LSU reeling from sexual misconduct reviews

When LSU’s football team emerges from the north end zone tunnel in 102,000-seat Tiger Stadium for its traditional spring scrimmage on Saturday, players will take a field emblazoned with a logo recognizing Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

The logo symbolizes an effort to promote healing on campus, but also is a reminder of the inescapable challenges that LSU faces for the foreseeable future.

It is unclear what impact investigations by the U.S. Department of Education and a state Senate select committee into how the university has handled sexual misconduct allegations, as well as a $50 million lawsuit in federal court, will have on LSU’s athletics programs.

But regardless of the outcomes, it will likely take time to remove the stain from LSU’s tarnished brand.

“LSU’s like my children. I’m always going to love it, but I want it to do better,” said political pundit James Carville, an LSU graduate who teaches at the university and has one child enrolled there and another who graduated from there. “Right now, it’s not doing better.”

While no current LSU coach or official has been fired yet, the allegations from female students dating back nearly a decade caught up with former university leaders after they left the school. Recent revelations about how those allegations were handled were unsavory enough that former LSU football coach Les Miles and ex-university President F. King Alexander were run out of their most recent jobs elsewhere.

Miles, who won a national title while coaching at LSU from 2005 to 2016, lost his job at Kansas.

Oregon State fired Alexander as its president. He had the same job at LSU when allegations that Miles made improper sexual advances toward female students working in the football office were kept private by the university and its law firm in 2013 — despite a recommendation by then-athletic director Joe Alleva that Miles be fired.

There does not appear to be any imminent threat to the job of current LSU football coach Ed Orgeron. But he is choosing his words carefully, partly because of the federal lawsuit filed by current LSU associate athletic director Sharon Lewis.

Her lawsuit alleges that certain current or former members of LSU’s athletic administration and football staff conspired to retaliate against her when she tried to report Miles’ alleged advances toward female students.