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Rape activist calls for Baylor to cancel the remainder of its season

Sam Cooper
College football writer
Baylor dropped to 6-2 on the season with a loss to TCU over the weekend. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
Baylor dropped to 6-2 on the season with a loss to TCU over the weekend. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Rape activist Brenda Tracy believes Baylor should cancel the remainder of its football season.

Tracy, who said she was gang-raped by four men, including two Oregon State players, in 1998, spoke to the Baylor football team during the summer and spoke positively about how she was received. But after Saturday, when the team wore black in a supposed protest of fired coach Art Briles’ removal and a “CAB” (coach Art Briles) banner hung from the window of a suite in McLane Stadium (and shirts were sold outside the stadium), Tracy told ESPN she doesn’t think the Bears should play any more games this season.

“What I want is for Baylor to act like they have some institutional control and stop allowing the football program to re-victimize the already traumatized survivors. In a show of institutional courage, Harvard just canceled the rest of the men’s soccer season over lewd ratings of female players. If Baylor wanted to do the right thing, they would cancel the rest of the football season for yesterday’s display of deliberate and calculated cruelty,” Tracy told ESPN.

The university is in the midst of a sexual assault scandal that led to the firing of Briles and former university president Ken Starr, as well as the resignation of athletic director Ian McCaw. Members of the school’s board of regents have said that 17 women have come forward with allegations of sexual assault against 19 players since 2011 and that Briles was aware of at least one gang rape allegation.

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On Friday night, Baylor coaches posted a message to Twitter saying Briles was unaware of the alleged rape. The note was signed by the entire staff (sans acting head coach Jim Grobe), including Briles’ son Kendal, the Bears’ offensive coordinator.

Grobe said Saturday he was unaware his assistants planned to send out the statement. Tracy (who predictably has received backlash on social media) called it a “deliberate slap in the face” to victims.

From ESPN:

“It was all over social media,” Tracy said in the statement. “Please don’t try to say that you didn’t know. Every single assistant coach that tweeted the night before in support of Art Briles knew what those black uniforms meant. … The entire thing was INTENTIONAL.

“It was a deliberate slap in the face to the women who were assaulted and raped on Baylor’s campus and for what? Art Briles? The man who said he knew of a gang rape and did nothing? Or the man who threw all of his assistant coaches under the bus by saying that he delegated down and didn’t know what was happening on his team?”

The team wore all-black for Saturday’s game. Wide receiver Chris Platt tweeted Friday that the “black out” meant “more than just uniforms.” After it was speculated Platt was referring to Briles, Platt said the uniforms were not in support of Briles or a protest of his firing (his Twitter account is now private).

Baylor said the team wore black because it was a rivalry game. From ESPN:

“The seniors met with Coach Grobe and asked him if they could wear black since it was a rivalry game. They are not making any type of statement,” Baylor spokesman Nick Joos said Sunday.

University spokesperson Lori Fogleman added, “According to seniors who met with Coach Jim Grobe, the team’s decision to wear black uniforms for [Saturday’s] game was made months ago in anticipation of the game against TCU, Baylor’s 111-year rival. The black uniform is a team favorite and is reserved for one home game each year against a noted rival.”

In other Baylor news, a group of alumni and donors is planning to start a nonprofit organization that will “demand an overhaul of the university’s board of regents as well as full details of the school’s sexual assault investigation.”

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The organization, known as Bears for Leadership Reform, includes Drayton McLane, whose name adorns the school’s football stadium, McLane Stadium.

From ESPN.com:

Bears for Leadership Reform is going to be “demanding transparency and accountability,” spokeswoman Julie Hillrichs said.

“They believe the only way we can do this is to have true reform of the board. They want a seat at the table when the board selects its next president, and then they want a best-in-class Title IX program on that campus,” she said, referring to the federal gender-equity law that requires schools investigate reports of sexual violence.

McLane has been critical of the firing of Briles, but Hilrichs said the group’s interests don’t involve Briles.

“I cannot stress enough it’s not about football, and we’re not even going to talk about Art Briles,” Hillrichs said. “This is about women who have been sexually assaulted on this campus. We need to have total accountability and transparency.”

She said the group will use its funds to build a broad coalition of students, faculty, domestic violence organizations and community leaders to “put an enormous amount of pressure on that university to be transparent and accountable.”

For more Baylor news, visit SicEmSports.com.

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Sam Cooper is a writer for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!