By Professor
Doom
One of the most infuriating things about
higher education is how, when the people at the top are exposed, there are no
criminal charges, and they get huge bonuses, even when they resign their
positions. Time and again we hand millions over to these “leaders” in higher
education, and this situation is so common that it barely makes the news
anymore…but I feel the need to highlight it all the same.
--yep, that Ken Starr. It’s weird how
political lawyers end up as Poo Bahs.
Baylor is a decent enough sized university, with some 17,000 students and a
billion dollar endowment. I doubt most readers have even heard of it, beyond
their football program. Football is something of a blight on higher education
for many reasons, not least of which is it’s often responsible for academic and
sex scandals. Football also sucks up huge amounts of that student loan money
despite football having little impact on anyone’s education, but today it’s
about the sex scandals.
The coach (Art Briles) and Starr didn’t
really participate in the scandal directly, which involved sexual assaults by
football players. The scandal mostly involved a serial rapist on the football
team, with enough victims to generate a 20 year prison sentence, as well as a
few other players engaging in rape. Horrible, of course, but let’s talk about
the scandal leading to the resignations of the Poo Bah and end of the coach of
the university.
I’ll say it again later, but I want to
emphasize: they lost their jobs under a huge cloud. This netted them nearly 20 million dollars in golden parachute money. Ken
Starr actually resigned, quit the position, and still received $4.5 million for
his role in the scandal. By all means, if any of my gentle readers know of any
other jobs where you can quit and receive millions of dollars for doing so,
please use the contact form to let me know how I can apply for it so I can
change careers immediately. You needn’t worry I’ll hold the position long, of
course.
So how were these “leaders” involved in
the scandal? Well, quirks in our laws allow universities considerable leeway in
how to investigate allegations of criminal behavior, at least if they happen on
campus. So, when the coach and Poo Bah were presented with the knowledge of a
football player raping kids on their campus, they did what any responsible
leader in higher education, the best we can find to judge by their pay, would
do: they covered it up and protected the football player. There’s no reason to
let a raped female negatively impact the team’s record, after all.
In a report released by Sue Ambrose and David Tarrant of the Dallas Morning News, some within
the Baylor community criticize Starr for being silent about rape and sexual
offenses on school grounds and for how the school puts football above crime
victims.
The allegations of cover-up go on for
years, and I’ve only included a snippet above…interested readers can see a timeline
here, but there’s
enough of a pattern over a long enough period of time that it’s hard to believe
the coach and Poo Bah didn’t know what was going on and thus had no reason to
take steps to protect their other students at least a little from the kind of
people they had on their football team.
Well, one more snippet from this
extensive timeline:
…who sent messages attacking Tracy.[101] The same
day, Randy Cross, a College Football Hall of Fame inductee,
voices his disgust for the scandal. He said, "I thought (the NCAA) should
have stepped in (and punished Baylor for the sexual-assault scandal). I thought
Art Briles should have gotten a show-cause. This whole idea that he can be back
in coaching, I think, is an embarrassment. It’s not only that; it’s a travesty
to those 17 women that have accused these kids of doing what they did."[102]
Hey, I get that some people really love
their college football, and that this is the justification our leaders use for
covering up crime by the football players…but honest, higher education isn’t
supposed to be about protecting rapists and thugs. Our leaders think
differently, of course.
All the leaders in higher education care
about is getting the money, the huge sums of money from the student loan scam
being a primary source. Only accredited schools can get that money, and so
perhaps the accreditor can step in here and say “look, protecting rapists and
thugs on your campus should be discouraged, and so we’ll do something about
that.” Any luck with that?
Accrediting committee recommends
no punishment for Baylor over sexual assault scandal
The reader might find this shocking, but
there are no prescribed penalties for violating any aspect of accreditation. My
blog has highlighted this time and again, of course, but bottom line this is
why our leaders honestly don’t care about protecting rapists and thugs on their
campus. Accreditation doesn’t care, they just want the checks, too.
Briles apologizes for his part in the school’s scandal,
saying "I made mistakes. I did wrong, but I'm not doing this trying to
make myself feel better for apologizing. I understand I made some mistakes.
There was some bad things that went on under my watch. I was the captain of
this ship. The captain of the ship goes down with it." [81]
----to clarify, he means “the captain of the ship goes down with
a huge golden parachute,” at the risk of mixing metaphors for the sake of
honesty.
Now, to be fair, the coach’s $15 million
payout wasn’t due to a resignation, it was to cover the rest of his contract.
One might hope that there’s a “for cause” clause in that contract, however. We
really, really, need to ask why “the best” people in higher education aren’t
smart enough to put prudent clauses in their contracts so they can fire people
for protecting thugs and rapists, without awarding millions of dollars like
this.
“…part
of widespread leadership
changes at
Baylor following the scandal. Board of Regents chair Richard Willis said in the
May 2016 announcement the school was "horrified" by findings from an
independent review handled by the Law Firm of Pepper Hamilton…”
--the
review has, so far, not been released to the public. Of course.
We need to
understand there’s a whole infrastructure, a completely corrupted
infrastructure, which is allowing these sorts of scandals to be everyday events
on campus, to take place over a decade or more before any of it comes to light.
This isn’t just about the head coach and the Poo Bah, any more than it’s about
“a few bad apples” on the football team.
Make all the
leadership changes you want, as long as they’re paid millions for covering up
horrible crimes, it won’t make any difference as to what the leaders will do
when confronted with horrible crimes.
Grobe…states that Baylor’s issues are common to every school.
--Grobe is another football coach at Baylor.
Moreover, we need
to understand that as long as the people at the top are not penalized, are
actually rewarded with millions of dollars for covering up the scandal, and
would get absolutely nothing for ripping out the corrupted infrastructure,
these scandals will happen, and as the coach hints at above, are almost
certainly in progress at many other schools.
In the meantime,
perhaps we could stop the student loan money going to at least the football
schools? I mean, if football really is so important that rape is acceptable
behavior, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind giving up all that money…
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