Baylor Met with Big 12 Reps for Two Hours; Big 12 Releases Positive Statement|Baylor Hot Topics|Team BattleGround|College BattleGround

Baylor officials met with Big 12 members for two hours today. The Big 12 put out this statement after the meeting:

The Big 12 Board of Directors today was given an update by Baylor representatives on the university’s investigation of sexual assaults on its campus. In response to the Board’s request for information, Baylor interim president David Garland, regent’s chairman Ronald Murff and David Harper, academic and student affairs committee chairman met with the Board for over two hours.

“The details provided today are a necessary step in helping the entire membership gain a better understanding of the past actions and how the university plans to deal with all the issues identified in the Pepper Hamilton findings.” said Big 12 Board of Directors chairman and University of Oklahoma president David Boren. “We were assured of the university’s commitment to keep the conference appraised going forward. My Board colleagues and I sincerely appreciate the leadership of interim president Garland during this period, and support his efforts for absolute compliance. We were pleased by the commitment made by their regent’s chairman, Mr. Murff, to support appropriate institutional control going forward, and to assure full Title IX compliance.”

Though not mentioned in the statement, one of the more important pieces of information shared today was that Baylor has apparently removed compliance issues completely from the purview of the Athletic Department.  This move, which was discussed previously, is probably the right thing to do in the interests of avoiding conflicts of interest and makes complete sense.  Overall, the Conference was apparently satisfied enough by Baylor’s efforts to decide against issuing any sanctions at this time, although that is probably not surprising to anyone outside of Austin.