Sexual assault survivor wants Baylor to cancel rest of football season
Sexual assault survivor Brenda Tracy says that photos of Baylor fans buying t-shirts in support of former head football coach Art Briles was "hurtful" and adds that the school should cancel the remainder of the season.
Tracy, who says she was the victim of a gang rape involving two Oregon State football players in 1998, has spoken out against the school in wake of the sexual assault scandal that has surrounded it for the past few years.
Baylor hired Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton earlier this year to investigate the school's response to sexual assault allegations. Briles was fired, university president Ken Starr was demoted and later resigned, athletic director Ian McCaw was suspended and resigned, and other department employees were fired as a result of the Hamilton report.
"All this stuff keeps coming out and these people just keep defending that man (Briles)—at the expense of all these victims and survivors—and I don’t get it,” Tracy said to USA Today. “I don’t understand why nobody is standing up and saying something about it. … You know that this is being organized. Why would you do this?”
Black t-shirts with the words #CAB, for Coach Art Briles, were being sold outside of McLane Stadium in Waco before Saturday's game against TCU.
“I think about how much they must be struggling, and how shameful it is of Baylor in this football season to not even care what these victims are going through. I’m so angry with them," Tracy said. "You’re making sure their lives are destroyed. People treat us (rape survivors) like we’re not even human, like we don’t even matter."
Tracy said she read about Harvard canceling the remainder of its men’s soccer season after members of the team made sexual comments about players on the women's soccer team.
"Why can’t Baylor end the season for this?” Tracy said. “To me, this is egregious behavior. This is not OK on any level. You cannot tell me that those assistant coaches and players didn’t know what they were doing."
Baylor has lost two straight games since starting the season 6–0. The Bears play at Oklahoma on Saturday.
– Scooby Axson
