At Baylor, a Scandal’s Constant Drip Means a Relentless Spotlight

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When a federal judge cleared the way this week for a lawsuit filed by 10 former students against Baylor University to go forward, it confirmed what many on the scandal-weary campus already suspected.

The focus on how the university allegedly failed to take sexual-assault complaints seriously over a number of years would remain in the headlines, bringing more unwanted attention to a private Baptist university that prides itself on its image as a caring, compassionate place.

Many worry that the scandal, much like the Sandusky child-molestation scandal at Pennsylvania State University, has tarnished Baylor’s reputation, hurt morale, and threatens to leave a black mark on the institution for years to come.

As the lawsuits and investigations continue to crop up, some of the central players have also reappeared in the news in recent weeks — the university’s former president, Kenneth W. Starr, with a new book that recounts some of the turmoil, and the fired head football coach Art Briles with a statement denying that he covered up assaults or otherwise obstructed justice.

Baylor alumni, in particular, have grown weary of reading about their alma mater’s troubles.

But some say the spotlight, while unwelcome, should stay on the university until the problems are fully acknowledged and fixed.

“Our primary concern is not our reputation but the educational experience of our students, and I do think that continues to be good,” the university’s interim president, David E. Garland, said in an interview on Thursday.

After a tumultuous year, donations are down slightly so far this year, but applications are up, Baylor officials say.

“I don’t know any school that has been as transparent as we have and taken the extraordinary actions we have,” said Mr. Garland.

Those steps included demoting Mr. Starr, who later resigned; firing Mr. Briles; and disciplining the athletics director, Ian McCaw, who also later resigned.

“We’ve also published, on our website, findings of fact which in many ways are findings of fault,” Mr. Garland added. “From a Christian perspective, we’ve confessed our sins, tried to repent and tried to make restitution.”

To its critics, including a group of wealthy and influential alumni who are pushing for changes in the way the Board of Regents operates, Baylor hasn’t gone far enough.

The group, Bears for Leadership Reform, says the university should have insisted on receiving a complete writeup of the scathing findings that a law firm, Pepper Hamilton, delivered verbally to the regents. Those findings were summarized in the 13-page “Findings of Fact” Mr. Garland referred to, but were never expanded on in a full written report, according to the university.

The investigators found that Baylor administrators had failed to comply with the gender-equity law known as Title IX and that the football program had not held players accountable for their misconduct. Baylor has responded to about 85 of the 105 recommendations the law firm made to strengthen its sexual-assault prevention and response policies, Mr. Garland said.

‘Dribbling Things Out’

Some of the most incendiary details of what went wrong, including the allegation that Mr. Briles knew about a possible gang rape involving his players but didn’t report it, have come out in bits and pieces as lawsuits have been filed and multiple investigations opened. The former coach has vigorously denied the accusation.

“By dribbling things out over months and months, it keeps this controversy alive,” said the reform group’s chair, John Eddie Williams, a leading donor for whom Baylor named its football field. “If we’d just ripped the Band-Aid off earlier, exposed the problems and corrected them, then we could start the healing process and move forward.”

Courtesy of The Baylor Lariat

Many students, not surprisingly, are also tired of seeing their university reflected in such a negative light.

Last month four freshman women walked around the campus with a video camera asking students why they came to Baylor and what the university meant to them. The result was a video meant to project a more positive image of their university, which the students interviewed described as loving and supportive. The students said they were motivated by an ESPN video that referred to Baylor’s football program as “so corrupt, so vile, so corrosive” that parents should say “there’s no way” they would send their daughters to Baylor.

The students’ video was seemingly innocuous, but it triggered a response that shows just how sensitive discussions about the assaults remain. In an editorial last month, the college’s student newspaper, The Baylor Lariat, said that showing pride in the university is fine but blaming the media for punishing Baylor is not.

“Students, we should be appalled by the facts of our past that are seemingly coming to light continuously,” the paper wrote.

“Support the university, but don’t pretend that we are the victims and that Baylor has not erred,” the editorial said. The focus, it said, should be on the steps Baylor is taking to improve.

Gavin Pugh, a Baylor senior who is editor in chief of the Lariat, said the newspaper has done its own informal surveys of student opinions about the controversy.

“A lot of the sentiment was that ‘it’s a terrible thing that’s happened — my condolences to the victims, but at the same time, it doesn’t affect me directly,’” he said.

That changed, for many, in December, when Baylor’s accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, put Baylor on warning status for a year while the agency monitors the university’s compliance with three core standards.

