Blurred Lines on Campus

The male student said he was "on my way." The woman responded: "Goto [sic] my room I'll be there soon."

According to the male student's account, "little more than 'Hello' was said before she grabbed [him], kissed [him] and [they] began to have sex." "He claimed they each undressed themselves," the Daily News reported. "They had sex twice that night, he said, and once more in the morning. ... He said that after their second sexual encounter that night, the complainant said she was sober."

The woman remembered the incident differently: "She woke up feeling terrible that she had become so inebriated and had sex despite not wanting to. ... When he initiated sex that morning, the female student said she did not resist because she felt refusal would be too emotionally exhausting."

Upsetting, but not, the woman initially thought, assault. It was only a few days later that her friends said the man's actions constituted rape because she was too drunk to consent. "Let's just start with objective fact: you raped me," she emailed the male student in May. "You are a rapist."

The following April, 13 months after the encounter, the woman filed formal charges. She claimed the man had violated Yale's sexual assault policy, which requires "positive, unambiguous, and voluntary agreement" and provides that "engaging in sexual activity with a person whom you know -- or reasonably should know -- to be incapacitated constitutes sexual misconduct."

In the end, an investigative panel decided in favor of the male student. The college dean accepted its findings, although an appeal is possible.

This seems the just outcome, but one that, given the low "preponderance of evidence" standard of proof and Yale's stringent consent rules, could have gone the other way.

And at what a traumatic cost. To a young woman who sincerely believes she has been raped but seems, at least from afar, to have been pushed by the prevailing culture into viewing a bad choice as a quasi-criminal event. To a young man who lived under the shadow of accusation and expulsion.

This is a cautionary tale about a still-evolving, still-uneasy balance in dealing with sexual assault on campus. The Yale episode demonstrates: parents of boys should be every bit as nervous as parents of girls about what can happen to the not-quite-adults they send off to college.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.