> No, that isn't sound. It's a criminal matter.

What distinguishes criminal matters from civil matters is the remedy sought. For example, OJ Simpson was acquitted of murder, applying criminal standards of proof. But he was found liable for wrongful death, and ordered to pay damages to the families, applying civil standards of proof.

Criminal law and civil law address different concerns, and the same conduct can raise both criminal and civil issues. Criminal law vindicates the government's interest in retribution, deterrence, or rehabilitating an offender. It does not generally address the victim's personal rights. Thus, the government can prosecute when the victim does not want to, and vice versa.

In a campus rape case there is a criminal aspect. But there is also a civil aspect. Students have a civil legal entitlement to pursue their education at schools receiving government funding free from harassment. Forcing a student to either continue attending classes with her rapist, or to leave the school is undoubtedly an infringement of that legal entitlement. That civil concern is wholly distinct from the criminal question of punishing the rapist.

> That's a nasty attribute of rape, and of various other crimes, not of colleges.

No, it's a distinction between civil and criminal aspects of a course of conduct.

Say you hit me with a car because you were driving drunk. There is a criminal aspect to the case (driving drunk is a crime), but there is also a civil aspect to the case (hitting someone with a car due to negligence is a tort giving rise to damages liability). You being erroneously acquitted of drunk driving under a criminal standard of proof doesn't hurt me. It's a moral loss, nothing more. But you being erroneously found not liable for negligent driving does hurt me. It means I'm forced to bear my medical costs, and have been erroneously denied compensation. The false negative (an wrongfully injured person being forced to bear their own medical costs) is just as bad as the false positive (a wrongfully accused person being forced to pay someone else's medical costs). So in the civil context, we do not apply the maxim of "better to let ten guilty men go free than convict one innocent man." Because it's not better to find 10 people not liable for drunk driving when they did so than to find one person liable for drunk driving when he did not. That results in 10 victims who are wrongfully denied compensation for their injuries. So that's not the standard we use. Instead, we weigh credibility under a "more likely than not standard."

The same is true for sexual assault and sexual harassment in the workplace or the school. Applying criminal standards of proof in that context, what you're saying is: "it's better to force 10 people to continue to attend classes/go to work with their harassers/rapists than to force 1 person to quit their job/school due to a false accusation." But that doesn't make any sense. In both cases (false positives and false negatives), someone is wrongfully denied educational opportunities. Saying that it's okay to have 10 of one outcome to avoid 1 of the other outcome basically just says that false accusations are somehow worse than sexual assault.