Leave it to Harvard University to set the example for the rest of us – again. Granted, the latest precedent set by the nation’s most illustrious institution of higher education has nothing to do with the home of British North America’s first known printing press or a Princeton Review poll. On the contrary, Harvard’s most recent example has to do with rape culture amongst college campuses and the issue of “locker room talk” (the phrase popularized by Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, to excuse grabbing women by the pussy). Whereas the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, has refused to take action regarding issues of sexual assault and harassment amongst coaching staffs and student athletes, Harvard’s administration has effectively condemned its 2016 men’s soccer team for its objectification of women by cancelling the remainder of its season and forfeiting any post-season opportunities. Where the NCAA has failed, Harvard has excelled.
On Thursday, November 3, the news broke that Harvard University had cancelled the remainder of its men’s soccer team’s season. With only two regular season games remaining, the team was ranked #1 in the Ivy League. A win against rival Columbia University on Saturday, November 5, would have clinched the team’s spot in the NCAA tournament. The team was condemned, however, in a motion establishing a clear expectation by the university, following an investigation into an annual tradition amongst team members auditing the women’s soccer team’s recruiting class on their looks and sex appeal.
In an October 25 article published by the nation’s first and most storied university’s daily student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, “2012 Harvard Men’s Soccer Team Produced Sexually Explicit ‘Scouting Report’ on Female Recruits,” C. Ramsey Rahs publicized the disgusting tradition. The document’s author, a member of the 2012 men’s soccer team, circulated the document over the group’s email list via Google on July 31, 2012. He and his teammates referred the document, a whooping a nine pages in length, as a “scouting report.” In vulgar and sexually explicit terms, the document’s author individually evaluated each female recruit, organized by photographs of each woman pulled from social media, assigning her a numerical score and writing an assessment paragraph. Amy X. Wang, in “This Is The Sexist Chat That Got The Harvard Men’s Soccer Team Shut Down,” reprinted excerpts of the chat, which included phrases such as, “She looks like the kind of girl who both likes to dominate and likes to be dominated”; “Her gum-to-gum ratio is about one to one” (this woman was nicknamed Gumbi and deemed a 6); “Yeah, she wants cock”; and, “She seems to be very strong, tall, and manly, so I gave her a three because I felt bad.” (Props to the boys for properly utilizing the Oxford comma. I would expect nothing less of Harvard students). Furthermore, each woman, in addition to her position on the soccer field, was assigned a sex position with which the men’s team associated with her and a nickname, like sweet Gumbi was. Fahs reported that the report appeared to have been a chauvinistic tradition amongst the team, as the 2012 report’s author began the document, “While some of the scouting report last year was wrong, the overall consensus that [a certain player] was both the hottest and the most STD ridden was confirmed.” In response to the audit, a handful of members of the 2012 men’s team expressed their affirmation of its content. Both this, and the entirety of the e-mail list by that season’s team, were publicly available and searchable through Google Groups until recently.
Harvard’s Director of Athletics, Robert L. Scalise, first viewed the 2012 document on Monday, October 24, claiming to have been previously unaware of the document. Following his preliminary reading of it, he said (as quoted by Fahs), “‘Any time a member of our community says thing about other people who are in our community that are disparaging, it takes away from the potential for creating the kind of learning environment that we’d like to have here at Harvard.’” Scalise contented to express he’s fear that the document reflected pertinent issues both among Harvard’s Cambridge campus and throughout collegiate campuses nationwide, “‘We’re not insulated from these types of things. These things exist in our society… Whenever you have groups of people that come together, there’s a potential for this to happen.’” Scalise expressed his intent to speak to both the men’s and women’s athletic teams’ coaches, consult with Harvard’s administration, and discuss the matters with the athletic department. The university emphasized that the issue’s handling would be an “internal Harvard matter.”
Dean of the College, Rakesh Kurana, was not contacted about the document until the afternoon of Friday, October 21. She initially ignored requests for an in-person meeting with the Crimson report, Fahs, to view or make a statement on the document. Rachael Dane, college spokesperson, finally expressed in an email that Khurana was unavailable for a person interview. After Dane viewed the document in person, Khurana emailed Fahs a statement. She wrote,
As a human being, and a member of the Harvard College community, I am always profoundly disturbed and upset by allegations of sexism, because I feel it is wrong and antithetical to this institution’s fundamental views. No one should be objectified. In light of all the attention that has been given to issues of inclusion, gender equity, and personal integrity at Harvard and elsewhere, we must work together to build a community of which we can all be proud.
