Kenn Starr has resigned as chancellor of Baylor University.
Advertisement
Ken Starr is resigning as Baylor’s chancellor, according to a report from ESPN. Starr only learned of former Baylor defensive end Tevin Elliot’s 2014 sexual assault conviction in the media, he said, and didn’t think it said anything about the program as a whole. “We need to put this awful situation behind us”, Starr said. “We need to be honest”. Starr resigned the position Wednesday morning, effectively immediately, telling ESPN he did it with sorrow and as a matter of conscience..
Starr didnt immediately respond to requests from The Associated Press for comment.
Starr, Baylor’s president since 2010, was stripped of his duties last week by the school’s Board of Regents.
Starr said he was ultimately responsible for the university’s lacklustre response to the crisis.
“There are significant concerns about the tone and culture within Baylor’s football program as it relates to accountability for all forms of student athlete misconduct”, the university quoted the findings as saying.
Starr first became famous in the ’90s when he acted as the special prosecutor in Clinton’s notorious sex scandal with Lewinsky.
Starr apologized to the “victims who were not treated with the care, concern and support they deserve”, in a statement issued last week, when the school fired its head football coach Art Briles April 26. Secondly, he is either completely oblivious or monstrously unflinching when it comes to the plight of women on Baylor’s Waco campus.
Starr was behind major fundraising initiatives at the school, including one that helped pay for its $266 million football stadium.
“Coach Briles is a player’s coach, but he was also a very powerful father figure”, he said to ESPN.
Hernandez said the lack of response from school officials left her feeling “just being completed ignored and sort of pushed under the rug”. Its not happening on campus, to the best of my knowledge.
The report said school administrators discouraged students from reporting or participating in student conduct reviews of sexual assault complaints, and that they even contributed to or accommodated a “hostile” environment against the alleged victims.
Starr told ESPN that he and the school’s faculty senate are pressing the Baylor board of regents for “full transparency”.
Advertisement
The school also found problems inside the athletic department, “including a failure to identify and respond to a pattern of sexual violence by a football player and to a report of dating violence”.
