Like most people, I tend not to read the fine print.

If someone puts a legal-looking document in front of me, I sign it without a second thought. Sure, I might be agreeing to donate an essential organ or give up my first-born, but honestly, who can be bothered to read when there are so many other interesting things to do?

Of course, when I wake up in a bath of ice with a note reading, “Call 911,” or Rumpelstiltskin shows up one day to cart off my newborn, I’ll probably wish I had read whatever contract I signed.

It was with this in mind that I decided to read the entirety of Saint Louis University’s policy on sexual assault, a behemoth running an intimidating length of nine pages. I braved the morass of legal jargon and tortured language in order to understand exactly for what actions we, as students, may be held responsible.

The document begins by committing SLU as a supportive role to “encourage individuals to report incidents.” The policy states that the University will, to the best of its ability, “protect the rights of the Reporting Party, the Accused Party, and other parties involved in or affected by the case.”

Following the preamble are the definitions of relevant terms, the foremost of which is “consent.”

On a college campus, everyone should know the basic definition of consent.  However, there were some subtleties with which I was not familiar, such as: “It is the responsibility of the person initiating the sexual activity to obtain the affirmative consent of the other party throughout the duration of said activity.”

Not only does this sentence assume that only one person can initiate sex, and the other is only a passive recipient, it also suggests that it is the responsibility of the initiator to continually get the other person’s consent. This rule reduces the activity to a rough staccato and makes sex entirely unsexy.

Further on, it states: “It is the responsibility of the person seeking to initiate sexual contact or conduct to affirmatively obtain such consent.  It is not the responsibility of the intended recipient of such sexual contact to affirmatively deny such consent.” When coupled with paragraph two (“throughout the duration”), this rule makes no sense.

According to the policy, if the initiator attains positive consent from the recipient, but decides that repeatedly asking for consent would be, shall we say, stupid, the recipient may silently withdraw consent during the act, because it is not the recipient’s responsibility to affirmatively deny consent. Even if such a case couldn’t hold up in court, the policy is still hopelessly confusing.

Backing up to the definition of consent: “For the purposes of this policy, valid consent cannot be obtained from a person whose ability to make decisions is substantially impaired by alcohol, drugs, or other intoxicants.”

Basically, the policy asserts that an intoxicated person cannot give consent.

How does alcohol prevent someone from being responsible for their own actions? It seems to me that SLU is being overly paternalistic. And how drunk is “substantially”?

It is obvious that if someone is passed out in a puddle of their own vomit, you should not have sex with them, because that is rape.

But what if someone is just stumbling around and slurring their words a bit? And if two intoxicated people have sex, does that mean they raped each other? What if one were drunker than the other? In that case, do the two rapes cancel out, or is one rape worse than the other?

Ultimately, it does not matter who raped who, because of the way SLU determines responsibility for the alleged sexual assault. In the absence of physical evidence, SLU uses the “preponderance of the evidence standard, i.e., more likely than not a sexual assault did or did not occur.”

Notice it does not say “proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” but only, “more likely than not.”

It should be in the interest of the administration to have an informed student body that is well aware of their policies. Regardless of whether or not my questions have any merit, the University should do a better job of explaining, in no uncertain terms, what does and does not qualify as sexual assault.

Ben Eldredge is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences.