As seems to be the new policy at the New York Times, the headline doesn’t quite match the story. Somebody leaked a draft copy of the proposed new Title IX regulations to Erica Green, so the headline reads “New U.S. Sexual Misconduct Rules Bolster Rights of Accused and Protect Colleges.” Except they’re not yet rules. Indeed, they’re not yet proposed rules. They won’t be until they’re published in the Federal Register.

But hey, details, right? At least the Times’ erroneous headlines isn’t nearly as wrong as Mother Jones.

The New York Times Just Revealed Betsy DeVos’ Plan to Let Colleges off the Hook for Sexual Assault

Both the Times and Mother Jones concede that the rules remain a draft, and won’t become regulations until after they’ve undergone the required notice and comment.

Liz Hill, an Education Department spokeswoman, said on Wednesday that the department was “in the midst of a deliberative process.” She added that any information obtained by The Times “is premature and speculative, and therefore, we have no comment.”

This is certainly correct, and yet it’s too late. Once the draft was leaked, there was no question but heads would explode. To add irony to the mix, Green didn’t post the leaked draft, but rather characterized it for the benefit of her readers, who are apparently neither worthy nor sufficiently interested in knowing what it specifically says. After all, can’t we trust her to tell the full and accurate story?

The proposed rules, obtained by The New York Times, narrow the definition of sexual harassment, holding schools accountable only for formal complaints filed through proper authorities and for conduct said to have occurred on their campuses. They would also establish a higher legal standard to determine whether schools improperly addressed complaints.

This vague description is more than enough to generate the clearly anticipated outrage from Title IX activists without actually saying much of anything. At Reason, Robby Soave tries his best to make some sense of this second-hand story.

According to the Times, the new rules “would add the ability for victims and their accused perpetrators to request evidence from each other and to cross-examine each other. The rules also allow the complainant and the accused to have access to any evidence obtained during the investigation, even if there are no plans to use it to prove the conduct occurred.”

Cross-examination is a key component of due process and an important tool for arriving at the truth of a dispute. But under the previous administration’s Title IX guidance, university officials were discouraged from extending this right to students accused of sexual misconduct, under the theory that scrutinizing alleged victims would be traumatizing.

The new policy would mandate cross-examination in situations where a school’s adjudication process involves a live hearing, and it would require an effective substitute in all other cases.

The lack of confrontation has been a core grievance in the past. Without knowing specifically what the rules would require, does this “fix” anything? Cross isn’t easy. Not for lawyers. Not for college sophomores. Would this involve advance questions, submitted to a tribunal for approval to ask only those questions they deem appropriate? Or does this tell colleges to not hold live hearings so no cross, to the extent some kid was capable of it, could be had? What in the world is an “effective substitute”?

The Education Department also wants to define sexual harassment as “unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies a person access to the school’s education program or activity,” according to The Times. Previous guidance, released in 2011, compelled administrators to combat any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.

That’s not the DoE’s definition. That’s the definition crafted by the Supreme Court in Davis*. The reason it seems new is that the definition used by Catherine Lhamon was a bastardized version of her own creation. Lhamon chose to ignore the law and substitute her own definition.

It will permit colleges to adopt higher evidentiary standards in hearings, mandate cross-examination of relevant parties in a dispute, and stress that all students are considered innocent until proven guilty, an official with knowledge of the proposal has confirmed to Reason.

“Permit”? But not mandate? And does Robby really mean “evidentiary standards,” as in no hearsay, or burden of proof? They’re not the same things. Not even close.

The upshot is that Green’s leaked draft provided enough fodder to provoke outrage without providing enough of a clue what they are actually going to do.

They are “a tacit endorsement of making campuses a safer place to commit sexual assault, rather than a safer place to learn free from violence,” said Jess Davidson, the executive director of End Rape on Campus.

And the flip side:

“Going solely by what has so far been reported, it sounds as though the proposed rules will go a long way towards restoring meaningful due process protections to the campus justice system, which will benefit both accusers and the accused,” said Robert L. Shibley, the executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Yet, nobody actually has a clue what the draft actually says, and even if they did, it doesn’t mean it won’t change before publication in the Federal Register. It was always anticipated that the new rules would be an improvement over Lhamon’s unilateral imposition of her will on 6000 colleges, but just because the DoE might be eliminating some of the worst abuses of due process doesn’t mean there will ever be meaningful due process in a college kangaroo court.

The purpose of this leak, and Green’s facile failure to provide the actual source material so that we’re constrained to rely on second-hand descriptions, is to give the Title IX activists a heads up and let them start screaming about how Betsy DeVos is about to enable every male on campus to rape at will and get away with it.

Beyond that, Green has made sure that no one knows any more about it then she deigns to tell them. For the anti-rape advocates, that’s more than enough. For lawyers, this tells us almost nothing. Most importantly, no matter what changes are made at the superficial level, no matter how much shrieking about enabling rape is heard, it remains highly unlikely that any of these changes will have any significant impact on the outcome of college kangaroo courts. Still, we can’t even begin to discuss it until we know what the specific proposed changes will be. But that won’t stop the activists.

*Contrary to the absolute belief of almost every rape activist, Title IX does not mandate that colleges police every sexual interaction on campus. It never has.