The elevation of life’s minor indignities to full blown crimes of sexual harassment and assault have created a cottage industry on college campuses. Millions of dollars are being spent by universities hiring “lawyers, investigators, case workers, survivor advocates, peer counselors, workshop leaders and other officials to deal with increasing numbers of these complaints,” according to a report from the New York Times.

Notice how police and due process advocates are missing from the list of hires. Make no mistake, the lawyers aren’t being hired for the students involved in these disputes, they’re being hired to protect the schools from lawsuits arising from these disputes (although at least one school, Columbia University, does provide legal advice to accusing and accused students).

“The expansion of Title IX bureaucracies — often at great expense — is driven in part by pressure from the federal government, which recently put out a series of policy directives on sexual misconduct on campus,” the Times’ Anemona Hartocollis wrote.

Title IX is a federal statute banning sex discrimination on college campuses. It was originally intended to help female athletes, but over the past few decades it has morphed into a weapon being used to punish students for minor offenses. The American Association of University Professors recently released a 56-page report on Title IX overreach, which has expanded definitions of sexual harassment and sexual assault to include anything a student finds objectionable. These expansions, AAUP notes, have led to an evisceration of due process and free speech on campuses.

Hartocollis includes in her article an example of potential sexual assault from Mia Karvonides, one of the Title IX bureaucrats hired to police the sexual lives of allegedly adult students. Karvonides — apparently with a straight face — gave the hypothetical example of Jose and Lisa, both chemistry students working late in a lab. Lisa comes up behind Jose and kisses him on the neck. Karvonides, the Title IX coordinator at Harvard University, told Harvard students that this could the start of a sexual misconduct complaint.

“I want to acknowledge that this isn’t so simple,” Karvonides said. “I don’t have any magic words for you. It takes a little bit of a closer look to grasp the concepts.”

I do have magic words for college students: When examples like the one involving Jose and Lisa are examples of sexual assault, the lesson should be to never touch or talk to anyone, ever.

Because no matter what the circumstances of the kiss are — a joke between good friends, an unasked-for moment of flirting or even a simple gesture between two people in a relationship – the event can be labeled as sexual assault if one party decides to report it as such.

Now, in this example, where Jose would be the accuser, the case would probably be thrown out. But if Lisa were the one who received the neck kiss and decided to accuse (even if the circumstances were from one of the three examples I listed) then Jose can kiss his college education goodbye.

And schools are spending millions of dollars to make this happen and insulate themselves from the lawsuits that result.

Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.