You can tell this is ragebait because they didn't bother to do any actual reporting work. The entire story is just the student's own recounting of what happened.
> University of Exeter has been approached for comment
I guess this breaking news was just too urgent to even allow the use of past tense.
Besides, present perfect seems appropriate. It's commonly used to discuss events in the past relating to 'now'.
Past perfect wouldn't make sense, as past of what past? And past simple, focusing on a finished, closed event, when this even doesn't seem 'over' - at least from the perspective of some.
Yet you appear to have taken the headline at face value despite all the qualifiers that put this shaggy dog story six years in the past, claimed as true by a single aggrieved party, lacking supporting evidence which supposedly exists (but can't be shown because ...? (it didn't support the students account, the dog ate it, etc))
The Telegraph is a UK broadsheet with a good century and more of barely plausible to medium credibity reporting with a conservative spin .. it's a fun read but they do love to stretch a kernel of truth to beyond breaking point.
For example, I don't doubt that Robert Ivinson has been on the grounds of the University of Exeter .. past that I'd want confirmation, was he ever enrolled, was he expelled for anti social behaviour, etc.
If you look at the take up by The Daily Mail, and GB News, and other UK outrage mills then decades of history suggest caution; not because of any left V right partisanship, simply beacuse of this is a strong repeating pattern.
> University of Exeter has been approached for comment
I guess this breaking news was just too urgent to even allow the use of past tense.