OT: 12 Things You Should Know About Ken Starr's Baylor Rape Scandal (a good synopsis)
I know this has been addressed ad nauseam, but I thought this was a very good overview with breath and depth that I've not read before while being easy to read and concise.
With the lingering domestic issues on many campuses I thought it still worthwhile to post.
http://blogs.alternet.org/education/12-things-you-should-know-about-ken…
I was out of the loop for a bit there, and when I got back, Armageddon had apparently hit Baylor and I had no clue why. The guys on Reddit didn't want to explain to me what had happened.
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What I find interesting is that Baylor fans are acting exactly like Penn St fans. I checked out few of their boards and majority are upset that Briles is gone. They all blame the administrators and argue that Briles did what he was supposed to do (refer to administration), how great a guy he is and point to other players who turned out fine.
There is lack of sympathy for the victims (there is a lot of slutshaming), and most believe that Briles is the true victim in this situation.
There are also posts discussing why Baylor should bother firing Briles since they are going to get bad press either way. At least keeping Briles, they would have a good football team.
I am thinking this is the normal response by all football fans and not just PSU.
This makes me incredibly sad...
Have they started referring to the Pepper Hamilton report as a vast conspiracy the way PSU fans do to the Freeh report?
Pretty much. But from the opposite side. They talk about how the report is nothing but allegations with no details and no proven facts. They don't think the university should do anything until the full report is published. But that is never going to happen since this is a private university.
So they think the university is choosing to just publicize the bad parts of the report while repressing the parts that will totally exonerate the school?
It really shouldn't be that surprising anymore. I think this is pretty much the norm and expected reaction for pretty much all of the power program fan bases. The Solid Verbal podcast had a good bit on it, where you have all of these fervent CFB fan bases that love and outright worship their team and head coach WAY more than any other sport. Its not even close. Every fan base (ours included) has a "my coach is clean and doing things THE RIGHT WAY, but every other coach is a dick and cheating" mentality.
I mean, just take the reaction of Michigan's fan base to the satellite camp outcry. It ain't a whole lot different. Completely different subject matters, but the general reaction is the same -- our guy just loves the game and football, and all of these other guys are cheaters and lazy and jerks and their the real bad guys here.
And I could 100% guarantee if Harbaugh, or any highly successful Michigan coach were accussed of doing something very wrong you'd have the same subset of fans like PSU or Baylor does out there defending the actions and blaming it on someone else.
Its shitty, but that's the ugly reality of college football right now.
I finally came to the same conclusion.
I always thought if something like this happened at Michigan, we would handle it "the right way". I don't believe that any more. And I disagree that it will be a subset, the majority will circle the wagon.
The tribal mentality built in to our instinct over millions of years is a hard thing to overcome. To think that you are above it all is delusional.
this board, with it's (fun but admittedly comprehensive) harbaugh mania, would be able to be impartial if something god awful like this were to ever happen.
I spent some time on OurDailyBears yesterday and read a pretty long thread largely consisting of people wondering why none of the Regents had fallen on their swords along with Starr and Briles and the rest. Also a lot of people arguing, with reasonable points on both sides, about whether the full report should be released (though it's not clear that it even exists in any formal sense). There's been very little there of what you describe, especially since the PH findings of fact came out.
Here are just a few samples...
Yep, BOR screwed up the university by a 16-14 vote
BU failed those raped so badly! (this was so sad...)
I was reading threads just after the coach got fired after the report. It was pretty awful.
Two different blogs, two completely different communities of commenters.
Read a bit at ODB--it might wash out some of the bad taste. Not everyone associated with that school is a nutjob.
I almost vomited after reading the line about a Baylor official telling a sexual assualt victim to "hope for the best" when her restraining order request was not considered by the university.
Oh boy - this is really bad. Ken Starr is a first class douche cannon. When the full report comes out, I think the uproar against Baylor will greatly intensify as it did Ray Rice when the video came out.
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This kind of evil shit can happen anywhere, but it's the response by those in charge, by those entrusted to look out for the students, that really makes the difference. In that regard, Baylor failed miserably.
And, new head coach Jim Grobe announced in a press conference yesterday afternoon that he is keeping the rest of the football staff--no one else has been dismissed.
Amazing that Baylor is retaining Art Briles' son, offensive coordinator Kendal Briles, and son-in-law Jeff Lebby, the team's passing game coordinator.
I have to admit, Grobe was an excellent hire for them.
