It might have been fitting if Dean Wormer, he of “Animal House’’ fame, magically appeared at a Babson College disciplinary board meeting Friday, to announce that Parker Rand-Ricciardi and Edward Tomasso had been on double-secret probation all along.

When it came to dealing with the hell-raising fraternity brothers at Delta House, the malevolent Dean Wormer didn’t let the niceties of evidence or due process get in the way.

Likewise, Babson officials are pressing ahead with charges against Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso, even though the most serious allegations against them have been shown to be false or uncorroborated.

Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso are the two Babson frat bros who, the day after their hero Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, drove onto the campus of Clinton’s alma mater, Wellesley College, to rub it in.

They drove around in a pickup truck with a Trump flag, shouting “Trump 2016!’’ and “Make America Great Again!’’ out the window.

The cops stopped them just outside the campus, and later one of the Babson students posted a video in which they laughed about what they’d done, and boasted that they would be arrested if they returned to the Wellesley campus.

Their obnoxious gloating seemed like the impulsive, deliberately provocative act of a couple of immature college kids. But by the time the story got retold second and third-hand on the third rail that is social media, the two offenders sounded more like hooded Klansmen than hoodie-wearing college kids.

The claims on social media became part of the narrative in stories that appeared in many news outlets, including the Globe.

Someone claimed the Trump flag was a Confederate flag. The Babson students were accused of yelling a slur commonly used to demean lesbians, of screaming racial epithets, of purposely driving to the house that is a gathering spot for Wellesley students of color to intimidate those there. A Facebook posting that went viral accused one of the Babson students of spitting on a black student. The Babson students got death threats.

Even before investigating the allegations, the Babson administration threw their two students under the bus, banning them from campus. The fraternity the two students belonged to threw them out. More than 200 members of the Babson faculty signed a letter condemning “the racist rhetoric’’ and intimidation tactics used by the pair. Wellesley students, and even some Babson students, demanded they be expelled.

The investigations carried out by Wellesley and Babson college police, however, painted a picture much less sinister and sensational. They found that Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso had acted like triumphalist jerks, not epithet-hurling bigots.

The Wellesley student who initially claimed that the driver of the pickup, Tomasso, spit toward the car she and another student were in did not speak to a Babson administrator who conducted a separate investigation, for reasons that are unclear.

The Wellesley student who was with the one who claimed to have been spat at told police she had not seen either Babson student spit, and that she based her initial claim on what the other student told her.

None of the officers in the three Wellesley College police cruisers or the Wellesley town police cruiser that pulled the two Babson students over saw the alleged spitting. Nor could the police find any eyewitness who said the Babson students shouted racist, homophobic, or misogynistic slurs.

The overall picture that emerges from reading the investigative summary compiled by Babson officials, based on the investigations of Wellesley and Babson college police and a Babson administrator, is that the most egregious acts that the two had been accused of didn’t happen. The allegations had metastasized in the echo chamber of social media.

It was those allegations that took this from a case of insensitive gloating to one of a purported hate crime that went viral, garnering international attention.

Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso were hardly blameless. They apologized for their actions, acknowledging that what they thought was funny was offensive to others.

“My insensitive celebration of the Trump victory was an extremely poor choice, plain and simple,’’ Rand-Ricciardi wrote in a statement. “Publicly celebrating the election at a time and in a place when so many were deeply disappointed about its outcome and, indeed, genuinely grieving about it, was just not smart.’’

Taking to Facebook, Tomasso said: “I’m sorry. My actions reflected terribly on my institution, my family, and myself.’’ He insisted he is not a bigot, but acknowledged that “I hurtfully displayed a flag that symbolizes fear for many people, and my actions caused pain that I am responsible for.’’

Tomasso showed some deeper introspection. “As a white male, I do not feel threatened by the new president,’’ he wrote.

“I have not had to work for that privilege. It was something I was born with. However, I’m willing to listen to how I can use this privilege to help those impacted by it and promote unity, equality, and prevent the marginalization of those afflicted.’’

Despite the apologies, and the investigative findings, those who leveled the most egregious allegations aren’t taking them back.

Babson administration officials, meanwhile, pressed on with disciplinary hearings against the two students, charging them with harassment and disorderly conduct. A decision is expected as soon as Monday.

Like everything else that has happened since Nov. 8, the contretemps over what the Babson students did or didn’t do has been viewed through the prism of the most divisive election in American history.

But this didn’t happen in a vacuum. The crackdown on free speech, more specifically on unpopular speech, by college administrators has been a festering problem for years. And nothing is more unpopular on American campuses these days than expressing admiration, sneaking or otherwise, for Donald Trump.

Jeff Robbins, a Boston lawyer who used to chair the Anti-Defamation League of New England, supported Hillary Clinton and was appalled when Trump won. He is petrified by a Trump presidency.

“I think it poses a danger to the country,’’ Robbins said. “I loathe Donald Trump.’’

Robbins also happens to be Parker Rand-Ricciardi’s lawyer and thinks that the way Babson has treated his client and Tomasso should petrify all Americans, that running roughshod over the rights of free expression and due process is also dangerous and loathsome.

“These kids’ reputations were destroyed based on accusations that were found to be groundless,’’ Robbins said. “Babson smeared these two students, then released a report admitting that it has no evidence to support its statements.’’

This is about more than the systemic suppression of free expression on campus, much more than a cautionary tale about the unquestioning use of social media as a source of information. It’s about cheapening instances of real bigotry.

One of the corrosive effects of wildly inflating what the Babson students did is that it blurs and deflects attention away from genuinely hateful acts..

The rush to judgment in the Babson case has been seized on by those who refuse to believe that bigots have been emboldened, that Muslims, immigrants, and others in marginalized communities have suffered insults, threats, and worse since the election.

The problem with exaggerating the actions of imagined or perceived bigots is that it inevitably, if unwittingly, helps real ones.

There’s enough hate out there. No need to manufacture a flimsy imitation.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeCullen.