The latest 20 pages of federal regulations telling universities how they must address the problem of assault vividly illustrate how off-base college education has become. These new rules follow a successful effort by the Obama administration to relax the standard of guilt in sexual assault cases—making it easier to charge young men with rape, ruining their educational careers and damaging their future, often because of actions that reflect heavy drinking and stupid decisions by both parties.

Yes, there are rapes on campuses, but a very large percentage of them are “date rape” (or, rather “acquaintance rape,” since few people on campus go out on dates anymore).

The universities may not be handling sexual assault cases with finesse. But the real problem with this regulatory and litigious approach to acquaintance rape is what it does to the parties involved.

Harry Lewis was dean of Harvard College when two assault cases led to the dismissal of two male students. After that, more sexual assault cases turned up (seven in one school year, compared to thirteen over the previous ten years).

In his book Excellence Without a Soul, he reports that in typical cases, “the only witnesses were the principals and more often than not, both had been drinking and had only vague or partial recollections of the events. In the process of adjudicating the complaints, much of the arguing concerned not whether sex had taken place but how drunk the woman had been when it happened. “

In Lewis’s view, young people are being taught to accuse and litigate instead of to grow up. “In the 1970s, a movement began that was intended to empower and protect women and to bolster their independence,” he writes; “ now, it teaches them that in matters sexual, they cannot control what happens to them.”

But tell that to feminist groups, university women’s centers, and the federal government. They wouldn’t know what he is talking about. It’s all about victims—and, apparently, only women can be victims.