It's from today's WSJ and specifically targets Starr and Briles, I'm pasting it because you probably need a sub to read it, and it's long but holy crap those two guys were dirtballs.
In 2011, Baylor University football star Tevin Elliott was suspended from school for academic misconduct, but was reinstated after university president Kenneth Starr intervened on his behalf.
“Keep riding that white horse,” Baylor football coach Art Briles wrote in an appreciative email to Starr, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Elliott soon faced more serious problems. In 2014, he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison after a trial in which four Baylor students testified that he sexually assaulted them. Three of those incidents took place after his reinstatement in August 2011. The other alleged assault occurred in 2009 but the victim testified she kept the incident a secret until she learned the player was accused of assaulting other women.
Elliott’s reprieve from Starr, which hasn’t been previously reported, is disclosed deep in the transcript of his trial.
Starr’s ruling was made over the objections of other administrators. The disagreement is indicative of deeper tensions that simmered between him and other Baylor officials long before the sexual-assault scandal that roiled the country’s largest Baptist university and sent one of the nation’s top college-football programs into free fall.
Messrs. Starr and Briles were fired last May following an outside investigation that described “institutional failures at every level” in addressing sexual violence on campus. Without many specifics, the report cited “significant concerns about the tone and culture within Baylor’s football program as it relates to accountability for all forms of athlete misconduct.” In October, Baylor officials told The Wall Street Journal that the investigation found 19 Baylor football players were involved in alleged incidents of domestic and sexual assaults since 2011, including four gang rapes.
The explosive allegations, however, were preceded by several years of behind-the-scenes conflict involving Starr’s leadership of the university. The backstage disputes provide a window into how a prominent former federal judge turned no-holds-barred prosecutor—best known for his controversial 1990s investigation of Bill Clinton—lost his job in part for not effectively responding to reports of sexual misconduct.
In an interview, Starr said he was never given a full explanation for his dismissal and that his intervention in the Elliott matter was the only incident he was aware of that was presented as part of the investigation’s findings. He said he threatened to resign on multiple occasions in previous years due to conflicts with the board and other administrators, but was persuaded to stay on.
“I was continually in tension with the board leadership,” he said.
His settlement with Baylor precludes him from disparaging school officials but an unrelated previous lawsuit uncovered emails in which Starr complained about micromanagement from certain board members that he said interfered with his ability to run the university.
Many Baylor alumni, as well as Briles, have raised similar complaints against the board, which they say has mismanaged the scandal. Briles’s attorney, Ernest Cannon, said he believes “there was a great deal of friction between Starr and the regents, and they saw the (investigation) as a way to get rid of him. Then they messed up and realized they had to get rid of Briles too.”
Cannon said those issues will be explored in depth as part of a lawsuit Briles filed last month alleging that four Baylor officials conspired to defame him in their comments to The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets. The Baylor officials have not commented.
Starr was involved in numerous long-running disputes with administrators and regents over his management of Baylor.
Two people familiar with the matter say Starr and the school’s board of regents were told by early 2014 that administrators on campus were concerned about a mounting number of incidents involving the football team and the perception that athletes benefited from a lower standard in disciplinary matters. While those issues didn’t involve allegations of sexual assault, there was a growing perception that football players weren’t being held accountable for bad behavior, these people said.
Starr’s management style was the focal point of other tensions as well. In 2011 and again in 2013, consultants hired by Baylor reported to board members their view that while Starr was a standout at external functions such as alumni and student relations, he was a poor administrator when it came to managing a university with an annual budget of almost half a billion dollars, according to people familiar with the matter.
In 2013, a group of senior administrators wrote a memo to the board that listed a variety of Starr’s perceived shortcomings, including a “failure to grasp the scope and scale of the complex issues facing the university,” and described the school’s leadership as “highly dysfunctional.”
Starr acknowledged that his actions often riled other administrators who thought that he occasionally coddled student athletes.
He also said that he is in favor of full transparency regarding Baylor’s probe, and that he is skeptical of some of the allegations released thus far.
“I personally have doubts that there were gang rapes,” he said.
