Baylor Faces Rising Calls for Transparency in Sexual-Assault Scandal

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Hundreds of Baylor University alumni, donors, and supporters met near the campus this week to demand that the Board of Regents divulge more information about the sexual-assault scandal they say has tarnished the university’s reputation.

The meeting was organized by a recently formed nonprofit group, Bears for Leadership Reform, that has accused the board of being too secretive and of micromanaging university matters.

The group called on the board to turn over any written materials from the law firm Pepper Hamilton’s investigation of the scandal. Without that, the group’s leaders said, they have no way to understand why the board took the actions it did, which included firing the head football coach, Art Briles, and demoting the president, Kenneth W. Starr. Mr. Starr and Baylor’s athletic director, Ian McCaw, later resigned.

Baylor officials have said no written report exists because it would have taken the firm several months to complete it, and they wanted to move ahead with fixing the problems. If that’s the case, the group said, they want to see any notes the regents took during the law firm’s oral presentation as well as minutes of their meetings.

The university is being sued by more than a dozen former students who say that Baylor failed to act on their complaints that they had been sexually abused.

In May a summary of Pepper Hamilton’s findings said that Baylor had violated the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX and that the football program had failed to hold players accountable for their misconduct.

Football players were involved in 10 percent of the Title IX complaints from 2011 to 2015, but those cases have received the most national attention. Baylor officials recently revealed that 17 women accused 19 different football players of domestic violence or sexual assault during that time, four involving alleged gang rapes.

‘A Christian University’

Among the directors of the new nonprofit group is a former Texas governor, Mark W. White. What happened to his alma mater “is embarrassing, unnecessary, and didn’t have to happen,” he said in an interview.

“A Christian university shouldn’t have to be told by the federal government how to be Christian,” Mr. White said, referring to the Education Department’s investigation of possible Title IX violations at Baylor. “When a young girl is sexually abused in any way, you don’t turn her away. You treat her like she was your daughter.”

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
• At Baylor, a Scandal’s Constant Drip Means a Relentless Spotlight
• Feuding Over Sex-Assault Scandal Intensifies Spotlight on Baylor

The Board of Regents, he charged, holds too many secret meetings and didn’t ask enough questions as the sexual-assault controversy swirled around it.

“It all boils down to leadership, and we’ve had a self-confessed failure of leadership,” Mr. White said.

A Baylor spokeswoman, Lori Fogleman, said in an email to The Chronicle that university officials support the new group’s stated mission, which “is about women who have been sexually assaulted on this campus” and the need to be transparent and accountable. Administrators and regents “look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue about meaningful reform,” she wrote.

The group’s meeting came at a time of renewed scrutiny over the role that Baylor’s fired football coach, Mr. Briles, played in the scandal that led to his dismissal last spring.

Several of the prominent alumni and donors who spoke at the meeting have close ties to the football program, including the donors for whom Baylor’s football field and stadium are named. While some of the members continue to support the fired coach, “This is not about football or Art Briles,” a hired spokeswoman for the group, Julie Hillrichs, said. “This is about sexual-assault victims who were harmed by the actions of the university and its leadership.”

But some Baylor alumni, students, and supporters aren’t ready to put the Briles controversy to rest.

Last week Baylor’s assistant football coaches released a statement on Twitter disputing the Board of Regents’ assertion that Mr. Briles knew about an alleged gang rape by players but failed to report it to the appropriate authorities. Mr. Briles’s son, Kendal Briles, is the team’s offensive coordinator and was among the coaches signing the statement.

And at a game against Baylor’s archrival, Texas Christian University, fans lined up to buy and wear T-shirts that read "#CAB,” for Coach Art Briles.

Ernest H. Cannon, a lawyer for Mr. Briles, has accused the regents of heaping too much blame on the coach for a campuswide failure to enforce Baylor’s Title IX policy. Mr. Cannon has not returned telephone calls over the past several days.

Briles Won’t Be Back

On Thursday the chairman of the Board of Regents, Ronald Murff, posted a statement online making it clear that while Mr. Briles had been a “brilliant and successful” coach, he was not coming back.

“This change in leadership was not based on any single incident, but on the weight of the information presented to us and a pattern of poor decisions over a range of disciplinary issues, not just sexual assault,” Mr. Murff wrote.

The past few months have been trying, Mr. Murff went on, and “emotions are running high.” He described what he called sweeping changes in how the university handles sexual-assault complaints that he said would ensure that Baylor students “will never again have to wonder whether Baylor will stand with them and support them if they are victimized in any way.”

His comments appeared on a website that university officials said they had set up to keep everyone at Baylor informed about the steps the university was taking to improve its responses to sexual-violence complaints. The site was initially called “The Truth” and later renamed “The Facts.”

Rape survivors and activists who feel that Mr. Briles allowed a culture of violence and disrespect toward women to continue are frustrated that some fans and alumni remain loyal to him.

Among the activists is Brenda Tracy, who said she was gang-raped by four men, including two Oregon State University football players, in 1998. She has become an activist for rape survivors and spoke to Baylor’s football team this year.

After seeing the T-shirts and the other shows of support for Mr. Briles, she called on Baylor to suspend the rest of its football season. That prompted some fans to respond with vulgar tweets, which she said wouldn’t deter her from speaking out.

A former regent, Emily Tinsley, told the group she was worried about the impact the scandal could have on Baylor’s financial health.

“Even if only half of what they tell me is true,” she said, “we should be frightened to the core.”

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.