(un)fair: when do we just tear it down?

When laid out on paper, it makes perfect sense that someone with gymnastics as a favorite summer sport would have figure skating as their winter viewing of choice. Both sports prioritize combining complicated, dangerous skills with some degree of elegance and expression, both sports’ fans and competitors love to argue about that particular degree of elegance and expression, both sports have incredible competitors who made the sport their entire life and who redefine greatness with every competition – and both sports have long, sordid histories of abuse.

The Kamila Valieva saga over this last week brought back nothing so much as the sinking pit in my stomach generated by everything that happened with USA Gymnastics. On the surface, the two situations could not be more different. Kamila Valieva tested positive for a banned substance with no therapeutic exemption and is now subject to the kind of suspicion and doubt that never truly goes away. USA Gymnastics enabled abusers of all varieties to use the elite and pre-elite gymnastics field as their own personal playground. The similarities come when we step away from the specifics, though, and look at the bigger picture, allowing our eyes to slide slightly out of focus as if trying to find that image in the Magic Eye cacophony.


The true commonality is this: What are we willing to do to win? For a long time, in the US, gold medals came at the expense of young women’s lives and safety. We turned a blind eye to what, in hindsight, was so clearly a damaged system, because we wanted to see five smiling faces on top of the podium (and then we wanted to yell at them for not putting a hand over their heart, as if they weren’t thankful enough to a nation that would see them preyed upon). We watched fluff pieces praising the coaches who forced athletes to tumble on broken bones, who scoffed at injury, and who played favorites with the only intention being to create an atmosphere of mistrust, rather than solidarity.


If, before this week, you only knew of Eteri Tutberidze and Sambo 70 through international sports media and commentary, you likely had an impression of the miracle-worker coach and her prodigy students, all achieving things beyond the commonly understood boundaries of the sport. “Revered but controversial” read one headline promoted on Twitter, a reductive but succinct demonstration of the general public’s opinion towards Tutberidze. Headlines like this have been around every Olympic cycle going back to 2014, when 15-year-old Yulia Lipnitskaya stunned everyone in the Team Event in Sochi, every one of them not interrogating the narrative any further than the “fearsome work ethic” and rags-to-riches story of the Russian skating queen-maker.


Under the surface of “we spent a week at Sambo-70 and look at all these baby quad queens!” though, lies a darker story. Even if we put aside the positive test for a banned substance with no use in a 15-year-old athlete other than to increase aerobic capacity, there are the threads of a tale of a coach willing to treat young athletes as disposable. Lipnitskaya, hailed by every English-language outlet as the next great Olympic champion, was out of the sport by age 19 and struggled with an eating disorder. Perhaps relatedly, Tutberidze gave interviews praising how Lipnitskaya could survive on only “powdered nutrients.” Evgenia Medvedeva, the next hailed queen of skating, competed with a stress fracture in PyeongChang 2018 and came in second to Alina Zagitova, who, in turn, has not competed since 2019.


To be frank, I could keep going with the list of skaters Tutberidze coached who burned bright and flamed out. It’s long, and depressing, and if you have any feeling at all, makes you want to give the sport up for lost.


That’s not the answer, though. It’s not the answer in gymnastics and it’s not the answer here. The answer here is accountability -- both on the part of federations, of coaches, and of us, the media and the fans. We have to be better about asking questions: Yes, these quads are amazing, but are the athletes performing them learning them safely and in a way that won’t ruin the rest of their life (which is usually much longer than their sporting career?) Yes, we want to see even more high-flying tumbling and amazing skills from our gymnasts, but can we guarantee that without the added pressure of a system where failure means humiliation, and no amount of success can protect you?


I joke sometimes that my habit of becoming so invested in a sport that I learn all the dirty little secrets keeps me from actually enjoying anything, ever, but the truth is a little more complicated than that. At its best, this sport is one that marries performance and exceptional athleticism. How can one not be drawn in by that? We know that it can be coached at a high level with respect for the athletes, because we have seen it happen. Sometimes, loving something means knowing it can be better, and being that noisy person who tries, even with a tiny platform and a small voice, to extort it to become what it could be.


Where does that leave us today? I don’t know.


It leaves us with an Olympic women’s competition that feels a bit like a joke. If Valieva wins, there will be no medal ceremony, no flowers, no acknowledgment of an achievement that the IOC, WADA, and many other skating federations feel will be nullified in the coming months. If she doesn’t win, blame will be placed on the drama surrounding the previous week -- and scrutiny will fall on her teammates, fellow Tutberidze students who are the most likely medallists, thanks to their technical components. Other skaters will surely be wondering why the rules feel so different this time when in the past, suspensions have not been lifted until skaters could prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that contamination came from an outside source (such as US Pairs skater Jessica Calalang, who couldn’t compete for eight months while waiting for WADA/USADA to clear her for testing positive for a metabolite caused by her makeup).


The fact that Valieva is 15 is being given as the reason for the lifting of her suspension, here. Other athletes whose suspensions have been enforced were above the age of 16, the age where according to WADA regulations someone is responsible for their own behavior and positive drug tests. That just leads us to another question: Why is 15 the senior age in skating? Why is it that someone can compete as an adult and yet not be held to adult rules and regulations? Why is it that in both sports, there is still such a dedication to the outdated ideals of push-push-push until you can’t? Why does it take the greatest athlete in the history of the sport refusing to put herself in danger to create the tiniest bit of change?


At the end of the day, it all comes down to this: It isn’t fair. The Olympic Movement is built on this ideal of fair competition, fair sport bringing the world together. This incident in particular, and the greater demonstration of disregard for universally adhered-to regulations regarding the amount of outside assistance available to athletes, undermines all of that. The house built on sand cannot stand, and an undertow is eating away its foundations -- and they are letting it fall.


It isn’t fair to Kamila Valieva, who went from being “the first woman to land a quad at the Olympics” to “another doping Russian athlete,” at an age where most of us weren’t deemed mature enough to drive a car. It isn’t fair to every other competitor in the women’s event, who now has to wonder exactly how real every competition they saw swept up by the ROC athletes was. It isn’t fair to whoever else medals, to have their Olympic moment taken away from them thanks to something they didn’t do. It isn’t fair to every 13-year-old girl in both Russia and other countries, breaking her body in search of something that might not even be achievable without untoward help.


