PRESUMED GUILTY: How the government encourages kangaroo courts for sex crimes on campus.

Yu’s resident adviser told him some students had seen him and the young woman on their way to the dorm. They had been so concerned by Walker’s apparently inebriated state that they called campus security. Alarmed, Yu contacted Walker on Facebook to make sure everything was all right. She replied that she had had a “wonderful time” and that he had done “nothing wrong”-indeed, that she was sorry for having “led [him] on” when she wasn’t ready for a relationship. A month later Walker messaged Yu herself, again apologizing for the incident and expressing hope that it would not affect their friendship. There were more exchanges during the next months, with Walker at one point inviting Yu to dinner at her place. . . .

Last February, one year after the encounter, the other shoe dropped: Yu was informed that Walker had filed charges of “nonconsensual sexual contact” against him through the college disciplinary system. Two and a half weeks later, a hearing was held before a panel of three faculty members. Yu was not allowed an attorney . . . Many of his questions (including ones about Walker’s friendly messages, which she had earlier told the investigator she sent out of “fear”) were barred as “irrelevant”; he says that when he was allowed to question Walker, she would start crying and give evasive or nonresponsive answers. Yu was found guilty and summarily expelled from Vassar.