The Trump administration is adjusting its interpretation of Title IX as it concerns sexual assault, including rape. The change greatly reduces the requirement for colleges and universities to themselves investigate sexual assaults, including rape, where those occurred off campus. Critics, of course, complain that the move will simply increase the likelihood of further moves like the alleged Cornell student who lately has filed a civil suit against the school and the seven students she alleges raped her at an off-campus party.

The move may well encourage fee-seeking lawyers and deep pockets civil suits by alleged victims, but the plain matter is centered on who has the jurisdiction for investigation and criminal charges.

If the assault occurs off campus, even if in an off-campus fraternity or sorority house, it’s still primarily a city police matter, not a campus police mater. The fraternity and sorority house is off campus almost exclusively because it’s not supported or even sanctioned by the school, perhaps even evicted from the school’s campus. That severely limits campus police authority regarding those places, and campus police have no authority at all anywhere else off campus. Beyond that, off-campus means off campus, and so outside the jurisdiction of school authority of any sort.

Outside school jurisdiction, though, does not mean the alleged victim has no protections against assaults or no means of redress after the assault as some of the more hysterical criticisms would have it. Those protections and means of redress remain where they have always been: in the local, State, and Federal laws against any crime, including sexual assaults of any form, in the hands of local and State police to investigate, and in the hands of the State and Federal criminal trial courts.