It could be fair. I still believe that. I still believe that with a few changes, with a few people held responsible, it could be fair. It just isn’t right now, and that makes it hard to enjoy.

post-baseball

My last byline for Baseball Prospectus was on March 20th, 2019. It’s been two long years since I published anything meaningful about baseball, and closer to four since I attended any type of baseball game with any sort of regularity. If I went back in time to talk to my summer 2017 self, who still harbored some moderate-sized dream of working for a baseball team, working “in baseball” in the way that matters to the outside world, she’d be stunned at what’s transpired. Mainly, by the global pandemic, the fact that I moved back in with my parents willingly for three months in 2020, the fact that masks are a thing now, and my burgeoning dice addiction, but she’d also never be able to comprehend where I am with baseball right now. Baseball was my entire life. I dreamed in the game, moved heaven and earth to make afternoon doubleheaders. I drove hundreds of miles without compensation, hoping that this would be the thing I wrote that got me the job. I drank way too much, I lost friends, and I lost jobs thanks to my obsession, and letting baseball take priority over everything else. I was too naive, too stubborn, and too damn young. For a topical reference that will seem hideously out of date for anyone reading this after the late winter/spring of 2021, when Harry said his relationship with William was “space,” that echoed how I’ve felt about baseball for a while. I haven’t really talked about it much - partially because I ditched Twitter for the better part of 2020, and partially because how do you talk about “this game wore me down until I burned out and couldn’t stand to watch two innings consecutively” on the platform where you’ve made your name as someone who talks about...baseball. So, I let it kind of fade away. Answered questions to the best of my ability (or ignored them), that ability severely hampered by not knowing what on earth was going on. In college, I could name the 25-man roster of six or seven different teams at any given point, and that felt important. Now? I’m only really sure that Sean Doolittle is on the Cincinnati Reds because of the excellent “Red Scare” jokes. In some ways, it’s better on the other side. Baseball no longer has any power over me, so I can say what I want. Not that it truly stopped me before, but friends can attest to sleepless nights wondering if speaking the truth had cost me a job, and caring entirely too deeply about that. I still do baseball work, or rather, I’ve returned to doing baseball work, but it’s quiet work, private work, and it’s something that fills a want, not something creating a need. I’m nearly thirty, and it feels weird to consider that in a year I’ll have been publicly talking about baseball for ten years. I’m so completely different from the person I was back then - at first, eager for men’s approval, desperate to be “one of the guys,” and then combative but still bone-crushingly aching for acceptance, and then something of an expert, and now...well, if we define post-modern art, perhaps that’s what this is. I’m now looking at the sport from a post-baseball perspective. At the raw foundation, baseball still fascinates me. The pure interaction of pitcher to batter. The way we’re still learning and growing and defining and discovering the science and art of the game, the way the ball leaves the fingertips and takes on a life of its own. We can’t ignore everything built on top of that, of course, the white supremacist nature of the corporate entity swallowing the game whole, the very misogyny baked into the bones of it, from the miserable attempts at addressing sexual misconduct to the very fact that women are still fighting just to play the game, and while at one point in time I was the person to address these things, and perhaps I will be again, I’ll happily leave them to better voices. If you let something define your whole entire being, at some point, it will eat you whole and spit you out a bone-scarred shadow of yourself. This time, I’m coming back to baseball on my own terms. I think we’ll both be happier that way.

On Le Tour de France

As le Tour de France crested its final competitive stage for the race overall, a shortened race for the safety of the riders (in that, not enough of them are cyclocross riders to attempt the landslide-obliterated roads across le Cormet de Roselend), the same team won what had been one of the most entertaining Tours in recent memory. One could call that boring, though it wasn't. One could call it expected, but it didn't look like it would be until the entirely unexpected early termination of the previous day's stage. One could call it a footnote, which, it's not, but it's not the headline, either.

The final result isn’t really why we watch this race. There’s the one big prize, of course, the honor of being “A Winner of Le Tour de France” (at least, unless you’re found to have doped and get your yellow jerseys stripped from you like so much laundry), and three lesser prizes, and the prize commonly acknowledged to be given to the favor of the French crowd. We all have our favorites we cheer for, or our villains we cheer against, but for 21 days, we don’t tune in to see just that.

It’s been five years that I’ve gotten back into watch Le Tour, and I’ve cried at the end of every one. The reasons are different - sometimes Le Tour’s been the one thing keeping me sane while I grapple with unemployment, or with a difficult job, or with the various fears and compromises that come with being alive. Sometimes its just that the directors and editors of the Amaury Sports Organization are incredibly good at their jobs, and the sweeping shots of the Alps, of the riders crossing the fields of wheat and sunflowers, of the faces of pain and struggle, men pushing their bodies to places they aren’t supposed to go - you’re supposed to feel something. You’re supposed to, first, want to go to France (something I feel with every bone in my body, a physical yearning for the mountains that could also be fulfilled with a trip to Colorado), but second, to have a purely emotional response to a sport that fundamentally makes no sense.

It’s a stupid, beautiful race. It’s every man for himself, other than the men charged with burning every last ounce of resolve and carbo-gel fueled muscle for someone else. It’s seeing every single little church over the age of 100 on the broadcast and knowing that the riders know almost nothing of what they’re speeding past. It’s something that gets Americans up early, keeps Australians up late, and throws a bunch of people together in a single Slack room filled with more capital letters than the average ransom note.

It’s easier to describe what Le Tour is than why I care about it so much. Le Tour is 22 teams of eight men each racing for 21 days over some of the best terrain - but only some of - in the world for the honor of a yellow shirt and the chance to raise what is essentially a large dinner plate. It’s a race where you can win the whole thing without ever having won a single day, and the single day winner could also be in the bottom half of the standings at the end (and many of them will be). It’s a big ol’ complicated mess that is deeply, deeply French and yet not won by a Frenchman for over 30 years. It’s deeply problematic, has a horrendous issue with sexism (the women’s race organized by the same group was one day long this year and got less than a tenth the fanfare), and yet somehow one of the purest expressions of sport.

