I don't understand what is Microsoft's role here. This is a complaint between employees about a potential crime that happened outside of Microsoft's walls, outside of business hours, and between employees that have no position of hierarchy over one another. This seems to me as a simple police matter. I don't think employers should become an out-of-court justice system as long as they are not involved directly. All they can do is to separate the employees in a way that neither is negatively impacted until the legal proceedings are settled which from what I can tell from the article is what they did.
The other thing about tech companies is that it would be interesting to compare their statistics of sexual harassment to other industries. Putting at the front page some stories about sexual harassment don't mean anything. Microsoft has 125,000 employees, google 75,000, apple 125,000, etc. At this scale, and unless they have a special hiring technique that enables to spot criminal behavior that I am not aware of, they are bound to hire some future criminals: rapists, thieves, stalkers, etc. It's just statistically impossible for it not to happen. Is there any evidence that there is more sexual harassment in the tech industry than other industries?
Similarly, I don't understand why universities get involved in crimes among or involving students. In other countries, crimes are a matter for the police. The university's job is to teach. This whole "in loco parentis" thing is a bit outdated, surely.
Presumably the crime couldn't be proved to the standard that the justice system requires, so getting Microsoft to implement a punishment based on her allegations and public opinion is the next best thing.
Getting someone punished for unproven allegations based on pressure from people whose only knowledge of the case comes from a news article isn't a good thing.
The other thing about tech companies is that it would be interesting to compare their statistics of sexual harassment to other industries. Putting at the front page some stories about sexual harassment don't mean anything. Microsoft has 125,000 employees, google 75,000, apple 125,000, etc. At this scale, and unless they have a special hiring technique that enables to spot criminal behavior that I am not aware of, they are bound to hire some future criminals: rapists, thieves, stalkers, etc. It's just statistically impossible for it not to happen. Is there any evidence that there is more sexual harassment in the tech industry than other industries?