Losing Its “Moral Compass”
The first signs of trouble came in 2014 when a former linebacker with the Baylor Bears was charged with and convicted of raping a female classmate. A year later, a defensive end, who had a troubled history before Baylor recruited him for the team, stood trial over similar allegations. That case drew national attention and soon it became clear that these were not isolated incidents.1 The university’s Board of Regents eventually acknowledged that 19 football players had sexually assaulted 17 female students from 2011 to 2016, including carrying out four gang rapes.2 A lawsuit against the university alleged that the number of players and victims involved was far higher.3
And it also became clear that these crimes were not limited to the football team. An official who was brought on eventually to investigate these cases calculated that students had made over 400 allegations of sexual assault or harassment during this time, 90 percent of which did not involve athletes.4 These revelations sent shock waves through the Baptist campus, which forbade undergraduates from engaging in premarital sex as well as from drinking. These prohibitions appear to have discouraged women from reporting sexual assaults because they feared or were even told by university officials that they could be penalized for violating them. “A number of victims were told that if they made a report of rape, their parents would be informed of the details of where they were and what they were doing,” an attorney told journalists in 2016.5
“By God’s grace, we are living in the golden era at Baylor,” Ken Starr had declared to the university community in August 2015.6 Less than a year later, he was out of his job. The university demoted Starr (who left Baylor soon afterward) after a law firm he hired to investigate the university’s handling of sexual assault cases concluded that “Baylor was making its students less safe.”7 The report found that the university “failed to consistently support” women who had been raped, discouraging them from filing reports.8 And the report found that Briles, the football coach, and his staff had repeatedly met with rape victims without alerting other university officials of the allegations. The university regents fired Briles after receiving the report.
These horrors have done lasting damage to Baylor’s reputation and standing. As Matthew Watkins of The Texas Tribune wrote, the narrative around the institution shifted: “Suddenly, the national story of a private university out-punching its weight was replaced by one of a Christian school whose outsize ambitions caused it to lose its moral compass.”9
Citations
- Luther, “How Baylor Happened,” source.
- Brad Reagan, “Baylor Regents Found Alleged Sexual Assaults by Football Players ‘Horrifying,’” The Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2016, source.
- Luther, “How Baylor Happened,” source.
- Michael Powell, “Baylor’s Handling of Rape Cases Still Follows Ken Starr,” The New York Times, January 19, 2020, source.
- Luther, “How Baylor Happened,” source.
- Powell, “Baylor’s Handling of Rape Cases,” source.
- Watkins, “Under Starr’s Presidency, Baylor Watched Golden Age Turn Sour,” source.
- Watkins, “Under Starr’s Presidency, Baylor Watched Golden Age Turn Sour,” source.
- Watkins, “Under Starr’s Presidency, Baylor Watched Golden Age Turn Sour,” source.