With Ken Starr’s Future in Doubt, Baylor Alumni Come to His Defense

Reports that Baylor University’s president, Kenneth W. Starr, is being forced to resign for failing to respond adequately to a string of sexual assaults on his campus prompted more than a thousand people on Wednesday to rally to his defense online.

“We as Baylor constituents love and support our president, Judge Ken Starr,” reads the petition, which had attracted more than 1,500 signatures by Wednesday evening. “Over the past six years, Judge Starr has ushered in a new era of success. We believe he will continue to do so going forward in his current role.”

The petition was started by a 2009 Baylor graduate who believes the Board of Regents is using the president as a scapegoat as it seeks to contain a controversy that has tarnished the reputation of the world’s largest Baptist university.

Two football players have been convicted of a handful of rapes. Meanwhile, a blogger’s moving account of her rape by a fellow student and what she saw as the administration’s failure to support her prompted several other women to come forward with similar reports.

The petition comes at a time when Mr. Starr’s status is uncertain.

A former Faculty Senate president asserted that “very reliable sources” have said the board will ask Mr. Starr to step down as president but remain in the more ceremonial role of chancellor.

“It is obvious that the Baylor faculty holds Judge Starr in very high regard,” Jim H. Patton, a professor of neuroscience, psychology, and biomedical studies, wrote in an email.

Two years ago, he said, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution thanking Mr. Starr for his “effective leadership and his value of shared governance.”

The president, who has obtained legal counsel, is also said to be under consideration for a position in Baylor’s law school, where he holds a tenured faculty position.

Too Little Information

But feelings about the president are mixed. Laura E. Seay, a 2000 graduate of Baylor who wrote an open letter criticizing Baylor’s response to sexual-assault complaints, called the petition “misguided.”

“It misses the fact that we do not have full information about how sexual-assault cases were handled or mishandled under Starr’s leadership, that we have numerous accounts of serious and widespread errors made by multiple administrators under his supervision and on his watch, and that the sexual-assault problem at Baylor goes far beyond the well-publicized cases allegedly involving football players,” Ms. Seay, who is now an assistant professor of government at Colby College, wrote in an email.

“It is well within the realm of possibility that Starr bears responsibility for these errors, for exposing Baylor to lawsuits, and, most importantly, for failing so many survivors as they sought help and justice,” she wrote. “I would not advise anyone to sign this petition until we have the facts.”

Baylor officials have refused to confirm reports that circulated this week saying the regents had already fired the president. They said the regents are continuing to review the findings of a Philadelphia law firm, Pepper Hamilton LLC, that investigated Baylor’s handling of sexual-assault complaints and recently briefed the regents on its findings.

The petition, which supporters were circulating on Twitter using the hashtag #keepken, cited reports that said Mr. Starr hadn’t been permitted to review the Pepper Hamilton findings. A campus spokeswoman did not respond to an email requesting confirmation.

‘Rumor and Innuendo’

Vincent Harris, the Baylor graduate who started the petition, said that if in fact the board moves ahead with reported plans to fire the president or force his resignation, it would be blaming Mr. Starr for things that were outside his control.

“Why are we firing a man when there’s no shred of evidence that he looked the other way?” Mr. Harris asked in an interview on Wednesday. “All we have is rumor and innuendo.”

Mr. Harris founded and runs a media group that has worked on the campaigns of a number of Republican politicians, including the former Texas governor Rick Perry, the former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich, and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who recently dropped his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. He said he has deep family ties to Baylor and once taught a political-science class there as a visiting faculty member.

When Mr. Starr took office, in 2010, “there was a lot of discord among faculty and alumni, and President Starr has quietly and meticulously calmed the seas,” Mr. Harris said.

Meanwhile, the fate of the university’s football coach, Art Briles, and its athletics director, Ian McCaw, remained unclear on Wednesday, with some alumni and students questioning whether firing the president, but not those closest to the players found guilty of raping students, would send the wrong message about the university’s priorities.

Jack Stripling contributed to this report.

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.