The Texas Tribune: EDUCATION

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <rss xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title>The Texas Tribune: EDUCATION</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/education/</link><description>The latest articles about EDUCATION</description><atom:link href="http://www.texastribune.org/feeds/sections/education/" rel="self"></atom:link><language>en-us</language><lastBuildDate>Mon, 21 Sep 2015 10:48:17 -0500</lastBuildDate><item><title>Sexual Assault Common, Outcry Rare at UT-Austin, Texas A&M</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/21/survey-18-percent-ut-students-have-been-sexually-a/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/09/21/survey-18-percent-ut-students-have-been-sexually-a/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/TxTrib-HigherEd003_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="University of Texas at Austin students pass by the Main Building on their way to and from classes."> </a> </div> *Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout.&nbsp; More than 18 percent of female undergraduates at the University of Texas at Austin and about 15 percent at Texas A&amp;M say they have&nbsp;been sexually assaulted since arriving on campus,&nbsp;<a style="line-height: 1.35;" href="http://www.utexas.edu/compliance/" target="_blank">according to comprehensive surveys released&nbsp;Monday.</a>&nbsp; Those rates are too high, school officials say, but appear to be lower than the schools&rsquo; peers. The numbers were compiled through surveys conducted at 27 schools that are members of the &ldquo;tier one&rdquo; Association of American Universities. &ldquo;One sexual assault is too many,&rdquo; said UT-Austin President Gregory L. Fenves in a statement. &ldquo;It is essential that we foster a campus that does not tolerate sexual assaults while strongly encouraging victims to come forward and report incidents."&nbsp; But while the reported incidents were lower than average, a significant portion of students at both schools didn&rsquo;t express confidence that allegations of assault would be taken seriously by their university. Other campuses had the same problem. At UT-Austin, 62 percent of students said they thought it was likely or extremely likely that a report of sexual assault would be taken seriously. That is just below the national average of 63 percent. Confidence was higher at A&amp;M, where 73.4 percent of students thought it was likely or extremely likely that school officials would take a report seriously. A&amp;M also fared much better than its peers in students&rsquo; confidence in how an on-campus investigation would play out. More than 64 percent of students said A&amp;M would be likely or extremely likely to conduct a fair investigation. At UT-Austin, that number was 47 percent, below the national average of 49 percent. "Everybody here at A&amp;M really understands from the deepest level that the students are the focus of the enterprise," said A&amp;M President Michael K. Young. "There is a sense here that their concerns matter and we are going to address them." Young said he thinks A&amp;M's numbers may be slightly better because of the culture of respect and service on the A&amp;M campus.&nbsp;Still, he said the university won't be satisfied until all students have confidence in the school's ability to handle cases.&nbsp; Federal law requires schools to investigate and consider taking action when a student accuses another student of sexual assault. Schools are expected to ensure that the victim is taken care of and able to continue his or her schooling safely and comfortably. The alleged assaulter can be suspended or kicked off campus. Both Texas schools have ramped up their efforts to combat sexual violence. The UT System&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/09/next-year-heightened-focus-campus-sexual-assaults/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections" target="_blank">recently launched a $1.7 million&nbsp;initiative</a>&nbsp;that&nbsp;includes in-depth surveys of all campuses, along with studies that closely follow smaller cohorts of students throughout their four years on campus. The effort is "the most comprehensive sexual assault study in higher education," system officials said.&nbsp; Meanwhile, A&amp;M has launched a publicity campaign that encourages students to speak out against sexual&nbsp;assault and to intervene in cases where a student appears at risk.&nbsp; Still, the survey indicates that much more work is needed. Just 26 percent of female respondents who said they were&nbsp;were raped while students said they reported the incident to a proper authority. At A&amp;M, that rate was 23 percent. Female students who said they&nbsp;were incapacitated during a rape&nbsp;reported at an even lower rate &mdash; 15 percent at UT-Austin and 14 percent at A&amp;M. Young said he suspects that many students don't know the full range of options available to them if they report a sexual assault.&nbsp; "We need to do a good job to communicate that, no, we aren't going to blame the victim and we want to make sure that services are provided that are in line with their needs," he said.&nbsp; At both schools, about 6 percent of females who said they were&nbsp;victims of "nonconsensual sexual touching" reported the assault to authorities. Women at both schools listed feelings of shame, embarrassment or fear of emotional difficulty as the top reasons they didn&rsquo;t report the assaults. The other primary reason was that the women didn&rsquo;t think their cases were serious enough to report. It's a sign, school officials said, that more outreach is needed. Simply conducting the survey and publishing its results should help show students that sexual assault prevention is a priority, said LaToya Hill, who presides over the UT-Austin office that handles assault cases. UT-Austin leaders plan to meet with student groups and conduct focus groups to reinforce that impression, she said.&nbsp; "We have to go in a grassroots type of way, and just listen to those students," she said.&nbsp; Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&amp;M University are corporate sponsors of The Texas Tribune.&nbsp;A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections" target="_blank">here</a>. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Matthew Watkins</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 21 Sep 2015 10:48:17 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/21/survey-18-percent-ut-students-have-been-sexually-a/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>Video: A Conversation with Gregory Fenves</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/21/video-a-conversation-with-gregory-fenves/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div class="video"> <div class="livestream"> <iframe src="http://new.livestream.com/accounts/4773527/events/4333412/videos/99878466/player?autoPlay=false&height=357&mute=false&width=635" width="635" height="357" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> </div> </div> Full video of my 9/21 conversation with Gregory Fenves, the President of the University of Texas at Austin. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Evan Smith</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 21 Sep 2015 09:45:43 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/21/video-a-conversation-with-gregory-fenves/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>School Options Abound for Irving Student Suspended Over Clock</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/17/transfer-offers-abound-for-ahmed-mohamed/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/09/17/transfer-offers-abound-for-ahmed-mohamed/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/09/16/Ahmed_Mohamed-002_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="A photo of Irving teenager Ahmed Mohamed being taken into custody has gone viral."> </a> </div> Where will Ahmed Mohamed go to school? Offers have been rolling in for the Irving 14-year-old suspended and handcuffed&nbsp;Monday&nbsp;after officials mistook his homemade clock for a bomb.&nbsp; </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Kat Chow, KERA</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2015 19:22:48 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/17/transfer-offers-abound-for-ahmed-mohamed/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>Past Cases, Politics Mean Early 2016 School Finance Ruling, Experts Say</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/17/experts-expect-early-2016-school-finance-ruling/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/09/17/experts-expect-early-2016-school-finance-ruling/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/09/01/TXEG107_VdkQUiO_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="Texas Supreme Court Justices Paul Green, left, and Chief Justice Nathan Hecht listen to oral arguments Sept. 1 in Texas&#39; appeal of a 2014 ruling that struck down its system of funding public schools as unconstitutional."> </a> </div> Earlier this month,&nbsp;the Texas Supreme Court heard hours of arguments in the latest challenge of the way the state funds its public schools. Now, the big questions &mdash; other than exactly how the high court will rule &mdash; are when the court will rule&nbsp;and whether the decision will require the Legislature to come back to Austin to craft a fix before the 2017 regular legislative session. Given past rulings and politics &mdash; three justices on the nine-member, all-Republican court are up for re-election next year &mdash; the&nbsp;consensus among experts and insiders is that a decision will come early next year and likely will require a 2016 special legislative session because it will favor, at least in part, the 600 school districts suing the state.&nbsp;That could mean that a school finance fix is in place before the next school year. For the justices who will be on the GOP&nbsp;primary ballot, &ldquo;the perfect situation&rdquo; would be for a ruling to come after that March 1 contest, said Austin-based lobbyist and political consultant Bill Miller. &ldquo;If I were on the ballot, hypothetically, and I&rsquo;m a justice, I want the election over with before big, monumental decisions are released,&rdquo; he said, noting that judicial candidates now are expected to talk more openly about their rulings on the campaign trail. So far, only one of the justices up for re-election &mdash;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/debra-lehrmann/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">Debra Lehrmann</a>&nbsp;&mdash; has a garnered a challenger, but the window to file to become a candidate has not opened yet. (It will close Nov. 14). The other justices up for re-election are&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/paul-green/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">Paul Green</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/eva-guzman/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">Eva Guzman</a>. Any of them could be tasked with drafting a majority opinion in the school finance case, which experts say could give them some discretion as to how long the process takes but also put a target on their back during the campaign.&nbsp;(The justice who writes the majority opinion is decided at random, with justices drawing from a pile of&nbsp;&ldquo;shuffled blue index cards&rdquo;&nbsp;labeled with the appeals they've agreed to hear, explained court spokesman Osler McCarthy.)&nbsp; A more important date than when the court rules is what deadline it might give the Legislature to come up with a fix, said Sheryl Pace, a senior analyst at the business-backed Texas Taxpayers and Research Association who specializes in school finance. (That&rsquo;s assuming the court upholds at least part of a 2014 district court ruling that struck down the state&rsquo;s school finance system as unconstitutional, which Pace thinks will happen.) Past school finance rulings indicate the court is &ldquo;usually concerned&rdquo; not with elections but with giving the Legislature time to implement a fix before the next school year or until the end of the next regular legislative session, Pace said. With no legislative session until 2017 &mdash; and considering the amount of time the court has taken to rule in the past &mdash; Pace is predicting a January 2016 ruling with a fix-it deadline six months after that. The current school finance case is the seventh of its kind to reach the high court since the mid-1980s. In the six previous cases, the court typically has taken anywhere from two to eight months to rule from the time it hears arguments, according to dates provided by the research association. But Houston-based lawyer David Thompson, who has worked on all seven school finance lawsuits, said he wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if the court takes longer to rule than usual &mdash; "early next spring is certainly reasonable" &mdash;&nbsp;because there are more parties involved who are &ldquo;making some different argument than the court&rsquo;s ever dealt with.