How should colleges and universities (and sports stadiums, for that matter) respond to allegations of sexual violence and harassment on (or off) campus? Check out Emily Bazelon’s excellent essay “The Stanford Undergraduate and the Mentor.” The following excerpt from her report especially caught our attention:

In 2011, the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education sent a letter to every college and university in the country that receives federal funding, as almost all do, clarifying that under Title IX, the federal law passed in 1972 to prevent sex discrimination in education, colleges and universities had an obligation to prevent and respond to sexual violence and harassment … The government also instructed schools to adopt a new standard for determining the outcome of a sexual-harassment or violence case. At the time, many schools used the standard of “clear and convincing” evidence, meaning that the adjudicators (usually a panel of administrators or faculty) believed that it was substantially more likely than not, or roughly 75 percent likely, that the accused had committed the offense. The letter from the civil rights office demanded that schools switch to a lower standard of proof, a “preponderance” of evidence, meaning that it was more likely than not — above 50.01 percent — that the offense was committed.

Isn’t the preponderance standard too low? Should each college and university be free to decide its own standards of proof in these cases? Should such institutions even be in the business of adjudicating such claims?