A review by the Office of General Counsel, Harvard’s team of lawyers, was immediately instructed by Harvard University President, Drew G. Faust, Andrew. M. Duehran and a team of other Harvard Crimson writers reported in November 3’s “Harvard Cancels Men’s Soccer Season After Finding Sexually Explicit ‘Reports’ Continued Through 2016.” In an interview earlier that day, Faust said, “‘As I asked the OGC to undertake this, it had to be on a fairly short time frame because the season is proceeding apace. I wanted a response that should be within the context of the team’s responsibilities representing Harvard and this athletic season.’” The OGC’s review revealed, unfortunately, that, as Scalise explained in an email to Harvard student-athletes, “‘…the practice appears to be more widespread across the team and has continued beyond 2012, including in 2016.’” According to Faust, team members failed to be initially forthcoming about their involvement in the “reports” in the investigation. The direct result of such findings and behaviors was the cancellation of the remainder of the 2016 men’s soccer team’s season. Harvard mandated that the team forfeit its remaining games and decline any opportunity to achieve an Ivy League championship or participate in the year’s NCAA Tournament.
“Sexist ‘Scouting Report’ Ends Harvard Men’s Soccer Season,” by Chris Boyette and Emanuella Grinberg, illuminates the rationale for the severity of the team’s consequence. In his email, they report, Scalise wrote, “‘We [Harvard’s administration and Athletic Department] strongly believe that this immediate and significant action is absolutely necessary if we are to create an environment of mutual support, respect, and trust among our students and our teams… Harvard Athletics has zero tolerance for this type of behavior.”
This might just be the most severe penalty formally handed down to an NCAA athletic team since Ponygate. Props to Harvard for nipping this atrocious tradition of objectification, demeaning language, and perpetuation of rape culture in the bud (or whenever it found out). The catch? The punishment forewent the NCAA, the authority on all organizations, regulations, and violations involving member schools’ teams, which has failed to even condemn more severe cases by both college coaches and athletes. The most recent controversy involving sexual assault amongst a collegiate athletic team in which the NCAA intervened, the Pennsylvania State University child molestation case, resulted in the NCAA rescinding its sanctions.
Unlike the controversy that has come to light in Cambridge, the abuse case regarding the sexual violation of innocent children at Penn State resulted from the wrongdoing of its football teams’ coaches, rather than student-athletes.
The scandal broke in early November, 2011, when a former assistant football coach and defensive coordinator for the Penn State Nittany Lions, Jerry Sandusky, was indicted on 52 (you read it right – fifty-two) counts of child molestation. [Child molestation is defined as the act of any older child or adult sexually touching a child (a girl or boy who is of 13 years of age or younger) for his or her own sexual gratification]. Sandusky had located and groomed victims through his charity organization, the Second Mile, founded in 1977 to help disadvantaged youths.
Although Sandusky’s abuse may have begun as early as the charity’s establishment, he was charged with abuse that occurred between 1994 and 2009. In addition to Sandusky, three school officials, including President Graham Spanier and Athletic Director Tim Curley, were charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, failure to report suspected child abuse, and related charges. Spanier, the university’s 16th president, resigned as early as November 9, of that year. The Penn State Board of Trustees terminated Curley’s contract and fired storied longtime head football coach, Joe Paterno.
Despite retiring as a coach in 1999, Sandusky had remained a coach emeritus with an office in, and access to, the school’s football facilities. According to grand jury testimony, the assaults extended to Penn State’s campus, including in the Lasch Football Building on its University Park campus and the East Area Locker Rooms. Over 20 of the assaults were said to have taken place while Sandusky was still coaching the Nittany Lions.
The Board of Trustees commissioned former FBI director, Louis Freeh, and his firm to conduct an independent investigation into the scandal. What was coined the “Freeh Report” stated that Spanier and Paterno, along with Curley and the school’s Vice President Gary Schultz, had known about allegations of Sandusky’s child abuse as early as 1998 (when he was first investigated for sexual abuse of a child in which no charges were filed) and were complicit in failing to disclose them. (However, Paterno did make a report to his superiors). Freeh went on the record acknowledging that Penn State’s senior-most leaders showed a “total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims” for upwards of a decade and “empowered” Sandusky, designated a sexually violent predator at his 2012 sentencing.
