Across the country, colleges and universities are being sued and vilified for how they handle claims of sexual assault and harassment.

Both the University of Kansas and Kansas State University face lawsuits in which the plaintiffs claim university officials did not do enough to investigate and prosecute cases of sexual assault.

Hundreds of other colleges face similar lawsuits – or complaints that foreshadow civil suits.

The growing numbers of suits come courtesy of the federal Department of Education, which has decided that universities need to play the roles of judge and jury and also police and prosecutor any time a student makes an allegation of sexual violence or harassment.

Even if the incident occurs far from campus.

And they need to handle every complaint quickly. The written guidance from the federal government tells universities not to wait for police to investigate before deciding the guilt of the accused.

The guidance is part of the Education Department’s interpretation of Title IX, a 1972 law enacted to ensure equality for women on campus.

Like so many federal laws, it has grown into an unintended morass of regulations that now cover much more than whether women and men have equal opportunities in academics and sports.

The Education Department’s expansive interpretation of Title IX raises questions about the appropriate role of universities in dealing with rape and other kinds of sexual violence.

In Kansas, a lawsuit regarding an alleged sexual assault at a KU-operated apartment complex in 2014 was filed in March by the parents of a student-athlete. A month later, a lawyer filed separate lawsuits for two K-State students who say they were raped at off-campus fraternities, one in 2014 and one in 2015.

The lawsuits claim the colleges did not do enough to protect the women from a dangerous environment nor did they adequately address their claims of assault.

Most claims of sexual assault made by women are valid. Police and victim advocates will tell you that, and there are no good reasons to doubt them.

But that doesn’t mean all claims are true, as Rolling Stone magazine learned after publishing the sordid lies of a woman they called Jackie at the University of Virginia.

The rules developed by federal officials under Title IX raise the odds for reaching wrong conclusions, given that they coerce universities to act beyond their scope of expertise and to do it quickly.

The usual standards for determining guilt are not in play. Rather, colleges and universities are directed to determine guilt based on a “preponderance of evidence” rather than the “clear and convincing” evidence standard. Federal officials even launched action against Princeton University for holding to the higher standard.

The Education Department explains the departure from the nation’s understanding of proving someone’s guilt or innocence by explaining that there’s a big difference between criminal complaints and Title IX complaints.

For example, Title IX officials can’t send anyone to prison.

Fair enough.

But they can ruin the future and finances of accused students. Those are serious consequences – too serious to tell universities they need to move quickly to investigate complaints and hand down punishments – or remedies as the feds prefer to call them.

Such investigations and prosecutions unwisely stretch the scope of both Title IX and universities. Local police, prosecutors’ offices and courts are the right venues to handle alleged criminal acts.

For those incidents that don’t rise to the level of a crime, it’s appropriate for the university to investigate and take action. For example, universities should continue to handle complaints that deal with staff harassing or discriminating against students, subordinates or colleagues.

But when there is reasonable evidence of a crime, the case should be handed to the professionals who are elected and hired to handle crime in our society.

Sexual violence is a serious issue, and it deserves to be handled by professionals who are trained to investigate and prosecute crimes.

Perhaps because of its own tendency to overreach, the federal government seems bent on coercing universities to do the same. But the costly and uneven process that has been mandated serves neither universities nor their students well.

Here’s a Q and A from the Education Department about Title IX and handling complaints of sexual violence and harassment. Title IX Guidance

 

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and Republicans in the Legislature are unwilling and unable to balance the state’s budget.

They have lots of excuses but no solutions.

Instead, again and again, they choose to dig the state deeper into debt.

The problems began four years ago, when Brownback and his supporters in the Legislature gleefully passed massive income tax cuts.

The state’s political leaders advocated the huge cuts even though research showed they would produce  budget gaps totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Republicans told Kansans the experts were wrong; they said the tax cuts would spur economic growth and state revenues would grow.

It didn’t happen. Not even when the oil and agriculture sectors were booming.

If there were any years in which the Republicans’ math should have worked, it was from 2012 through 2014, when Kansas crude oil, crops and cattle were all doing extremely well.

While those sectors don’t employ many people relative to other parts of the state’s economy, they can have an outsized impact on government budgets because of the money involved.

But the way in which Brownback and his supporters changed Kansas’ taxing system meant that even in good years, Kansas didn’t have enough money to pay its bills.

The state had to keep borrowing billions of dollars. It had to raise its most regressive of taxes – the sales tax. It had to cut funding to higher education and aid to the poor.

That was before farm prices and the oil industry sagged.

Once revenues from those sectors started to fade, the state’s financial hole got even bigger.

So Brownback and his supporters decided they needed to keep digging.

They decided to sell off state assets and borrow billions more – which as anyone who has taken on a loan knows – adds to the cost of whatever it was you were trying to pay for.

As they peered last week into the massive pit they had created, they seemed puzzled.

Some said the lousy farm and oil economies were to blame for the big hole.

Some said it was a reflection of a weak national economy.

And of course, some blamed Obama.

