Baylor’s athletic department is taking rightful heat for their response to various sexual assault scandals within the football program.
Their mishandling of those reports has already led to the removal of Art Briles, as well as athletic director Ian McCaw. In the aftermath, the depths of Baylor’s seemingly unconscionable lack of oversight have come to light.
More has come up, as on Friday Baylor released a statement on the timeline of the reporting of Briles had denied knowing of a reported gang-rape by a female student-athlete.
Via an Associated Press report:
The student-athlete informed her head coach in April 2013 that she had been assaulted a year earlier and provided the names of the football players, university officials told The Dallas Morning News (http://bit.ly/2ftNXrC ) in a statement Friday.
The university said the coach reported the matter to Briles, former athletic director Ian McCaw and a sports administrator. But no one reported it to the university’s office of Judicial Affairs, as required by federal law, according to the statement.
Briles and McCaw have acknowledged they did not report it to Judicial Affairs, the university said. Baylor officials said McCaw, who could not be reached for comment, initially denied having any knowledge of the student-athlete’s allegation, but later admitted the woman’s head coach had told him.
“The internal system of discipline operated by (Briles) was not in line with the university’s mission and obligations,” Baylor regents chairman Ron Murff told the newspaper. “To Art’s credit, he took responsibility for this in discussions with the Board of Regents and in a national media interview.”
This is important for a few reasons, some more obvious than others. Firstly, no one bothered to report the assault allegations to law enforcement or the appropriate on-campus office, which is directly in conflict with the what those who have reporting responsibilities are supposed to do. That’s why they’re called “reporting responsibilities”, it’s not that hard.
That’s in line with the various other examples of Baylor’s seemingly systemic issues with covering up sexual assaults and other instances of domestic violence or violence against women.
And of course there’s the fact that this statement contrasts sharply with what Baylor assistant coaches, including Art’s son, Kendal, told the media recently.
And despite all of these stories, the NCAA will apparently not be punishing Baylor to the same extent they did Penn State, despite the surface similarities of the situations. And despite the fact that Baylor does not have a clean athletic department history, perhaps most memorably when Dave Bliss attempted to cover up NCAA violations in the wake of one of his players murdering a teammate by painting the murder victim as a drug dealer.
Baylor was defeated on Saturday at Oklahoma, if you can read all of that and still care about how their team is doing. And if you can, congratulations, you must be on the Baylor Board of Regents.
[AP]