The NCAA utilized the Freeh Report in lieu of its own investigations to promulgate sanctions on Penn State’s football program. On July 23, 2012, the NCAA imposed a $60,000,000 fine (the amount of gross revenue from one football season), a postseason ban lasting four years, reductions of scholarships (the money was instead slated for the support of children’s issues), and the stripping of 111 team victories earned between 1998 and 2011. Paterno would no longer be the Division I’s all-time winningest football coach. Such sanctions were considered to be the most severe ever imposed on an NCAA member school, just short of the death penalty (in which case the football team’s upcoming season would have been cancelled entirely). NCAA President, Mark Emmert, stated that the sanctions were levied “‘…not to be just punitive, but to make sure the university establishes an athletic culture and daily mindset in which football will never again be placed ahead of education, nurturing, and protecting young people.” The Big Ten Conference, the nation’s oldest Division 1 collegiate athletic conference heralding from the highest level of NCAA competition, imposed an additional fine worth $13,000,000.
However, in 2014, the NCAA rescinded the postseason ban, restored scholarships, and re-credited Penn State, and, consequently, Paterno, with the Nittany Lion’s 111 victories of which they were stripped. Its athletics integrity monitor, former Senator (D-ME) George Mitchell, recommended the reduced punishments in his second annual report gauging the university’s progress. The university complied with 115 of the 119 recommendations which Freeh had suggested. That’s obviously enough to prevent sexual assault on and by members of college campuses, right?
What I fail to understand, however, is how the NCAA could have really brought the hammer down on Penn State on behalf of its football program’s coaches’ infractions. There is no doubt that the coaches were wrong and that Sandusky deserves to rot in hell for what he did. However, the crux of the NCAA is the student-athletes. Without the collegiate kids that pursue their athletic endeavors with reckless abandon, the NCAA would cease to exist. The NCAA is about student athletes. The entire rationale behind the NCAA’s 1986 two-year death penalty on Southern Methodist University’s football program was the unethical treatment of student-athletes, as SMU’s most serious violation was the maintenance of a “slush fund” that used for private payments of players. Hence, the NCAA’s failure to act upon the irreconcilable behaviors of and sexual assaults by student-athletes on Baylor University’s football team’s roster is nothing short of deplorable.
Granted, both of my parents boasts degrees from Texas Christian University, Baylor’s rival of over a century. I was raised singing “Riff Raff, Bah Zoo.” My sweet mother was both a sister of TCU’s Delta Delta Delta chapter and dancer with the Showgirls (ranked the seventh hottest spirit program in the nation by Total Frat Move in 2016). My dad, a college pitcher, even transferred from Baylor to TCU when his coach defaulted on a promise to allow him to bat. Considering the malice that a 61-58 Baylor football victory perpetuated following the 2014 football season, I have been groomed to hate the Bears. Since transferring from a small, liberal arts school due north of Boston, to Texas Tech University, a Big 12 Conference member school, that hatred has only grown. However, having seen firsthand the devastating implications of sexual assault amongst rape survivors, my despise for the green and gold stems from their recently publicized history, and negligence, of sexual assault.
Like the recent controversy at Harvard, student-athletes are at the core of Baylor’s sexual assault scandal. However, unlike the occurrences at both Harvard and Penn State, nothing had been done about it.
To best describe the disgusting events which have transcended at Baylor, I will rely upon a timeline of events. I’ve compiled such from Zac Ellis’ “A Timeline of the Baylor Sexual Assault Scandal” and Bruce Tomaso’s “A Quick, Complete Guide to the Baylor Football Sex-Assault Scandal.”