Even in attempting to write about it dryly I can’t help but go into the floweriest of language. It’s that kind of a thing, and that’s part of why I love it. It’s a 19-day vacation from the comfort of my couch (well, and for those early morning 200 km day starts, my bed). It’s the fans who line the side of the road, and wishing I were one of them, seeing the peloton go by in a five-second blur. The motorcycle going around the curve in the road, the sky opening up beyond it, the riders a meaningless speck in the helicopter shot of the high valley, or across a wheat field. The feeling of possibility at every start line, when everything is new and five to ten to thirty guys think they might just have a shot. The way it is so easy to completely immerse yourself in this - or you can let it skim by, enjoying the kind of vistas that even few films can provide.

Why do I love this most ridiculous of things? Because it’s there. Because it’s a bunch of mad idiots on bikes who point themselves at some of the highest mountains in the world and say — let’s go.

catharsis

It's the everyday indignities of being a woman, right?

There's more than one kind of harassment, you know - sexual being one of the objective-worst, and most pervasive, and the one finally somewhat being brought out to the light - but that's not the only way that there is to take a once bright soul and dim it.

There's the guy who walked into a Dallas diner, sat down at a booth diagonal from me and a female friend, and pulled out his penis. I forget about him, usually, though, compared to the man who became my friend, then became emotionally abusive to the point that I am still scared of what he could do to my career today. That abuse wasn't about sex, or if it was, I was too naive. It was because I was powerless, because I was desperate, because I've been lonely my whole life. He wasn't even the first emotional abuser - because that's most of the abuse I've experienced. Emotional beat-downs, feeling like I have to buy friendships because I'm not worthy of anything otherwise.

There was the truck full of drunk guys on Baylor's campus who cat-called me as I was walking to my car late one night. I'd gone to my sorority little's dorm to borrow her shower, as my apartment's water was off, and so I was dressed quite alluringly in: A giant sorority tee-shirt, a pair of marching-band sweatpants, slide-on Chuck Taylors, with my hair in a beach towel on my head. Those guys somehow recede in my mind, though, compared to the man in the pressbox who would not stop poking me, who laughed at my protestations, who said I was being over-sensitive when I got angry, who made me feel ashamed and worried that my reaction would keep me from covering this sport I love.

I'm lucky, you know? Objectively, the worst thing that has happened to me is probably the guy in high school who, as I was walking to Calculus, came up and draped his arm around me, taller enough than 5'3" me that his hand dangled near where you'd think it would. I slapped him, the only time I acted out in high school close to a teacher and didn't get written up for it. He didn't get written up for it, either, of course. I didn't even remember this had happened until someone told a similar story on Twitter, and then it came rushing back.

I've also had some disgusting comments left in anonymous chat interfaces, emails to any email address questioning my abilities and my worth, accusations of sleeping with no less than five different people to get information, rather than believe that I know what I talk about.

We've all been pitted against ourselves, here. I've been made to feel worthless by the fact that I don't get cat calls. My friends have been made to feel worthless by the fact that they are constantly seen as nothing more than pieces of meat.

I'm not sure what I'm looking to accomplish by this. Some kind of catharsis, maybe. Some kind of peace.

prospective perspective

I've been writing about prospects since 2014. That's honestly not that long ago, but in the scale of time I work on, it feels like forever. I've gotten lucky, in that time, to be mentored by some of the best and most giving people out there - both on the evaluation and the writing side of the gigs. For a while, I even wanted to be a scout, thought that would be the culmination of my dreams.

Things change as we grow older, though, including our priorities and our abilities. Evaluation's still very much a part of me, my identity, being the girl who can hang in there with the guys when taking apart a prospect's swing or mechanics or makeup. It's a part of how I approach anything to do with numbers - we can slice and dice, but the game's still played on the field.

However, it's not my home, anymore. There's no future for me in this game on the pure evaluation side, not right now. I'm not going to pretend that this isn't bitter, that this thing I got into for love has turned into this...but it's also possibly time for me to step back, simply because I'm not in it for love anymore.

I'm not quitting, entirely. This isn't some big flounce of a blog post, with complaints about how it's too hard or it's not fair. I'm still going to go to some games, just not nearly as many. I'm still going to write about some prospects, but they might be fewer, and further between. I still love baseball, but I'm just redistributing my time a bit.

Right now, I have the chance to learn from some of the best people in the public industry on the number-crunching and innovation side of the street, and I'd be a fool to turn that down. Added to a real job that requires 45-60 miles of commuting, daily, to which I'd be adding an additional 20 if I were to attempt to go to Frisco every day, a dire need for sleep, and simple economics, it's a clear choice, if not also a painful one.

Even simpler, though, it had become about being ahead, "winning," constantly comparing myself to others and their accomplishments, which isn't a healthy way to be about anything that isn't, you know, an actual competition. Maybe this step back will be good. I'll learn some stuff, figure out my "real" job and the balance of everything, and be able to continue fusing evaluation and analytics in new and exciting ways.

I don't expect anyone to read this blog post and really understand anything. I honestly don't understand it myself - and I still don't have an answer for what I'm trying to get out of this baseball thing. Sometimes, though, you just have to make the rational decision instead of the easy one, and look forward to learning new things.

auld

2016 has been a year.

Well, technically, all years are years, and most of them are equal, though this one was not. It was a leap year, and it was a weird year, and it was a sad year. I came into the year with a full time job, lost that job, pretended that I could survive as a freelance writer, came to terms with the fact that a baseball job isn't in the cards for me now, if ever, and finally, with barely any time to spare, found a new job.

In that time, there's also been a lot of writing. Baylor University self-immolated, and I was there to write about it from my unique position as both an informed advocate and an alumna. The Texas Rangers went to the playoffs, and I was there to cover their spectacular flaming out. I wrote about hockey, in my weird way. I got to work with one of the best co-authors a writer could ask for in Russell Carleton on a piece that started out as a "what if" and turned into five parts and counting, tearing apart the murky insides of Major League Baseball's front office hiring. I also took on everything from the absolute bullshit spewed by lawyers trying to keep minor league players from fair pay to major leaguers in Olympic sports. I wrote more, and more regularly, than I thought I could!

