Apparently, transparency is no longer such a four-letter word in Waco. Somewhat.
Citing a brief filed in court Friday by attorneys representing Baylor, the Waco Tribune is reporting that “[g]eneral information behind every alleged sexual assault reported to Baylor University since 2003 will soon be released by the school.” The university is currently in the process of putting together spreadsheets that will shed light on the incidents over the last decade and a half.
Per the Tribune, below are the parameters of the information that will be included in the spreadsheets.
- Date of alleged assault
- Date alleged assault was reported to Baylor employee
- Whether alleged victim was Baylor student
- Gender of alleged victim
- Gender of alleged assailant
- Whether Baylor knew the identity of alleged victim
- Whether Baylor knew the identity of alleged assailant
- Whether alleged victim asked Baylor to keep the alleged assailant’s identity confidential
- Location of alleged assault
- How Baylor learned of alleged assault
- Specific offices or type of Baylor personnel who were made aware of alleged assault
- Disposition of complaint
Information that appears will be noticeably absent? Whether or not the assailants were Bears football players at the time..
In mid-May of this year, BU was served notice that it is being sued by a former BU volleyball player, only identified as “Jane Doe,” who claims that she was gang-raped by as many as eight then-Bears football players in 2012. That was at least the seventh Federal Title IX lawsuit filed in connection to the sexual assault scandal that rocked the university and cost several high-profile officials their jobs, including head football coach Art Briles, nearly a year ago.
That latest filing came a little over two months after the Texas Rangers confirmed that it had commenced a preliminary investigation centered on how the university, the football program and campus police handled allegations of sexual assault made against student-athletes, most notably members of the football team. The confirmation of that probe came a little over a month after details in one of the handful of federal lawsuits the university is facing emerged, with that suit alleging 31 Bears football players had committed 52 acts of rape over a period of four years beginning in 2011; in late March, BU sought to have that suit dismissed.
Outside of the federal lawsuits and Department of Education Title IX investigation, two former Bears football players have been convicted of sexual assault that were committed while they were members of the football team. Several other players were accused of committing either sexual assault or violence — or both — while playing for Briles.
None of Briles’ assistants were dismissed along with the head coach as a result of the scandal even as an independent review into the football program’s handling of sexual assault accusations showed that “members of the Baylor coaching staff chose not to report incidents of sexual violence involving football players, [instead] meeting directly with those filing complaints of sexual abuse and handling their own investigations outside of university policy to discredit the complainants, thus denying them the right to a fair investigation by the university.”
In early February of this year, the Big 12 announced that it will withhold 25 percent of future revenue payments to BU, only releasing the monies “pending the outcome of third-party verification review of required changes to Baylor’s athletics procedures and to institutional governance of its intercollegiate athletics programs, among other matters.”
In the same brief filed late last week, the university again confirmed that it is the subject of “an ongoing, pending investigation” by the NCAA.