August 17-20, 2015: Texas Monthly first reported that Baylor’s defensive end, Sam Ukwuachu, was indicted on June 25, 2014, on two counts of sexual assault. The act of violence, against a female student-athlete who also represented Baylor (who, Tomaso revealed, was a member of the women’s soccer team, which is reminiscent of Harvard’s current controversy), was deplorable, but not – as it turned out – surprising. Ukwuachu was brought in by Briles after he was kicked off of Boise State University’s football team for unspecified disciplinary actions. Little was known about his departure, but he was acclaimed for his performance in the 2012 season, the only year he played with the Broncos, due to which he was named a freshman All-American. Baylor’s then-head coach, Art Briles, claimed that Chris Petersen, then-Boise State’s coach, recommended Ukwuachu and made no mention of the player’s past, aside than explaining that he was depressed and had a “rocky relationship with his girlfriend.” Briles served as head coach at Baylor 2008-2015 and was accredited with grooming famed quarterback, Robert Griffin III (RG3) and leading Baylor to its first streak of winning seasons. Peterson, now at the University of Washington, instead claims to have “thoroughly apprised Coach Briles of the circumstances surrounding Sam’s disciplinary record and dismissal.” On August 21, 2015, Ukuwachu was found guilty of sexual assault by a Texas court. He was sentenced to 18 days in a county jail, given 10 years of felony probation, and ordered 400 hours of community service. Likewise, he had to register as a sex offender. In October of that year, he was denied a new trial.
January 31, 2016: ESPN’s Outside the Lines reported a number of instances in which Baylor failed to adequately investigate - if at all - allegations of sexual violence on its campus. It took Baylor over three years to comply with a federal mandate to hire a full-time Title XI coordinator. More specifically, after the directive was given by the United States Department of Education in April, 2011, to schools receiving federal funds, Patty Crawford, Baylor’s first full-time Title XI coordinator, was not hired until November 2014. The show also publicized interviews with three women, including Baylor student, Jasmine Hernandez, claiming that Baylor failed to act upon complaints that women have been attacked by Tevin Elliot, a defensive lineman in 2011 and 2012. Hernandez’s federal suit, filed in March 30, 2016, claimed that Baylor “did not take any action whatsoever to investigate” her claim that Elliot raped her twice at an April, 2012, party. Now in prison on two counts of sexual assault, Elliot was convicted in January, 2014.
February 7, 2016: Then-Baylor University President, Kenn Starr, issued a letter addressed, “Dear Baylor Nation,” in which he addressed claims of sexual violence on the school’s Waco campus. (Starr rose to fame when his legal counsel provided the framework upon which the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, due to Clinton's cover-up of and sexual relationship with White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, was based). He wrote, “Such despicable violations of our basic humanity contradict every value Baylor [the nation’s largest Baptist university] lifts up as a caring Christian community….” Baylor then pledged to hire more counselors and investigators to attend to claims of sexual violence, boost campus police patrol, and expand training for students and faculty. The university also hired a Philadelphia law firm, Pepper Hamilton, to review the school’s policies and procedures for dealing with sexual assault complaints. Some media outlets have argued Baylor did so in order to avoid a formal NCAA investigation. For example, in “NCAA Might Not Sanction Baylor After What Happened in Penn State Case,” Stewart Mandel wrote, “It’s also possible the school’s ‘contact’ was largely a goodwill gesture meant to stave off an outside investigation.”
March 3, 2016: Jacob Anderson, President of Baylor’s chapter of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, was accused on rape outside of a fraternity party on February 20, 2016. PhiDelt’s Nationals prompted suspended Anderon’s membership in the organization and Baylor’s administration suspended the fraternity. Anderson’s defense attorney, Clyde Chandler, expressed his concern that Baylor’s sullied reputation would negatively affect Anderson’s trial. (Note that Baylor imposed harsher punishments upon members of the Greek community for sexual assault than they did upon those of the football team's roster).
April 13, 2016: Former All-American defensive end, Shawn Oakman, was arrested on charges of sexual assault. Ironically, Oakman, a Philadelphia native, was a Penn State recruit kicked off the team as a freshman for shoplifting a hoagie sandwich. As an act of gratitude to Baylor, he had “second chance” tattooed on the inside of his left arm and sported #2. Previous to his arrest, Oakman was regarded as an NFL-caliber talent, with CBS Sports calling the 6’9”, 275 lb. athlete “…a freakish specimen on the hoof… with a physique that makes scouts gush.” Some websites had him slated for the second- or third- round of the NFL Draft. However, after a Baylor graduate student told police that Oakman had assaulted her following a meeting at beloved campus dive, Scruffy Murphy’s, Oakman was not drafted. It then came to light that Oakman had been previously accused of sexual assault on January 10, 2013, according to a Waco police report, by a 19-year-old ex-girlfriend. The victim claimed that Oakman had asked, “You think I care?” when she expressed her discomfort and proceeded to call her both a “slut” and a “whore.” The report’s investigating officer noted she had bruises on both arms and a “swelled up bottom lip.” She did not press charges.
