(FORTUNE Magazine) – Back when your correspondent was a callow collegian, the campuses were not crawling with professional sex researchers. In 1942, nobody was so rude as to inquire of Rutgers freshmen whether they spent more time thinking about sex or about English literature from Beowulf to Hardy. Nowadays, by contrast, a Nexis search requesting all documents that mention ''sex,'' ''survey,'' and ''college'' within 30 words of one another yields 432 citations and a staggering array of sociological data, none of it suggesting a win for Beowulf. Our own favorite finding was the one reported at the State University of New York at Albany, where scholars proclaimed that male college freshmen have nearly eight sexual fantasies per day, vs. only 4.5 for the girls. We got into this research via an astonishing document issued by the University of Michigan. This great institution is among many now seeking to thwart bigoted behavior on campus by issuing detailed codes of conduct and restricting speech. An earlier version of the university's code was widely condemned (e.g., by the American Civil Liberties Union) as an affront to academic freedom, and a Michigan judge declared it unconstitutionally vague and ''overbroad.'' The present interim code wrestles uneasily with the judge's concerns. A section on permissible speech on campus starts out barring ''verbal slurs'' based on race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, creed, national origin, ancestry, age, or handicap, but then turns around and says the bar applies only when two conditions are met: (1) when there is an intentional effort to needle somebody and (2) when the speech in question is not part of a discussion of ideas. Accused students have the right to be represented by counsel, and the university's judicial procedures include a right of appeal. Michigan lawyers would seem to have struck the mother lode. But it was, of course, the section on sexual harassment that sent us to Nexis. In a broad though ill-defined range of circumstances, the University of Michigan now prohibits ''unwelcome sexual advances'' on campus. Think about it. The university was recently serving in loco parentis for 20,374 boys and 16,100 girls who, it may be calculated, generate a total of 235,442 sexual fantasies per day. Nexis offers no data on the ratio between fantasies and advances, but it stands to reason that there has to be a sizable amount of intergender feinting and parrying on an average day in Ann Arbor. Okay, you are saying, but what about the welcomeness issue? Here some historical perspective is required: In ruling out only ''unwelcome'' advances, the university is adopting the definition of sexual harassment originally cooked up by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which knew it would get laughed into the Potomac if it tried to outlaw all romance and therefore promulgated the fateful welcome-unwelcome distinction. Result: the first law known to mankind or at least the present writer wherein proscribed behavior is defined not in terms of the perpetrator's objective conduct but solely in relation to the subjective post hoc responses of the perp's companion, who is thereby enabled to turn law-abiding citizens into instant malefactors. The arrangement is flawed at the core, as we now know from scientific research telling us that many a temptress sends out false and misleading signals. Oh? You didn't know about the research? That must mean you were not at last year's New Orleans convention of the American Psychological Association, when Dr. Charlene Muehlenhard cited survey data indicating that more than a third of college women put up a certain amount of resistance when they were privately hoping for action. To be sure, there is also the University of Missouri nationwide survey of college women indicating that many of them are getting more action than desired. Sex with professors, for example, is undesired 28% of the time. If there were breakdowns for the humanities vs. the sciences, Nexis somehow missed them.