Normally, I'd try to write this with the passion and conviction - or at least elegant language pulled out of depression. The above reads like some laundry list of accomplishments, some kind of dry recitation of "please read my work." I mean, it's not that - every writer longs for approval, and applause, and the recognition of the audience - the reassurance that we're not just shouting into the void.

To be honest, this year hasn't been easy. I don't think I've given that impression on Twitter (hell, I know I complain a lot, and a lot more than I should, considering where I'm starting from) but it hasn't. Unexpectedly losing my job took a toll, as did the constant unending grind of bad news in both sports and life across the entirety of the anum. It's sometimes really difficult to take stock of where you are when weighed down with the pressure of everything around you, like you're drowning in the midst of your concerns.

Things are looking up, now, possibly. It's been a year where we've learned to take nothing for granted - not a job, not a life, not a fastball. Maybe we'll burn, maybe we'll emerge refined.

all my best,
kate

2016 Best Of, by yours truly:
The entirety of my writing on Baylor, but particularly "How the 'Baylor Bubble' explains the college's rape scandal." at Fusion.
"The Perils of MLB's Sorting System" with Russell Carleton, at Baseball Prospectus
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
"The Women's Version of Baseball is Baseball," at Baseball Prospectus
"The 7,500 Apprentices," at Baseball Prospectus
"Which Olympic Events would Baseball Players Be Best In?" at FanRag Sports MLB.
"Squishy Managerial Factors and what makes managers good," at FanRag Sports MLB.
"Take a Loss, Save a Bullpen," at Baseball Prospectus.
"The Joy of Adrian Beltre," at Baseball Prospectus.

My favorite writers in 2016:
Sam Miller, both at Baseball Prospectus and ESPN; Levi Weaver, of WFAA and everywhere else; Emma Baccellieri at Baseball Prospectus; Ryan Nanni on Twitter; Spencer Hall; Jarrett Seidler; Meg Rowley; Jen Mac Ramos; Corinne Landrey; Carolyn Wilke at FanRag Sports NHL; Mallory Ortberg, late of the late The Toast; the great Jessica Luther; and so many more.

I can't hope to both list everyone, and all my favorite pieces from everyone, but these people are great, and well worth reading.

So here's the thing.

I got caught between circumstances. Right after I graduated college, I could have done a baseball internship. I know this, because I did three months of an unpaid internship, but in social media. I did this while also writing twice a week about baseball, working a different internship, and living with my parents. I also didn't know enough about baseball to even be considered for a bird-dog scout job. I was just learning, but I was also using my time up.

Now, I'm older. I'm almost too old to be on my parents' insurance, I've got rent and bills and a car that won't pass inspection, but I know my baseball. Not well enough, obviously, but I like to think I've learned something in the three years between when I graduated.

I live a life of incredible privilege. My parents have been able to help me out - both right after I graduated, and when I was suddenly laid off from my full-time job. My friends are incredible, and even if I couldn't keep my apartment, I know I'd be able to find somewhere to live. What does that say that even if I, with the incredible luck, privileges, and inherent connections I have thanks to my work for Baseball Prospectus, cannot see a path where I would be able to survive on an internship salary, to the point that I don't even apply?

This is the thing, then - I'd like to work in baseball. It sounds really stupid to say that out loud, because we're never really supposed to articulate our "dreams" but I'd like to work in baseball. I like to think that with a little more experience I'd actually be good at it. For now, though, that door is shut to me. It's shut to me because despite what I do have, I don't have enough. It's shut to me because I'm a little bit older, a little bit later, a little bit less of whatever it is. You may say I'm the one that closed it, but even if that is true, I only closed it because if I didn't, it would swallow me whole.

Sure, some of this goes back to my inherent lack of self-confidence, maybe, the reluctance to even apply; but some of it is pure self-preservation - if I've already done the math, and I already know the answer, then why try to fool myself into other things?

I know it's possible to live off credit cards, borrow against a tomorrow you hope will happen, but that's not the reality I want. So yeah, I'll continue to fight with what weapons I have - my words, which have very little weight, but I do what I can. I do believe that there is a future out there where someone can figure out just a little late, someone who doesn't fit the pre-determined mold who has a mind that sparks when the information is provided. I just don't believe it's there for me.

wrung

I'm sitting outside, I've had a fresh cup of coffee, the sun is shining and I'm even wearing a jacket. I should be able to put some good and fun words on paper about something I love, either the Dallas Stars and Rich Peverley or The Great British Bake-Off, but instead, I can't. Every sentence that comes from my fingers is flat and insipid, and my head feels both fuzzy and empty, like a washcloth wrung out to dry and left to hang stiff.

It's been a difficult few months for yours truly - getting unexpectedly laid off, having false hope abound, losing money and time and friends. Supposedly, all this nonsense should have resulted in epic writings, book-length musings on the nature of stress, and whether or not we need to change ourselves, and not the slow diminishing of my ability to spell and write and move people with my words.

The sun plays across my eyelids as I stop typing and stare upward at the porch roof, and then bounce off onto one of the websites that counts as a distraction for me. I'm empty right now, a vessel used and poured out, and while in the movies, this is when I'd "go crazy! Spend the rest of my savings on a vacation and just get out of town for a while!" I can't do that, because this is real life, and real life means not knowing how much longer I'll have to rely on those savings to pay my rent, or how long I'll need to keep eating meals at my parents' house to not buy as many groceries, and we don't always get what we want.

I mean, sometimes we do, but we don't know that we don't want it. I wanted out of my previous job, which was a bad fit in all directions and was actively making me sick from a different kind of stress, but then I knew I had a paycheck coming in every two weeks, could save money and occasionally spend it, and didn't have to obsess over what came next. In the long run, sure, it's great that I'm out of there, even if being laid off three months ago means that every day that goes by I worry about whether or not I'm unhireable for one reason or another.

"You're 25!" you say, not unreasonably, but then you go on. "You should be taking risks! You should be living! Move somewhere! Go out to bars!" But what am I supposed to do when I sign an 11-month lease assuming that I'll be here for another 11 months and then have everything fall apart in my hands, like when a child tries to pick up a sandcastle? Where's my trust fund buying me a new car so I can drive across the country like "living my best life?" Where's the fairy godmother (or godfather, I don't discriminate) making it so I can pursue my dreams instead of sadly accepting the status quo while still ranting about it?

I'm a pragmatist, so sue me, but I've always been one with a creative's soul, and that creative soul is drying up like the lakes of California. It turns out that that nothing lasts forever, you know?

An Open Letter to the Baylor Class of 2020

Dear the Baylor Freshmen of the class of 2020,

By now, you are a few months into your career at what I previously thought was one of the best universities in the state of Texas, if not the United States. You’re fresh-faced and ready to take on the world, if you’re anything like I was, full of belief and passion and maybe a little indecision and uncertainty.

For your sakes, I hope you have the college experience I did. I hope nothing worse crosses your path than a semester on three hours of sleep, or one episode of drunk cat-calling by frat boys at 2:00 AM the day before DIA.

You should know, though, that the university does not love you back. Your professors might, your mentors might, your librarians and bosses and support staff might, but the university, as personified by the Board of Regents and those who haunt the hallowed halls of power, does not love you back. Approach all you do with this understanding.

If you are a collegiate woman, you have a 27% chance of being touched or violated sexually without your consent, most likely by someone you know. If you are Baylor student (and so many other universities, but I did not attend those universities, and my heart is not breaking at their failure to comply with the law) then you will not be helped by your university, even now. You may find a sympathetic ear in the counseling center, you may have a professor you can confide in, you may tell no one and hope it all goes away. If you go to the university, though, they will not help you.

I had an incredible experience at Baylor University. I learned so much more than what was taught in the classrooms - things like critical thinking, and sisterly bonds, and how to walk on my own two feet without needing to fear failure. These lessons I learned, from my incredible professors and my family of friends, are why I am so absolutely furious to continually learn about another University failing at every single step. I had such a special Baylor experience that it ruins me to know that there are people out there, most of them young women just like me, who had that brutally ripped away from them under the same bell tower that I studied.

“To err is human, only God is divine!” You might reply, if you’re a firm believer the the power of sunshine and giggles, with no human authority questioning instinct at all. We all err, yes. We all sin, yes. To continue to definitely err in the face of such allegations, though, is more than we should be able to bear as a society, much less as a supposedly God-fearing university.

I wish I could tell you, Baylor Freshmen, to buy in. I wish I could tell you to buy in to what you’re reading in emails, what you’re being told in Chapel, what the University wants you to believe.

Don’t, though. Resist the clarion call to sit and do nothing. It’s clear now that nothing with change without full-on shoving, so shove away. You are freshmen, I know, and you feel you are both limitless and ever-so-limited. Work within those limits. You are the change.

Know that I am out here rooting for you to be the beginning of something better.

As long as stars shall shine,

A 2013 graduate.

what's next

What is success? 

In baseball, success is both easy and incredibly difficult to define. Success is a certain number of home runs, a certain batting average, a certain way of creating outs. It's both one thing (winning) and every thing. 

In life, it's much harder than that to define success. I used to think I'd found some measure of success - first writing locally, then getting to write at Baseball Prospectus, and then...and then...but the problem with "and then" is that there's the question of "what's next?" 

I've been stuck on "what's next" for over two months now, since I was laid off from my rent-paying job precipitously and have had to make do with a set of circumstances I've handled both well and not well enough. I'm in that precarious position where I can make do for right now, but I can't make do forever, meaning I've had to turn away from opportunities I never thought I'd even be able to think about. My whole life is in limbo right now, which feels like the opposite of success. 

In some ways, I've failed. Without getting into specifics, I'm not brave enough to make what I want happen, and I'm not good enough to get other options presented to me. I spend too much of my time sitting on my couch, staring at the TV and/or crying, alternately. I'm too uncertain to network properly, and I'm too plainspoken to not put this stuff on the internet, when my current situation should probably call for care and quiet. 

I write, but I'm not a successful writer. I'm no one's favorite, and I don't have a big enough name to argue back. I'm too established to be up-and-coming, but I'm too unknown to be established. 

This was going to be a...whatever I write on this blog is - about Pitch and being a woman in baseball. About success in failure and how incredible (and how easy it is to be cynical about) a story where a woman is the main character, a sports story where a woman is the one we're supposed to care about, a sports story where she's not the sidelined chick with three lines. Maybe I'll still write that, but right now, I feel like the sidelined one. 

Even now, at a point where it's better for women writing sports than any other point in history, it feels like we still fall prey to the curse of "there can be only one." Some of this is internal, yes. When you're trained throughout your entire life to treat every day like a battle for superiority of some kind between you and your fellow women, it's real easy to bring that into your writing. Some of it is external, though, the self-same notion that women can't be good at this. 

Of course, there's always the what if - what if the reason I'm stuck on "what's next" is because I really am not good at this? I can't even write a coherent and clear ramble on Twitter about failure and success without twisting it into a rant about how fair life isn't, so maybe this isn't the thing for me. 

Here's the thing, though: It's really difficult to not focus on that when "what's next" seems to be flashing in front of your eyes in neon letters. It's hard not to push the words out of your hands because you have to, not because you want to. It's impossible to slow down and let things come to you because you have to keep reaching and keep grabbing and losing and trying to get to that mythical whatever is next. 

Here We Go Again

Today, a new round of documents came out alleging a deeper level of involvement and complicity on the part of Baylor University in the cases of football players assaulting other persons.

I'm angry, you know? I'm so angry that I'm not angry anymore, that I'm just exhausted. Ken Starr and his student-friendly ways, student-friendly until it came time to actually stand up and be a man of honor, which he apparently couldn't do. Art Briles and his country charm, his folksy mannerisms, and his willingness to take on anything. Ian McCaw and his savvy hiring, his quiet maneuvering of a sinking ship on the Brazos to a new safe harbor of entertaining success.