April 14, 2016: ESPN’s Outside the Lines reported Baylor took upwards of two years to investigate a sexual assault report made against two football players. Waco police informed Baylor officials about an incident involving players Tre’Von Armstead and Shamycheal Chatman in 2013, but administration refused to investigate the case until 2015. This delay in response time clashed directly with federal law requiring universities to address allegations of sexual violence immediately.
April 19, 2016: Briles, still – at that time – head coach of Baylor’s football team, disclosed that the school had brought in professionals to raise athletes’ awareness of issues regarding sexual violence and the treatment of women.
May 13, 2016: Baylor reviewed Pepper Hamilton’s full report and was briefed on their findings.
May 18, 2018: Fort Worth, Texas’s newspaper, Star-Telegram, reported that Baylor’s Board of Regents expected to retain Briles, but was considering firing him as a “final solution” to the scandal. The report of obtained documents described allegations involving RB Devin Chafin (then a fourth-year junior), CB Tyler Stephenson (2010-2013), S Ahmad Dixon (2010-2013), DL Gary Mason (on the practice squad as a freshman in 2008), and RB Isaac Williams (2008-2011). Each of the players had been accused of violent acts – not sexual assault – with the exception of Dixon, who had been accused separately of both. The report claimed that coaches and other administrative officials at Baylor knew about the allegations, despite having failed to take action. It also claimed that Waco police had taken extensive steps to keep the allegations from surfacing.
May 19, 2016: ESPN’s Outside the Lines reported largely unknown “allegations of sexual assault, domestic violence, and other acts of violence involving several Baylor football players.” It claimed that, although some Baylor officials were aware of the reported incidents, most players lost no playing time for disciplinary reasons. One victim of these violent attacks was never even contacted by Pepper Hamilton during its investigation.
May 24, 2016: Baylor publicly released Pepper Hamilton’s findings from its external review of the university’s Title IX response processes and procedures. The school announced that Briles had been “suspended indefinitely with intent to terminate” (following eight seasons as head coach and the accreditation of having turned the university’s football program around). President Ken Starr was also demoted to chancellor, and Athletic Director Ian McCaw was both sanctioned and put on probation.
May 30, 2016: McCaw resigned as Baylor’s Athletic Director.
June 1, 2016: Starr resigned as university’s chancellor, although he is still employed by Baylor’s law school.
So, as a history of sexual assault became ingrained amongst Baylor football’s roster, why did the NCAA refuse to intervene? Baylor’s administration took it upon itself to demote leadership who had been complicit in the team’s members’ wrongdoings, despite failing to properly discipline the involved student-athletes, but the NCAA never once interfered. In fact, Baylor was well on its way to a 6-1 season before rival TCU slaughtered the Bears 62-22 on Saturday, November 5.
There are two possible reasons for the NCAA’s apprehension to intervene in the scandal. One such reason is the revenue which college match-ups generate for the schools involved. David Jones’ “Penn State Football Simply Can’t Get By On $36M Profit?...” reveals that Penn State’s football program is expected to generate a profit ranging $60 to $70 million annually once the Big Ten’s pending new media rights deal goes into effect. Despite spending upwards of $28 million in expenses, a PointAfter report reveals that Baylor’s football program grosses nearly $35.6 million in revenue and $7.14 in profit. Another PointAfter report on Harvard’s soccer teams reveals that, although the university spends $899,894 in total combined expenses on the men’s and women’s teams (although $400 more on the men’s team), the men’s team makes $510,963 in revenue and the women’s $378,931, and neither team makes a profit. Harvard’s men’s soccer team had nothing to lose, but quite the pretty penny to spare by ended its season prematurely. Thus, it makes senses that the NCAA would face greater public pressure to intervene amongst D1 teams. However, it might also be because the teams generate so much more revenue for their universities that the NCAA did not get involved, if not more involved. Mandel wrestled with this issue in his write-up. He quotes Gene Marsh, a former member of the Committee on Infractions who represented Penn State during its crisis. Mandel writes, “Marsh, who would not comment specifically about the situation at Baylor, thinks the NCAA is unlikely to meddle in criminal matters against given the price it subsequently paid in lawyers’ frees.” After all, it was only after a number of costly lawsuits that the NCAA rescinded its sanctions which it imposed upon Penn State.
