Where I studied and taught, matriculation and TAship were two, different things. Now being expelled would end one's job as a TA, obviously, but losing your TAship would not necessarily cause expulsion (depending on the severity of the offense that caused the termination).
I do think it's quite possible that, as an out-of-state student, BK would have found tuition prohibitively expensive without a TAship. Again, I do not have inside knowledge of WSU, but I have been both a TA and a prof at another uni in the same athletic conference.
I think that's true in general. DH and I were discussing this last night - BK has not been expelled, that we know of. It's not really an issue right now, and if he is exonerated, he could return to WSU, I suppose.
I also wanted to mention that when results of a termination process are released publicly, it's the fact that the termination occurred and the formal reason enacted by the Board of Trustees or governing authority (often the Chancellor, sometimes the College President), not the entire case file from HR.
The HR records (all the phone calls, interviews, signed statements, etc) remain private. So in the case of a faculty person fired just this semester (who had an office two doors down from mine), it went Dean>College President>Chancellor and boom he was gone. He did not have tenure. And it didn't go to the Board because technically he resigned. He was told to resign immediately or face it going to the Board and it becoming public because the Chancellor and the President were adamant he would do (it was an egregious contractual offense, also rather open/shut - hard to deny).
The way I read the Criminology program's statement is that all Criminology students get some kind of discount on tuition (I think it was 50% as compared to 10% in some departments) in their first year (in addition to TA-ship). Then, if they take all measures to become Washington State residents (DL, car registration, voter registration, local address, etc) they get in-state tuition (half off, IIRC) for their second and third years, then it's free after that. He had clearly started the process of becoming in-state. At any rate, his tuition for Spring would have been something like $7500 at the 50% off rate. I am thinking he probably had some kind of loan for that amount, since his TAship wouldn't pay it.
But I bet the TAship covered his rent. It's possible he could have gotten loans for all of it, but it's still a disgrace and everyone around him would know it. Financial and psychological damage.
And I do believe that while he had fantasized committing a crime and had a very specific kind of crime in mind, he had some inhibitions to overcome. The situation with his schooling dialed down his inhibitions.
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