The lawsuit, filed by a woman identified as Elizabeth Doe, alleges there were 52 “acts of rape” committed by Baylor football player from 2011 to 2014. Doe says she was gang-raped by [two football players] on April 18, 2013. According to Doe, the school did not move to investigate or discipline the players, instead offering to “pay for her education in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement.”
Three players, and you get a stipend too.
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Ouch. National reaction not very nice.
What if Baylor gets the death penalty? What’s it got left? A stupendously hypocritical Christianity, and the ruins of a university.
January 28th, 2017 at 8:39AM
Will this be the one occasion in history in which Southern Baptists are against the death penalty?
January 28th, 2017 at 9:02AM
Unfortunately, I’m not sure Baylor’s behavior is actually all that hypocritical. I don’t wish to paint with too broad a brush, but there is a strain in some elements of Christian conservatism that very much buys into the Madonna/whore dichotomy. After all, until recently, this university was led by a man who gratuitously humiliated a young woman, Monica Lewinsky, in support of his self-righteous crusade against a certain bawdy ex-president. (Say what you will about the investigation, but there was no need to include, for example, the cigar story in the final report; it added nothing probative to the case. Rather, it was inserted, as it were, to embarrass and delegitimize Bill Clinton. I doubt Starr even cared how these unnecessary revelations would scar Lewinsky. After all, what kind of woman would expose her thong to a man 20 years her senior?) I could certainly see many of Baylor’s supporters thinking, “No Good Girls were harmed in this story.” Now, I am not suggesting that they’re ok with gang rape. But I think many of them were comfortable with the idea that, given how much was at stake (football glory), there was nothing wrong with letting a flock of loose women service their recruits and star athletes. And that attitude created a sense of entitlement that convinced certain violent and morally deficient players that any woman who somehow fell into the orbit of the athletic program was theirs for the taking. I’m sure many people at Baylor are just as horrified about all of this as we are. But more than a few of the obnoxiously self-righteous have probably gone soul-searching and come up empty.
January 28th, 2017 at 9:53AM
TAFKAU: Ain’t it the truth.
You can see how Baylor appears to have believed that it had a system of tacitly sanctioned rape and prostitution under spiritual as well as legal control.
As you suggest, in the context of its internal moral code, there was no hypocrisy involved, since it’s our duty to condemn loose women who tempt lustful men (much of the world deals with this problem by sticking women under burqas). In the eyes of the larger ungodly society, however, it does seem a bit… questionable.
January 29th, 2017 at 12:52PM
baylor opened a 266 million dollar football stadium a few years ago. it’ll be decades before the bonds are paid. if the football team gets the way overdue death penalty, then it’ll probably crush the academic side, as well. so what’s a few rapes when you’ve got debt to service…..