&rdquo; Unlike in the past, when traditional school districts sued the state, this time the challengers include public charter schools and&nbsp;a coalition of parents, business interests and school choice advocates who believe that the traditional public school system is a monopoly. The charter schools say they should be funded the same as other public schools, while Texans for Real Efficiency and Equity in Education&nbsp;says the state's public education system is unconstitutional because it is inefficient and over-regulated. Travis County District Court Judge John Dietz &mdash; a Democrat &mdash; ruled against the two non-school district parties in 2014,&nbsp;but they are appealing, meaning the state Supreme Court would have to address their arguments to some extent in any ruling. At a three-hour hearing Sept. 1, lawyers for the state&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/01/one-year-later-school-finance-appeal-back-court/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">asked</a>&nbsp;the court to toss the case &mdash; or at least to remand it to state district court given the funding increases and policy changes the Legislature has enacted during the two legislative sessions since 2011, the year school districts sued the state months after lawmakers slashed $5.4 billion from the public education budget.&nbsp; "We are hopeful the court will end this cycle of endless litigation and recognize that Texas' school finance decisions should be made by our Legislature," the state attorney general's office said in a statement. Whatever the court&rsquo;s decision, political consultants say it could have big political consequences for justices up for re-election.&nbsp; &ldquo;I think that there&rsquo;s an equal price you will pay no matter what the decision is,&rdquo; said Republican political consultant Todd Olsen, noting that polling has showed GOP primary voters favor spending more money on public education. &ldquo;You will pay a heavy price if you essentially say, &lsquo;Hey, there&rsquo;s nothing wrong&rsquo; and pay a huge price if you say, &lsquo;The Legislature has to figure out a new way to fund this.&rsquo;&rdquo; But Olsen and Republican political consultant Ted Delisi, who works for state Supreme Court Justice Jeff Boyd (who is not up for re-election next year), noted that one of the last state Supreme Court justices to garner political scrutiny and opposition over a school finance ruling &mdash; now-U.S. Sen <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/john-cornyn/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">John Cornyn</a> &mdash; emerged unscathed. In 1996, the year after the court approved a Cornyn-crafted decision that upheld the divisive <a href="http://tea.texas.gov/Finance_and_Grants/State_Funding/Chapter_41_Wealth_Equalization/Chapter__41_Wealth_Equalization/">"Robin Hood" plan</a>, he won re-election by a healthy six-point margin, beating out two challengers in the November general election. It is difficult &mdash; and pointless &mdash; to anticipate the political consequences of a school finance ruling, Delisi said. &ldquo;I think the very best Supreme Court justices are the ones that make their determination according to the law and then figure how to make a case to the voters that their competency or their conservatism is worthy of re-election,&rdquo; he said. Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice&nbsp;<a style="line-height: 1.35;" href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/tom-phillips/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">Tom Phillips</a>, who heard four different school finance lawsuits during his nearly 17 years on the court, said the timing of a ruling may be shaped by certain &ldquo;external factors&rdquo; &mdash; like the need for a special legislative session &mdash; but that elections have &ldquo;never been much of an issue.&rdquo; &ldquo;The first goal is to get it right and the second goal is to get it out timely,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think (the court&rsquo;s) up against any artificial deadline.&rdquo; </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Kiah Collier</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2015 06:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/17/experts-expect-early-2016-school-finance-ruling/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>New in Trib+Edu: Zero-Tolerance Policies Questioned</title><link>https://www.texastribune.org/plus/edu/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/plus/edu/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2014/04/17/TribPlus-EDU_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt=""> </a> </div> In this week's edition of the Trib+Edu newsletter: New questions are raised on zero-tolerance discipline policies, a $50 million contest is launched to revamp high schools&nbsp;and an interview with&nbsp;Kay Wijekumar of&nbsp;Texas A&amp;M University. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">John Reynolds</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2015 06:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/plus/edu/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>Irving Student Likely to Transfer Schools Following Arrest</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/16/irving-police-drop-charges-against-muslim-student/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/09/16/irving-police-drop-charges-against-muslim-student/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/09/16/Ahmed_Mohamed-002_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="A photo of Irving teenager Ahmed Mohamed being taken into custody has gone viral."> </a> </div> Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout. An Irving teenager whose arrest for bringing a homemade clock to school drew a national outcry, said Wednesday that he would probably be transferring schools.&nbsp; Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old student at MacArthur High School, was handcuffed and taken into custody Monday after a teacher expressed concerns that the clock might be a bomb. Ahmed was initially charged with making a &ldquo;hoax bomb&rdquo; and released to the custody of his parents. His story,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-ninth-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school.ece">first reported by</a>&nbsp;The Dallas Morning News, drew a firestorm on social media and generated headlines across the nation. Ahmed announced his plans to change schools Wednesday afternoon during a news conference in front of his home with family members, a representative from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and his family's lawyer. "I'm the person that built a clock and got in a lot of trouble for it," said Ahmed, who built the clock to impress one of his teachers. "When I showed it to her, she thought that it was a threat to her. It's really sad that she took a wrong impression of it and I got arrested for it later that day...I'm thinking about transferring schools."&nbsp; He did not provide information about where he might transfer.&nbsp; In a separate news conference Wednesday, Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd&nbsp;said that the arrest had nothing to do with the student&rsquo;s race and that&nbsp;the arresting officers quickly determined there was no immediate threat the device would detonate, which is why they did not evacuate the high school. The officers weren&rsquo;t sure if Ahmed had intended to cause alarm, so they took him into custody, Boyd said. &ldquo;Our follow-up investigation was to determine whether there was intent created by what the student brought to school, or whether it was just a naive set of circumstances, with him not recognizing the suspicious nature of the situation,&rdquo; Boyd said at a news conference. Asked if a white student would have been treated differently, he said, &ldquo;Our reaction would have been the same either way.&rdquo;&nbsp; The department has since closed the investigation, because police are satisfied that Ahmed was not trying to provoke a reaction, Boyd said. Ahmed has been suspended for three days from school. During Wednesday's press conference, Ahmed said Irving police have yet to return his clock.&nbsp; News of Ahmed's arrest prompted a significant wave of support on Twitter, under the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed. Those who have weighed in on social media include President Obama. A tweet from his @POTUS account said, &ldquo;Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.&rdquo; Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas, said Ahmed's arrest raises questions about racial profiling in Texas public schools. "Instead of encouraging his curiosity, intellect, and ability, the Irving ISD saw fit to throw handcuffs on a frightened 14 year-old Muslim boy wearing a NASA T-shirt and then remove him from school," Burke said in a statement. "The state of Texas in general, and Irving ISD in particular, need to take a long, hard look at their disciplinary policies to ensure that blanket prejudices and the baseless suspicions they engender don't deprive our students of an educational environment where their talents can thrive."&nbsp; Lesley Weaver, director of communications for the Irving Independent School District, said she felt the public reaction is the result of &ldquo;very unbalanced&rdquo; information. &ldquo;We were doing everything with an abundance of caution to protect all of our students in Irving,&rdquo; she said. Ahmed's family could not be reached for comment for this article. A spokesman for the Irving Police Department, James McLellan, told the Tribune that arresting Ahmed was the appropriate course of action. &ldquo;When we attempted to question the student about what it was, what it was for, why he brought it to school, he only said it was a clock,&rdquo; McLellan said. &ldquo;Not knowing what he was going to do or why he had it, with the information they had, the arrest was appropriate.&rdquo; Although Ahmed explained that the device was a clock he&rsquo;d made himself, McLellan said, Ahmed declined to provide other information. &ldquo;He was very short and abrupt with the officers, and he would maintain to us only that it was a clock,&rdquo; McLellan said. &ldquo;If he&rsquo;d been more &mdash;&nbsp;if he&rsquo;d explained what he explained to the media &mdash;&nbsp;I&rsquo;d venture to say the outcome may well have been different.&rdquo; Ahmed, whose father is an immigrant from Sudan, told The News that he is passionate about inventing. &ldquo;The clock itself, it was in a box you could get at Target for like five, ten dollars, and they&rsquo;re telling me it&rsquo;s a suitcase, a briefcase, a moving bomb,&rdquo; Ahmed told The News. &ldquo;I never said anything about a bomb. It made me feel like I wasn&rsquo;t human. It made me feel like a criminal.&rdquo; </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Jordan Rudner and Madlin Mekelburg</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 16 Sep 2015 12:39:25 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/16/irving-police-drop-charges-against-muslim-student/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>Texas A&M to Open Satellite Campus Near McAllen</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/15/texas-m-open-satellite-campus-near-mcallen/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/09/15/texas-m-open-satellite-campus-near-mcallen/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/AnM_Tower_AggieLand_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="Texas A&amp;M University"> </a> </div> Texas A&amp;M University on Tuesday announced plans to open a satellite campus near McAllen that will offer students the chance to earn degrees from A&amp;M's main campus in College Station without leaving the Rio Grande Valley. The campus, which will be built on land donated by the McAllen city government, is scheduled to open in 2017 with around 100 students. The school plans to grow enrollment to more than 750 over the next five years. Degrees will be offered in engineering, technology and agricultural fields, among others.&nbsp; The plan is the first of its kind in South Texas. Both the University of Texas and Texas A&amp;M systems have schools near the border, but those are their own standalone universities. The satellite campus will operate more like A&amp;M's two branch campuses in Galveston and Qatar, which are overseen by the A&amp;M president and where students are considered part of the A&amp;M flagship's student body.&nbsp; "It's the same degree, same ring, same admissions standards, same everything," said A&amp;M System Chancellor John Sharp.&nbsp; The plan was revealed by city leaders and A&amp;M officials at a press conference in McAllen Tuesday afternoon. Local officials touted the announcement as "groundbreaking" and said it would "transform the region and enhance the quality of life in South Texas." McAllen and Hidalgo County will contribute about $18 million worth of land and infrastructure to the campus. A&amp;M officials didn't release how much they plan to spend on the project.&nbsp; The region has worked for years to increase educational opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley. Last month, the University of Texas System opened the UT-Rio Grande Valley, which combined the previously existing UT-Pan American and UT-Brownsville into one larger school.&nbsp;A&amp;M's entry into the community will provide even more options, local leaders said.