In his Washington Post column on Friday, Fox News contributor George Will suggested that progressivism on college campuses is worse than being coerced into non-consensual sex.  Or, as he put it, being a rape victim on campus is now “a coveted status that confers privileges” and causes “victims (to) proliferate.”

As Huffington Post noted, the problem of sexual assault on campuses is “very real.” It’s also an issue the Obama administration is working to address. But Will seems to think that’s the bigger problem. He sneers in his column about the “the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. 'sexual assault'” and calls the official statistics of its prevalence (20% of college women) “preposterous.”

Will concludes by suggesting the real crime is progressivism: “It is salutary that academia, with its adversarial stance toward limited government and cultural common sense, is making itself ludicrous. …What government is inflicting on colleges and universities, and what they are inflicting on themselves, diminishes their autonomy, resources, prestige and comity. Which serves them right. They have asked for this by asking for progressivism.”

“Getting what they deserve” is pretty much how Will seems to view college sexual assault, too. He scornfully relays an anecdote about a woman who felt coerced into sex with an ex-partner who fell asleep in her bed. Instead of considering solutions to such a situation, Will all but said she was “asking for it.” He dismissed her experience as part of “the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults.”

As Huffington Post reported, the reaction to Will’s column has not been positive, at least if Twitter posts are any guide: