Above the Rules: Baylor's Sexual Assault Crisis
episode
Campus Files: Scandals, Secrets & Crimes at American Universities
34 min
4 speakers
3 chapters
transcribed 2 months ago
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Colleges across the country tend to have similar codes of conduct. No plagiarism, no cheating, no hacking university networks. But at religious institutions, the list looks a little different. Take Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Baylor was founded by Baptist missionaries back in 1845. It's the largest Baptist university in the world. And the school's identity and code of conduct revolve around Baptist scripture. It prohibits all sorts of things other schools allow. Until recently, that included dancing. For the first 151 years of Baylor's existence, students weren't allowed to dance on campus. Another thing Baylor bans is premarital sex. It has for its entire history. Officially, premarital sex doesn't happen there.
The problem with that position is what it forces the institution to ignore.
From the religion's point of view, there should be no premarital sex. So the idea that they have to address non-consensual sex and rape among their students is something that they're not prepared to do because they don't want to acknowledge that it's happening. So therefore, we're not going to have a system set up to deal with this.
I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, the sexual assault crisis that unfolded at Baylor University.
Jasmine Hernandez grew up in Yorba Linda, California. Her parents raised her in a Christian household, Lutheran high school, church on Sundays.
She kind of struggled with that a little bit because she realized early on that she didn't really know what her sexuality was, that she might be gay. And she knew that from her parents' perspective, they were very loving people, but that anything other than being straight, heterosexual was not okay.
This is ESPN reporter Paula Levine. She's the co-author of Violated, exposing rape at Baylor University amid college football's sexual assault crisis.
For Jasmine, as she had these feelings in high school and going into college, it was something that she kind of struggled with. And I think to some degree, in sort of a weird contradiction, she wanted to go to Baylor because she felt maybe it was a place where she could put her religion first.
What Paula means is this. Baylor explicitly prohibited homosexuality. And for Jasmine, that was part of the appeal.
How did Baylor's religious rules shape campus life and sex policies?
If the rules forbade it, maybe she wouldn't act on it. Jasmine decided to enroll, and her parents were supportive. They felt confident that Baylor would continue what her religious upbringing had started.
Unlike you would see it maybe like in Notre Dame or another school that is technically religious-affiliated, At Baylor, the Baptist tradition is ever present in the education there even.
Baptist values were woven into the course requirements, and they were also woven into the rules.
There were pretty stiff violations for alcohol. Now, there are at other campuses too, clearly, but I think people would say at the time, Baylor was even more strict on some of those things. And the area where they really diverged from what your traditional college experience would be was when it came to sex.
According to Baylor's Code of Conduct, premarital sex is a misuse of God's gift. The policy states that premarital sex is meant exclusively for procreation and the bond between husband and wife.
Now, is that how the student body was? You know, it's still a college.
In other words, there were students having sex and doing other typical college things.
From the students that we talked to, I mean, the social scene at Baylor was in many ways pretty typical for any college, really.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
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