&nbsp; "With the addition of a Texas A&amp;M campus, our region will have two flagship institutions with access to Permanent University Funds,&rdquo; said Hidalgo County Judge Ramon Garcia, referring to the state's multi-billion dollar higher education endowment fund. &ldquo;Hidalgo County is proud to partner with the city of McAllen and Texas A&amp;M University. Education is the great equalizer." Disclosure: Texas A&amp;M University and the Texas A&amp;M University System are corporate sponsors of The Texas Tribune. A full list of donors and sponsors can be found <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/support-us/corporate-sponsors/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>.&nbsp; </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Matthew Watkins</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 15 Sep 2015 16:04:10 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/15/texas-m-open-satellite-campus-near-mcallen/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>Patterson's Exit Brings Another Big Expense for UT-Austin Sports</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/15/patterson-out-longhorn-athletics-director/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/09/15/patterson-out-longhorn-athletics-director/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2014/05/15/PattersonSteve073_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="UT Athletic Director Steve Patterson talks about new football coach Charlie Strong at TribLive on May 15, 2014."> </a> </div> Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout. Steve Patterson&rsquo;s time as athletics director at the University of Texas at Austin will be remembered for his efforts to cut costs and raise revenues during a time of financial uncertainty in college athletics. His exit, meanwhile, will probably bring one more big expense for Longhorn sports. Patterson resigned Tuesday under what UT-Austin President Greg Fenves described as a mutual agreement.&nbsp;He'll be replaced by Mike Perrin, a Houston lawyer and former Longhorn football player. "This has been a decision that had been building over recent weeks," Fenves said. "I felt that the risks of not accepting his resignation at this time and trying to have him stay outweighed the benefits. I think we both mutually agreed that this was the right time." Patterson leaves less than two years after signing a contract that pays $1.4 million per year through August 2019. He was promised a 2.5 percent raise each year and received benefits like a car allowance and a country club membership. There was no buyout included in the deal, though the school did have the right to reassign him. After negotiations, Patterson and the university reached some sort of deal. But school officials would not discuss the terms, saying it had to be approved by the UT System Board of Regents first. &nbsp; Perrin will be on contract with the school through at least August 2016, Fenves said. He'll be paid an annual rate of $750,000.&nbsp; UT-Austin has already spent millions in recent years paying off departing coaches or administrators. At the end of the 2013 football season, longtime coach Mack Brown was shown the door. The school eventually agreed to pay him a $2.75 million buyout and give him a one-year job as special assistant to the president. That job paid $500,000. Under Patterson, longtime basketball coach Rick Barnes was forced to resign. The school said this spring that it would pay him $1.75 million. Patterson is earlier in his contract than each of those two coaches. Patterson's contract promises him more than $5 million over the next few years, but it's possible he'll get significantly less than that in the deal.&nbsp; Buyouts are common in big-time college athletics, though it&rsquo;s somewhat rare for a school to pay so many in such a short time period. If anyone can afford to pay, it&rsquo;s UT-Austin, which usually brings in the most revenue from sports in the country.&nbsp;The UT-Austin athletics department generated $161 million in revenue in the 2013-14 fiscal year, according to its NCAA financial report. Patterson joined the Longhorns in November 2013. During his tenure, he made two high-profile and popular coaching hires &ndash; football coach Charlie Strong and basketball coach Shaka Smart. The excitement about the football hire has worn off a bit lately, as the Longhorns went 6-7 last year and lost badly to Notre Dame in the 2015 season opener. But he also generated ire from many fans and donors for his perceived narrow focus on making money for the department. Many fans complained about increased ticket and parking prices for football games. At last weekend&rsquo;s home football opener, there were many empty seats. Program insiders, meanwhile, were frustrated with personnel and management decisions, including the firing of popular Assistant Athletics Director John Bianco, who handled media relations or the football team. "I literally heard from hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals over the three months I have been president," Fenves said. "It was a wide range of opinions." Patterson also made news for seeking to grow the international brand of the Longhorns. He explored playing a football game in Mexico City and arranged to open the basketball season with a game in China. Patterson defended his actions by noting that the department lost money in 2013-14 and was incurring increased expenses due to the cost of feeding athletes and an NCAA rule allowing universities to pay athletes on scholarship the full cost of attending school. Fans were unconvinced, and many questioned whether he was trying to treat the tradition-laden athletics program like a business. Patterson joined UT-Austin from Arizona State, but spent most of his career in pro sports. In a statement released late Tuesday, Patterson said he remains devoted to his school.&nbsp; "I am very proud of what we have accomplished in a relatively short period of time, including the historic addition of coaches in football and basketball, improvements to ticketing operations, facilities and other initiatives that will greatly benefit our Longhorn student-athletes and the many fans who care deeply about them," he said. "As a Longhorn myself, a graduate of the University and its law school, I want nothing but the best for my alma mater, and I wish President Fenves and everyone at UT-Austin well as we continue the journey. &nbsp;I leave behind a motivated and dedicated team committed to the world-class standards that all Longhorns expect." Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.&nbsp;A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Matthew Watkins</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 15 Sep 2015 08:46:45 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/15/patterson-out-longhorn-athletics-director/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>Free Freshman Year? Texas State To Try It Out</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/10/free-freshman-year-texas-state-will-try-it-out/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/09/10/free-freshman-year-texas-state-will-try-it-out/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2014/10/03/TexTrib-TUITION-07_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="Chelsea Stewart listens to a lecture in the College of Health Professions at Texas State University. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board recently reclassified the school as an Emerging Research University."> </a> </div> The Texas State University System has an idea for future students busy with families and jobs: Don't even show up on campus freshman year. Starting next fall, the system plans to encourage nontraditional students to take free massive open online courses, known as MOOCs, before arriving on campus. If they take 10 courses and pass tests for college credit, students could show up at school with a year's work complete before paying a single tuition bill. &nbsp; The courses will be run by the New York-based nonprofit the <a href="http://modernstates.org/">Modern States Education Alliance</a>&nbsp;through a program called Freshman Year for Free. The group plans to launch a free online portal providing access to about three dozen free online courses next fall. Students who complete the courses will be eligible to take Advanced Placement or College-Level Examination Program tests to collect credit.&nbsp; The students would only have to pay for the tests, costing about $90 per class.&nbsp; The program will be available to all students planning to attend schools that accept AP or CLEP test scores, including all public schools in Texas. But Texas State is the first system in the state that has committed to actively promote the program.&nbsp; "We want as many tools for students as we can give," said&nbsp;Texas State University System Chancellor Brian&nbsp;McCall. "We thought this was a particularly good one for older, busy, driven and disciplined students." The Texas State System, which includes Texas State, Lamar, Sam Houston State and Sul Ross State universities, has a large number of nontraditional students. More than 70 percent of the system's students also work. Older students with kids and full-time jobs might benefit the most, McCall said, since they may not have time to take four years out of their lives to attend school.&nbsp; David Vise, a senior advisor for Modern States, said working students are one group targeted by the program. Students who attend high schools that don't offer many AP courses may also benefit. Enlisted members of the military can work toward credit while deployed. And students who left school a few credits short of graduating might find it a convenient road back, he said.&nbsp; The goal, Vise said, is to make higher education more affordable and accessible.&nbsp;"We believe it will be used in a variety of ways by lots of different people for different reasons," Vise said.&nbsp; Modern States plans to launch more than 30 classes in fall 2016 ranging from U.S. history to astronomy hosted by edX, a MOOC platform developed by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Teachers from the University of Texas at Austin, Rice, Georgetown and Harvard universities have already signed up.&nbsp; Students can take as few &mdash; or as many &mdash; of the courses as they'd like.&nbsp; Earlier this decade, free online courses were a trendy tool in higher education.&nbsp;But lately, they've fallen a bit out of style. <a href="http://harvardx.harvard.edu/news/learner-intention">Many courses have very low completion rates</a> &mdash; students often sign up for the free classes and then don't follow through. <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/08/26/cheater-cheater-mooc-beater/">And there have been concerns raised about cheating.</a>&nbsp;Until now, there hasn't been a way to receive college credit.&nbsp; But McCall said he isn't worried. Since courses are free, the cost of failing to finish one is much smaller than it would be for students dropping a class. And someone who cheated in an online class would still have to pass the highly moderated AP or CLEP test, he said.&nbsp; The Texas State System hasn't set many expectations for the program. McCall said he has no idea how many will sign up or actually receive credit. But he said he's thrilled to give students the opportunity.&nbsp; "We believe this will require more discipline, more focus, more resolve to get the desired result," McCall said.&nbsp; The Texas State System is among 10 universities or university systems around the country that have signed on to promote the project to their students. As more schools buy-in, opportunities for an inexpensive education will grow, Vise said.&nbsp; "We feel that no one should be shut out of education after high school because cost or lack of access," he said.&nbsp; Disclosure: Texas State University, Sam Houston University and The University of Texas at Austin are corporate sponsors of The Texas Tribune. Rice University was a corporate sponsor in 2013. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Matthew Watkins</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2015 06:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/10/free-freshman-year-texas-state-will-try-it-out/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>University of Houston Pours Millions into Sports</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/03/quest-top-tier-u-houston-spends-big-athletics/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/09/03/quest-top-tier-u-houston-spends-big-athletics/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/09/01/UHsports_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="A football practice at TEDECU Stadium at the University of Houston in Houston Friday, August 28, 2015."> </a> </div> As classes wrap up at the University of Houston on Thursday,&nbsp;marching band members&nbsp;will fan out to perform at campus dorms and lead students to a pep rally at the school&rsquo;s one-year-old, $128 million football stadium. There, administrators hope students will pick up free T-shirts, collect autographs and listen to a speech by the team&rsquo;s much-hyped new football coach.&nbsp; The rally, school officials say, is one way the university is trying to spark a new culture of support for its sports teams.&nbsp;Empty seats in the new stadium&rsquo;s student section were far too common last year. If the Houston Cougars want to become a nationally competitive program, that needs to change, they say.