HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, JUDICIAL COMMON-SENSE EDITION: Judge Faults University for Requiring Student to Prove He Was Innocent of Sexual Misconduct.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga erred in finding a student guilty of sexual misconduct based on his inability to prove he had obtained verbal consent from a woman who described her own memory of their encounter as clouded by intoxication, a state judge has ruled.

The state-court judge held that Steven R. Angle, the campus’s chancellor, had rendered an “arbitrary and capricious” decision last December in ordering the expulsion of Corey Mock, a senior.

In demanding that Mr. Mock prove he had obtained verbal consent in advance of sexual intercourse, Mr. Angle held the student to an untenable standard, partly because the campus’s code of conduct defines as consent not just verbal messages but “acts that are unmistakable in their meaning,” according to the judge, Carol L. McCoy of the chancery court in Nashville.

In addition, the judge held, Mr. Angle violated Mr. Mock’s due-process rights by interpreting the university’s code of conduct, which requires initiators of sexual activity to obtain consent, as establishing a judicial requirement that students accused of sexual misconduct prove that they had obtained consent in order to clear themselves.

That interpretation of the conduct code, the judge said in her ruling, “erroneously shifted the burden of proof onto Mr. Mock, when the ultimate burden of proving sexual assault remained on the charging party,” the university.

Let me take it a step further: Such burden-shifting, when coupled with a disciplinary system that disproportionately targets males, creates a hostile educational environment for male students, and is thus itself a violation of Title IX.