The perceived threat to Baylor’s accreditation frustrated students who felt they were being punished for something over which they had no control.

“Baylor is by no means a cheap university and there was real fear that it could tarnish the value of our degree,” Mr. Pugh said of the accreditor’s action. “A lot of students felt that wasn’t fair, but then others would point out, How would you like to be the victim of sexual assault? None of this is fair.”

Drumbeat of Negative News

Meanwhile, the fallout over the sexual assaults has continued with relentless regularity in the past few months.

Texas lawmakers introduced a flurry of bills this legislative session aimed at curbing sexual assaults on campuses. Those efforts were largely in response to the scandal at Baylor, but would affect colleges throughout the state. Five were filed by a Baylor alumnus, Kirk Watson, a former Austin mayor and current Democratic state senator.

Among other things, his bills would require universities to provide an anonymous online reporting process for sexual assaults and prohibit administrators from punishing victims who were later found to have been drinking underage.

Baylor took another big hit last month when the Big 12 Conference announced it would withhold 25 percent of future revenue distributions from the university until an independent review verifies that it complies with conference rules and Title IX requirements.

The Fallout at Baylor

A sexual-assault controversy led the university to demote its president and take action against members of its athletics staff. Read more about how the scandal unfolded and its lingering effects.

• How Baylor’s First Female President Plans to Move Past the Sex-Assault Scandals
• Feuding Over Sex-Assault Scandal Intensifies Spotlight on Baylor
• Title IX Officers Pay a Price for Navigating a Volatile Issue
• Baylor’s New Provost Seeks to Foster a ‘Morally Significant’ Culture
• ‘Fundamental Failure’ on Sexual Assaults Brings Sweeping Change at Baylor

Meanwhile, the university is also being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and faces several lawsuits.

And last week, the Texas Rangers, the state’s top criminal-investigation agency, announced that it had opened a “preliminary investigation” into Baylor’s handling of the assaults.

Those developments would have been enough to keep Baylor in the news. But within days, Baylor’s former football coach, Mr. Briles, publicly released a letter denying any attempt to obstruct justice, and the former president, Mr. Starr, released a book that includes descriptions of his final tumultuous year at Baylor.

Questions about the extent of the sexual-assault scandal remain.

University officials have confirmed that they knew of at least 17 allegations against 19 football players since 2011. Court documents have suggested there could have been as many as 52 rapes by 31 football players between 2011 and 2014. One lawsuit alleges that female students were used to recruit football players with “an implied promise of sex” and suggests that coaches helped promote that culture.

Mr. Garland said many of those charges have not been proven. “In a lawsuit, you can say anything you want to with impunity and people will take that as fact,” he said.

The fact that early applications were up 19 percent, to more than 14,000, this year over last year is an indication that the Baylor brand is still strong, university officials say. But inevitably, given all of the coverage of the controversy, questions crop up when students are deciding where to enroll,

Those conversations are playing out on online chat sites like College Confidential, where a potential applicant this fall said she had become afraid by the recent news.

One reader responded that because of the unwanted attention the scandal drew to the school, Baylor has taken steps that probably make it safer than ever today.

Not so, chimed in a mother who said she’s relieved her daughter chose another college because she doesn’t think Baylor has taken the problem seriously enough and has “threatened and intimidated women who reported rapes and told them they would be disciplined for drinking alcohol.”

The students aren’t the only ones who have become frustrated at the seemingly endless complaints about their university.

Kim Mulkey, coach of the highly-successful Baylor women’s basketball team, told fans last month that she was tired of reading and hearing about the scandal. “If somebody’s around you and they ever say, ‘I will never send my daughter to Baylor,’ you knock them right in the face,” she said. She went on to describe Baylor as “the damn best school” in the country.

In a postgame news conference, Ms. Mulkey said the problems at Baylor are no different than those at any other college in America. “Period. Move on. Find another story to write,” she declared.

The next day, after her comments were roundly criticized, she apologized for her “poor choice of words” and said she hadn’t meant to minimize the impact the sexual assaults had had on victims.

Among faculty members, there is “a sense of weariness” about the constant drip of information, said Byron Newberry, a professor of mechanical engineering and chair of the Faculty Senate.

Still, he said, he doesn’t believe the scandal has hurt student or faculty recruiting. “We have three searches going on in my department, and they’re all going well,” he said.

“I haven’t heard any specific anecdotes about people declining to come here because what’s been in the news.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.