&nbsp; But while fan attendance may be lacking, the university's&nbsp;teams have received huge support in another way. To fund its ambitions, the University of Houston has transferred more than $100 million from its academic side to its sports programs in recent years, figures reviewed by The Texas Tribune show.&nbsp;Meanwhile, the university has launched or is planning a series of expensive sports construction projects, and&nbsp;the school's athletics department has struggled to stick to its annual budget. Athletics departments at public universities&nbsp;are generally expected to pay their own bills, with schools usually chipping in to cover shortfalls. But Houston&rsquo;s&nbsp;subsidies&nbsp;in recent years have grown beyond the norm. From 2008 to 2014, the school transferred $106 million to athletics, according to financial reports reviewed by the Tribune. The next highest spender among major public NCAA schools in Texas was the University of Texas at El Paso, which transferred $47 million. Houston&rsquo;s subsidy shows no sign of shrinking this year, even though administrators have told the department that they&rsquo;d like it to become more self-sustaining. School leaders remain committed to making the teams more competitive. They see basketball and football success as a way to increase the school's&nbsp;visibility and strengthen student and alumni ties. To do so, administrators say, the school has to spend money.&nbsp; &ldquo;The athletic department is truly the front porch of the institution,&rdquo; said Hunter Yurachek, vice president of intercollegiate athletics. &ldquo;It is not the most important room in the house, but it is the most visible.&rdquo;&nbsp; <div id="pym-graphic">&nbsp;</div> Major conference ambitions Lately, the University of Houston has tried to elevate itself in many areas. It has been the state's&nbsp;most aggressive school&nbsp;in striving for vaunted tier one university status. And it has worked hard to slough off its reputation as &ldquo;Cougar High,&rdquo; the derisive nickname rival fans pinned on it years ago for being perceived as a commuter school. Since President Renu Khator took over in 2008, the school&rsquo;s on-campus dorm capacity has nearly doubled to more than 8,000. And research funding has grown enough for the school to be named a tier one research institution by the Carnegie Foundation in 2011. In sports, the investment has just begun. In the last two years, the school has signed&nbsp;new football and basketball coaches to multimillion-dollar contracts. After completing construction on the football stadium last year, the school began work on a $20 million basketball practice facility. More projects are coming. Fundraising has begun to pay for a $25 million renovation to the&nbsp;basketball arena, and administrators hope to build an indoor football&nbsp;practice facility that will cost between $15 million and $20 million. Plans are also in the works for new or renovated baseball, tennis and track and field facilities. The goal is to catch up after falling behind over the past few decades, athletic officials say. The school&rsquo;s athletic success peaked in the 1980s, when Houston was a Southwest Conference power.&nbsp;But in 1996, the Southwest Conference dissolved. Many of Houston&rsquo;s rivals moved on to the elite Big 12. Houston was left out, and since has bounced around between lesser conferences. Fan support waned in those post-Southwest Conference years. Last year, home attendance for football and basketball games was less than half of that at Texas Tech, a school with similar enrollment and academics that's in the Big 12.&nbsp; The possibility of joining the Big 12 has loomed over Houston's growth plans. Some Big 12 member schools have called for expansion.&nbsp;The Cougars&nbsp;missed out in 2012 when the Big 12 added two schools, Texas Christian University and West Virginia. School officials say they are happy with their current American Athletic Conference affiliation, but hope to position themselves as an attractive program if the conference landscape shifts again.&nbsp; "Our goal is to compete on the highest level that we can," Khator said. "That is the nature of competition." Tough to rein in costs Houston's big spending goes beyond construction, however. The school mostly paid for its new stadium with revenue bonds and alumni donations; the university's cash transfers go toward day-t0-day expenses. Those costs are proving difficult to rein in.&nbsp; The university transferred at least $12 million to athletics each year since at least 2008. That was true even&nbsp;after the 2011 legislative session, when state funding was cut by millions. The school transferred $17 million in 2012 and $18 million in 2013. Among top-level Division 1 universities, the next highest one-year transfer by a school in Texas was $8 million by UTEP in 2013. Khator declined to discuss the institutional transfers. But in response to questions, the school provided three years worth of numbers of its own. Those indicated that the school considers total university support to include institutional transfers and student athletic fees. Both contribute to students' cost of attendance. And by the schools' numbers, Houston spent more than the rest of the state over the past three years, but it was much closer. Houston spent $69 million; the next highest was Texas State, which spent $64 million. And other non-Texas schools in Houston's conference spent more, the numbers indicated.&nbsp; Student athletic fees are usually approved by a campus-wide election. And money generated by them is designated for a specific purpose. No student approval is needed for institutional transfers, however.&nbsp; The financial data used by the Tribune in this report was collected directly from each Texas school through the Texas Public Information Act. According to those numbers, Houston reported to the NCAA that its athletics collected $144 million in student fees and institutional transfers from 2008 to 2014. Texas State collected $115 million, the next highest amount, during that time. Either way, Khator defended the school's spending.&nbsp; "People always have, and always will, raise questions about the cost of athletics, not just at UH but at most universities, and these are very valid questions," she said. "One has to find the right balance." At times, Houston's balance has been called into question.&nbsp;In January, the school&rsquo;s student senate passed a resolution calling for the resignation of Vice Chancellor and Vice President of Administration and Finance Carl Carlucci, saying among other things that the construction of the football stadium went over budget and past deadline, and that he&rsquo;d hired an unqualified contractor to manage the new building's operations. The school also recently launched an internal investigation into whether it illegally used $5 million reserved for academic purposes to help pay for the football stadium. The University of Houston System&rsquo;s auditor eventually cleared the school, saying the money had been spent on the portion of the stadium used by the band, which technically isn't an athletic program. Meanwhile, the school has missed financial targets. A 2015 audit of athletic department finances reported that spending on equipment, uniforms and supplies came in 88 percent over budget in the 2014 fiscal year, while travel expenses were 57 percent over their mark. Meanwhile, revenue from ticket sales came in 21 percent under budget. Overall, the school had planned to reduce its athletic subsidy by $3.5 million for the 2014 fiscal year, according to the audit. It ended up increasing it by $700,000. This year, Yurachek said the department expects a subsidy of about $16 million. The hope, he said, is to eventually lower that number to between $8 million and $10 million. That&rsquo;s a fairly common amount, he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;There are very few athletic departments that survive without institutional support,&rdquo; Yurachek said.&nbsp; Just win The best way to reduce that reliance is to win, Yurachek said, bringing more paying fans to the games and making the school more attractive to major conferences.&nbsp; But even then challenges would exist. Big 12 member schools are publicly divided about adding more schools. And it&rsquo;s no sure thing that Houston would be a top candidate if expansion were pursued. Previous conference growth has been driven largely by television revenue, and Big 12 teams already have a strong fan presence in the Houston market. Right now, Houston has a hard time keeping up with those major conference teams. That's true across the country, said Amy Perko, executive director of the Knight Commission, which advocates for reasonable spending in college athletics.&nbsp; "Schools may have to manage and to set more reasonable expectations," she said. Expectations at Houston remain high. But calls for adjustments could change if progress isn't seen soon.&nbsp; &ldquo;I believe students would say that they are in favor of a more robust athletic program,&rdquo; said state Rep.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/garnet-coleman/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">Garnet Coleman</a>, D-Houston, a vocal supporter of the school in the Legislature. &ldquo;But I will say, I wish [the subsidy] was lower. That is a lot of money.&rdquo; Disclosure: Texas Tech University and Texas State University are corporate sponsors of The Texas Tribune. The University of Houston was a sponsor in 2013, and the University of Texas at El Paso was a sponsor in 2012. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Matthew Watkins</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 03 Sep 2015 06:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/03/quest-top-tier-u-houston-spends-big-athletics/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>New in Trib+Edu: Does Band Class Make You Smarter?</title><link>https://www.texastribune.org/plus/edu/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/plus/edu/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2014/04/17/TribPlus-EDU_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt=""> </a> </div> In this week's edition of the Trib+Edu newsletter: A study suggests taking band class improves students' cognitive skills, comparing student achievement data across states remains difficult&nbsp;and an interview with Melissa Wetzel of the University of Texas at Austin. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">John Reynolds</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 03 Sep 2015 06:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/plus/edu/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>State Urges Texas Supreme Court to Drop School Finance Lawsuit</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/01/one-year-later-school-finance-appeal-back-court/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/09/01/one-year-later-school-finance-appeal-back-court/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/09/01/_F8A2001_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller addresses the state Supreme Court on Tuesday. The state&#39;s highest civil court agreed to hear the state&#39;s appeal of a 2014 lower court ruling that struck down the state&#39;s method of funding public schools as unconstitutional. (AP/Eric Gay)"> </a> </div> Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout.&nbsp; &ldquo;Money isn&rsquo;t pixie dust&rdquo; when it comes to improving public schools, lawyers for the state of Texas told the state Supreme Court on Tuesday, arguing an appeal in what has been described as the most far-reaching school finance case in state history.&nbsp;They urged the high court to either dismiss or remand the lawsuit brought four years ago by nearly two-thirds of the state's school districts. Lawyers for those 600-plus districts meanwhile argued the state had not given them enough money to achieve higher goals state lawmakers have set for the state&rsquo;s more than 5 million public school students, imposing them &ldquo;without knowing the true cost&rdquo; by relying on decades-old cost estimates that do not account for the growing population of disadvantaged students who are more expensive to educate. Districts sued the state in 2011 after state lawmakers slashed $5.4 billion from public education to help balance a post-recession budget shortfall.&nbsp;During the long-running lawsuit,&nbsp;they have argued that the Legislature is violating its constitutional duty to provide an adequate and efficient public school system, enacting large cuts even as rigorous new testing and accountability systems&nbsp;raised the bar on expectations. Since making those cutbacks, however, lawmakers&nbsp;have added back more than 90 percent of what they took away&nbsp;&mdash; albeit unevenly &mdash;&nbsp;while also enacting policy measures aimed at reducing the burden on student performance.&nbsp; During a nearly three-hour hearing&nbsp;Tuesday&nbsp;that saw the court shower all sides with tough questions, lawyers for the state urged the nine justices to either dismiss or remand the lawsuit because of&nbsp;the kinds of changes made this year.&nbsp;They also said that more money is not the answer.&nbsp; "Funding is no guarantee of better student outcomes," said&nbsp;Texas Assistant Solicitor General Rance Craft.