Of course, as well as being unable to concentrate in class, the midshipmen are infuriated—as I know by talking to several groups of them in the days that followed the abrupt tightening of the screws. Many of the men feel that they are being told that they are potential rapists; some of the women are groaning at the suggestion that they are, or should be, afraid of their male friends and classmates. "What's the problem?" one woman asked. "I don't feel afraid, and I don't know anybody who is."

True sexual assault is of course a heinous crime and a big problem. But by and large the situation at Annapolis is not of this nature: Rather, there's a lot of sleazy but predictable young-adult behavior being made into something much worse by the over-reaction of the brass, and by their inability to draw distinctions between truly bad behavior and problems created by the unwillingness of a repressive system to acknowledge reality. Reportable behavior includes full-fledged sexual assault as well as "unwanted sexual contact" (which includes "unwanted touching of ...sexually related areas of the body"). I'm not sure that "unwanted sexual contact" in whatever gender combination can ever be completely stamped out in a college populated by libidinal 18- to 21-year-olds where men and women live cheek by jowl in alternating rooms, and where up to four men or four women share a single room. However, I can tell the brass how to radically decrease it and reduce the tension among students to a manageable level: legalize sex at the service academies.

Some readers will be puzzled: Am I saying that sex itself, of any sort, not just unwanted or of the assault variety, is forbidden at taxpayer-supported service academies? Yes. Everything is forbidden with any sexual overtones or content at all, starting with hand-holding and moving to consensual sexual intercourse. The midshipmen's short version of this is "no sex in the Hall"—Bancroft Hall, their common dormitory. But actually the prohibition extends to all of the 338 (partly wooded) acres of Annapolis's campus, as it does to the Coast Guard Academy and the considerably larger estates of West Point and Air Force.

We can reduce the problem with sexual assault by ceasing to police more normal varieties of sex. As it is, we make it impossible to show them what's wrong with unwanted sex when even wanted sex is against the rules. Because all sex is forbidden, we can't talk with them about distinguishing between okay and not-okay. All we can do is yell louder, threaten them with expulsion, create a hostile working environment (ironically, a punishable offense when expressed in sexual terms), make them even more resentful than they already are, and keep them up all night so they sleep through their taxpayer-supported $400,000 education. This is hugely destructive, and it also won't solve the problem it's designed to address. Young adults nowadays simply won't listen to older adults who are telling them that all sex is off limits. They tune it out. So let the brass "train" the midshipmen all they want. It won't help.

The justification for this bizarre policy of wrap-around abstinence is always that sex is forbidden on ships under deployment or in a platoon underway and the service academies are practice for the military. In fact, a lot of sex happens on ships and on deployment—as evidenced by the number of pregnancies that result from tours of duty. And by what strange logic do four years of college on dry land become comparable to a few weeks or months of deployment in the real military, a deployment that lets you go home when it's over? Besides, just the way you can't lessen the effects of sleep-deprivation by forcing students to practice it, so it seems unlikely that you can make short-term celibacy easier by mandating four years of enforced practice. Abstaining from sex makes sense under battle conditions or on deployment for short periods where the ship is going somewhere. It makes no sense for college.