One, House Speaker Ray Merrick, was frustrated that the state kept having to lower its revenue estimates as Kansas’ problems grew larger.

Not one of the Republican leaders, however, has proposed a plan to permanently fill the hole.

Not one has offered a way to make the state’s budget structurally sound – that is to make recurring revenue sufficient to cover recurring expenses.

They just keep digging.

When I interviewed for a job in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in 1994, the editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal warned me not to stray too far from the downtown hotel at which I was staying.

Gun violence related to drugs was too common to be taken lightly, even in the relatively small Hudson River city with a population of 30,000.

I took the job working on the newspaper’s city desk, a vantage point from which to watch the city, located 80 miles north of New York City, battle the shootings and drug dealing that plagued much of the country.

Violent crime was a serious nationwide issue in the early 1990s, and it drew the attention of elected officials in Washington who passed the 1994 crime bill.

Poughkeepsie officials used funding made possible by the bill to hire more police. They also made major changes in their leadership and their approach to policing.

And like much of the rest of the country, Poughkeepsie saw results: less violent crime.

The 1994 crime bill, now under attack by liberals, was not the sole reason for the substantial decline in the crime rate, but it was a factor.

Those who attempt to twist the legislation into an attack on black Americans – such as the Black Lives Matter movement – focus on the negative consequences. They ignore the evidence that the legislation made the nation safer.

As Ronald Brownstein pointed out in a piece in the Atlantic recently, at least 10 black mayors of U.S. cities actively supported passage of the bill in the summer of 1994.

They did not support all of its provisions, but they understood that crime threatened both the lives of their citizens and the economic viability of their cities.

Now that same legislation and those who supported it are being attacked by many liberals who blame the law for the large number of blacks in prison.

Just what did the crime bill do? Here are some of the major elements:

1. It provided funding for 100,000 more additional police officers to work in cities, towns and counties across the country. Additional grants were given to communities for prevention programs and for community-oriented policing.
2. It effectively mandated longer and more prison sentences by adopting truth-in-sentencing and minimum prison terms for many federal crimes. States followed the federal lead and adopted tougher laws that also put a lot more people behind bars. The trend toward increased incarceration, however, already had begun. As was noted in several pieces, such as one by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, the rate of imprisonment jumped 400 percent between 1970 and 1994. Over the next 15 years, it would double again. Since 2000, according to a piece by Bill Scher for Real Clear Politics, the incarceration rate has begun to fall.

3. The bill established the Violence Against Women Act, which helped change how police dealt with domestic violence. The law ensured more cases were prosecuted – not ignored as “private, family matters” – and it also established standards for the treatment of victims of rape and domestic violence.
4. The law banned the sale of certain assault rifles that were favored by drug gangs and mass murderers. The ban expired after 10 years, and Congress refused to renew it.

Like most legislation, the crime bill was a compromise between President Bill Clinton and Congress. It won support from moderate Republicans and Democrats. It was opposed by conservative Republicans for being too generous and by liberal Democrats for being weighted too much toward punishment.

In the Kansas delegation, Pat Roberts, then the First District representative, and Sen. Bob Dole opposed the bill.

Republican Sen. Nancy Kassebaum and Republican Rep. Jan Meyers, supported it, as did Democratic congressmen Dan Glickman and Jim Slattery.

Like most compromises, it wasn’t perfect. But it did help cities and counties battle crime, and it pushed them to adopt more effective approaches toward policing.

Critics would better serve their cause by working to address the country’s excessively high incarceration rates without undermining what the crime bill helped achieve.

 

 

What people get paid doesn’t necessarily correspond to the value of their work.

Otherwise, a starting major league baseball pitcher would not make more for a single game than a critical care nurse makes all year.

Attempting to correlate the importance of a job with its pay is often frustrating and futile. We think salaries should make more sense – that the correlation between pay and what we value as a society should be stronger.

A number of activists are battling what they consider to be unfair pay practices. The issues range from proposals to raise the minimum wage to efforts to lower the pay of corporate CEOs – with complaints tossed in about the disparity in pay between men and women.

In soccer, for example, five professional female players have filed a wage discrimination complaint against the U.S. Soccer federation.

Arguments for pay equality between men and women sound reasonable, until you remember that we’re talking about sports. Pay scales in professional sports – and in the entertainment industry – defy logic.

The concept at work in sports and entertainment is that certain players and actors draw bigger audiences. That means they help generate more money from ticket sales, TV deals and so on. U.S. Soccer says its men’s teams generate about twice the revenue as the women’s teams, which is why there’s more money for bigger salaries. The women dispute that claim.

The argument that big-name actors and male athletes earn more for everyone to share doesn’t always hold true; some of the highest-paid stars in sports and entertainment are the biggest financial flops.

And the premise certainly isn’t working in the business world, where the heads of failing or faltering companies earn big bucks.

Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer, for example, made $42 million in 2014, even as the company flailed.

Mayer is one of the more egregious examples of a corporate pay system that is disconnected from social and economic values.

