Baylor University demoted school President Ken Starr and fired football coach Art Briles on Thursday, issuing a scathing report over the university’s handling of sexual assault complaints against players.
The board of regents at the nation’s largest Baptist university said in a statement that Starr, a former prosecutor who investigated the Monica Lewinsky scandal, will vacate the presidency on May 31 and stay on as school chancellor. It said it suspended Briles “with intent to terminate” and placed athletic director Ian McCaw on probation.
Starr asked a firm last year to review Baylor’s handling of sexual assault cases following allegations the school mishandled several cases in which football players were accused of attacking women.
Among the firm’s findings was that football coaches and athletics administrators at the school in the central Texas city of Waco had run their own improper investigations into rape claims and that in some cases, they chose not to report such allegations to an administrator outside of athletics.
By running their own “untrained” investigations and meeting directly with a complainant, football staff “improperly discredited” complainants’ claims and “denied them a right to a fair, impartial and informed investigation.”
“The choices made by football staff and athletics leadership, in some instances, posed a risk to campus safety and the integrity of the University,” the report states.
The report’s “findings of facts” did not name specific coaches or athletics staff.
The university’s statement said the review revealed “a fundamental failure.”
The report also found that Baylor was too slow to enact federally-required student conduct processes, and that administrators failed to identify and eliminate a “potential hostile environment” for victims.