MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY administrators have long claimed, to the federal government and public, that they have handled sexual assault, violence, and gender discrimination complaints properly.

But an Outside the Lines investigation has found a pattern of widespread denial, inaction and information suppression of such allegations by officials ranging from campus police to the Spartan athletic department, whose top leader, Mark Hollis, announced his retirement on Friday. The actions go well beyond the highly publicized case of former MSU athletic physician Larry Nassar.

Over the past three years, MSU has three times fought in court -- unsuccessfully -- to withhold names of athletes in campus police records. The school has also deleted so much information from some incident reports that they were nearly unreadable. In circumstances in which administrators have commissioned internal examinations to review how they have handled certain sexual violence complaints, officials have been selective in releasing information publicly. In one case, a university-hired outside investigator claimed to have not even generated a written report at the conclusion of his work. And attorneys who have represented accusers and the accused agree on this: University officials have not always been transparent, and often put the school's reputation above the need to give fair treatment to those reporting sexual violence and to the alleged perpetrators.

Even MSU's most-recognizable figures, football coach Mark Dantonio and basketball coach Tom Izzo, have had incidents involving their programs, Outside the Lines has found.

LANSING, Mich. -- A former Michigan sports doctor who parlayed his reputation and personal charm into years of sexual abuse of Olympic gymnasts and other young women was sentenced Wednesday following the riveting statements of more than 150 victims, including one of his first public accusers. Judge Rosemarie Aquilina sentenced Larry Nassar to 40 to 75 years in prison Wednesday -- the seventh day of a remarkable hearing that has given the girls, young women and their parents a chance to confront Nassar in court.

Aquilina said Nassar will "be in darkness the rest of his life."

"I find that you don't get it -- that you're a danger. You remain a danger," she said to Nassar.

The last witness to speak at Nassar's sentencing hearing was Rachael Denhollander, a Kentucky lawyer and one of the first women to publicly identify herself as one of Nassar's young victims. Denhollander contacted Michigan State University police in 2016 after reading reports about how USA Gymnastics, which trains Olympians, mishandled complaints of sexual misconduct. Nassar worked at Michigan State and also was the national gymnastics squad's doctor.

When Minnesota Public Radio abruptly severed ties with Garrison Keillor in November, the sole explanation offered by the company was "inappropriate behavior" with a female colleague.

For his part, the creator and longtime host of A Prairie Home Companion described his offense as nothing more than having placed his hand on a woman's back to console her.

An investigation by MPR News, however, has learned of a years-long pattern of behavior that left several women who worked for Keillor feeling mistreated, sexualized or belittled. None of those incidents figure in the "inappropriate behavior" cited by MPR when it severed business ties.

Nor do they have anything to do with Keillor's story about putting a hand on a woman's back:

After nine days of deliberations, jurors have acquitted the three former Montreal, Maine and Atlantic (MMA) railway employees charged with criminal negligence causing death in the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster.

Locomotive engineer Tom Harding, 56, rail traffic controller Richard Labrie, 59, and operations manager Jean Demaître, 53, were all charged after the derailment of a runaway fuel train early on July 6, 2013. Several tankers, carrying highly volatile crude oil exploded, turning downtown Lac-Mégantic into an inferno and killing 47 people.​

There was an audible gasp in the courtroom and the family of Labrie cried when the verdict was delivered early Friday afternoon.

Through tears, Labrie described his relief. He said his thoughts were always with and continue to be with the community of Lac-Mégantic.

"I would like to say the people of Lac-Mégantic, what they went through, they showed a huge amount of courage," he said.

Last night, I made cinnamon rolls. I’m not a huge fan of cinnamon rolls, per se, but this recipe was included in Mario Batali’s sexual misconduct apology letter, and so I feel compelled to make them. Batali is not the first powerful man to request forgiveness for “inappropriate actions” towards his coworkers and employees. He is not the most high profile, and he is ostensibly not even the worst offender. But he is the only one who included a recipe.

And of course, the glaring question is why? Was his PR team drunk? Is life suddenly a really long, depressing SNL sketch? Do these cinnamon rolls somehow destroy the patriarchy? Does the icing advocate for equal pay?

I figure the only way to answer these questions is to make the damn rolls.

I bake a lot. Never one to pass up on a pun, my husband doesn’t bring me flowers, but flours. I’ve become skilled to the point that I can make a dessert from virtually anything, that I can have a small cake made from start to finish – including baking time – on the table in about half an hour.

According to Fox 6, administrators at Our Redeemer Lutheran School in Wauwatosa, Wis., apologized to parents after students brought home an assignment asking them to name three good reasons and three bad reasons for slavery. One parent, Trameka Brown-Berry, found the assignment offensive and posted it to her Facebook page.

“It’s highly offensive and insensitive. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe they sent something like that home,” said Brown-Berry, apparently able to contain the God-given slapping-the-shit-out-of-fourth-grade-teachers instinct gifted to most black mothers.

School Principal Jim Van Dellen admitted the assignment was “out of line” in a letter to parents, explaining that the assignment was intended to “spark debate.”

“The purpose of the assignment was not, in ANY way, to have students argue that ANY slavery is acceptable, a concept that goes against our core values about the equality and worth of people of all races,” the letter read, despite the fact that the explicit instructions of the assignment were to ask students to argue about the acceptance of slavery.