A big rape scandal at LaSalle University has edged Iraq off the Philadelphia Inquirer's front page.

It's a typical story: athletes in dorm room plus booze plus sex equals rape and coverup scandal. As former coach Speedy Morris puts it,

These things are happening at many campuses.

What attracted my attention about the story was the apparent blurring of the distinction between victim and criminal. Here's the way one of the "suspects" surrendered:

Cleaves, 22, of Paterson, N.J., surrendered at 8:45 p.m. at the Special Victims Unit at Episcopal Hospital, said Lt. Tom McDevitt. He bypassed reporters and photographers by entering the hospital through a tunnel, police said. Cleaves was accompanied by his attorney, who was not immediately identified.

I guess these guys must think they're pretty special "suspects."

And what about the "victims"? According to the article,

The 19-year-old woman, a student at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, told police she was intoxicated when she met the two basketball players outside St. Miguel Court on campus around 1 a.m. and accompanied them to a dormitory room. The men raped her, she said, and she next remembered waking up on a couch in the dormitory.

She was taken to Germantown Hospital, where she met with police.

After the woman talked to investigators, one of her friends, a 20-year-old member of the La Salle women's basketball team, said she, too, had been raped.

Maybe I'm a little jaded, but if I was raped I think I'd know it right away, and I'd fight like hell. I can't see myself going to a dormitory room of my own free will and then waking up and discovering the next day that I was raped. Not even when I was 19 years old!

Am I hopelessly old-fashioned? Or sexist?

In an accompanying article, a "mutual" standard is announced, and the reason I'm putting it in my blog is that I am having conceptual difficulty understanding it:

"The good that can come out of this is that more people will see the problem for what it is," Bath said. "We have to educate young women about this issue, and we also have to educate young men. Don't put yourself in position to be a victim or a perpetrator.

"Young men, including athletes, have to be made to understand: You're not entitled to sex. And if the woman is drunk, you're even less entitled to sex. It's a crime."

I think I have a pretty good idea how to avoid being a victim. But how do I avoid putting myself "in position" to be "a perpetrator"? Any idea what that means? I mean, usually, the way I manage not to perpetrate crimes is simply by not perpetrating them.

Position? Do they mean sexual positions? Or merely in any tempting locations? There are sexually attractive people in many locations; does this mean that there should be no dating? No kissing? No heavy necking?

Analogizing to other forms of crime, does that mean that people shouldn't work near money lest they put themselves "in position" to be a perpetrator?

Then there's the entitlement issue. Certainly, I am not entitled to sex. Agree completely. I never thought I was. The statement makes me wonder whether there is an entire new class of people out there who believe in sexual entitlement as a matter of right. Is that true? What have I been missing?

Then there's this:

if the woman is drunk, you're even less entitled to sex. It's a crime.

It's been a long time since I took criminal law, but I never learned that drunkenness automatically transforms sex into rape. True, intoxication tends to negate the ability to consent, and I remember cases stating that if a doctor has sex with an unconscious person, it's rape, as there was no consent. In fact, here's the relevant California statutory language:

Where a person is prevented from resisting by any intoxicating or anesthetic substance, or any controlled substance, and this condition was known, or reasonably should have been known by the accused.

I'll say this: if these people were all gay men, no one would be complaining of rape. Why is that? Because it's basic common sense among homosexuals that if you go to someone's bedroom late at night and get drunk with him (or meet him in an already drunken state in say, a bar!), there's an understanding that, far from being rape, sex was the whole idea. Each party would, without any hesitation, accept his own responsibility.

Accept responsibility?

But aren't homosexuals irresponsible? Immoral? Immature?

They must be, because why would any responsible person imagine that getting drunk and visiting someone's bedroom at 1:00 a.m. means sex?

Is it irresponsible to assume sexual responsibility?

Obviously, I am missing something.