If there's anything these new reports show, it's that the leaders of this university can't hide behind a claim of ignorance anymore. There is no ignorance, and it seems to be growing ever clearer that there never really was.

How did I not see this coming, that this was a group of people so determined to win at any cost, even if that cost was this? They can't say "oh, well, they never played a down of football" anymore. No, these were huge team contributors that would have hurt those chances for titles and money and glitter if the men in charge done the honorable thing.

But no, we've got a stadium to pay off, and so the show must go on.

The thing is, the thing that I want to come back to and also avoid, is that this is everywhere. This is everywhere! Not every university may be failing to this level, but there is this kind of systemic failings of victims at every university. No one is perfect. The greater sin, though, is that for years and years and years, Baylor has pretended it is.

I wrote some on this in my previous pieces on this theme, but here we are again, with another round of damning documents that no longer allow us the innocence of youth. When you step onto Baylor's campus, you're told it's a home, that you're with family, that these people (this president of the university who helps you unload your boxes) would do everything to protect and encourage you - but it turns out there are limits.

There are limits, like when a team chaplain reportedly tells a young woman reporting an assault to him to let it be. There are limits, like when there's not even the most basic of system in place - a Title IX office, the very least possible - to ensure that when this happens, it can be handled well. There are limits, because this is Baylor, right? We can stick our head in the sand like ostriches and pretend that Good Christian Boys have been Taught Better and Would Never and that Good Christian Girls wouldn't Put Themselves In These Positions Anyway, and therefore, it just Can't Happen Here.

Wake up, Mr. President. Wake up, head coach. Wake up, various and sundry honored sirs and madams of the council. You are not exempt. You are not special. This university is just dirt and stone like every other place on earth, and the people in it are a mix of humanity like any other. If you don't take proactive measures - not just those blue-light poles, half of which seem to be broken every semester, not just the asinine "we're here for you" and then cutting off counseling sessions after a semester, not just the barest of minimums - if you aren't here, then you don't only lose your claim to being "better than," you are therefore worse than for even claiming it.

Of course, I've said this all before. I have! I've said it in more flowery language, I've torn apart rhetoric from here to there, I've screamed and cried and cursed and worn myself hoarse trying to make this university worthy of me. Right now? It's not, and I feel like I'm just repeating myself, screaming at an unhearing wall, an uncaring group of people who want to wear a caring mask.


Note: I feel I must lay this out here, simply because it is who I am. I did not experience anything like what has been reported while I was at Baylor. My experience while on campus was, for the most part, a good and growing one. I had incredible professors who did live up to the ideals put forth by the university, I had wonderful mentors who made time for a very confused and frustrating music student who wanted to do anything but, and I had a counselor who flouted those very "only so many sessions" rules to help me make it out of the mire of my mind, even temporarily. This is why I feel so betrayed, I supposed - because I had the model experience, and it seems there are so many who didn't, and were shoved away for not. 

something ranty about things

Right now, at this moment, if I had money and time and life on my side, I would gladly drop everything and give my all to a baseball job.

In the real world, though, if I were to get the highest paid internship I have heard of in baseball, I would be taking an immediate 25% pay cut, and that's low-balling my annual income as of right now (which is already on the low end of the scale for my particular specialty in my particular location). That pay cut doesn't include the question of health insurance, or any increase in rent, or moving expenses, or all the little things that come with dropping everything to do what we're lied to about from middle school on and pursue a dream.

I'm not even in any need. I'm very firmly middle-class, from a middle-class family, in a middle-class job. I live in a not huge but not tiny apartment, by myself, in a fairly low cost-of-living area of the country. My student loan debt is weighty, but not crushing. I don't even have credit card debt! I make some extra money on the side, I try my best to save and spend wisely, and I budget for the occasional extravagance - like playoff hockey tickets or a nice dinner out, but not both at the same time. If I can't make baseball work from a practical standpoint, then who on earth can?

These limitations mean that "the best and the brightest" becomes "the best of the interested richest.” Yeah, there's going to be exceptions. There's going to be those precious few who hit on the right thing at the right time, make insane amounts of sacrifice, and then are rewarded with token status  - "if they did it, then clearly you, you younger generation, are just lazy!" or, the ever-dreadful "but look at this one hire we made!"

It's been shown time and time again in multiple fields of business that diversity - inclusive of race and gender and opinion - makes for better ideas. Why has baseball, a business so intent on chasing any bit of advantage in a largely even field, not paid more attention to this? There are signs of this happening, yes. The Dodgers, for one, the Brewers, for another, the Mariners...but it's still the exception, not the norm.

There are bright minds out there. They may not be making noise, but they're in college, and they're in the workplace, and they're thinking and commenting and coming up with ideas that, for the large part, won't be seen by a major league team due to the barrier for entry. Not only do these "diverse" minds have to first overcome the societal skepticism that comes with whatever tag they're blessed with, but then they have to figure out whether or not they can actually, practically, if they have the good fortune to get noticed, make that next step.

Major League Baseball's diversity problem isn't this easy to fix, I know. The financial barriers aren't the only thing making it difficult for people to decide that something they love is more valuable than something that allows them to live - but they're no small part.

To bring this back to me - however selfish that is, I only really have my example to work from - a lot of things might have been different if I'd known that baseball was something I could do, for real, when I graduated college. It took me two years to find a full-time job in my current field, two years I lived with my parents doing my own succession of low- or no-pay internships, two years that are the reason I can't drop everything and do that now. I drained my savings account paying my student loans so I wouldn't have to pay more later - and how lucky was I to have savings! Now, when I know enough and am encouraged enough and lucky enough to have a chorus of people telling me that I - a woman, a music major, a non-math person - I could (?) be good enough to work in baseball, I just can't make it happen.

If you want to really see change, it has to happen at the beginning. Baseball can't wait for people to come to it. We've got to stop holding it up as a golden god of employment, something worth sacrificing health and wealth and sanity to. We've instead got to hold it accountable, something that's been happening more and more often in these recent years.

It may be too late for me and baseball, but I sure as hell want to make sure it doesn't get to be too late for whoever is next.

