A complaint about the content of a Kansas University class has gotten way more attention than it deserves.

Kansas legislators must not have enough to do.

That’s the only logical explanation for a proviso, aimed at the content of a single Kansas University class, that now is headed to the governor’s desk as part of the state’s main budget legislation.

On the basis of one complaint from one student in Dennis Dailey’s human sexuality class, Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, introduced an amendment last week that would prohibit state universities from showing videos in sex education classes. The clinical photos and videos Dailey uses in his class were offensive to the student. Rather than simply dropping the class, which isn’t a requirement for any KU degree, the student decided to contact her state legislator.

Wagle picked up the ball and introduced the amendment, which directs the Kansas Board of Regents to immediately pull the funding of any department caught buying or showing obscene materials in its sex education courses.

The matter raises many questions, not the least of which is what qualified material as “obscene.” Will the same standard used to judge materials in a sex education course also be applied to courses in human anatomy? How will the state possibly enforce such standards? Will the regents send “agents” into every class at all six state universities to examine the curriculum and the materials being used?

Students are quick to come to Dailey’s defense. Both current and past students have said his class was one of the best and most useful they took at KU. Dailey is an award-winning and popular teacher and has the support of many social welfare professionals.

Regardless of the materials used in Dailey’s class, however, the more pressing issue is whether it is appropriate for state legislators to try to micromanage university curricula. One student interviewed in connection to Dailey’s plight saw an opportunity and jokingly said she had another professor she really didn’t like and wondered if the Legislature could help her out.

The content of a single class at KU came to the attention of a state legislator. If the Kansas Legislature is going to examine state universities at this level of detail, there would be little need for the Board of Regents. Who knows how much equally egregious material may crop up in other university classrooms?

The bottom line is that legislators need to be looking at bigger issues than one student’s anecdotal complaint about a single university professor. We agree with Lawrence Rep. Tom Sloan that the governor should use her line-item veto to eliminate Wagle’s proviso and turn the Legislature’s attention back to the more pressing provisions of the state budget bill.