&nbsp; But his boss,&nbsp;Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller, delivered what has emerged as the heart of the state's argument: That school finance should be addressed by the Legislature, not the courts &mdash; an argument at least one justice, Debra Lehrmann, pointed out the court specifically struck down a decade ago during the last school finance lawsuit. Others, including Justice Don Willett, appeared receptive to the claim. Lawyer Richard Gray III, representing a group of 443 districts that was the first to sue, meanwhile told the court that "the output screams at you that this system is not doing what it's designed to do."&nbsp; He noted stagnant scores on the state&rsquo;s standardized exam known as STAAR, implemented in early 2012 just after the budget cuts took effect. "The state can point to statistics that will make the system look better, but they choose to ignore their own standards, their own model," he said of the high-stakes test when Justice Eva Guzman asked about the state's high graduation rates. "The STAAR test was the state's model that they developed to measure" student performance, he said. "And when they got the results that they got, which are abysmal by anybody's standards, then they run to other things and say, 'Oh but look at this,' and 'Oh, but look at that.'" The school finance case was the first heard by the&nbsp;state&rsquo;s highest civil court during its new term.&nbsp;The justices, who are all Republican, did not indicate&nbsp;Tuesday&nbsp;when they might rule, although some insiders and experts have speculated a decision could come shortly after the primary election next spring.&nbsp; If the court rules well before the 2017 legislative session and at all favors the districts &mdash; or two other parties suing the state, including charter schools &mdash; it could force Gov. <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/greg-abbott/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">Greg Abbott</a>&nbsp;to call a special legislative session. As attorney general, Abbott &mdash; elected governor last year &mdash; appealed a lower court ruling against the state in the case directly to the state Supreme Court, on which he used to serve. After considering changes lawmakers enacted in 2013, including a $3.4 billion funding boost to public education, the now-retired state District Judge John Dietz &mdash; a Democrat &mdash; struck down the state&rsquo;s system of funding schools as unconstitutional last August. He cited inadequate funding and flaws in the way the state distributes money to the state's more than 1,000 regular school districts, and found that the system imposes a de facto state property tax. Dietz also&nbsp;ruled against two groups that do not represent traditional school districts &mdash; Texans for Real Efficiency and Equity in Education and the Texas Charter Schools Association &mdash; whose lawyers also argued before the state Supreme Court&nbsp;Tuesday. Dietz concluded that the Legislature was the more appropriate entity to address the issues they raised at trial. Later Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the same should apply to school districts, elaborating&nbsp;on the solicitor general's jurisdictional argument &mdash; also advocated by Abbott in an amicus brief filed with the court ahead of Tuesday's hearing. &ldquo;This issue is best dealt with by the Legislature, the elected representatives of the people of Texas, and not by the courts," Paxton said in a statement released after the hearing. "Texas education must be about properly educating students, not endlessly battling in court.&rdquo; During the hearing, lawyers for school districts asked the justices to uphold Dietz&rsquo;s ruling, pointing to sluggish STAAR scores and difficulty getting students ready for college or careers after graduating high school. &ldquo;We are not preparing students for the 21st&nbsp;century,&rdquo; said former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, who is representing schools in the lawsuit. "Now is not the time to abandon judicial review," he said in his opening remarks, alluding to the long history of courts forcing state lawmakers to address the way the state funds its schools &mdash; and addressing the state's jurisdictional argument. The current case is the seventh time since 1984 that a case challenging the state&rsquo;s school finance system has reached the state&rsquo;s high court, which partly sided with school districts in 2005 although it rejected their argument that the state was not providing adequate funding. During Tuesday's hearing, lawyers&nbsp;for the state pointed to high graduation rates and slightly improving test scores as evidence that school districts are slowly but surely reaching the benchmarks the Legislature has set for them. The public education system is &ldquo;currently working toward its goals and is thus constitutionally adequate,&rdquo; Craft said. &nbsp; </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Kiah Collier</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2015 12:53:51 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/01/one-year-later-school-finance-appeal-back-court/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>2011 Budget Cuts Still Hampering Schools</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/31/texas-schools-still-feeling-2011-budget-cuts/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/08/31/texas-schools-still-feeling-2011-budget-cuts/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/Seats_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt=""> </a> </div> In a packed Austin courtroom in 2012,&nbsp;the state's lawyers sought to convince a judge that if Texas schools spent their money wisely, they needn't suffer greatly from&nbsp;a $5.4-billion cut to public schools passed by the Legislature.&nbsp;Surely, an assistant attorney general argued, districts could deliver a sufficient education&nbsp;&ldquo;without&nbsp;iPads or teacher aides or brand-new facilities.&rdquo; Nearly two-thirds of the state's school&nbsp;districts had sued,&nbsp;arguing that lawmakers violated their constitutional duty to provide an adequate and efficient public school system by slashing funding to help balance a post-recession shortfall even as&nbsp;a&nbsp;rigorous new testing and accountability systems&nbsp;raised the bar on expectations. The districts pointed to a host of evidence to underscore their argument: swelling class sizes, truncated staffing and flat test scores. Ultimately, a Travis County district court judge agreed with them, deeming&nbsp;the state's method of funding public education unconstitutional. Three years later, as the state prepares to argue an appeal before the Texas Supreme Court, a&nbsp;Texas Tribune analysis shows that schools still are grappling with the fallout from the lean budget times&nbsp;even as&nbsp;the Legislature has&nbsp;restored a majority&nbsp;of the cuts.&nbsp; An examination by the Tribune found: <ul> <li>Public school staffing remains lower than it was before the cuts, with at least&nbsp;3,700 fewer teachers in regular, non-charter districts last school&nbsp;year, according to state data. That&rsquo;s as student enrollment in those schools grew by more than 220,000.</li> <li>The state still is approving far&nbsp;more&nbsp;waivers allowing&nbsp;elementary schools to&nbsp;exceed a 22-student class size limit established in 1984. Last year, the total number of campuses requesting waivers exceeded 2,100, according to state data; In the five school years leading up to the 2011 budget cuts, it never topped 1,375.</li> <li>Scores on the high-stakes STAAR (State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness) exam remain flat &mdash; with success rates hovering in the 70th percentile &mdash; even though&nbsp;students have now had several years to get used to the more difficult testing regime, implemented in early 2012.</li> <li>Per-student state funding has recovered to pre-2011 levels for some districts, but many still are behind. Under the two-year budget state lawmakers passed this year, lawmakers have restored&nbsp;more than 90 percent of what they cut four years ago, yet nearly 30 percent of school districts will receive less per-student funding from the state than they did before the reductions, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board.</li> </ul> To some conservative and business groups, the numbers are not a sign of underfunding but of pervasive inefficiencies in the state&rsquo;s public school system &mdash; including the 31-year-old class size limit, which they have described as arbitrary and too restrictive. "I don&rsquo;t think you can address the funding unless you can address how that funding is spent," said Robert Henneke, director of the Center For the American Future at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The conservative Austin-based think tank is backing a group of school choice advocates and business interests that joined the lawsuit against the state (albeit for much different reasons). "With the structural inefficiencies within the current system,&rdquo; Henneke said, &ldquo;additional funding will not accomplish anything except to lead to the seventh public education lawsuit a couple years down the road.&rdquo; The current lawsuit marks the sixth time since 1984 that districts have sued the state over the way public schools are financed. The state&rsquo;s Republican leaders also have repeatedly argued that more money is not the end-all to improving public education, while downplaying the lingering effects of the 2011 budget cuts. &ldquo;Our first goal has to be creating an education system that will advance students in the best way possible and then funding that program,&rdquo; Gov. <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/greg-abbott/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">Greg Abbott</a> said last week when asked if schools need more money to help low-income students. But school officials and public education advocates say the negative effects remain. The trends in staffing, class-size waivers and test scores, they say,&nbsp;signal the inadequacy of the funding increases the Legislature has approved in the years since the budget cuts. &ldquo;The fact that we still haven&rsquo;t added back all the lost personnel and we&rsquo;re still seeing a large number of waiver requests proves that schools still are struggling,&rdquo; said Chandra Villanueva, a policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a left-leaning Austin-based think tank. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a consequence of underfunding our schools.&rdquo; The debate surrounding the enduring impact of the 2011 budget cuts&shy; &mdash; and whether the Legislature has done enough to address them since &mdash; looks to play a big role in the state&rsquo;s appeal of state District Judge John&nbsp;Dietz's&nbsp;ruling last year&nbsp;striking&nbsp;down the school finance system as unconstitutional. The Texas Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday. The Legislature&rsquo;s lead public education policymakers say the state&rsquo;s high court should send the case back to district court for reconsideration, given the funding increases and policy changes enacted during the past two legislative sessions. &ldquo;We changed quite a bit,&rdquo; said state Rep. <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/jimmie-don-aycock/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">Jimmie Don Aycock</a>, a Killeen Republican who chairs the House Public Education Committee. &ldquo;I think if I were in a black robe, I&rsquo;d look at it again before I made any final decisions.&rdquo; In 2013, lawmakers restored much of what they cut from public education, boosting funding by $3.4 billion while altering graduation and testing requirements and expanding the state&rsquo;s charter school system. Those changes prompted Dietz to reopen evidence in the case, although he again&nbsp;sided with the more than 600 school districts that sued the state. Earlier this year, lawmakers gave schools another $1.5 billion in addition to covering student enrollment growth. &ldquo;In large part we&rsquo;ve gone back and covered the cuts that were made in 2011,&rdquo; said state Sen. <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/larry-taylor-dallas/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">Larry Taylor</a>, a Friendswood Republican who chairs the Senate Education Committee. &ldquo;At the very least,&rdquo; Abbott said in a brief filed with the court last week, &ldquo;this Court should allow the reforms enacted by the (2015) Legislature to be tested in the real world before passing&nbsp;judgment on the constitutionality of Texas&rsquo; public-school system.&rdquo; (As attorney general, Abbott appealed last year&rsquo;s district court ruling directly to the state Supreme Court, on which he used to serve). But attorneys for the school districts suing the state &mdash; who supported Dietz&rsquo;s decision to reopen evidence following the 2013 legislative session &mdash; say the 2015 session is far from a game changer. &ldquo;The clear problems that were identified in the trial were not corrected in the &lsquo;15 session,&rdquo; said David Thompson, who represents many of the state&rsquo;s larger school districts, including Austin, Houston and Dallas. &ldquo;There was very little substantive change.