Some of the proposals are the beginning of a necessary correction. Others are almost guaranteed not to achieve their intended goals; some could even backfire. And at least one provision may weaken a significant protection for complainants.

As I wrote in a three-part Atlantic series last September, the use of Title IX to protect female students, however well-intentioned, has resulted in the over-policing of sex between young adults. It has also sometimes resulted in adjudications that assume guilt, rely on junk science, gut fundamental fairness, engage in racial animus, and disregard the effects of ending men’s education and crushing futures. The Times’s story was based on a leak, so we still need to see all the rules in their final form. Because these proposed rules will go through an administrative process known as “notice and comment”—meaning the public can weigh in—revisions are likely.

There is no doubt that, in the past, women’s accounts of sexual assault were disbelieved, and too many violators went unpunished. Today there are wrongdoers, even some predators, on campuses—as there are in the rest of society. But there is no evidence that they exist in droves or that campuses are terrifying “hunting grounds.” The people I’ve spoken to over the years who deal closely with Title IX say many of the cases involve alcohol-lubricated encounters that both students agree began consensually. But on campus the rhetoric has been alarming, telling young women they are weak, helpless, and lack sexual agency, and that their male classmates are inherently violent and exemplars of “toxic masculinity.”

Although it wasn’t reported in the Times, according to a source familiar with department deliberations who did not wish to be identified, the new rules will require that the training materials for Title IX investigators and adjudicators, and the proceedings themselves, must be impartial and free of sexual stereotypes. Often campuses demand a “trauma-informed” response to accusations. Last year, I wrote about the rise of bogus trauma science on campus, and the false assertions about how the mind is supposed to respond when faced with potential imminent death. Adoption of this junk science in Title IX training materials hampers the ability of an accused student to mount a defense since everything from an accusing student’s failure to reject a sexual overture, to her changing accounts of what happened, to her seeking out further sexual contact can be ascribed to trauma.

Schools keep training materials confidential and have fought in court against turning them over to the accused. It’s no wonder. The materials that have been made available are shot through with assumptions that female accusers have experienced life-threatening ordeals and that male accused are serial predators. The Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate bogus and stereotypical assumptions could help start a necessary cultural shift. But what’s the likelihood of such a reevaluation if it comes from the administration of a man who boasted of grabbing women’s genitals and has been multiply accused of sexual violations?