According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the NCAA has notified Baylor U. that it will be charged with a “lack of institutional control” over athletics, the most serious violation a college can commit.LM Otero, AP Images
Tensions at embattled Baylor University ratcheted up this week as the institution faced new public-relations hits related to its leadership and its vast sexual-assault scandal, which has dragged on for more than two years.
Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for less than $10/month.
Don’t have an account? Sign up now.
A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.
If you need assistance, please contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com.
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the NCAA has notified Baylor U. that it will be charged with a “lack of institutional control” over athletics, the most serious violation a college can commit.LM Otero, AP Images
Tensions at embattled Baylor University ratcheted up this week as the institution faced new public-relations hits related to its leadership and its vast sexual-assault scandal, which has dragged on for more than two years.
Here’s what you need to know:
A former board chair allegedly used the N-word to describe black football players.
Richard Willis, a former chair of Baylor’s Board of Regents, made the offensive comment during a 2014 trip to Mexico, according to an affidavit filed in a federal district court in Texas on Tuesday. Greg Klepper, a local businessman, said Willis had “made a statement that the reason Baylor has ‘such good [N-word] football players’ was because ‘we have the best blond-haired, blue-eyed pussy in the State of Texas.’”
The affidavit was made public as part of a Title IX lawsuit against Baylor in which 10 women say the university mishandled their sexual-assault complaints.
ADVERTISEMENT
Willis, who served as chair from 2012 to 2016 and who remained a board member until last year, led the board when an outside investigation into Baylor’s response to sexual assault, conducted by the law firm Pepper Hamilton, found widespread shortcomings. He also presided over the decisions to demote Kenneth W. Starr, the president, and fire Art Briles, the football coach.
During the 2014 trip, Willis also “talked repeatedly about his power at Baylor, how any major decision had to go through him, and how President Ken Starr could not do anything without Mr. Willis’s approval,” according to Klepper’s affidavit. Willis also made insulting comments about women, including Starr’s wife. Another person who was present confirmed Willis’s racist and sexist comments in a declaration that was also filed in court on Tuesday.
Linda A. Livingstone, Baylor’s president, wrote in a letter to the campus that the institution had been “actively investigating” the claims. Klepper’s lawyers say they have a recording of the conversation, she added, and the university has filed a subpoena to obtain it.
Willis denied the allegations in a statement to KWTX, a local television station, saying he had “never used any of the reprehensible words.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Baylor has received a formal notice of allegations from the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Shortly after the university’s investigation into Willis was made public, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that the NCAA had concluded its investigation into the scandal and sent a letter containing a notice of potential wrongdoing to Baylor.
Briles, the football coach who was fired in 2016 amid claims that he had mishandled sexual-assault reports against his players, is among those implicated in the association’s letter.
According to the newspaper, the allegations against Briles are in the category of “head-coach responsibility: failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance.” The association also alleged that Baylor had exhibited a “lack of institutional control.” That’s the most serious NCAA violation a college can commit, and could lead the association to shut down a sports program, a punishment known as the “death penalty.” The sanction has rarely been used.
The NCAA has been investigating Baylor since at least June 2017. A Baylor spokeswoman told The Chronicle in an email: “Out of respect for the NCAA guidelines and to preserve the integrity of the investigation, we are unable to discuss this matter publicly.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Baylor’s former Title IX coordinator detailed how university officials had actively tried to prevent her from doing her job.
Patty Crawford, who oversaw the university’s handling of sexual-misconduct prevention and response from 2014 to 2016, said several board members, administrators, and powerful faculty members didn’t see Title IX compliance as a priority; some were opposed to the federal gender-equity law on religious grounds.
Crawford recounted her experience in an August deposition taken by lawyers for the 10 women who are suing Baylor. Parts of the deposition were made public in a Tuesday court filing. The lawyers wrote in the filing that the central figure in that anti-Title IX group was Willis, the former board chair.
It just was a pattern of things — we don’t want things documented.
Officials stonewalled Crawford’s efforts to negotiate a relationship with the local police department, she said, and to put in place a case-management system that would more easily track sexual-misconduct complaints. They discouraged her from maintaining “formal records of Title IX-related things other than anything that went through judicial hearing,” she said.
ADVERTISEMENT
“It just was a pattern of things — we don’t want things documented,” she said. “And it makes the Title IX coordinator’s job very difficult.”
Crawford also said she had expressed concerns about the football program’s use of scantily clad female students to help recruit high-school players, describing the group as “40 beautiful women in mini-shorts, tight mini-shorts, and polos and cowboy boots” who had to “make sure that they had a good time.” But she said her concerns weren’t taken seriously.
Those are far from the only recent developments in the Baylor scandal.
Other prominent players in Baylor’s scandal have spoken out in recent weeks through a smattering of court filings. Lawyers for Briles, the former football coach, said that he had always handled sexual-misconduct complaints properly and that the university’s board had blamed him to deflect attention from other problems at the university.
Phillip W. Stewart, a current board member, said in a deposition that the findings of the 2016 Pepper Hamilton investigation had been “orchestrated” and “staged to achieve [the] desired results” of punishing Starr, Briles, and Ian McCaw, then the athletics director. Stewart said that he had dissented from the board’s decisions to take those personnel actions.
ADVERTISEMENT
McCaw made similar comments in an earlier deposition, saying a handful of board members and campus officials had concocted a plan to ensure that Baylor’s football team would take the fall for the university’s sexual-assault problems.
Annual tax forms filed by Baylor showed that the university’s legal spending increased nearly fourfold in one year, from $2.8 million to $11 million, as the scandal broke.
Baylor has repeatedly expressed confidence in the Pepper Hamilton investigation, whose report has never been made public, and in the board’s decision to demote Starr and fire Briles.
Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.