Much of the coverage of proposed new rules released last week on how schools should handle sexual harassment allegations has focused on how the rules expand the rights of those accused — and they do. But the most significant parts of the proposal have nothing to do with protecting students, accused or otherwise. Instead, if allowed to go into effect, the new rules would, above all, protect schools.

Schools don’t like getting in trouble with the law. Under the previous administration, the Education Department opened nearly 400 investigations into schools’ handling of sexual violence. Some colleges reportedly spent as much as $600,000 to avoid the reputational hit of being found in violation of Title IX and the theoretical threat of the department pulling their federal funding (which it has never done).

The education lobby made clear it wasn’t happy. The National School Boards Association repeatedly demanded that the department ease the standards by which it assessed schools’ liability. The American Council on Education and a group of university presidents complained to Congress that the department’s approach was too vigorous. A lucrative cottage industry arose to train college administrators on “Twenty Steps to O.C.R.-Proof Your Campus on Title IX.” (O.C.R., or the Office for Civil Rights, is tasked with investigating schools.) Public lobbying disclosures reveal that universities like Yale, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M, and the Universities of Iowa and Colorado spent tens of thousands of dollars — in just the past year alone — lobbying the Trump Education Department on regulations, including on Title IX.

The new proposed rules lighten the burdens on institutions. First, the rules significantly narrow what counts as sexual harassment. Under the Trump administration’s definition, harassment must be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access” to education. Some courts (though fortunately not all) have said that even a rape does not count under this standard because a one-time act of violence is not “pervasive.” That means a victim of rape (not to mention other less severe forms of sexual misconduct) might never see her school investigate her claims, let alone remedy them.