A full-page advertisement thanking former Baylor University President Ken Starr for his “integrity, leadership, character” and “exceptional care for students and their well-being” was placed in the Austin-American Statesman and Waco Tribune-Herald on Sunday.
In the past few years, over a dozen women reported rapes to administrators at Baylor only to have their allegations ignored completely, or even worse, retaliated against by administrators for bringing it up.
Starr was recently demoted from president to chancellor after an external investigation found that there was a “fundamental failure by Baylor” in handling rape accusations against Baylor students, particularly when football players were the perpetrators.
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Last fall, Texas Monthly reported on Baylor’s cover-up and botched investigation of football player Sam Ukwuachu, who was eventually convicted of raping a fellow student just months after he arrived on campus. The Baylor Board of Regents commissioned an investigation, and the Pepper Hamilton report — which was summarized but not released in full last month — found that the Ukwuachu case was not an isolated incident. Instead, it described the university’s student conduct policies as “wholly inadequate.”
Head football coach Art Briles was fired, but most of his staff remains. Starr stepped down as chancellor late last week due to a “a matter of conscience,” but remains a law professor at the school.
The judge, who was formerly best known as the driving force behind the investigation into President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, has repeatedly said that he didn’t know about any rape allegations until the Texas Monthly report last fall. However, when confronted by a reporter on Friday with an email a rape victim had sent him with the subject, “I Was Raped at Baylor,” Starr was completely flustered. He offered three separate answers to the questions, the first being, “I honestly may have. I’m not denying that I saw it.”
The “Thank You Judge Ken Starr” advertisement ran two days later.
So, who are these people who publicly signed their names to a letter thanking Starr for “elevating Baylor to new heights?” Well, they are six prominent Baylor alumni (and their wives), primarily current or retired businessmen in the Waco area who have given millions to the university and proudly espouse the Baptist school’s strong Christian values and principles.
Ray and Ellen Deaver are the parents of Kyle Deaver, the current mayor of Waco. Ray is the chairman of the board of American Bank Waco.
Gale Galloway, who signed the letter along with his wife Connie, was “a celebrated player for the Baylor Bears football team from 1949–1951.” He is a former chair of the Baylor Board of Regents and former president of the Baylor Alumni Association, and as of 2013, he was the president and CEO of GLG Energy.
“Baylor University was founded on the same Christian principles my parents had, and I felt like I was part of a family there. What Baylor did for me was to perpetuate that commitment of living a Christian life and realizing that you can accomplish all things through Christ,” Galloway said in a 2014 profile in Baylor Magazine, upon his recipient of the Baylor Founders Medal.
Top Officials At Baylor Fired And Demoted After ‘Fundamental Failure’ In Handling Athlete Rape…Sports by CREDIT: LM Otero, AP Baylor University confirmed Thursday that head football coach Art Biles had been fired…thinkprogress.orgRondy Gray is the President of the Gray Family Management Company, and recently hosted an event in Starr’s skybox at McLane Stadium with Starr and his wife, Alice.
Jim and Nell Hawkins received the Baylor Legacy Award in 2011, which is given to “individuals who demonstrate extraordinary service and philanthropy to Baylor or causes that fit the university’s mission.” The Hawkins family provided $3.5 million in 2012 for a new Indoor Tennis Center at Baylor, which was renamed in 2013 the Jim and Nell Hawkins Indoor Tennis Center. The Center’s Court Number One was provided by Claude and Becky Lindsey, who also signed the letter.
Just do the right thing, and it will serve you well.
Paul and Carol McClinton donated $1.5 million to Baylor which led to the McClinton Family Auditorium within the Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation. McClinton is the vice president at AMC Financial Holdings in Waco.
Danny Prince is the president of Paramount Healthcare. All four of his children with his wife, Linn, attended Baylor, and he received the Baylor Business Leadership Medal of Service in 2012.
“[I] really do believe this: it doesn’t matter if you are a big donor or just an interested fan of Baylor, you have a respect from the people who work there, who manage the school, who direct it and operate it, all the way from Judge [Ken] Starr to anybody in one of the offices. And I really do appreciate and respect that,” Prince said in Baylor Magazine, before emphasizing how important principles are to Baylor.
“Basic principles of treating people correctly and being honorable in what you do. That’s my biggest comment about Baylor and how it made a difference in my life. It’s confirmation of what really matters is that you treat people right. I have this statement I tell my employees: Just do the right thing, and it will serve you well. I think that’s what Baylor does, and I try to do it, too.”
Starr says that he resigned as chancellor so he could talk more freely about the scandal, and he is demanding that the full Pepper Hamilton report be released. However, the more he talks the more it seems that if he was ignorant, it was willfully so.
Ken Starr: “I’m behind a veil of ignorance.”
— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) June 1, 2016
Ken Starr said all sexual assaults he knew of were off campus. Baylor PD data list 10 reports of sex assault since 2010 in dorms/BU housing
— Paula Lavigne (@pinepaula) June 1, 2016
“I believe the students love Uncle Ken,” Starr said last week on ESPN.
“Pepper found that Baylor’s efforts to implement Title IX were slow, ad hoc, and hindered by a lack of institutional support and engagement by senior leadership,” the Pepper Hamilton Findings of Fact document says. “[T]he University’s student conduct processes were wholly inadequate to consistently provide a prompt and equitable response under Title IX, that Baylor failed to consistently support complainants [of sexual violence] through the provision of interim measures, and that in some cases, the University failed to take action to identify and eliminate a potential hostile environment, prevent its recurrence, or address its effects for individual complainants or the broader campus community.”
The ad in the newspapers includes a link to www.ThankKenStarr.com, where others can join the six families in thanking Starr.