I have been reading this with keen interest over the last couple of days deciding if I should share another side to this and I think I will.
My son is 4 years older and is a Freshman in a co-ed dorm. He returned back to his room, after going away for a weekend, to find a letter from the school announcing he had been accused of several offenses including sexual harassment. He was stunned and neither he nor his roommate had any idea where this was coming from.
We (he and I) went to the investigatory meeting with the Dean and the report that had been filed was very incomplete, did not specify acts, specific “victims”, dates, places, etc. it was mainly generalities with a list of 4 - 5 women that prepared the report. The over reaching theme was that he was asking/pressuring women for sex.
His explanation/defense was that his group of friends (the women in the report along with several other men) had several ongoing jokes that everyone engaged in, him no more than others and he was subjected to the same jokes from the complaining women. He provided other parties (male and female) that could provide details to this ongoing banter being universal.
The Dean then investigated, talked to the other parties and my son’s witnesses and ultimately decided that there had been no violation of the student code and no harassment on his part. The Dean did explain that while everyone was joking and having a good time with the banter on occasion, an individual may have felt uncomfortable in the situation but as this was never expressed, no one ever left the room, and nothing was ever said about it, and the banter continued at future times there was nothing that could point to wrong doing. There is much more to the story but this hits the highlights.
Now that the investigation is over and he is “back to normal” he has learned what really drove this process, from some of the complaining parties. One of the women was upset with my son, not around anything in the report, but rather a comment he had made about another male friend in the group that she didn’t like and misunderstood. Her decision was to go to the RA with complaints of sexual harassment, thinking the RA would talk to him, it would be uncomfortable for him, and he would “feel a little pain”. She attributed statements to the other girls, most without their knowledge, when she went to the RA. The RA took her information at face value and submitted the allegation to the Dean without investigating the situation, expecting the Dean to investigate. Once the others were able to explain statements that were attributed to them they were able to refute the statements and defend my son, leading us to a good outcome.
This is a long way of saying I don’t think we can say the OP’s son is lying. These types of allegations are a very effective means of retribution and should be investigated fully before a decision is reached. Could the OP’s situation be similar, the girls thought he was “weird” and he didn’t take the hints to leave them alone so they exaggerated interactions to have the school force him to get the hint? two months ago I would have said no, now, after what we have gone through I say possibly. Is it further possible that in an attempt to bolster their exaggeration they have co-opted others into the story? Again two months ago I would have said unlikely, today I think it is possible.
Without the investigation the Dean conducted in my son’s case he could have been facing serious consequences, just taking a story at face value. It sounds like that is what has happened here and I believe had I not been as involved with the Dean on my son’s behalf the investigation may have been much more cursory than it was. My advice is to advocate for your son, ask to see any and all evidence, be able to see/hear the questioning of the girls, not everything is as it appears on first glance.