Baylor boomed during most of Starr’s leadership: applications soared, fundraising hit new records and many of the school’s athletic teams— including football—enjoyed unprecedented success. After taking over in 2010, he was instantly popular among alumni and faculty. He instilled a student-friendly management-style, asking that students call him Uncle Ken.
His philosophy extended to student discipline. In an interview, Starr said he felt the student-led judiciary process often resulted in overly harsh punishments and that he “believed in second chances” for troubled kids. In particular, he said, he felt that athletes who came from underprivileged backgrounds were often treated in a “sacrificial” manner by universities and that he tried to find ways to keep them in school.
“This was my moral view of what the president of the university does,” he said.
Starr’s approach to discipline meshed with Briles. In Briles’ 2014 autobiography, “Beating Goliath,” the coach wrote about being in “the kid-saving business” and was critical of other schools who he said ran off players at the first sign of problems.
The Elliott case put that ethos to test. One person familiar with the matter said Elliott’s suspension came after two alleged incidents of plagiarism, and that he missed the initial deadline to appeal. Other Baylor administrators, who had previously told Starr they thought he needed to hold students more accountable for bad behavior, were particularly bothered that he agreed to hear the appeal after the deadline passed, this person said.
When the board was briefed on the incident, Starr said, the investigators omitted context he thought important: that he overruled Elliott’s suspension only after being given a detailed plan by athletic director Ian McCaw to improve the player’s academic performance. He said Briles never pressured him to go soft on Elliott or any other players.
Elliott, a defensive end who made the Big 12 all-freshman team in 2010, was reinstated in time to play the 2011 football season.
In April 2012, Elliott was the first Baylor football player to be accused of sexual assault during Briles’ tenure. Another, Boise State transfer Sam Ukwuachu, was convicted in 2015 while a third, Penn State transfer Shawn Oakman, is under indictment. He has pleaded not guilty.
Meanwhile, the fallout continues to mount: Just before Thanksgiving, Baylor reached financial settlements with two former students who alleged they were gang raped by football players in 2012. Their attorney, John Clune of Boulder, Colo., said the details of the incidents were “almost beyond words.”
In a statement, Baylor interim president David Garland said he apologized “both personally and on behalf of the university that we didn’t do more to prevent, respond to and support the care of these women.”
In 2011, Baylor University football star Tevin Elliott was suspended from school for academic misconduct, but was reinstated after university president Kenneth Starr intervened on his behalf.
“Keep riding that white horse,” Baylor football coach Art Briles wrote in an appreciative email to Starr, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Elliott soon faced more serious problems. In 2014, he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison after a trial in which four Baylor students testified that he sexually assaulted them. Three of those incidents took place after his reinstatement in August 2011. The other alleged assault occurred in 2009 but the victim testified she kept the incident a secret until she learned the player was accused of assaulting other women.
Elliott’s reprieve from Starr, which hasn’t been previously reported, is disclosed deep in the transcript of his trial.
Starr’s ruling was made over the objections of other administrators. The disagreement is indicative of deeper tensions that simmered between him and other Baylor officials long before the sexual-assault scandal that roiled the country’s largest Baptist university and sent one of the nation’s top college-football programs into free fall.
Messrs. Starr and Briles were fired last May following an outside investigation that described “institutional failures at every level” in addressing sexual violence on campus. Without many specifics, the report cited “significant concerns about the tone and culture within Baylor’s football program as it relates to accountability for all forms of athlete misconduct.” In October, Baylor officials told The Wall Street Journal that the investigation found 19 Baylor football players were involved in alleged incidents of domestic and sexual assaults since 2011, including four gang rapes.
The explosive allegations, however, were preceded by several years of behind-the-scenes conflict involving Starr’s leadership of the university. The backstage disputes provide a window into how a prominent former federal judge turned no-holds-barred prosecutor—best known for his controversial 1990s investigation of Bill Clinton—lost his job in part for not effectively responding to reports of sexual misconduct.
In an interview, Starr said he was never given a full explanation for his dismissal and that his intervention in the Elliott matter was the only incident he was aware of that was presented as part of the investigation’s findings. He said he threatened to resign on multiple occasions in previous years due to conflicts with the board and other administrators, but was persuaded to stay on.
“I was continually in tension with the board leadership,” he said.