&rdquo; In the past year, Texas has surpassed a few other states in per-student funding as state assistance and property values have rebounded, according to a recent study. But &mdash; at 38th &mdash; it still ranks in the bottom one-third, spending $9,559 per student on average. (The national average is $12,040). In 2016, 29 percent of school districts&nbsp;will receive less per-student funding from the state than they did before the budget cuts, according to the budget board; in 2017, that will drop to 24 percent. And those that have seen state funding recover in the four years since the cuts have not added that much, with funding growing just more than one percent per year on average. The fast-growing Leander school district, about 30 miles northwest of Austin, cut $22 million from its budget in 2011 and has seen state assistance grow by only $14 million since then. It has absorbed the reduction in large part by adding kids to third- and fourth-grade classrooms so it can hire fewer teachers, said spokeswoman Veronica Sopher. Since the 2011 budget cuts, the number of elementary&nbsp;campuses in the 37,000-student district receiving waivers to exceed the 22-student limit has grown by 83 percent, according to state data. The district&nbsp;expects to file about 90 waiver requests&nbsp;this year. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no doubt that the budget cuts in education had an impact on how we do staffing,&rdquo; Sopher said. Some may cast doubt on the benefits of having fewer children in classrooms, but Texas PTA President Leslie Boggs said &ldquo;there&rsquo;s not a parent in this state that doesn&rsquo;t realize that a smaller class size is the best option.&rdquo; Factors including a lingering surge&nbsp;in class size waivers is &ldquo;a very strong point in favor of the trial court&rsquo;s ruling,&rdquo; said lawyer John Turner, who represents some of the state&rsquo;s property wealthy school districts. It shows that schools still &ldquo;are not given sufficient funding to meet this state standard,&rdquo; he said. In the 2011-12 school year, immediately following the budget cuts, the number of classes exceeding the 22-student limit grew to about 8,600 from more than 2,200, a 74-percent increase.&nbsp;Last year, the total was nearly 5,900. In 2011, the Texas Education Agency added &ldquo;financial hardship&rdquo; to the list of reasons districts could request waivers &mdash; &nbsp;&ldquo; a recognition that districts were forced to cut budgets, which often involved laying off staff,&rdquo; said TEA spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe. It remains an option and a commonly cited one. (Last year, it applied to all of Leander's approved waivers). But school officials say the other available reasons &mdash; like unanticipated growth, lack of facilities and inability to find qualified teachers &mdash; are all exacerbated by stagnant state assistance. The partial restoration of state funding in recent years has &ldquo;helped a lot,&rdquo; but it&rsquo;s not enough, said Stuart Snow, chief financial officer for the Cypress-Fairbanks school district near Houston, the state&rsquo;s third largest and one of the fastest growing. Snow said where his district needs the most help from the state is with facilities; it hasn&rsquo;t received any since around the time of the budget cuts. And staffing levels remain lower than they would like, he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just taking several years to be able to get back to normal,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not quite there yet.&rdquo; Disclosure: The Texas Public Policy Foundation and Center for Public Policy Priorities are corporate sponsors of The Texas Tribune.&nbsp;A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Kiah Collier</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2015 06:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/31/texas-schools-still-feeling-2011-budget-cuts/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>UT-Austin Removes Confederate Statue</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/30/ut-austin-removes-confederate-statue/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/08/30/ut-austin-removes-confederate-statue/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/08/30/2015-08-294-2_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="Workers prepare for the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue at the University of Texas at Austin Sunday morning."> </a> </div> The Jefferson Davis statue will no longer cast a shadow on the University Texas main mall after its removal Sunday&nbsp;morning. About 100 students, university staff members and other Austinites&nbsp;gathered to see the relocation of the controversial statue of the Confederate president. Workers wrapped the statue in plastic and cut its bolts loose from its column before lifting it onto a trailer on the back of a truck. UT President Greg Fenves announced during the summer the statue will move to the Dolph&nbsp;Briscoe Center for American History. The decision came after he received&nbsp;recommendations from a task force he&nbsp;assembled on&nbsp;the future of&nbsp;statues of Confederate veterans. The fatal shooting of nine people inside a black church in South Carolina in June sparked nationwide debate about Confederate symbols across the South. Fenves said a statue of President Woodrow Wilson will also be moved for symmetry on the South&nbsp;Mall. The removal of the Jefferson Davis statue was briefly postponed after the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a confederate heritage group, asked a judge to block the move. Last week a state district judge gave&nbsp;UT the right to continue. Kirk D. Lyons, a lawyer for&nbsp;the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said he will work to have the statue put back. &ldquo;This is the beginning of legal procedure; this is the beginning of the fight," Lyons said. Lyons said the removal of the statue has, &ldquo;awakened the sleeping giant.&rdquo; He said the Sons of Confederate&nbsp;Veterans intends to tap&nbsp;its&nbsp;supporters on social media, where it has&nbsp;launched a GoFundMe campaign that has raised $8,805 in the past 16 days. UT Student Body President&nbsp;Xavier Rotnofsky &mdash;&nbsp;who proposed the removal of the statue as part of his satirical campaign &mdash;&nbsp;said the fight is over and he is&nbsp;happy to see the statue being moved. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very satisfying,&rdquo; Rotnofsky said. &ldquo;What started off as a very far-fetched idea during the campaign &mdash; we came through with and the school year has barely started.&rdquo; He said&nbsp;the national conversation after the South Carolina shooting&nbsp;and the passion of students on UT's&nbsp;campus made the removal possible. UT public health junior Amber Magee, who was on hand to see the statue come down,&nbsp;said Fenves&rsquo; decision to move it makes it feel like she matters on campus. &ldquo;I think that this more than anything, it is a fantastic first step for showing support for students of color, for really anything that students identify as an impairment to their personal experience, education or their personal growth,"&nbsp;Magee said. <div class="content"> Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.&nbsp;A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>. </div> </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Luqman Adeniyi</dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 30 Aug 2015 13:14:14 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/30/ut-austin-removes-confederate-statue/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>UT-Austin to Remove Confederate Statue Sunday</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/29/ut-austin-remove-confederate-statue-sunday/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/08/29/ut-austin-remove-confederate-statue-sunday/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/06/22/txtrib-lbs-jeffersondavis-2_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="The statue of Jefferson Davis, once president of the Confederate States, stands just south of the Main Building on UT&#39;s campus on June 22, 2015."> </a> </div> Days after a state district judge gave the go-ahead, the University of Texas at Austin plans to remove a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from a plaza on campus&nbsp;Sunday. The removal will begin around&nbsp;9 a.m., according to a press release. The statue is being moved after years of complaints that it was offensive to minorities on campus. UT-Austin President Greg Fenves commissioned a committee to consider its future this summer. Acting upon that group's recommendation, Fenves decided to remove it and instead display it in its "proper context" at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. A statue of President Woodrow Wilson will also be removed for symmetrical reasons; it sits across the plaza from the one of Davis. The statues' removal has been vehemently fought by the southern heritage group Sons of Confederate Veterans. That group unsuccessfully sought to block&nbsp;the relocation. So far, efforts to appeal have failed. <div class="content"> Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune. &nbsp;A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>.&nbsp; </div> </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Matthew Watkins</dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 29 Aug 2015 16:37:38 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/29/ut-austin-remove-confederate-statue-sunday/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>Judge: UT Confederate Statue Can Be Removed</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/27/judge-ut-confederate-statue-can-be-removed/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/08/27/judge-ut-confederate-statue-can-be-removed/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/06/22/txtrib-lbs-jeffersondavis-2_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="The statue of Jefferson Davis, once president of the Confederate States, stands just south of the Main Building on UT&#39;s campus on June 22, 2015."> </a> </div> Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout. The University of Texas at Austin will take down a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in the next few days after a Travis County judge denied a request by a southern heritage group to block the school&rsquo;s plans. State District Judge Karin Crump ruled Thursday that the Sons of Confederate Veterans didn&rsquo;t have the right to sue to halt the statue&rsquo;s removal. Even if it did, she found, it appears unlikely that the legal effort would have succeeded. Crump seemed unswayed by the confederate group's arguments that the statue was too brittle or artistically and historically important to be relocated. UT-Austin plans to move the statue to the on-campus Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, where students and members of the public can see it. School officials say they'll show the statue in its proper historical context. Its current home is the school&rsquo;s heavily trafficked south mall, within eyesight of the UT Tower. Its prominence has been a source of tension on campus for years. The statue has repeatedly been vandalized, and calls for its removal intensified this summer after nine people were killed in a racially motivated shooting in Charleston, S.C. On Thursday, Kirk Lyons, the confederate group&rsquo;s lawyer, made an impassioned plea to leave the statue where it is, twice comparing UT-Austin&rsquo;s decision to actions of the Islamic State group. The first time, the judge deemed that comparison irrelevant, but Lyons raised it again during his closing argument. &ldquo;I apologize if anyone was offended by my actions comparing removal of the statues to ISIS and the Taliban, but that is what it smacks (of),&rdquo; Lyons said.&nbsp; Earlier in the hearing, he said UT-Austin&rsquo;s decision set a &ldquo;dangerous precedent&rdquo; that would lead to removal of other statues. &ldquo;I am afraid we will be signing the death warrant for every statue on campus, except maybe Barbara Jordan and Martin Luther King,&rdquo; he said. Representing the university, lawyers from the state Attorney General&rsquo;s Office mostly avoided discussing the historical or political significance of the move. Instead, they focused on how the statue could be safely moved, and argued that no one from the confederate group was being harmed by the removal. If the confederates were unable to show how their property rights or finances would be hurt, they didn&rsquo;t have any standing, the attorneys argued. Lyons admitted in court that winning the case was a long shot, but said he felt his group needed to do something. &ldquo;If someone is drowning, it doesn&rsquo;t matter too much who has standing to pull them out of the water,&rdquo; he told the judge. A few dozen people, mostly supporters of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, packed the tiny courtroom to watch. The jostling for seats before the hearing got tense at times. One attendee threatened to break a journalist&rsquo;s leg after he accidentally stepped on her foot. Eventually, the judge ordered everyone in the room who didn&rsquo;t have a seat to leave. After the hearing, UT-Austin officials said they didn&rsquo;t know exactly when the statue would be moved. They predicted it would happen &ldquo;in the next few days.