Women’s rights upheld at Baylor, and a lesson for other schools

It’s not just Baylor.

And it’s not just football.

More than 40 years after women won a civil right to equal education under federal law, that victory must be reaffirmed time after time in classrooms, courtrooms and sometimes boardrooms.

Beneath the firing of Baylor University football coach Art Briles lay one simple American principle: All students are entitled to safely go to school, and schools have to care equally about every student’s safety.

Baylor cared more about football players than about their multiple sexual assault victims — at least eight players have been accused in the last eight years — and openly ignored the women or even retaliated, according to findings by the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton.

Briles, 60, was in high school at Rule in West Texas in 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed the law amending Title IX of the Civil Rights Act.

From reading the law firm’s findings, you’d think Briles was coaching out of a 1952 playbook, or 1922.

At the very least, he paid zero attention to the emphasis on women’s education rights since 2011. That’s when new federal rules required schools and colleges to investigate complaints of an off-campus rape or harassment if the school “knows, or reasonably should know” about it.

In 1972, Rayla Allison had just graduated from Western Hills High School in Benbrook.

Now, she’s a Title IX attorney and a senior lecturer at the University of Minnesota Sport Business Institute.

“Women and girls have equal access to admissions, degree programs and education — from the beginning, that’s always been part of the law,” she said by phone Thursday from Minnesota, her home for 21 years.

“Some high-profile cases — many rape cases — have come up lately across the nation where the universities didn’t react appropriately to prevent discrimination. … It’s not just Baylor. It’s not just athletes. And it’s not just male athletes or students who are involved.”

Baylor has an entire law school. They teach equality and civil rights there.

You’d think they’d know you can’t treat women students worse than men, and particularly not treat women athletes worse than football players.

When Allison grew up here in an Air Force family, she played tennis in a school district where most money went to football. She played and coached softball at UT Arlington.

“I know about Texas and football,” she said, “but this is not so much about football as it is about rape cases and institutions handling them appropriately, regardless of who’s involved.”

Briles was not a knowledgeable expert on civil rights, education law or victims’ rights.

Someone at Baylor needed to be.

“The bottom line is, we need to make sure rights are protected and there’s a safe environment on campus,” Allison said.

“I would think the citizens of Texas, and the parents, would want that.”

You’d think.

This story was originally published May 26, 2016 at 8:44 PM with the headline "Women’s rights upheld at Baylor, and a lesson for other schools."