Another reason for which the NCAA has failed to intervene in sexual violence scandals regarding NCAA teams is the umbrella organization’s refusal to serve as member schools’ moral compass. Mandel again quotes Marsh, “‘In issues where there are so many other avenues of redress – criminal, civil, Department of Education – the NCAA does not need to be the policeman of the world in matters that involve athletics… Organizations can learn from their mistakes.’” So, the NCAA does not want to be intertwined where a greater authority may be. Okay. Although the judiciary took care of Penn State’s Sandusky, though, not every Baylor player has been fairly charged and tried for their trespasses. Moreover, sexual assault is a nationwide issue, restricted to neither Penn State nor Baylor. Mandel continues, “The problem is, what happened at Baylor is essentially too serious to fall under NCAA purview.” So child molestation is not serious enough, but the rape of a number of women is? When law enforcement fails to teach student-athletes a critical lesson in human decency, though, is it not the responsibility of the NCAA, the self-proclaimed authority on all student-athletes, to step up to the plate? Furthermore, sexual assault may wander outside of the NCAA’s jurisdiction, but unethical conduct sure as hell doesn’t.
NCAA Bylaw 10.1: “Unethical Conduct” addresses the unequal treatment of student-athletes. Mandel explains in the bluntest of terminology, “It’s an NCAA rulebook no-no to bestow favors on athletes.” Hence, why two of SMU’s football seasons were essentially eliminated when it surfaced that Mustangs football players were sent monetary incentives for their services to the university. However, is it not a favor upon an athlete to pardon criminal behavior or sexual assault, as was done by both the coaching staff and administration for Baylor’s football roster? Zac Crain’s “If Baylor Isn’t Given The Death Penalty, Then It Will Never Be Used Again” substantiates this claim. Crain writes, “Honestly, Baylor’s absolutely selling out of the [Baptist] values it claimed to stand for, its sacrificing its female students at the altar of Big Football, makes what happened at SMU look like getting executed for kiting bad checks.”
Speaking for “sacrificing female students at the altar of Big Football,” I should address Baylor’s 2016 football team’s past two weeks both on and off the gridiron.
Despite Coach Briles’ repulsive transgressions and failure to address the undeserved victimization of multiple innocent women, Baylor players, staff, and fans have continued – for inconceivable reasons – to stand by their storied coach. Rick Gosselin, in “For Baylor, Once-Sacred Saturday Isn’t an Escape from Art Briles Controversy Anymore,” suggests that the Bears’ commanding performance this season and #17 ranking in the College Football Play-Off polls have distracted from its present controversy. Until two weeks ago, the Bears were 6-0 for the 2016 season. The media was more focused upon Baylor's stellar record than its ongoing trial. Then, the Bears lost to the University of Texas Longhorns and TCU Horned Frogs two weeks in a row.
Gosselin writes, “Last week [October 29, 2016], before the Bears played Texas, the Wall Street Journal reported that 19 Baylor football players were involved in 17 reports of domestic violence.” Following this scandal, the Bears lost their first game of the season against the unranked Longhorns. He continues, “Then, on Friday night [October 4, 2016], the Baylor assistant coaches took to Twitter to dispute a claim by a school regent that Briles was aware of at least one allegation of a gang rape but failed to report it to the proper authorities.” Nearly 24 hours later, the Bears lost their second game of the season to their rival Horned Frogs – 62-22 – at Waco’s McLane Stadium (again, as a Horned Frog baby and placebo TCU fan, I’m quite thrilled by this).
Although the green and gold has tried to suppress the current controversy with their gridiron glory, such cannot be ignored. Gosselin writes, “The 60 minutes on Saturday afternoons had been the one safe haven this fall for the Baylor football program. But even those 60 minutes are no longer safe.”
