Student to return to campus after dismissal in sexual assault case

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Michigan State University sophomore dismissed after an internal judicial board found he’d had sex with a fellow student while she was incapacitated will be allowed to return to campus pending a hearing on the case in Ingham County Circuit Court.

The man is identified in court documents only by his student identification number.

The case stems from an incident that occurred at an off-campus party in August. The woman told a university investigator that the man had been flirtatious, “asked her how many times she had sex and told her he has had sex seven times,” according to a report included in court filings. MSU judicial board proceedings are not public.
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The man doesn’t deny that they had sex, but said it was consensual and that he hadn’t put drugs in her drink. He met with investigators in September but later, through an attorney, declined to participate in the university investigation. He gave the university the results of a successful polygraph.

In a hearing Monday afternoon in front of Circuit Judge Clinton Canady III, attorney George Brookover argued that MSU had denied his client due process by not allowing him or an attorney to directly question the woman who accused him or cross-examine witnesses.
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University associate general counsel Michael Kiley talked about that investigation, as well, but in the process of noting that the university is required under Title IX “to enforce an environment that doesn’t foster harassment.”

That enforcement differs from the criminal courts, which require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The federal government expects universities to use a preponderance of the evidence standard in their internal investigation, basically deciding whether it’s more likely than not that something occurred.

MSU’s investigator wrote that the man accused “knew or should reasonably have known” that the woman was incapacitated because he had been the one giving her alcohol.'