&rdquo; A statue of former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson will also be removed. No one was complaining about that one, but it is across the mall from the Davis statue and will be moved for the sake of symmetry. Other statues of Confederate leaders &mdash; including Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston &mdash; will remain on the mall. UT-Austin officials say the men depicted in those statues have strong connections to Texas. Lyons said he didn&rsquo;t know whether the confederates would appeal the judge&rsquo;s ruling. Litigation is expensive, he said, and his group knew that its odds were slim against UT-Austin, a powerful school with lots of resources. But he said he was proud to have put up a fight. Someone needs to protect the monuments, he said. &ldquo;Sometimes you have got to be that Chinese student in front of those four tanks in Tiananmen Square,&rdquo; he said. Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified one of the statues on campus. It is of Robert E. Lee, not Stonewall Jackson.&nbsp; Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.&nbsp;A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Matthew Watkins</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 27 Aug 2015 17:18:02 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/27/judge-ut-confederate-statue-can-be-removed/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>Judge Set to Consider Future of UT Confederate Statue</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/27/judge-consider-future-ut-confederate-statue-thursd/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/08/27/judge-consider-future-ut-confederate-statue-thursd/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/06/22/txtrib-lbs-jeffersondavis-2_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="The statue of Jefferson Davis, once president of the Confederate States, stands just south of the Main Building on UT&#39;s campus on June 22, 2015."> </a> </div> The fight over the future of a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis has boiled on the University of Texas at Austin campus for years. On Thursday, a judge will consider whether to end it.&nbsp; UT-Austin President Greg Fenves wants to move&nbsp;the statue from the school's south mall to an exhibit in the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. Acting on advice from an on-campus&nbsp;committee, he made plans to remove it on Aug. 15, but a last-minute&nbsp;lawsuit by the Sons of Confederate Veterans put them on hold. The school has asked a judge to dismiss the suit. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday afternoon to hear the two sides out.&nbsp; The Sons of Confederate Veterans is arguing that removing the statue would violate the will of the man who donated the money to erect it, old UT-Austin benefactor George Washington Littlefield. The Confederate group is also arguing that the school needs permission from the state before it takes action.&nbsp; The university disagrees, saying it has a right to place statues anywhere on campus it wants. It's also arguing that the two plaintiffs in the Sons of Confederate Veterans' suit &mdash; group commander Gary David Bray and Littlefield's third cousin David Steven Littlefield &mdash; have no right to sue.&nbsp; A vocal group of UT-Austin students have complained that the statue of Davis is offensive to minorities on campus. It has been vandalized multiple times. Calls for its removal increased after nine people were killed in a racially motivated church shooting in Charleston, S.C. Some opponents of moving the statue have argued that taking it down would be an attempt to ignore the state's history.&nbsp; The future of a statue of former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson is also at stake. No one has complained about that statue, but it's on the other side of the mall from the Davis statue, so university leaders say they want to move it for symmetrical reasons.&nbsp; Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.&nbsp;A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Matthew Watkins</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 27 Aug 2015 10:36:01 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/27/judge-consider-future-ut-confederate-statue-thursd/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>Baylor May Face Legal Fallout from Rape Case</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/25/football-rape-case-presents-possible-legal-minefie/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/08/25/football-rape-case-presents-possible-legal-minefie/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2015/07/06/Baylor-Campus_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt="Baylor University in Waco, Texas."> </a> </div> *Correction appended After a Baylor University football player was convicted last week of raping a fellow student, public outrage honed in on what the school might have done to prevent the attack. But in coming months, the private Baptist school may be more vulnerable to questions from&nbsp;lawyers and federal regulators about&nbsp;how it acted after the assault. Experts say Baylor could face legal challenges concerning how it investigated the case,&nbsp;and how it treated the football player and his victim afterward. The federal government has shown a growing interest in holding schools accountable for how they respond to cases of sexual violence, with the U.S. Department of Education&nbsp;threatening colleges&rsquo; federal funding and ordering them to&nbsp;compensate&nbsp;victims. Meanwhile, victims who believe their cases&nbsp;were&nbsp;botched are filing lawsuits against institutions&nbsp;more frequently. Baylor&rsquo;s lawyers were in the courtroom&nbsp;for most of&nbsp;Sam Ukwuachu's trial, Waco media reported. It&rsquo;s possible that won&rsquo;t be the last time the case brings them to court. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any question that there is a potential for a lawsuit,&rdquo; said Michael Guajardo, a Dallas attorney who <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/headlines/20140919-smu-sued-over-its-handling-of-sexual-assault-report.ece">sued Southern Methodist University last year</a> for its handling of a sexual assault case. Ukwuachu was sentenced to 180 days in jail and 10 years probation Friday after a jury convicted him. During his trial, his victim testified that she screamed "no" as Ukwuachu raped her in his apartment after a homecoming party in November 2013, according to reports. Before the trial even ended, public focus turned to why Ukwuachu was at Baylor at all. Texas Monthly <a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/article/silence-at-baylor/">reported that the highly touted transfer from Boise State had been kicked off his old team</a> soon after he drunkenly punched through a window at a house he shared with his girlfriend. Baylor football coach Art Briles later denied knowing about the freshman all-American's past violence. Soon after, Ukwuachu&rsquo;s coach at Boise State, Chris Petersen, <a href="http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/13484043/chris-petersen-says-told-baylor-bears-coach-art-briles-sam-ukwuachu-violent-past">seemed to contradict that claim in a statement</a>, saying he fully apprised Briles of the player&rsquo;s background before the transfer.&nbsp; That back-and-forth didn't address the rest of Baylor&rsquo;s handling of the case. The school has stayed silent about how it responded, which could be a bigger source of liability. In response to questions Monday, Baylor provided a four-page list of its own questions and answers about how it handles sexual assault cases generally. That list didn't include any details about the Ukwuachu case.&nbsp; Title IX In addition to state and local criminal statutes, schools&nbsp;are&nbsp;responsible for responding to rape cases under&nbsp;Title IX, the federal law&nbsp;requiring&nbsp;schools receiving&nbsp;federal funds to give men and women students equal educational&nbsp;opportunities.&nbsp;In recent years, the Department of Education&rsquo;s Office for Civil Rights has interpreted the law to mean that <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/dear_colleague_sexual_violence.pdf">schools should react swiftly and strongly to claims of rape or harassment.</a> Schools must thoroughly investigate abuse&nbsp;claims&nbsp;&mdash; regardless of whether criminal authorities are also looking into them. If the school believes a claim is credible, it must act. Perpetrators can be expelled, suspended or ordered to stay away from their victims. And victims must be handled with care. If she or he needs counseling, time off or relocation to a new dorm room to feel safe, the school should make that happen, regulators have said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Schools have to treat these kinds of reports very seriously,&rdquo; said Lara Kaufmann, senior counsel for the <a href="http://www.nwlc.org/">National Women&rsquo;s Law Center</a>. The stakes are high for universities. If the civil rights office&nbsp;decides a school violated the law, the department can cut off federal funding, costing schools millions in research dollars and making&nbsp;students ineligible for federal student loans. That would be unusual &ndash; experts couldn&rsquo;t identify any cases where it has&nbsp;happened. But the threat&nbsp;of drastic measures is often used to convince schools to agree to changes. Under pressure from the feds, schools often agree to require training for employees, hire new enforcement staff and pay cash to victims. They often must&nbsp;sign public promises to do so &mdash; an acknowledgement of failure that can damage a school's reputations and hurt recruiting.&nbsp; Victims can also sue the university&nbsp;under the law.&nbsp;Those cases are difficult to win &mdash; and the statute of limitations is two years, meaning time is running short in the Baylor case &ndash; but <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/ci_7640880">recent payouts have been in the millions</a>. Troubling details? Last week's trial revealed&nbsp;some details indicating&nbsp;that the school could be legally vulnerable. The most glaring&nbsp;is&nbsp;Ukwuachu's conviction. The burden of proof in university investigations is supposed to be much lower than in Title IX cases. A criminal conviction requires evidence showing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. For university officials to take action, they only need to believe that a rape is more likely to have occurred than not. Baylor may have to explain why it let the football player off, while a jury didn&rsquo;t. According to the Waco Tribune-Herald, Baylor Associate Dean Bethany McCraw <a href="http://www.wacotrib.com/news/courts_and_trials/baylor-football-player-s-sexual-assault-trial-bogs-down/article_60b341f7-4e85-572a-8336-1d045bc99453.html">testified last week</a> that Baylor&rsquo;s inquiry included interviewing Ukwuachu, his roommate, the victim and one of her friends. She also said the school reviewed text messages between Ukwuachu and the victim, and gave Ukwuachu a polygraph test. In the end, she said she decided that the investigation &ldquo;should not move forward,&rdquo; the Tribune-Herald reported.&nbsp; In its statement Monday, Baylor said that it doesn't have subpoena power and can't access confidential medical records. It also said that the civil rights office generally expects schools to finish investigations within 60 days. If no one appeals its decision, the case is closed, the school said.&nbsp; But experts said nothing should prevent schools from re-opening investigations as new information emerges. It&rsquo;s unclear whether Baylor did that after criminal charges were filed against Ukwuachu. But he clearly wasn't kicked off campus after he was charged with rape.&nbsp;He eventually earned his degree from Baylor, and as Texas Monthly reported, an assistant football coach publicly stated as recently as June that he expected Ukwuachu to play football again for the Bears. (Athletes taking graduate-level courses are still eligible to play football.) The trial also raised questions about whether the school adequately responded to the victim&rsquo;s needs. The victim, a member of the women&rsquo;s soccer team, <a href="http://www.wacotrib.com/news/courts_and_trials/ex-baylor-student-testifies-football-player-assaulted-her/article_ea539beb-8160-52c2-bdf9-08483ee19c67.html">testified that she felt traumatized when she encountered Ukwuachu</a> on campus after the attack. And her father testified that the effects of the assault <a href="http://www.wacotrib.com/news/courts_and_trials/former-baylor-player-gets-probation-days-in-jail-for-sexual/article_2237b55e-2d1e-5cd2-b85a-4cac2576a3c8.html">made it difficult for her to recover from a knee injury</a>. The father said in court that she eventually lost her scholarship, according to the Tribune-Herald. She now attends another Texas school.&nbsp; That kind of struggle is exactly what Title IX is designed to prevent, experts said. &ldquo;If the reason she can no longer play athletics is related or exacerbated by the assault and the ensuing aftermath, I...I don&rsquo;t even know what to say about that,&rdquo; said Kaufmann, the lawyer for the National Women&rsquo;s Law Center. &ldquo;I just think it is unfortunate.