This... sucks.
That said — and this is
not to excuse anything — the statistics suggest that basically any NCAA athlete has been in situations broadly comparable to this.
The best information we have suggests that somewhere between 1 in 5 and 1 in 2 women attending colleges and universities have been the victim of some sort of sexual assault, where the huge range depends on the precise kinds of misconduct included in the operative definitions of "sexual assault," some of which are extremely common. The best information we have
also suggests that a considerable majority of these assaults are committed by a small minority of young men, who are serial assaulters.
We don't have good numbers for young women who are not students, so we don't really know if this sexual assault epidemic is a social phenomenon that's about collegiate culture in particular or just about our society's broader and deeply dysfunctional relation to young women. I suspect the latter: the Me Too phenomenon is showing us how dangerous it is to be a young woman in almost any career or area of social life. Everyone from aspiring actresses to janitors and hotel housekeepers get assaulted at crazy high rates. It's hard to know what the baseline is, but I think we can say it needs to be lower. We have a problem.
But while these statistics imply that direct responsibility for these crimes is limited to this tiny handful of predatory men, they also imply that a huge number of college students, men and women, have been
present at a party or social gathering at which or after which something like this happened. What is the nature of their responsibility for assaults that happen in those circumstances? There is a lot of work ongoing on college campuses to try to reshape the disastrous norms, values and practices that allow this social phenomenon — aptly described as a rape culture — to flourish. But this is hard work, and it's ongoing.
A lot of people blame alcohol, and I understand why.
But alcohol expresses and intensifies the prevalent social norms; it doesn't create them.
I think Verdugo, like all men, has a responsibility to care for people in his own social orbit. He has to look out for women's safety; he has to be mindful that his male peers may not always harbor good intentions. It sure looks like he failed that test in this instance. But you could say that about a lot of people.