His settlement with Baylor precludes him from disparaging school officials but an unrelated previous lawsuit uncovered emails in which Starr complained about micromanagement from certain board members that he said interfered with his ability to run the university.
Many Baylor alumni, as well as Briles, have raised similar complaints against the board, which they say has mismanaged the scandal. Briles’s attorney, Ernest Cannon, said he believes “there was a great deal of friction between Starr and the regents, and they saw the (investigation) as a way to get rid of him. Then they messed up and realized they had to get rid of Briles too.”
Cannon said those issues will be explored in depth as part of a lawsuit Briles filed last month alleging that four Baylor officials conspired to defame him in their comments to The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets. The Baylor officials have not commented.
Starr was involved in numerous long-running disputes with administrators and regents over his management of Baylor.
Two people familiar with the matter say Starr and the school’s board of regents were told by early 2014 that administrators on campus were concerned about a mounting number of incidents involving the football team and the perception that athletes benefited from a lower standard in disciplinary matters. While those issues didn’t involve allegations of sexual assault, there was a growing perception that football players weren’t being held accountable for bad behavior, these people said.
Starr’s management style was the focal point of other tensions as well. In 2011 and again in 2013, consultants hired by Baylor reported to board members their view that while Starr was a standout at external functions such as alumni and student relations, he was a poor administrator when it came to managing a university with an annual budget of almost half a billion dollars, according to people familiar with the matter.
In 2013, a group of senior administrators wrote a memo to the board that listed a variety of Starr’s perceived shortcomings, including a “failure to grasp the scope and scale of the complex issues facing the university,” and described the school’s leadership as “highly dysfunctional.”
Starr acknowledged that his actions often riled other administrators who thought that he occasionally coddled student athletes.
He also said that he is in favor of full transparency regarding Baylor’s probe, and that he is skeptical of some of the allegations released thus far.
“I personally have doubts that there were gang rapes,” he said.
Baylor boomed during most of Starr’s leadership: applications soared, fundraising hit new records and many of the school’s athletic teams— including football—enjoyed unprecedented success. After taking over in 2010, he was instantly popular among alumni and faculty. He instilled a student-friendly management-style, asking that students call him Uncle Ken.
His philosophy extended to student discipline. In an interview, Starr said he felt the student-led judiciary process often resulted in overly harsh punishments and that he “believed in second chances” for troubled kids. In particular, he said, he felt that athletes who came from underprivileged backgrounds were often treated in a “sacrificial” manner by universities and that he tried to find ways to keep them in school.
“This was my moral view of what the president of the university does,” he said.
Starr’s approach to discipline meshed with Briles. In Briles’ 2014 autobiography, “Beating Goliath,” the coach wrote about being in “the kid-saving business” and was critical of other schools who he said ran off players at the first sign of problems.
The Elliott case put that ethos to test. One person familiar with the matter said Elliott’s suspension came after two alleged incidents of plagiarism, and that he missed the initial deadline to appeal. Other Baylor administrators, who had previously told Starr they thought he needed to hold students more accountable for bad behavior, were particularly bothered that he agreed to hear the appeal after the deadline passed, this person said.
When the board was briefed on the incident, Starr said, the investigators omitted context he thought important: that he overruled Elliott’s suspension only after being given a detailed plan by athletic director Ian McCaw to improve the player’s academic performance. He said Briles never pressured him to go soft on Elliott or any other players.
Elliott, a defensive end who made the Big 12 all-freshman team in 2010, was reinstated in time to play the 2011 football season.
In April 2012, Elliott was the first Baylor football player to be accused of sexual assault during Briles’ tenure. Another, Boise State transfer Sam Ukwuachu, was convicted in 2015 while a third, Penn State transfer Shawn Oakman, is under indictment. He has pleaded not guilty.
Meanwhile, the fallout continues to mount: Just before Thanksgiving, Baylor reached financial settlements with two former students who alleged they were gang raped by football players in 2012. Their attorney, John Clune of Boulder, Colo., said the details of the incidents were “almost beyond words.”
In a statement, Baylor interim president David Garland said he apologized “both personally and on behalf of the university that we didn’t do more to prevent, respond to and support the care of these women.”