Personally, I find it painfully ironic that Gosselin would choose “safe” as his descriptor of Baylor football, since the very athletes which have made Baylor’s football program what it is (or what it was) have trespassed upon the safety of so many innocent women.
At last weekend’s rivalry game against TCU, Baylor’s football team sported all-black uniforms. Wide receiver Chris Platt initially tweeted, “This black out means more than just the uniforms to us. #truthdontlie.” The aforementioned hashtag was commonly used by Briles. Ben Kercheval elaborates upon the situation in “Baylor Sets Record Straight About Black Jerseys, ‘Coach Art Briles’ T-Shirts.” The team’s black uniforms coordinated perfectly with the #CAB (short for “Coach Art Briles”) shirts donned by a number of Bears. These shirts were sold outside of McLane stadium on Saturday, with short sleeves priced at $20/each and long sleeves being sold for five dollars more. Although spokesman Nick Joos told CBS Sports in a statement, “‘My understanding is the shirts were sold on private property across the street from the stadium, not on stadium property,’” a rape survivor whom had previously spoken to Baylor’s football team, Brenda Tracy, condemned the sale, tweeting, “How dare these people mock your [survivors’] pain. Our pain.”
However, Baylor’s administration tried its best to explain away the sale of the shirts and pro-rape message implied by the blackout. University spokesperson, Lori Fogleman, explained, “According to seniors who met with [current head] Coach Jim Grobe, the team’s decision to wear black uniforms… was made months ago in anticipation of the game against TCU, Baylor’s 111-year rival.” Alright, Lori. Try to explain away your sweet Baptist institution’s failure to condemn sexual assault.
This issue, confronted by the administration of Harvard University, partially by the NCAA on Penn State’s campus, and not in the slightest in Waco, Texas, is particularly pertinent in this day and age. Praise be to God, sexual violence has become an increasingly prominent issue amongst college campuses. I don’t expect rape to cease to occur, or the men with whom I share a college campus to immediate stop sexually harassing me in my apartment building’s parking garage, but I am enthused by the progress which universities have substantiated over the past sixty years. But this progress can neither slow nor cease, as such NCAA teams at Harvard, Penn State, and Baylor have substantiated. As the older sister of two sweet, twelve-year-old siblings, I’m angry as hell that Penn State has yet to be absolutely dismantled by the NCAA. If Sandusky were to ever lay a hand on either my brother or sister, I would fight for the rest of my life to have each and every Penn State victory led by a storied head coach that refused to do jack shit about the violation of an innocent child absolutely razed. As a woman, no different from any other victim of sexual assault, it makes me sick to see such a multitude of Baylor football players go unpunished for their crimes. Although I have never personally been the victim of such a heinous crime, I have had to file a police report for a dear friend victimized by a pig of a human being. I do not want any other self-respecting woman to ever go through what I did, nevertheless what my sweet, undeserving best friend did.
Furthermore, “locker room talk” is no excuse for this behavior. I am so grateful to have seen so many NCAA teams, including Amherst College’s soccer team, take to social media to protest Trump’s repulsive excuse for behaviors indicative of sexual assault which he has sought to justify. It may seem inevitable, given the tragic instances of the three aforementioned teams, but it does not have to be.
This issue is relevant because sexual violence is a reality in which so many of us are living. Take “Stronger Together,” the statement issued to the Harvard Crimson by Kelsey Clayman, Brooke Dickens, Alika Keene, Emily Mosbacher, Lauren Varela, and Haley Washburn, the six members of Harvard’s women’s soccer team’s recruiting class of 2012 publicly objectified by that season’s men’s team, describing an unfortunate truth: “The sad reality is that we have come to expect this kind of behavior from so many men, that it is so ‘normal’ to us we often decide it is not worth our time or effort to dwell upon.”
So, props to Harvard. Props to President Faust, who did not ignore evidence of sexual harassment as Baylor’s President Starr did, but tackled the issue head-on. Props to Harvard’s Athletic Department, which took a harder stand against sexual violence than the NCAA has upon multiple occasions. Silence is violence and, if the NCAA refuses to act in condemnation of sexually violent actions by Penn State’s coaching staff and Baylor’s football roster, the organization is simply condoning the filthy behavior of so many bastards. For that reason, I am eternally grateful to Harvard for setting an example.
