IT’S NO secret that America has a huge problem with sexual assault on college campuses.

One in five female college students and one in 20 male students have been victims of non-consensual sexual contact, according to a 2015 survey of 150,000 students by the Association of American Universities.

President Barack Obama launched a national campaign in 2014 called ‘It’s On Us’ to try and combat the problem. He developed a task force to help colleges work out how to best respond to and prevent sexual assault.

Part of the solution was to encourage victims to come forward. Of all the assaults that occur on campus, only 12 per cent are reported, President Obama said at the time.

“And of those reported assaults, only a fraction of the offenders are punished,” he said.

But as these universities try to deal with sexual assaults, more and more men are claiming they have been unfairly caught up in the campaign and are suing their alma maters.

On Tuesday, a former star quarterback from the University of Montana received a $US245,000 ($345,000) settlement from the university after being acquitted of a rape charge in 2013, The Washington Post reported.

“Self-possessed and hugely popular, Johnson was probably the most luminous celebrity in the state of Montana from 2011 through 2014, when he led the Montana Grizzlies football team to many dramatic victories,” wrote journalist and author Jon Krakauer in The New York Times.

Krakaur’s 2015 book Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town investigated a spate of campus rapes that occurred in Missoula, Montana in a four-year period, including the case against Johnson.

In February 2012, a female student reported to the university that Johnson raped her at an off-campus apartment. Seven weeks after her complaint was investigated, the university determined that Johnson was guilty.

He was expelled, charged with rape and his case went to trial, but was later acquitted.

In a statement released this week, Johnson said the University of Montana was unfair and biased in its rape investigation.

The Hunting Ground - International Trailer Watch the trailer for The Hunting Ground, a feature documentary chronicling the personal stories of students who have been sexually assaulted on American university campuses. Courtesy: Madman Films

“Any student accused of wrongdoing deserves a fair and impartial hearing of the facts of his or her case,” Johnson said in the statement, according to the Associated Press.

“Officials at the University of Montana — people who were in positions of great power — were unfair and biased. Their misconduct made my family and me suffer unnecessarily, both emotionally and financially.”

Johnson’s case is not an isolated one.

According to Inside Higher Ed, a news site dedicated to stories about universities, as of November 2015 there were more than 50 pending lawsuits filed by men who say they were unfairly kicked off campus after being accused of sexual assault.

“Almost every week, there’s at least one more suit like this,” Samantha Harris, from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, told the website.

“It’s a very rapidly emerging area of law. Up until this point, it’s an area that has not been super fleshed out by the courts, and earlier lawsuits have been largely unsuccessful. But that’s starting to change.”

On Monday, two men who are facing disciplinary action by the University of Texas for allegations of sexual assault sued the university, the American-Statesman reported.

One of the men is a 24-year-old recent graduate and the other is a 21-year-old student who is one semester away from graduating.

The graduate faces being banned from all UT campuses, denied undergoing further study with the university and a notation made against his transcript.

The student faces expulsion in addition to these punishments. No criminal charges are yet to be made against the pair.

Both of their lawsuits argue the university is seeking to gain a reputation for being tough on sexual assault, which means the investigations are biased.

“The university has been placed under enormous political pressure to appear tough on those accused of sexual assault and as a result have adopted a practice of expelling males from the university without regard to the rights of the accused student of the evidence,” each lawsuit says, according to the American-Statesman.

“The university has furthermore sought publicity and prestige by portraying itself as a national leader in the effort to curb on-campus sexual assaults.”

The most high-profile lawsuit is against Columbia University.

Former undergraduate student Emma Sulkowicz became famous for carrying her mattress around campus during the 2014-15 academic year to protest how the university handled her rape case, which became known as the ‘Carry that Weight’ case.

Sulkowicz and her mattress made international headlines, as did the name of the student she accused, Paul Nungesser.

Last April Nungesser sued Columbia University, arguing it had “damaged, if not effectively destroyed Nungesser’s college experience, his reputation, his emotional wellbeing and his future career prospects”.

“By refusing to protect Paul Nungesser, Columbia University first became a silent bystander and then turned into an active supporter of a fellow student’s harassment campaign by institutionalising it and then heralding it,” the complaint read.

As Sulkowicz wrote for Time magazine in 2014, in a piece detailing how she believes Columbia mishandled her case, “They’re more concerned about their public image than keeping people safe.”

Despite this crackdown, that indictment still seems to ring true.