Seth stood up from the witness chair and moved to the witness table. He sat down with his notebook in front of him, though he did not open it.
Dr. Voss asked him to describe what he had witnessed in the cafeteria on Tuesday.
Seth described it. He was precise and unhurried and completely specific. He described the table, the approach, the escalation. He described the slap, its sound, and the response of the room. He described the four words Ren had said, and the exact tone in which they were said, which he characterized as quiet and clear and not threatening.
One of the committee members asked him, "Mr. Drummond, you did not intervene at the time. Why are you here now?"
Seth looked at the committee member directly.
"Because I understand now that waiting for someone else to go first is not a neutral act," he said. "It is a choice. And I made the wrong one on Tuesday. I am trying to make a different one today."
The committee member made a note. Seth returned to the witness chairs.
Dr. Voss looked at her agenda. "The committee will now hear from Professor Eleanor Marsh."
Marsh came forward with the binders and set them on the witness table. She did not sit. She stood, because she had been standing at the front of rooms for 31 years, and it was the position from which she communicated most effectively.
She described the binders. She explained what they contained, why they existed, and how they had come to be in her possession. She explained the migration of digital records four years ago, and the documents that had not been carried forward in that process. She explained the closure language that appeared identically across three separate complaint files, which she noted was statistically improbable unless the language had been templated and applied rather than arrived at independently.
Then she described the signing official. She said the name clearly: Associate Provost for Student Athletics.
The man in the suit sat very still.
Dr. Voss looked at the binders. "The committee will enter these documents into the formal record." She paused. "Professor Marsh, in your professional judgment, having reviewed these documents, what do they indicate?"
Marsh looked at the committee without hesitation.
"They indicate a pattern," she said. "Not an isolated incident. A pattern of complaint management that has consistently produced the same outcome regardless of the specifics of the complaint, which suggests that the outcome was determined before the process was completed." She paused. "In my field, when an experiment consistently produces the same result regardless of the variables, you do not conclude that the experiment is working correctly. You look at the methodology."