The man generally knows what he is doing. Talked to a couple of Wake Forrest assistant coaches a few years ago at the coaches convention- Grobe inspires tremendous loyalty in his coaches and players.
He may well be an excellent hire. Time will tell. I thought his press conference on Friday was a disaster, but of course almost nobody saw or will ever see it. Even the few news stories about it seemed to go mostly unnoticed. Friday was a good choice for the timing.
His prepared, opening statement was fine and hit all the right notes, but his answers to questions afterwards left a lot to be desired, at least for anybody concerned about the rapes and sexual assaults. I know he is the football coach, and in normal circumstances the football team, in isolation from the rest of the university, should be the primary focus, but these are not normal circumstances for Baylor. To me his expressed concern about retaining continuity for the sake of the players fell flat. I hope he has a better and more detailed answer as to why the entire coaching staff will be retained as well.
It would seem that not only should many of the officials be fired, but criminial charges should be pursued for any that impeded investigations.
Shut them down. You can also argue there should be criminal charges against Starr (what a freaking hypocrite), Briles, and more of that administration.
This was (unfortunately) a good read. Just too many things to comment on. The one player raping 6 is obviously absurd. But I also am dumbfounded that Starr just said those things about Briles as recent as Wednesday. What. In. The. Fuck?
I hope every girl that was raped/assaulted that has not come forward now feels empowered to come forward. And I hope they sue the crap out of every piece of this trashy tale and are awarded a lot of $$$. Maybe Baylor can find a few dollars from their recent stadium fundraisers to settle the lawsuits, that would be ironic.
...was not six years ago, and the coverup wasn't over the murder, it was the coach trying to hide the fact that he'd been handing cash to the victim.
... this interview should really make people angry. Fuck him and Merrie Speith. Pieces of shit.
I'm an athiest, but times like this, I really hope I'm wrong, so these scum can rot in an eternal hell.
Everybody on this board needs to watch this video.
Everyone in the US should watch this video. That piece of garbage should be a total pariah, but he'll still find lucrative work somewhere. Because money.
How does a former high-level prosecuter not know how to answer that question "right" the first time?! Granted, he is a scum bag who has covered up rape in favor of football, but you would at least think he had the chops to do an interview.
Here's the thing I don't get about Baylor and Tennessee. You would think that these programs would have Sexual Assault Prvention and Awareness* courses for their players and would want to make an example of players who commit sexual assualt. Part of the mission of these coaches is to create upstanding men. Even if you lose one or two good players, you end up with a positive atmosphere with quality people. I don't get the motivation for covering up. You won't get sanctioned for taking the appropriate actions and people will respect you. Are these guys actually for rape? It doesn't make sense.
*Does SAPAC still exist at Michigan?
They're against extramarital sex. These women were by their own admission sexually active, they aren't married, and if the boys they hang out with can't control themselves, who's fault is that?
I suppose it's easy to forget that we still have people around that think like this, and I can see how it might be hard to believe that a group of them is in charge of a major university and controls the university's system for dealing with sexual assault complaints. But we do, and they are.
Never mind sex--we're talking about a campus where just a couple of decades ago dancing was a major code-of-conduct violation.
Also, these women were probably drinking and listening to sinful music, and that pretty much proves they were asking for it. Jesus never drank alcoholic beverages ( the bible translators all got it wrong when they used the word wine; others might have been drinking wine, but Jesus was drinking unfermented grape juice!)
That is an awful, awful human being.
that's damning. I'm speechless.
The way Starr's crisis manager called for do-overs, and just seemed to take for granted the original answers would be edited out gave me pause. How many news outlets would simply re-edit the final interview, leaving out the "practice answers", just to maintain access to celebs and newsmakers? (The answer is probably: lots)
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Because they, like a lot of the press, are condensing the story.
On the one hand there's the school's general response to sexual assault complaints, regardless of who the complaints were against. Starr's fully culpable there and it wouldn't be hard to make the case, though it's hard to make the case that money was the motivator. I think the ultimate cause was the (to me bizarre) set of opinions these clowns have about sex and rape, and about real human relationships in a community of 20-year-olds. The students themselves know better and they've been asking for change for a while now.
And then there's the story they're actually interested in, centered on Briles and the football program. There's not much if anything to directly tie Starr to the football program's "investigations" or their police-department contacts or their thoroughly inappropriate communications with victims and their families...except that it's a lot less likely they could have gotten away with it all for so long at a school that actually cared about the victims.
(Where by "school" I mean administrators and regents.)