Sexual assault on college campuses.

It's that time of year - almost - when kids are getting ready to send their college acceptance letters in. Here's one thing that parents of daughters are going to want to read about: sexual assault on campus.

Slate published a great article on sexual assault within athletic programs. The main cause, evidently, is a rape culture where women are viewed as a reward and college officials are reluctant to do anything about the situation because athletics is a major part of college revenue.

There are a few ways to deal with this: 1) Force colleges to investigate rape claims in a timely manner - and to have someone unrelated to the athletics department do it, 2) Have outside investigators come in to deal with rape and sexual assault. By outside, I mean outside the college and college town - since the police in college towns can be just as lame as the colleges, and 3) Take sports out of college.

There's another way too - change the culture of sports in America. When there are high school teams accusing of wholesale rape and cover up, there should be a call for change in the culture of sports. My dream is that sports uncouples from school - after all, kids should go to school to learn and sports should be separate from that. But since that's not going to happen, coaches and parents and other officials need to take this seriously.

Rape is serious. Sexual assault is serious.

Colleges have to release these numbers in accordance with Title IX. So before your daughter sends in her acceptance letters, look at the statistics. And talk with her about rape and what to do - and what not to do - if it happens to her.

We all know, as parents, that there's a chance it happens to our daughters. Then we, as parents, have a job to do - to educate our children to deal with what they need to do if it does happen.

Do I hope that my child never drink, never puts herself into a position where she might be impaired, where she might be raped? Sure. But sometimes it's not about what she does. In fact, rape is a crime committed mostly by men. It's almost ridiculous that we have to speak to our daughters about how to prevent rape - it should be speaking to the sons about not doing it.

It should be the coaches saying, "No raping. No sexual assault. Women and people and should be treated as such." It should be that players accused of sexual assault are banned from practice, investigated, and if found to be perpetrators, are expelled.

Unfortunately that's not the way it works. Rape has become a "women's responsibility to prevent," and there's only so much a woman can do to prevent it.

So take a look at the statistics and have that talk - before your daughter sends in her acceptance letters.