Alongside TWO Title IX lawsuits IN SIX MONTHS, UT-Austin protects Tenured professor with Criminal Domestic Violence CONVICTION

"He who covers his sins will not prosper,
But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy."
Proverbs 28:13

Last August:

According to the lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Austin, Fenves on April 12 overruled a university hearing officer who determined that there had been no assault. In a letter informing the student of his suspension, Fenves asserted that the woman was highly intoxicated and “someone who is intoxicated cannot give consent to sexual activity because they are incapacitated.”

Fenves, citing testimony by a witness who attended the formal, added, “While parties may disagree as to whether intoxication and incapacitation are synonymous, certainly, someone described as: ‘incredibly intoxicated, no longer coherent, at a point where she needed to be taken home away from the event because she couldn’t form sentences,’ meets the definition of incapacitated.”

The lawsuit accuses Fenves of coming up with his own standard for incapacitation and ignoring the university’s standard, which defines it as “a state of being that prevents an individual from having the capacity to give consent” and “could result from the use of drugs or alcohol.”

The lawsuit also says Fenves has a possible conflict of interest because the father of the woman is a university donor who gave a significant sum within a month of her allegations. And, while the school’s investigation was ongoing, the lawsuit says the university brought on the father to be an adviser at the school.

Two weeks ago:

The lawsuit states Doe will not be treated justly in the Feb. 7 hearing because UT amended the Title IX case report three different times after receiving notice of an impending lawsuit. The report was allegedly amended by replacing the word “incapacitation” with “intoxication” in a sentence that originally said a witness observed that Roe was showing signs of incapacitation by acting less “socially inhibited” that she would normally.

Later pages of the report however were not amended to replace the “incapacitation” with “intoxication,” according to the lawsuit.

“If UT can’t get their story straight on what the definition of incapacitation is after months of contemplation and a recent Federal Court suit and public admonitions on the same topic from (a) Federal Judge, how in the world are a couple of hormone filled college students supposed to do it after a night of drinking?” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also said the University’s “bumbling” attempts to amend the use of incapacitation with intoxication in only one instance of the word’s use in the report show its desire to equate the two. If this is the case, and the standard for intoxication is simply “diminished social inhibitions,” then the hearing is “merely a facade for a predetermined conclusion,” according to the lawsuit.

Annnd, then yesterday:

More than two dozen protesters gathered outside the University of Texas College of Pharmacy on Tuesday to demand that school officials fire professor Richard Morrisett, who pleaded guilty in 2016 to a felony charge accusing him of choking his girlfriend.

The university placed Morrisett on paid administrative leave after learning of the charge, but declined to sanction him. Since the American-Statesman published an investigation on the charges against Morrisett, people have sprayed graffiti outside the College of Pharmacy building and posted flyers with Morrisett’s mug shot around campus.

On Tuesday, about 35 people marched from the pharmacy school to the UT Tower with signs that read “Stop harboring abusers” and “Watch your back Richard,” calling university officials to take further action.

“He should be in jail, but at the very least he should be fired,” psychology senior Jasmine Bell said. “I don’t feel safe on this campus and neither do most of my friends.”

....

Morrisett pleaded guilty in 2016 to a felony charge for trying to strangle his girlfriend, according to documents obtained by the Statesman. He was also accused of a second violent incident that sent his girlfriend to the hospital and for violating a court order to stay away from her, records show. He was sentenced to four years of community supervision for the offenses but failed to inform the university of the charges, which is a violation of its policies.

Morrisett has been allowed to continue teaching. In their review of the incident, university officials determined that there was “no relation between how the professor acted in this situation and how he acted on campus,” according to an emailed statement from university spokesman J.B. Bird.

“I cannot express how angry I am to find out that UT didn’t do anything about having an abusive professor on campus,” government and economics junior Austin Smith said. “In my opinion, almost killing someone is universally immoral … if they are going to make excuses for why this man is still here, it’s just not good enough for me.”

Bottom Line: It takes a special degree of mendacity to make up Title IX standards out of thin air while simultaneously refusing to discipline a tenured faculty member (making $169,892) with a CRIMINAL CONVICTION.