In the midst of a moral panic, the rights of the accused-including the wrongly accused-count for little. In May The Daily Princetonian, Princeton University’s student daily, ran an editorial urging the school to change its standard of proof in sexual assault cases from “clear and convincing evidence” to “preponderance of the evidence.” Noting that “sexual assault is unique among cases requiring on-campus discipline” in its lack of corroborative evidence and its he said/she said nature, the editorial board concluded that the “clear and persuasive” standard might be appropriate for charges of theft, assault, or drug use, but it is “inappropriate in the case of sexual assault.”

The wheel has come full circle: Forty years ago, feminists argued that rape should be treated the same as other crimes against persons. Today the progressive position appears to be that since rape is harder to prove than other crimes (particularly when it is defined so that it does not require physical coercion, threats of violence, or incapacitation), it should receive special treatment.

When schools try to mitigate absurdly broad redefinitions of sexual assault with a nuanced approach to crime and punishment, they are liable to find themselves accused of coddling rapists. At Yale, for instance, a student may be sanctioned if he (or she, theoretically) fails to obtain “clear and unambiguous consent to each activity at every stage of a sexual encounter.” In August the university’s report on its handling of sexual misconduct caused an outcry in the feminist and left-wing blogosphere with the revelation that, of six students found guilty of “non-consensual sex” since the start of 2013, one had been suspended for a year, one placed on probation, and four given a “written reprimand” and encouraged to seek counseling. Yale activists such as law student Alexandra Brodsky and feminist blogs such as Jezebel assailed the university for hiding rape behind euphemistic doublespeak and letting off rapists with a slap on the wrist.