My guess is the situation isn't that black and white. I'm not convinced the guy did anything wrong (legally speaking), but likely there was a bad interaction between them and she thought she would get back at him by doing a spiteful art project targeting him. And then it blew up in popularity and she felt like it hit the point of no return and she had to run with it. And then she sensationalized it to make a name for herself. I mean, she wants to be an artist and artists need recognition to sell their work. Shitty on her part, but I understand how it could happen and how it then spun out of control.
But Columbia is really the bad guy here. They wronged the shit out of the guy and deserve a fat judgement against them.
They allowed her to harass the shit out of him even after he was cleared of wrongdoing BY THEM. They approved of her mattress project (which targeted him specifically for harassment, unapologetically), they displayed her other art pieces for public viewing which took personal shots at him, they allowed her to drag her mattress across the graduation stage after specifically disallowing it by their own rules. There's probably more I'm missing.
They institutionally failed to protect their own student from a harassment campaign and at least passively approved of it. Pay up, you hypocritical fuckers.