To hear Hillary, Obama, and the feminist zealots tell it, the only alternative to the Education Department’s “accused men are presumptively guilty” approach is to do nothing, and allow the “crisis” to grow. Not so, argue Bradford Richardson and Jon Shields in an article in the October issue of Commentary, “The Real Campus Sexual Assault Problem — And How to Fix It.”

The authors studied more than 1,300 colleges, evaluating them with regard to their permissiveness regarding alcohol and dorm visitation policies. “Our findings suggest that students are not so much victims of a ‘rape culture’ as they are victims of faulty institutional policies that contribute to a higher risk of sexual assault,” they write. If there is a “crisis” at all, it is concentrated at party schools that make it easy for students to get drunk and “hook up.”

Rather than forcing all schools to adopt the Department’s procedures that are inconsistent with due process of law, why not discourage the “anything goes” campus climate that is at the root of the problem? The authors put it this way: “Given the choice between limiting a student’s social freedom or depriving a student of his due process rights, the former is preferable.”

I will add that it’s also preferable for administrations to deal with problems on their own campuses than for Education Department bureaucrats to flex their authoritarian muscles and dictate to every college. Alas, that’s in the nature of federal bureaucrats.

Hat tip: Martin Morse Wooster