In a recent column at Real Clear Politics, Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution explains why colleges shouldn’t be doing the job of law enforcement professionals when it comes to rape.

U.S. Colleges’ Sexual Assault Crusade

If an undergraduate were accused of committing murder, no one in charge of a U.S. college or university would think of convening a committee of students, professors, and administrators to gather and analyze evidence, prosecute, adjudicate, and mete out punishment.

If an undergraduate were accused of the dramatically lesser but nevertheless quite serious offense of holding up the student cafeteria at gunpoint, no college or university would summon students, professors, and administrators to attempt to adjudicate the felony of armed robbery.

Why then if an undergraduate is accused of sexual assault or rape — heinous crimes for which the criminal justice system can send the convicted to jail for many years — do colleges and universities routinely convene committees of professors, students, and administrators to investigate, judge, and punish?

One part of the answer is that the Obama administration has intensified pressure upon them to do just that. Ostensibly, the administration wants to curtail sexual attacks on college campuses. But what the federal government is really doing is encouraging students, professors, and administrators to enmesh themselves in quasi-law enforcement activities for which they are utterly untrained. Underwriting that dubious enterprise is a pernicious notion that has taken hold in certain quarters of the academy that seems to equate heterosexual sex with assault.

In April 2011, amid controversy that universities shielded star athletes from prosecution and exposed other accused men to kangaroo courts, Department of Education Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali sent a letter to institutions of higher education throughout the country. The missive set forth requirements that universities must honor to comply with Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in higher education. The requirements include conducting investigations and holding a hearing even if the criminal justice system concludes the accusation of sexual misconduct is meritless; using the lowest evidentiary standard to determine guilt — preponderance of the evidence, which means more than 50 percent; shielding the accuser from answering questions from the accused; and, in the event of acquittal, also providing the accuser an appeal.