I've written this same damn post a thousand times, worked it out in blog and message and text, the same cry from inside my soul that I've got nothing, that I've been sucked dry. It's that time of year, I guess, when I realize that the fountain that used to spit out ideas and thoughts and clever bon mots is nothing more than a fickle spring, dried up at the first touch of drought. I'm not even good at my job right now, which is to this kind of writing what carob is to chocolate - nothing but an artificial and plasticne substitution.

I spend a lot of time talking about what I cannot do. I cannot command a room with my presence, I cannot seem to type quickly without error anymore, I cannot drink milk. I cannot work a full time job and write on the side full time, too. Right now, I cannot do even basic baseball analytics in the same way anyone else can. I can't find it in myself to be completely happy for someone else, even though I hate myself for that seed of jealousy.

Two paragraphs in and I'm staring at the rest of the page now, because sometimes I just can't even make my fingers keep going. I write in such flowery awful language, you guys, that even when I'm writing to write, writing to try to keep myself from completely falling apart, I sit and stare because the words just aren't lining up correctly, the rhythm isn't quite right, and it's not that this isn't a symphony, it's that it's barely a student-level piano duet.

Maybe it would help if I didn't flip to Twitter every time I finish a paragraph, but I can barely stand to be in a room with myself at times, much less on the same page. I still don't know if I'm actually going to hit that bright orange "publish" button yet.

That's a lie. I know I will, because I am, for all my love of espionage and misdirection, fundamentally honest. I will, because maybe my ranting, maybe my venting, maybe my honest exploration of emptiness (not even pain, just the vague black nothingness that is the inside of my head right now, where words used to exist) will help someone else. I doubt it, but maybe, they will, and all this won't have been for absolutely naught.

I'd like to write that great piece, still. The big something, my chance at glory. I thought I had it, a few months ago, but it slid through my fingers like sand, a reminder that I really shouldn't get my hopes up. So it's still out there, that chance for me to prove myself once and for all, or maybe it's not. Maybe this is it - I'm simply what I am today, nothing more or less.

I don't know what I am today, and every time I ask someone to tell me I cannot tell if they are lying.

I've been posting a lot of things untitled, recently, because I cannot come up with something that doesn't either feel misleading or overly pretentiously shallow. This will be another one.

honesty or foolishness or both

Two years ago, I was living with my parents. My car had no air-conditioning, I was draining my savings account to pay back my loans, and I was improbably mostly happy. I had a database of minor league information like you wouldn't believe, sources to call on to find out anything I couldn't see, and I didn't know what I didn't know - I was formless, but boundless, full of energy and vitality and I could write.

I'm now in my own place, with a car whose air conditioning works but suspension keeps creaking, working five days a week and making enough money to buy things from Sephora when I'm sad. I also can't remember half of what I knew about the Rangers' farm system, feel like a failure and a loser, and am constantly on the edge of tears. I'm exhausted and yet can't sleep, spend hours watching television and yet can't write.

So as I delete yet another pitiful plea for someone to pay attention to me when I've done nothing worth attention in a year, I try to say I don't want your pity but I do.

When I wasn't making money, I wanted to. Now that I am, I wish I could go back to that, that there was some way that I could pay rent and write, pay rent and be happy, pay rent and cover baseball the way I want to cover it.

It used to be a day's work (sometimes, a moment's) to churn out a piece on three prospects, and they'd be three guys I knew. Now, I have no idea what Adam Parks throws, why Josh Morgan isn't catching, or whether Jairo Beras has a chance. I might not have had an idea two years ago, but I didn't know that. I was writing by the skin of my teeth, soaking up knowledge like a sponge, so full of promise, and now, two years later, I feel spent.

I want to be your expert, I feel this never ending drive to be the best, to be the only, to be the one you think of when you think of I'm not even sure what, but that's passed me by and that's both good and bad. Good, because there are others and bad because I

I'm not a good person. I've gone on about this here, before, about how I'm all about feminism and equality and more space for women in this fucked up world of sports until it threatens me and then I clam up, because being the only meant it was easy for me to stand out. How awful is that? How absolutely selfish am I?

All this to say that I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Part of this is that I've hit that plateau, that there's only so much you can learn quickly and easily, even if you're me, and that nothing is easy, nothing come free. Part of it is that I only have so much RAM to give, and that right now too much of it is written with stress and the inconsequential nothings from a job that pays my rent but not my soul. Part of it? I'm just not good enough to find a way to write around that gap, to bridge what I can and can't do.

Maybe I'll find it again. Maybe admitting my every weakness is not honesty but foolishness, or both.

I have a stubborn streak a mile wide, inherited from a mother whose never much liked people telling her what to do, either. I'm obstinate and headstrong, both traits that can be valuable but usually just get me labeled a bitch. I'm paralyzingly terrified of failure.

These traits make it difficult to get things done, sometimes.

I'd be lying if I said I was happy with myself recently. I'd be lying if I said I said I was generally happy, recently. So I'm sitting here wondering if I can do what it takes to be not not happy, and whether the sacrifice is worth it.

Funny thing, sacrifice. It can mean so many things to so many different people. For some, it's passing up the easy opportunity for something more difficult and less rewarding. For others, it's passing up the rewarding thing in order to make sure they can make rent. For me, right now, it's giving up, failing, dropping away from something I really enjoy doing, even as it kills me.

It's easy to be objective about a baseball team, it's hard to be objective about yourself. Even as I sit, paralyzed by fear and emotion, accomplishing nothing and being incredibly noisy while doing so, I can't admit to myself that maybe it's the way it should be, because this would be me, giving up.

I've fought so much, taught myself so much, looked for answers and driven miles and gotten migraines. What does it mean if I step back from this, if I step back from doing what I really can't imagine myself without, now, in order to try to grasp at a future?

It wouldn't be a complete letting go, but even opening my hand that little bit and feeling the sand I've fought so hard to hold spill out makes me want to break apart. I have to make a choice, and it feels impossible.

I've stubbornly clung to this for two years, two years longer than anyone thought I would, and I can't let go, even as the tide pulls me away and my fingers bleed from clinging to the sharp iron bars that I thought I could handle. Why give up? Why give in? Isn't this surrender? Isn't this failure?

