An Update on the Baylor University Sexual Assault Scandal

A former student at Baylor University filed suit in federal court against the university on Friday, January 27, 2017, claiming that she was raped by two former football players and that the university did not protect her.[1] Baylor University has been plagued by this controversy for the past couple of years – this sexual assault scandal first came to light in 2015, when Baylor football player, Sam Ukwuachu, was found guilty of sexual assault. After his conviction, the Baylor Board of Regents hired a law firm to conduct an investigation into how the university handles sexual assault cases – the firm found that university officials and coaches often knew of sexual assault incidents and that Baylor worked with the Waco Police Department to keep the allegations private or to push them under the rug. This post was originally published on the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal website on February 15, 2017. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above

The Inability of Intellectual Property to Protect the New Fashion Designer: Why the ID3PA Should Be Adopted

This Comment argues that Congress should adopt legislation that affords copyright protection to new fashion designers. The present state of the intellectual property regime leaves a new designer without any legal protection against blatant copying and can easily result in the designer’s business demise. Part I of this Comment provides a brief background of copyright law, as well as other doctrines of intellectual property law, and the limited protection these doctrines provide for fashion designs. Part I also explains how the limited protections afforded to fashion designs vis-à-vis intellectual property law are rarely, if ever, applicable to the new designer. Part II provides a more thorough history of the predecessor bills discussed above, including the recent ID3PA (Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act) and IDPA, and explains why the IDPA ignores the needs of the new fashion designer. Part III claims that common arguments by those against the adoption of the ID3PA and future proposed legislation, including increased and frivolous litigation, are unwarranted. Ultimately, the enactment of the ID3PA or similar legislation would ensure a level playing field for new designers and the possibility that they too can realize the American Dream

The Inability of Intellectual Property to Protect the New Fashion Designer: Why the ID3PA Should Be Adopted

This Comment argues that Congress should adopt legislation that affords copyright protection to new fashion designers. The present state of the intellectual property regime leaves a new designer without any legal protection against blatant copying and can easily result in the designer’s business demise. Part I of this Comment provides a brief background of copyright law, as well as other doctrines of intellectual property law, and the limited protection these doctrines provide for fashion designs. Part I also explains how the limited protections afforded to fashion designs vis-à-vis intellectual property law are rarely, if ever, applicable to the new designer. Part II provides a more thorough history of the predecessor bills discussed above, including the recent ID3PA (Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act) and IDPA, and explains why the IDPA ignores the needs of the new fashion designer. Part III claims that common arguments by those against the adoption of the ID3PA and future proposed legislation, including increased and frivolous litigation, are unwarranted. Ultimately, the enactment of the ID3PA or similar legislation would ensure a level playing field for new designers and the possibility that they too can realize the American Dream

Practicing Ignatian Pedagogy: A Digital Collection of Resources

In the Spring 2015 issue of Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal, Kimberly Connor described building an Ignatian Pedagogy Faculty Learning Community at the University of San Francisco. One outcome of the FLC was to gather and make easily available a collection of resources on Jesuit education and the IPP (Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm). In this issue, two USF Gleeson Library/Geschke Center librarians, Zheng (Jessica) Lu, Digital Collections Librarian, and Vicki Rosen, Distance Learning Services Librarian, describe creating Practicing Ignatian Pedagogy: A Digital Collection of Resources, an openly accessible database available through the USF Library website, using the FLC resources and digital technolog

Practicing Ignatian Pedagogy: A Digital Collection of Resources

In the Spring 2015 issue of Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal, Kimberly Connor described building an Ignatian Pedagogy Faculty Learning Community at the University of San Francisco. One outcome of the FLC was to gather and make easily available a collection of resources on Jesuit education and the IPP (Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm). In this issue, two USF Gleeson Library/Geschke Center librarians, Zheng (Jessica) Lu, Digital Collections Librarian, and Vicki Rosen, Distance Learning Services Librarian, describe creating Practicing Ignatian Pedagogy: A Digital Collection of Resources, an openly accessible database available through the USF Library website, using the FLC resources and digital technolog

Jail Health and Early Release Practices

Local jails in the United States incarcerate millions of people each year. The COVID-19 pandemic made jail health a pressing public health concern nationally, where releasing individuals from jails occurred across the country in order to prevent pandemic spread. But releases also faced substantial resistance and exposed long-standing challenges in delivering adequate healthcare in jail settings. People in jail have substantially higher levels of medical need than individuals in the general population, with large numbers having serious mental illnesses and substance use disorders. Further, overcrowded conditions and poor healthcare standards and delivery make jails harmful to those already-vulnerable people. What means exist to protect individuals whose health would suffer in jail? Constitutional standards under the Eighth Amendment are highly deferential to jail administrators, nor is there substantial state or local level regulation of jail health. However, more informal mechanisms do exist, and they may be more responsive to health-based needs than constitutional or legal rights. This Article describes insights from qualitative interviews with jail medical staff in four states, to explore what challenges face delivery of healthcare, but more specifically, when health-based needs require counsel releasing individuals from jail. The Article describes widespread informal and unwritten mechanisms for health-based releases from jails. The Article will present the data and how such practices have implications for reforming the legal rules surrounding jail healthcare

The Dfam community resource of transposable element families, sequence models, and genome annotations.

Dfam is an open access database of repetitive DNA families, sequence models, and genome annotations. The 3.0-3.3 releases of Dfam ( https://dfam.org ) represent an evolution from a proof-of-principle collection of transposable element families in model organisms into a community resource for a broad range of species, and for both curated and uncurated datasets. In addition, releases since Dfam 3.0 provide auxiliary consensus sequence models, transposable element protein alignments, and a formalized classification system to support the growing diversity of organisms represented in the resource. The latest release includes 266,740 new de novo generated transposable element families from 336 species contributed by the EBI. This expansion demonstrates the utility of many of Dfam\u27s new features and provides insight into the long term challenges ahead for improving de novo generated transposable element datasets