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CU throws in the towel

A pragmatic decision to pay out $2.85 million

The Rocky

Published December 7, 2007 at 12:05 a.m.

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The University of Colorado didn't actually lose the sexual bias lawsuit claiming it was responsible for the squalid - and perhaps criminal - behavior of football players and recruits at an off-campus party that it never sanctioned or knew about.

And that's a good thing, since a defeat at trial would have helped to expand the reach of federal Title IX law to the point that universities might have been sued right and left over off-campus encounters that resulted in claims of abuse or worse.

But CU did settle the lawsuit by two women who claimed they were sexually assaulted by players and recruits at a drunken orgy six years ago - and for the considerable sum of $2.85 million. So the message that this case sends to other prospective plaintiffs here and elsewhere remains ambiguous at best, when we'd have preferred a clear-cut outcome warning off similar litigation.

Make no mistake: We supported the purge of the athletic department, from the athletic director to the football coach, as well as the replacement of the university president, chancellor and other officials that followed the scandal ignited by the booze-soaked party. We also applauded many (but not all) of the new recruitment rules adopted in reaction to the scandal. The CU administration had granted virtual autonomy - an unhealthy autonomy - to the athletic department; the athletic director in turn had granted virtual autonomy to the football coach. The result was that officials reacted too slowly to signs of potential trouble.

But the attempt to hold CU responsible for the alleged behavior of young men who denied the accusations and were never charged with a crime - and who were at an off-campus private party not sanctioned by the school - always seemed to us a stretch. To win the case at trial under Title IX, the plaintiffs would have had to prove, in theory at least, that CU was "deliberately indifferent to a known risk" of sexual abuse of female students by football players and recruits. The evidence from depositions and the testimony before an independent commission came nowhere near to making that case, in our view.

Unfortunately, the writing was probably on the wall once the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived the sexual bias claim against the school three months ago, reversing a lower court ruling. In a sense, the appeals court rewrote the Title IX law for the plaintiffs - pushing the university into a mood to bargain.

Not only did CU face the possibility (not probability) of losing the lawsuit if it insisted on a trial, it also risked renewing the torrent of awful publicity that it had endured for several years after the story originally broke. That publicity not only damaged fundraising, but it also reduced the interest of out-of-state students in the Boulder campus. CU President Hank Brown told us Thursday that the depressed interest of out-of-state students was actually more worrisome than the fundraising, given how much more such students pay in tuition than in-state students.

Plus, the legal costs of the trial alone would probably have exceeded the final settlement price.

By the way, that $2.85 million settlement does not even qualify as the largest outlay - nor even the most dubious - during the interminable saga of the recruiting scandal. For that honor, we must return to the buyout of Coach Gary Barnett two years ago.

The price tag for that mishandled fiasco: a cool $3 million.

Comments

  • December 7, 2007

    6:54 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    vudumom writes:

    I'm glad they settled,even though all the ugliness of the Barnett era won't be public.Make no mistake ,whether a party was off campus or not, there was alot of things that weren't directly said but was expected or santioned by the Athletic Department.

    Example: Look at the story of Katie Knida the 1st female kicker ,I think in college sports.She was routinely harrassed and called names and came out to her family one Thanksgiving after moving to New Mexico State,that she had been raped by a supposed football player friend.Her father being a Doctor and a Marine Reservist and she was still to ashamed to tell her family at the time it happened.
    How many other woman at CU went through the same thing and were too ashamed too tell?

    After Katie Knida, a credible person came out with her accusations of verbal abuse ,other players calling her the *unt word, and the rape allegation,what did the University do?
    Barnett went on an all out smear campaign with his hired goons on the football team and the President said publically that calling someone the *unt word actually dated back to the era of Elibeth 1 and was said as a word of endearment!

    Frank Brown did bring some sanity back to CU.Now that Barnett is gone maybe CU can run a clean and honest football program.Now that this is somewhat settled and if the Churchills of CU would go away,maybe they can get back to being a great University.However with another President coming in only time will tell.

    Will the new President keep cleaning up CU or go back to the boys will be boys attitude and let the Athletic Department become the focus or have a balanced University where both athletics and academics can be balanced and thrive?

    Hank Brown put CU back on track to becoming a great school again,let's hope his successor keeps doing the same.

  • December 7, 2007

    11:25 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    fmikey writes:

    What a travesty. This woman got a big settlement for essentially holding up the University. She proved nothing, but was aided and abetted by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the rush to judgment in our local media and the overall court of public opinion. The University, guided by weak-kneed administrators, caved in, and this will give impetus and hope to others who have dubious, but politically correct claims.
    Our judicial system generally thinks in terms of "innocent until proven guilty", but in alleged sexual assault cases, it seems certain interests want to pervert that to "guilty until proven innocent", and it doesn't matter who's alleged to be guilty. Its now accusation equals conviction, and let's move directly from accusing to punishment, by-passing any necessity to prove anything. The actual "perpetrators" (if there were any) were never identified, but that's ok, 'cause we can go after the deep pocket university on some vague, unproven assumption.
    Our media was complicit in this whole thing. Columns by certain well known local journalists on the subject during its "life" appeared to concentrate only on the gender of the individuals involved, the assumption being that the females were right and the males were wrong. So much for unbiased, fair journalism.
    Again, this is a travesty, and a perversion of our justice system. I don't presume to know what happened at the events in question, but it also appears almost no one else does either. A plaintiff needs to prove his or her case, but it wasn't necessary here to get a big result. I think I'm more disgusted with the gutless University administrators than anyone else involved.

  • December 7, 2007

    1:33 p.m.

    truth_teller writes:

    (This comment was removed by the site staff.)

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