&rdquo; New system in place In a letter to the Baylor community after Ukwuachu&rsquo;s conviction, <a href="http://www.baylor.edu/president/news.php?action=story&amp;story=159265">university president Kenneth Starr said the school works &ldquo;tirelessly&rdquo; to keep students safe.</a> He also told students that he had called for a &ldquo;comprehensive internal inquiry&rdquo; into the case. &ldquo;Many of you have expressed your disappointment and anger over this tragic episode,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My colleagues and I fully share your outrage.&rdquo; The statement said the school had &ldquo;joined university efforts nationally to prevent campus violence against women and sexual assault, to actively support survivors of sexual assault with compassion and care, and to take action against perpetrators.&rdquo; That includes maintaining a &ldquo;fully staffed&rdquo; Title IX office with a full-time coordinator and two investigators, the statement said. But those efforts weren&rsquo;t fully in place when Ukwuachu&rsquo;s case began. Baylor&rsquo;s Title IX coordinator, Patty Crawford, didn&rsquo;t start her job until more than a year after the rape. <a href="http://www.spelmanandjohnson.com/higher-education-professionals/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sjg-position-specification-baylor-title-ix-final.pdf">The 2014 post advertising her job opening</a> acknowledged that Baylor didn&rsquo;t have an office focused solely on Title IX at the time. &ldquo;Title IX responsibilities have been managed by a variety of individuals in several university offices, with Human Resources having primary coordinating responsibilities,&rdquo; the post said. Chris Kaiser, staff attorney for the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, called that "a really bad approach." The job post described strong institutional support and "many allies on campus" for Title IX goals. But it also noted that the job wouldn't always be easy at Baylor, a Christian school.&nbsp; &ldquo;[Stakeholders] noted that sexual misconduct is much too common on campus," the post said, "yet the public dialog is limited due to perceptions that &lsquo;this doesn&rsquo;t happen at Baylor." Correction: A previous version of this story said that a jury sentenced Ukwuachu to 180 days in jail and 10 years probation. The jury recommended probation; a judge added the jail time to his sentence. &nbsp; </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Matthew Watkins</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 25 Aug 2015 06:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/25/football-rape-case-presents-possible-legal-minefie/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>Study Finds Childhood Obesity Program Failed</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/24/study-state-program-failed-reduce-childhood-obesit/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/08/24/study-state-program-failed-reduce-childhood-obesit/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/PE_GymShoes_And_Ball_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt=""> </a> </div> A four-year, $37 million state program to improve physical education at high-poverty middle schools failed to reduce obesity rates, according to a study by the University of Texas at Austin. The program, Texas Fitness Now, primarily gave schools money to buy sports and gym equipment from 2007 to 2011. One-quarter of the money was originally meant for nutrition, but a much smaller ratio &mdash; about seven percent of the funds in 2009 and 2010 &mdash; went to healthy eating initiatives, the study&rsquo;s lead author said. &ldquo;The problem with this program is it was too open ended what the schools did, and there wasn&rsquo;t enough evaluation as things went along,&rdquo; said Paul von Hippel, a researcher at the University of Texas' Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. &ldquo;The program failed, we found, in its primary goal of reducing obesity, but it did increase fitness.&rdquo; A spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, which administered the grants, said the program nonetheless led to some success. &ldquo;The Texas Legislature is to be commended for taking this direct approach in combating the issue&nbsp;of childhood obesity in our schools,&rdquo; agency spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe said in a statement. &ldquo;While the results may not be what we all would have hoped for, many middle schools in some of the poorest areas of our state were able to acquire needed fitness equipment.&rdquo; A spokesman for Susan Combs, the former comptroller and a leading supporter of the fitness program, said Combs was out of the country and unavailable for comment. While obesity rates did not decline, boys and girls in the program could complete more pushups and a faster shuttle run, a short-distance agility drill. Girls in the program also performed better on an abdominal strength drill, and had better flexibility. The researchers analyzed public information collected by the Fitnessgram, a physical fitness exam Texas students must take each year. Texas Fitness Now was meant to improve students&rsquo; academic achievement, because, according to the program&rsquo;s guidelines, &ldquo;through increased fitness, students&rsquo; cognitive ability will improve.&rdquo; But the researchers reached no definitive conclusions about the funding&rsquo;s effects on classroom performance. On average, the grants had no effect on math or reading scores, but they may have improved scores among seventh- and eighth-graders who spent two to three years in participating schools. &nbsp;Texas Fitness Now was canceled in 2011 after widespread budget cuts. Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.&nbsp;A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Edgar Walters</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2015 18:13:44 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/24/study-state-program-failed-reduce-childhood-obesit/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item><item><title>After Student Death, Texas Tech Overhauls Greek Life</title><link>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/23/after-student-death-texas-tech-overhauls-greek-lif/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</link><description> <div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="/2015/08/23/after-student-death-texas-tech-overhauls-greek-lif/"> <img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2013/04/23/Tech-1_jpg_312x1000_q100.jpg" alt=""> </a> </div> Almost a year after an alcohol-related student death and a fraternity party featuring a banner that read &ldquo;No Means Yes, Yes Means Anal,&rdquo;&nbsp;Texas Tech University has boosted its oversight of fraternities and sororities in time for this year's fall recruitment. Shortened new member orientation periods, stricter sanctions for rule violations and increased education on planning safer social events are among a&nbsp;slew of new policies in a report released this month that&nbsp;will affect almost every aspect of Greek life at the Lubbock university of more than 35,000 students.&nbsp; Capping&nbsp;the new member training period at eight weeks should&nbsp;limit the possibility of hazing, officials hope,&nbsp;and reducing the hours per week for new member activities should provide fewer chances for underage drinking. The more than 50 university Greek&nbsp;chapters will receive&nbsp;mandatory training in bystander intervention and sexual misconduct. Fraternities will&nbsp;undergo&nbsp;an additional program, &ldquo;manhood and masculinity training,&rdquo; which will include discussions on appropriate gender discourse. The 39 policy changes were recommended by a 12-member advisory panel created last fall after Texas Tech freshman Dalton Debrick died from alcohol poisoning while drinking at an event for students rushing a &ldquo;colony,&rdquo; a local fraternity chapter waiting to receive official recognition from its national office. In September, the university faced another high-profile incident when the&nbsp;Tech chapter of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity held a party with a banner that read &ldquo;No Means Yes, Yes Means Anal&rdquo; and a cutout of a vagina positioned around a working sprinkler. The university and the fraternity&rsquo;s national office launched investigations after photos of the party leaked online. &ldquo;We hope that a lot of the policies prevent those kinds of incidents from taking place in the future,&rdquo; said Juan Mu&ntilde;oz, the university&rsquo;s senior vice president and vice provost and the panel&rsquo;s chair. &ldquo;Training ideally would have prevented the kind of topics or the kind of language that was used at that particular event.&rdquo; Recruitment for two of the university&rsquo;s four Greek councils, Panhellenic Association and the Interfraternity Council, ends this weekend. This past week, 1,100 women rushed the 12 sororities of PHA and 800 men rushed the 24 IFC fraternities,&nbsp;dean of students Amy Murphy said. The university is increasing&nbsp;risk management training for Greek leaders and introduced new guidelines for planning social events that advise chapters on tailgating and out-of-town functions. Texas Tech Greeks will have increased supervision from administrators and alumni &mdash; the school hired additional staff so each Greek council will have its own liaison. Students violating the new rules will face more serious consequences, said Murphy, who also served on the panel. Before the change, Tech had no specific sanctions for student groups, only individual students. The university is developing new sanctions for Greek-specific violations including during recruitment, pledging and social events. It also rolled out an online reporting system for conduct violations. The university is working to create more contact with parents of students who are rushing or have joined Greek organizations. Murphy shared the new policies with Debbie Debrick, the mother of the student who died last fall, and said she supported the changes.&nbsp; "Her opinion as a parent is very important," Murphy said. "She was very grateful that there was going to be additional information for parents of students who would be participating in the rush process." Texas Tech is not the only university to have issues recently with campus Greek organizations. An incident involving Oklahoma University&rsquo;s chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon sparked a national conversation about college Greek culture in March, when&nbsp;a video surfaced of a fraternity brother singing a racist chant. In Texas over the last year, a University of Houston fraternity was&nbsp;<a href="http://www.chron.com/local/education/campus-chronicles/article/UH-suspends-Sigma-Chi-fraternity-after-hazing-6139511.php">suspended</a>&nbsp;for hazing, and the University of Texas at Austin investigated a fraternity for&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2015/02/13/protests-erupt-over-border-patrol-themed-fraternity-party">throwing</a>&nbsp;a &ldquo;border control&rdquo; theme party, where guests wore ponchos and sombreros. After the incident, UT-Austin&rsquo;s IFC updated its code of conduct to include &ldquo;cultural sensitivity&rdquo; guidelines. At Texas Tech, fraternity brothers said the Greek community welcomed the new policies, which give them unprecedented communication with school administrators, and have already seen a change in the culture. Administrators and students said IFC fraternities have begun self-reporting more policy violations than they had in the past. New risk training encouraged brothers to report violations by stressing that safety and the values of the organizations should be prioritized over individual members who are misbehaving, said Tech junior Samuel Phariss, a member of Lambda Chi Alpha and IFC risk management chairman.&nbsp; Fraternity recruitment, which took place last week, has been safer this year, Phariss said, in part because IFC implemented a daily 10 p.m. meeting with students who are&nbsp;rushing. The meeting lasts one to two hours and keeps students from attending unsanctioned events and underage drinking at night during the recruitment period. "Last year was very tragic and it hit everybody pretty hard," Phariss said. "It was the unfortunate wake up call we did need." Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin, Texas Tech University and the University of Houston are corporate sponsors of The Texas Tribune.&nbsp;A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/support-us/donors-and-members/?utm_source=texastribune.org&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections">here</a>. </description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Ally Mutnick</dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 23 Aug 2015 06:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>http://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/23/after-student-death-texas-tech-overhauls-greek-lif/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20The%20Texas%20Tribune%20Sections</guid></item></channel></rss>

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