Over the last 20 years, CEO’s at the nation’s biggest companies have seen their pay rise 300 percent. Over the same period, according to reporting from the Economic Policy Institute and Fortune magazine, their workers’ pay has increased 11 percent. Both figures are adjusted for inflation.

The institute’s report said the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 20-to-1 in 1965, and it was 303-to-1 in 2014. The average annual pay in 2014 for CEO’s in the largest 350 companies topped $16 million.

But you don’t have to get into such enormous numbers to start a debate over pay.

Some conservatives across Kansas this past month used Twitter and other social media to complain about police officers and nurses at public facilities who made $100,000 or more last year, including their usual pay plus overtime.

There also was discussion on social media about the pay of some Kansas school superintendents, for whom salaries range from about $300,000 a year to less than $40,000 for districts that have part-time or shared leaders.

Among school districts, the differences in superintendent salaries are primarily linked to district size, but frugal patrons may well wonder about salaries for public officials that exceed a quarter of a million dollars.

It’s a legitimate view, but it’s hard to know what to consider excessive in an environment in which public university presidents can earn more than $500,000 a year — and still have their salaries dwarfed by the college’s basketball and football coaches.

It’s true that on the university level, there are revenue streams besides taxes, including tuition, student fees, donations and grants. There’s also revenue from football and basketball programs, although most programs spend more money than they generate.

It’s easy to criticize the pay disparity between, say, the basketball coach and a math professor as an evil of capitalism, but no economic system is without problems.

The adage is true: Our system is the worst – except for all the other systems.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make pay better reflect the value of the work performed – in the public and private sectors.

The efforts could include boycotts of overpriced entertainment, shareholder pressure on CEO salaries, calling for higher wages for low-paid workers and use of public records to create awareness.

We don’t have to get crazy and claim that hospital nurses should be paid as much as baseball pitchers. But we should keep in mind that pay is linked to the value we place on the work done. And the equation is way out of whack.

At both the state and federal level, politicians are working to make sure that judges do their bidding in court.

In Washington, D.C., the Republican-led Senate refuses to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Garland, 63, was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, by then President Bill Clinton in 1997. On the nation’s highest court, he would replace Antonin Scalia, who died earlier this year.

Garland is viewed as a moderate whose record reflects respect for judicial precedent and decisions made by other branches of government.

Here’s what conservative columnist George Will wrote:

“… In his record of deference, Garland resembles two justices nominated by presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, respectively — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and, even more, Scalia, who seems to be more revered than read by many conservatives. Garland’s reluctance to restrict the administrative state’s discretion would represent continuity in the chair he would fill.”

Senate Republicans, however, would rather take their chances. They are betting, first, that a Republican will be elected to the White House, and, second, that the new president will nominate someone more conservative.

In Topeka, Republicans aren’t even willing to wait for justices to retire or die to replace them.

They want to impeach judges with whom they disagree.

Legislation passed by the state Senate and now in the House would let lawmakers oust judges who “usurp” the Legislature’s authority or “introduce arbitrary power.”

Given that one of the duties of the court is to referee disputes about the meaning of the law and constitution, it’s not clear when interpretation becomes usurpation.

But I’m pretty sure the answer has more to do with politics than the constitution.

Arguments about judicial activism disappear when people agree with a court’s ruling. Claims of activism and usurping power arise only when judges’ interpretation of the law differs from their critics’ interpretation.

Kansas lawmakers currently are steamed by the state Supreme Court’s rulings regarding funding for public education.

The court has ruled that the funding the state provides for K-12 public schools does not comply with the constitutional guarantee of equitable and adequate funding for public education.

Many Republican legislators say the state Supreme Court has no right to determine what constitutes equitable and adequate funding.

Which raises the question: If the government’s highest courts aren’t authorized to determine the issue of constitutionality, who is?

Politically and practically, the court’s role as a referee in determining what is constitutional has lasted more than 200 years. In 1803, the case of Marbury v. Madison involved the authority of the Supreme Court to act as an arbiter of what actions and laws were constitutional.

The concept of judicial review has been around ever since.

It is a necessary component to the state and federal systems of checks and balances.

Without a judicial system that has the authority to determine the legality of the actions of the executive and legislative branches, no one could have told Richard Nixon in 1974 to turn over the recordings that made clear his involvement in the Watergate scandal.

The nation’s highest court would not have had the authority to rule that states cannot constitutionally segregate blacks from whites on public buses, in schools or other places such as hospitals.

We might still be fighting over who won the 2000 presidential election.

It was Chief Justice John Marshall, who handed down the Marbury v. Madison decision, a ruling that helped ensure we would resolve legal and political disputes in a civil and logical manner.

Marshall, it should be noted, was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in January 1801 by President John Adams.

At that point, Adams already had lost the 1800 presidential election to Thomas Jefferson. In his final weeks of office, Adams made all the political appointments he could, including that of Marshall.

More than any other chief justice, Marshall established the courts as valuable part of the system of checks and balances. His leadership helped ensure that the court’s decisions could not be ignored simply because judges failed to follow the political fashions of the day.