More than 150 students have signed a letter that will be sent to senators next week requesting the Education Department not get additional funds to continue its sexual harassment and sexual assault overreach.

The students, led by Tufts University freshman Jake Goldberg, take issue with the damage being done to free speech and due process rights on college campuses in response to an overblown effort to combat sexual harassment and sexual assault. While cutting down on these two problems is noble, the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights attempts have, through guidance documents known as "Dear Colleague" letters, created a dramatic broadening of the definition of those two offenses to include things that are not objectionably offensive.

"Though expressed as non-binding, this definition has still been widely adopted by our campuses all across the country," the students wrote. "By allowing vague and far-reaching restrictions on speech to be incorporated into sexual harassment policies, [the Dear Colleague letter's] directives have led to the deprivation of our constitutional and contractual rights to free speech and expression.

In addition, OCR's guidelines have eviscerated due process protections for those accused of violating the new definitions of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Across the country, schools have been incentivized to treat accusations as guilt or else risk losing federal funding.

And although the documents forcing schools to treat their students this way did not go through the proper notice-and-comment period necessary to place new financial regulations on schools, senators want additional funds to carry out the new responsibilities OCR designated for itself.

Until now, much of the opposition to OCR's overreach has come from third-party groups like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. But Goldberg, who organized the letter to senators, felt that students needed to start speaking up about the issue too.

"I think the most important voice to send to OCR is that of the students who are most burned by these rules and regulations," Goldberg told the Washington Examiner.

Goldberg said neither he nor any of his friends have faced an accusation of this nature, but he has heard horror stories in the media and from his mother, who does pro bono work for a group working to defend accused students. While talking to his friends about the issue, Goldberg said they realized that they can't wait until it happens to them and that they need to try and stop the problem.

"We're not immune to it, so we don't want to wait and have the same thing happen to us and we definitely want the stories of those who did suffer from it to be heard," Goldberg said.

Goldberg said it took less than 48 hours to amass more than 100 signatures from friends and friends of friends through Facebook. And since he published the letter to Legal Insurrection on Wednesday, he has received an additional 66 signatures. The signers aren't all men worried about being falsely accused, either. A copy of the list provided to the Examiner shows that about a quarter of the signatories are women who disagree with the federal government's overreach.

"One of the things I realized was this wasn't really a partisan issue, it's not a question of left or right, it's a question of right or wrong," Goldberg said. "And it's a message that so many people are opening up to once it gets their attention, but the problem is that it's not really on anyone's radar. Most people don't know, most people who do know think it's kind of fringe cases [and] it's not part of the mainstream."

Goldberg said that he has not gotten one "flat-out rejection." Some people haven't responded, but no one has explicitly said they disagree.

"People have been very receptive to this issue and I think the more people we can get, the more signatures we can get and more importantly, just more awareness to this issue," Goldberg said.

He plans to send the letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies as they seek comment on appropriations for the Education Department. A group of senators have requested giving OCR an additional $30 million to investigate violations of sexual harassment and sexual assault policies at colleges and universities.

Goldberg writes in his letter that student voices on this side of the issue will multiply, and for the subcommittee to withhold additional funding from the Department "until they change their guidelines to conform with constitutionally established principles of free speech and due process."

Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.