STAND UP TO THE MAN: Students petition Senate to stop federal overreach on sexual harassment, sexual assault.

More than 150 students have signed a letter that will be sent to senators next week requesting the Education Department not get additional funds to continue its sexual harassment and sexual assault overreach.

The students, led by Tufts University freshman Jake Goldberg, take issue with the damage being done to free speech and due process rights on college campuses in response to an overblown effort to combat sexual harassment and sexual assault. While cutting down on these two problems is noble, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights attempts have, through guidance documents known as “Dear Colleague” letters, created a dramatic broadening of the definition of those two offenses to include things that are not objectionably offensive.

“Though expressed as non-binding, this definition has still been widely adopted by our campuses all across the country,” the students wrote. “By allowing vague and far-reaching restrictions on speech to be incorporated into sexual harassment policies, [the Dear Colleague letter’s] directives have led to the deprivation of our constitutional and contractual rights to free speech and expression.

In addition, OCR’s guidelines have eviscerated due process protections for those accused of violating the new definitions of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Across the country, schools have been incentivized to treat accusations as guilt or else risk losing federal funding.

To be fair, the main reason that school haven’t fought this ruling is that they’d be attacked by favored internal constituencies. They don’t mind selling thes 45% of their students who are male down the river, so long as they don’t anger the 3% who are noisy feminists.