A place to comment on how parents sending kids to Baylor respond and recuperate after news today of firing of head football coach in the midst of Baylor failing to adequately address victims who had been sexually assaulted by football players.
Why do the parents of newly entering students have to “recuperate”? The parents weren’t the ones who were sexually assaulted.
I would think parents are relieved that steps are being taken to fix this issue. It’s really has been a major news story, since ESPN ran a story on it on February 1’st of this year.
A timeline:
I’m glad they took such measures, no halfways no if/buts. Much better than equivocating. Baylor means business if they’re willing to go after someone football-related which in Texas is near-religion status. 
@Gator88NE Thanks for the link since I had not heard any of the news reports on this topic.
@Baylorpoly I can see where the news of this failure to handle the sexual allegations properly is shocking. It seems much more investigating needs to be done and more actions need to be taken. I am sad for the victims. I hope all involved parties are held accountable and steps are taken to prevent anything like this from happening again.
@MYOS1634 Football isn’t really near-religion status in Texas. Please don’t lump us all into the same basket.
Okay, sorry for religions. Let’s say it’s taken very very very seriously, even compared to PAC12 or B10. Football players, even in HS, are considered a big deal. Is there a TJ/Stuy/Gunn in Texas? Surely. But you can’t say Texan football players aren’t considered differently than, say, volleyball players and mathletes, more so in some states than others. It’d be like saying Duke and UNC don’t care about basketball. Not all people agree but nevertheless football-related people and matters get a pass on some things. (Can you honestly say that football players don’t get special treatment? I’m not saying everyone agrees, but generally speaking).
Think of what happened with FSU to see the difference I’m trying to point to.
Failure is systemic. The swifter and more radical the consequences for failure at the top, the more likely the system is to devise a way to handle complaints effectively.
Taking on football-team-related issues in Texas is a powerful signal.
In the meanwhile, complaints should be made to the police.
My FB news feed is full of Baylor alum friends who are in mourning for their school. It kind of makes me ill. None of them posted how very sorry they are for the victims. They are just sad for the reputation of their school. Hmm…really? And the president of the university gets demoted to Chancellor and can remain a professor in the law school?
Any Baylor parent who thinks they are sending their kid to some safe virtuous island of religion needs to examine the reasons they are sending their kids to the school and realize it that is not the case. It is a regular school like every place else and despite their best efforts to make it appear otherwise, they are going to have normal people problems with an even “extra” normal motivation to try to cover things up to make it appear otherwise.
The kids around here who attend Baylor seem to be of two types: genuinely good kids who truly want and seek an environment conducive to their religious upbringing and then kids who were brought up that way, appear to be that way but whose social media (unchecked by parents, obviously), clearly suggests something otherwise i.e. a closet party kid.
Every school is going to have problems. Some are going to be more motivated than others to cover it all up.
Someone has to say it: the irony of Ken Starr going down for not investigating a sex story.
OP, I can see where Baylor will be dispirited next year, reeling from scandal, but agree that is is a good sign that the investigation took place and big steps were taken. So much better than at FSU!
I wouldn’t be concerned about sending my kids there. The airline that just had a crash is probably the safest one to fly.
I think 6 assualt allegations are more than enough to get rid of somebody.
Baylor wouldn’t be on my list of schools.
Unless you get hit by a Russian Buk missle…
incoming parents should be happy that the school finally took action. IMO, the previous news about Starr was only notable in that there was no mention of the coach.
There is still a pending issue of whether the NCAA will sanction the Baylor team(s). If the football atmosphere is important to OP and his child, it may be a different atmosphere for a few years.
What happened with regard to the football program was disgusting and I hope Art Briles never coaches again. However, Baylor’s handling of sexual assaults was awful all over. There’s a former Baylor student who has blogged about how her report of rape was handled and it’s stomach churning. The fact that Ken Starr is still allowed to work for that university shows me that they are still not taking this as seriously as they should.
^yes, that doesn’t work for me. He should not have any leadership position at all.
It seems that the process is disgusting at every university where a spotlight is directed.
Baylor is as terrible as the others.
If you, your daughter, your cousin, your roommate, your student suffers from a sexual assault, they ought to go to the hospital and have them call the police with a friend they trust. If you, your daughter, your cousin, your roommate was drunk wakes up to realize they were raped/sexually assaulted, you/ they can still go to the hospital and have the police called. THe university’s first responsibility is to the university. Their security doesn’t handle police matters, the police does, and hospitals gather the evidence for them. No matter how much you like your alma mater, they won’t handle this right unless the hospital and the police are involved.
^reiterating, but whoever reads this thread hopefully will drill this into their child’s, roommate’s, cousin’s, friend’s brain.
@trojanchick99:
I tend to agree with you, how they can have someone teaching law who was head of a school that basically suppressed evidence of crimes,pressuring victims not to file charges, and more importantly, at an institution that prides itself on being a religious institution? If they were taking this seriously, there would be a lot more going on, one of the things I learned a long time ago in organizations is that when you have breaches of trust like this, accountability is key to turning things around and that only happens when you show that breaches in ethics, breaches in trust, like this won’t be tolerated nor will those who looked the other way. I am glad Briles got fired, but there should have been a lot more heads, The AD should be gone, members of the coaching staff who knew, the university legal office should have a purge, anyone who either had a hand in this, or knew about it…but they will say “oh, Ken Starr has been punished”, but that kind of reminds me when Cardinal Law was removed in Boston and he ended up with a nice sinecure in Rome, not exactly sackcloth and ashes…
I think what is also sad about this was if the media hadn’t blown the cover on this, like with the PSU case, they likely would have kept going on their merry way with this. I hope the victims of this make the school pay as well, and that the money from settlements is forced to come from the revenue the football team gets from TV and such, that would be fitting justice (probably won’t happen,of course, God forbid they can’t maintain the jacuzzis at the right temperature or they can’t redo their uniforms).
Is it too late to transfer to Alabama?
I see big big lawsuits here.
Usually, I don’t think lawsuits work too well. Lawsuits take too long and they are very expensive.
But…
6 women accusing the same guy…if I was the dad of one of those women…
Baylor would not be happy.
I don’t think Baylor is going to be happy. And I can’t believe more heads are not rolling in the streets.
I strongly suspect that among powerhouse money sports programs, there are those who have been caught hiding player criminality, and those that have not been caught. In other words, I assume this is going on everywhere in the top echelon. Maybe I’m too cynical, but I think the incentives to protect star players are just too high. It’s human nature to respond to those incentives.
In other words, nothing special about Baylor.
And has Penn State suffered? Still recruiting, still has a waiting list for students wanting to get in. Even though the school spent millions on the case, can anyone say ‘Oh, the teaching in the English department has really gone down’ or 'we have to eat canned peas rather than frozen because of budget cuts?" Nope, it’s business as usual There are some individuals who have felt the punishment, but not the institution.
Baylor will be the same. SMU recovered after the death penalty. Penn State recovered. Baylor will recover.