Sorry, may have been too vague on that point.
I do agree there is not likely to be some sort of mustache twirling excel crunching person in middle management who flips the "anti-party" switch. I do think that a lot of this stuff is the output of working groups who use data to tackle common issues you see in Unis though, generally with good intentions.
However there are certain times when this actually is the case.
For e.g. when it comes to Greek life you'll see many social/party related rules that are made specifically for/by their insurance providers. These often are things like you must keep a licensed bartender to serve drinks, everyone can only bring X amount that have to be checked in and served back them, every social event must be registered with the university etc.
As for minimizing liabilities, my university had many trainings you must go through if you're part of any student org. The trainings are, at least in my experiance, not useful and only serve as something the university can point to in the event of an issue and say "hey we tried". I'd assume it's standard practice for most colleges, and while there may be some level of true belief in the effectiveness of these trainings I really doubt it considering they mostly amounted to motivational speakers who charge obscene speaking fees.
This happened in dorms too, but is less extensive, and frankly more useful b/c it was student (RA) to student and not a speech.
Also see most COVID policy written related to a uni. Particularly in the beginning of the pandemic.
At my school, parents were forced to pickup their children from across the country in crowded dorms all at once. This was back when it was assumed covid had a huge death rate and was already spreading where we lived.
My assumption is this was done to minimize liability for the university, even at the expense of infecting anywhere these kids were going. I fail to see how this was medically the best move. There was no quarantine period, and no-one was given the ability to stay unless you had a valid reason. (This included greek life and other mixed university-managed + student org housing, which doubly makes no sense unless it was about liability, since they were entirely independent from university in terms of maintenance, access etc)
A bunch of orgs on my campus petitioned the university to stay, especially those with vulnerable family and we were universally told to leave or we'd be arrested for trespass.
Another was seeing that our university police department owned riot gear.
Sorry for ranting a bit, I do admit I have a chip on my shoulder about that.