I can't endorse a society where men can have their futures deep-sixed when your freshman fling's mother finds her diary.

Absolutely. And that's wrong. I want to say, "I don't think that un-involved third parties should be allowed to press charges against one half of a couple who committed an act," but hey, we prosecute some charges for the state regardless of what the victim wants. Parents shouldn't be able to criminalize kids because they don't like what their offspring are doing with said kids in the bedroom (or the back of the car).

Telling everyone of all genders that they must ask for verbal, affirmative consent every time they proceed further physically in an interaction ("may I kiss you?" "OK now may I touch your stomach?" etc) isn't the answer. Everyone being afraid they'll be accused of rape, yup, that's wrong. Yes, we are teaching our kids not to trust each other and or to have reasonable romantic relationships or expectations when those kids/pubescent adults/almost-adults are surrounded by the media frenzy of "RAPE!" and "FALSE ACCUSATION!"

We're teaching our kids that sex is dangerous but not because of the cooties. The hotter this is in the presses, the more hyped this becomes, the bigger a fuss made in headlines and at colleges and awareness seminars, the more people learn one thing: "Don't trust your intimate partners."

"Being intimate is dangerous."

Hell, a person can be accused of rape without even having sex.

You'd like to think if you were close enough to a person to have sex with them you would know that you could trust them not to turn around and lie later. But, especially in college, kids learn by doing idiotic, awful things. Most of the time it's not false rape accusations or even slashing your ex's tires - most of the time, I hope, it's "mild Facebook stalking" and "disagreements escalating to shouting matches" and so on. So no, you can't trust someone just because you've known them a minute and they want your dick in them (or vice versa). You can't even trust people you think you've known for a while, because - especially in college - sometimes people go off the deep end. It's that age bracket, you know.

Colleges are shit-scared and they aren't going to prosecute students for making false rape allegations for a long time. They're going to kick the problem off of their turf, which theoretically "protects" the other students, and wash their hands. It's awful that accusations can be made and the policy at some places is not to even tell those accused the nature of the complaint. I agree.

I think colleges are backed in a corner with Title IX and I think we should shove it all onto law enforcement and take it away from colleges.

It's funny, if you commit a felony on school grounds and school catches you, you're out. But if you commit a felony off school grounds they don't give a shit. It's literally all about them protecting their asses. This isn't a moral decision they're making to protect students or about what kind of students (and with what moral caliber) they want on campus.

I would run from someone who'd made a false rape accusation as well. I would run hard, and fast, and never look back.

Some women, yes, I grant, some women may feel this way:

women should not feel safe to groundlessly annihilate the future of any man they encounter

And quite likely it is more now than it was then because as you said: rape is now no longer tolerated. Accusations have real bite behind them.

Until those making false accusations are punished soundly and thoroughly, by law enforcement and not by colleges, for those lies - defamation, libel, slander, fraud, you can fit it under a few different counts I reckon - people are going to feel free to make those accusations. They should face criminal charges and a permanent record. An academic slap on the wrist for lying is not sufficient.

So I say prosecute 'em.

I can't think of a solution where we go back to happy-happy time and don't worry about whether we can trust those we have sex with, but I do think it's fucked up that kids are trusting someone with participating in what can be among the most intimate acts with you while worrying that they cannot trust these partners not to lie about it later.

I can't do anything about Harvard and Yale's policies except disagree with them. Due process. Proof and evidence. Investigation. Criminal charges. Not the irritated flick of a wrist to get rid of after-dinner crumbs that itch and look bad on your shirt-cuff, so that the crumbs go on the carpet and become someone else's problem.

At the end of the day some victims won't report the crimes committed against them.

At the end of the day some insane shit-fucks will catfish and lie for "revenge."

We should work as hard as possible to discourage both behaviors. I don't think the solution is lessening the social stigma of rape (which, btw, is probably why it's so effective an accusation - it's so fucking loaded) so that means to me aggressively pursuing those who ruin others' lives by lying about it.

I'm even more stumped what we can do about the people who won't report criminals.

Problems on both sides of the fence and unfortunately the hotter of an issue this gets, the more I fear we will see false rape allegations for a while. And that pisses me off, too, because then we get all "[group] who cried wolf."

"Oh, a member of this group lied about this crime. Oh, another one did. Oh, you just can't trust any of them. They're all lying."

The people who lie make everything harder for the people who don't.