While it seems at times that critics whom accuse colleges of inaction regarding criminal assaults get their facts wrong, the recent case at Baylor is just appalling. It’s fairly clear that the football department and Baylor administrators knew the perpetrator had a ‘violence against women’ problem, even as they today try to cover their collective arse. But Baylor’s (and the Waco TX police) lack of even a basic investigation of an alleged violent felony is greatly disturbing.
“Flawed”? Now about nonexistent.
I can’t believe that Baylor forced her to stay in class with her attacker and never looked at the medical evidence! I hope this young woman sues. Baylor should be ashamed!!!
And the President of Baylor is Ken Starr? Oh, the irony.
^^ LOL! amen to that!!!
Another board reported the perp only got six months jail time. Disgusting if true.
True and disgusting!
One must wonder if any of those involved in this cover up have teenage/young adult daughters and how they would feel about putting them with this know violent attacker.
But…it’s Texas. And it’s football!
“Christian caring” evidently takes a back seat. B-)
Seriously, if I were a student or parent who sincerely bought into the image of itself as a Christian institution with high moral standards that Baylor likes to project, I would feel very, very betrayed.
Absolutely agree with you, Consolation. Zinhead, I’m at a loss trying to understand the EXTREMELY light sentence the perp received. Did the judge offer any insight at all regarding the sentence?
Sentence given by the judge was:
180 days in county jail
10 years of felony probation
400 hours community service
registration as a sex offender
A jury had previously recommended probation (if you are appalled because the judge’s sentence was too lenient, the jury’s recommendation is even more appalling). Maximum sentence was 20 years in prison.
We live in Texas and just can’t come to grips with this. Thankful Baylor isn’t on any of my kid’s lists and now never will be. I really don’t think they realize how far reaching this will be and for years to come…
I don’t get why any of this is surprising when a PSU staff member saw a coach rape a child, and that was hushed up, (including by the witness’ father, who was also a PSU staff member) and all the school was worried about was how it affected their football program. (and there are two missing persons associated with the case who are presumed dead under mysterious circumstances). But will they lose their wins!?!??!?!
The ultimate question in most of these cases is whether someone is innocent until proven guilty, and a corollary specific to colleges is whether someone who was subject to “sanctions” by a previous college, but never convicted by a court, would be considered “guilty” in terms of a transfer colleges policies.
Of course a person convicted of a crime should be treated severely.
But if the victim does not manifest their legal rights, including a restraining order (and I am familiar with that in a domestic abuse case at my college; a restraining order was sought and received, and it forced the abuser to not take any classes with the victim nor live in the same dorm (the latter was achieved by the victim moving however, not vice versa - so that the victim would not be at a known location)), and the college refuses to help (perhaps they do not see themselves as a judicial body once a case goes to courts?), what was wrong?
The only “wrong” thing is whether there should be a blanket policy at each college that says:
“If a student is arrested or indicted for a felony, they will immediately be put on suspension from the university. If the student is acquitted of charges, they may return to the university for the next full semester. Any tuition and fees will be refunded for the semester for which the student was forced to withdraw.”
Thoughts? If someone robs another person, and is arrested for it, should they be subject to immediate suspension from college? If someone is accused of robbing another person, and is arrested for it, should they be subject to immediate suspension from college, and then if they are discovered innocent, allowed to return with the only “recompense” to be tuition and fee reimbursement for the abbreviated semester?
IMHO, colleges should not be police nor judges. And people who want justice need to use the US justice system, not some set of rules specific to the college.
The description in the article is certainly harrowing. But the Rolling Stone article about the gang rape at a named frat was also harrowing.
(PSU story about cover ups: http://americanfreepress.net/?p=5131 )
(with any crime involving a minor, certainly an investigation of such crimes should end ANY contact with minors, EVEN if there is no arrest or indictment - yes, this means that an investigation of a rape of an adult should be treated differently than the rape of a child)
Should all of this be Federal - if ANY of your students receive Federal student financial aid, you MUST follow these simple rules, including a statement such as the above for any and all students (how about faculty, btw…).
I know we are not supposed to revive old threads, but this one seems appropriate and timely. Baylor University did the right thing by firing their highly successful football coach Art Brilles over his handling of this incident.
Kudos to Baylor.
Small town Texas politics could rival the mafia. I could write a John Grisham-like book based on my small town Texas experience alone.
Schools like Baylor in a town like Waco are even more motivated to keep a lid on things and even more likely to have such old-school views on sexual assault ie. “she deserved it” etc.
I do applaud them for hiring an independent law firm to investigate.
There is an old expression that I’ll try to clean up (the way my uncle used it was unprintable), it basically is that money talks and manure walks. Given how football crazy Texas is, and that Baylor is a division 1 powerhouse that routinely sends players to the pros, the football program and the university, much like PSU with the Sandowsky case, have a very big vested interest to shove it under the carpet. When it comes to big time college sports and the prestige and fanatacism around it, the purpose of a university, ethics, morality, all go out the window. It is interesting there are parallels here to PSU in some senses, Joe Paterno by all accounts was someone who seemed to value morals and ethics, accountability, yet the football program seemed to blind him to the cesspool that was around him (and before someone tries to defend Paterno, there are more and more revelations coming out, including that he knew way before even the earliest timeline once thought, that Sandowsky was molesting boys). Baylor proclaims itself a religious institution that promotes morality, yet it looks like the entire school basically just wanted this to go away. How Starr kept his job (and yep, ironic, given how he came to be well known) I don’t know, and Briles shouldn’t have been the only one fired, the AD should have been, and a lot of administrators should be, too. If Baylor is going to try and rebuild their image, what they have done so far is not enough, they will need to do a total purge, because as can be seen by other scandals we have seen by institutions over the last 20 years or so, institutions that keep doing the same old same old and more importantly show that there will be accountability no matter who the perp is, will end up damaged beyond belief.
Then again, thinking of other big football programs with problems, U of Oklahoma back in the day, U of Nebraska, U of Miami , U of Florida/Florida State, I wonder how much really will change.
If Baylor wanted it to go away, they could have ignored the issue and it would have faded away much like the Florida State rape scandal or the current Tennessee scandal. Baylor deserves credit for taking the more difficult path in this case.
Wow. I hadn’t seen the penalty publicized before. He was found guilty, but only got six months in jail?!? He could have gotten up to twenty years. Unbelievable. I guess they save all the long sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. 
Six months?
Well… That will push the accused to use the judicial system. 
@Hanna, what happened to the 15 students you tried to help to get back into attending colleges?
Some are still waiting for final results. But most of them have already admitted to at least one school that will suit them well.