campus. She told reporters that there were several versions of the application, some with the 700 figure, others without. The Department of Justice says there was only one, which claimed the 700 victims per year. So what is going on here?

The notion that quaint, hygienic places such as UC Davis are rape factories is a fantasy straight out of the fever swamps of political correctness, specifically the militant feminists who hold considerable sway on campus. The charge follows not from the data but from the claim that the United States is a vicious patriarchal society, marriage is slavery, and all men are sexual predators. In perfect ideological style, when the facts do not support the claim, it becomes an “invisible epidemic,” language one would expect from witch-hunters, not officials of higher education. Those officials are engaged in classic doublespeak.

To get more taxpayer money, they claimed a crime epidemic. To assuage potential critics, including supporters, they claimed there was no such epidemic. And when the press came knocking, they issued statements full of trap doors and escape hatches, but which no serious observer believed. But the episode is, nevertheless, educational.

The seven people in the world who still believe that academia operates on a higher moral and ethical plane can safely dismiss that notion, which was never true. When it comes to federal money, university officials are skilled shakedown artists and panhandlers, who know how to create a crisis where none exists.

Taxpayers can dismiss the idea that their hard-earned dollars are safe in Washington, DC. As this episode shows, federal officials are eager to give those dollars away, without verifying the facts. An invisible epidemic should not earn a visible grant of more than $500,000.

That money should be returned. No special grant is needed to fight the true campus epidemics of academic fraud, fiscal irresponsibility, and political correctness.

- K. Lloyd Billingsley