Baylor University, where the sexual assault took place a terrible norm Claiming that it had not violated NCAA rules within its football program in the 2010s, the association failed to make a statement on Wednesday.
“Baylor acknowledged moral and ethical failures in its handling of sexual and interpersonal violence on campus, but argued that these failures, however dire, did not violate NCAA guidelines,” an association committee said in a resolution released Wednesday. “Ultimately, and with great reluctance, this panel agrees.”
The committee said a different outcome would require the panel to “ignore the rules adopted by association membership”, something it wrote would be “contrary to the integrity of the infringing process”.
The association’s decision comes more than five years after a university-hired law firm concluded that Baylor’s football program leaders sometimes “choose not to report sexual violence appropriately” and that team officials “divert cases away from the student.” conduct or criminal proceedings.”
The law firm’s findings found problems across the university, eventually leading to the resignation or removal of the university president. Ken Starr; his soccer coach Art Briles; and athletic director, Ian McCaw. The NCAA filed a claim notice to Baylor in 2018, the college sports industry equivalent of an indictment.
But on Wednesday, the NCAA investigation ended with only a handful of violations involving academic and recruitment rules. The committee’s sentences for these offenses included four years of probation.
In addition to scrutiny by the NCAA, Baylor has faced a wave of criminal investigations and a wave of civil lawsuits related to sexual assaults. Baylor won in one of those cases in June, when a Houston jury ruled that the university was not responsible for the sexual assault of a woman in 2017, under a state law.
But Baylor was punished in other ways. For example, in October the U.S. Department of Education fined the university more than $461,000 in connection with a violation of a federal law governing campus crime statistics. The university has also reached agreement with some women making claims under Title IX, the federal law that effectively prohibits sexual harassment and assault in educational settings.
While the NCAA has focused its enforcement power on the more mundane issues of college sports in general, it has previously intervened in sexual misconduct allegations.
association in 2012 Penn State fined $60 million and banned the football program for four years post-season due to his handling of the child sexual abuse scandal involving longtime assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. At the time, the association’s president, Mark Emmert, said that football “will never again come before educating, nurturing and protecting young people.”
Nearly two years later, after repeated criticism that it was overdoing it, the association reduced some of the finesincluding end-of-season restrictions as officials say they see it as university good behavior.