Isn't this what I was afraid of?

babbling

It's self-indulgent, really, isn't it?

Sure, I can sit here and put all sorts of names to this invisible malaise that steals my joy and makes my brain run slow, but it's self-indulgent, really. To think that I could be good, to think that I could be well-known, to think that I could chase and catch that fickle fucker fame.

I vacillate between some form of utter self-delusion and self-loathing. If I'm as good as I think I am, where are my awards? Where are my haters? Where is this proof of my existence other than my meaningless words on a page?

I am full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I am angry about all sorts of things, white-hot in my righteous rage, and yet I fall prey to the same words that wound me, that feeling - insistence - that to be the only is to be the best, to be the best is to be the only, and that if I'm not the only then I'm overshadowed.

I write these self-flagellating raw posts out of my head and at the same time I loathe myself for them - what am I doing but indulging in some bit of amusing self-promotion? I write in the interests of honesty, but who am I fooling? It's all just this exercise in pretentious word-smithery, pretending that I'm better than you because I'm more honest, or some nonsense like that.

I wouldn't be writing these self-searching pieces of bullshit if I were writing real honest genuine work, of course. This is easy and requires no research, no work, no anything except the moving of my fingers and giving written voice to the constant voice inside my head.

What do I strive for? I don't even know, except for this yawning hunger in my chest for more - for better, for faster, for higher, for more and more and more.

Maybe I could have been a genius if I'd had an axe to grind, but I've had axes to grind and I've ground them and I've come out on the other side with nothing - maybe I didn't grind hard enough! At the end of the day, the three other fingers still point the blame back at me and self-indulgently I welcome it, roll in the mire of anger and frustration because it's easier than moving on.

Easy is a funny word. Is something worth less because it's easy? Probably, which is why these bitter ramblings I post out of a desperate sense of something unnameable detract from my value, but I've never known when to shut up.

It's self-indulgence, really.

relationship status: hockey?

There’s no insanely sappy, sentimental story tying me to hockey, honestly. There’s no childhood memories, no inherited passion, no tradition of fandom passed down from on high. There’s just me, a friend, and a promise that “come on, you have to watch one game. One game! One game when they come back from the lockout.”

The Dallas Stars either have a very simple or a very complicated history, depending on who you ask. They’re a team that moved, or was stolen, or was stolen and moved, and their fans are either a small but intense group, a bunch of immoral bandwagoners for rooting for a stolen team, or nonexistent. I knew that Mike Modano existed, somewhere in the back of my mind, as I was growing up, flipping past Stars news in the paper on my way to the baseball. Hockey was kind of there, but so was basketball and football.

Hockey lockouts are the worst, but I probably wouldn’t be a fan without the last one.

I wasn’t hooked the first game I watched, but I was intrigued. I don’t remember many of the specifics, really, other than the fact that the Stars won - one of the seemingly few times they’d do so that season. I was drawn in by the rush of it, though, despite the fact that I understood basically nothing about the game. It was fast and frenetic and I was watching it on a 13-inch screen across a living room in a desolate apartment in Waco, TX and while I didn’t fall completely in love at that moment, I at least felt some kind of stirring, something that kept me tuning in the occasional times I found them on whatever channel they’d gotten shuffled to.

I fell in love, though, in October 2013, when my good friend Graham Jenkins, himself a dedicated and long-time Stars fan, the one to whom I’d made the promise to start watching, and I went to the Halloween game, and I got to experience the adrenaline rush that is live hockey, even near too many Jets fans. I was in. Hockey, and specifically the Stars, had me - even though they lost that game 2-1 in a shootout.

Of course, it’s not been without growing pains. Hockey has its share of issues, things I can’t wallpaper over with my love of the game. There’s the sexual assault and rape allegations, the standard issue problematic teams and fans, the whole fighting and concussions and players encouraged to be too tough for their own good thing, everything you have to make your deal with the devil’s sport-related minion in order to remain a fan of any sport. It’s a part of being a fan - and so far, the positives have outweighed the negatives.

I got lucky, you know. The Stars have turned from laughingstock to powerhouse in the few seasons I’ve been a fan, making the playoffs, gathering young talent, having their captain turn into one of the best players in the entire league, getting new uniforms, the whole kit and caboodle. I don’t know if I’d be planning to buy half-season tickets if they were still at the bottom of their division, but now I can’t imagine my life without losing my voice in Victory Green.

Hockey’s seen me through depression, through frustration, through friendships and the dissolution thereof, through baseball, through writer’s block. It’s good, as a writer, to have a sport you can unashamedly love, a sport that you don’t have to hide or get rid of affiliation, a sport you can watch through green-colored glasses.

It’s bad, but all sports are bad. It’s good, in that all sports are good. It’s communal, it’s crazy, it’s impossible, and I’m in love with it.

A Personal Dissection of the Letter from Ken Starr and Baylor University

Now, a few notes before we dive in: I am not a rhetor (someone who studies rhetoric) but I do have some experience in this field. Anything and everything presented in this article is from my own interpretation of the letter from Ken Starr and Baylor University, and my line-by-line readings were done on my own time, and for no compensation. Additionally, I am not a lawyer, nor have I ever been to law school, nor have I played one on TV.

Diving in, then: The first thing this letter does is try to appeal to the sense of family that most Baylor students graduate with. “[W]e celebrate the founding of Baylor University on February 1, 1845...” history, tradition, tradition and history. Disarm and, as we’ll see in the next sentence, deflect.

“Today, in this Anno Domini[1] 2016, we continue to carry forward our Founders’ vision to address the needs of the broken world around us.”  Well, seeing as the school was founded in 1845, I think that while the thought may be to carry on their vision, some attention must be paid to the, you know, here and now. Additionally, this is deflection - “broken world around us.” It’s not our fault, you guys, it’s the world’s!

“Consistent with our Founder’s vision, Baylor has always been - and steadfastly remains - firmly committed to providing a safe and supportive environment for our wonderful students.” Well, visions, but not really reality. Maybe they’ve been dedicated to a safe environment, and in certain circumstances supportive, but there’ve been some consistent failings across the years to fully uphold the second point.

An interlude, before I go farther. I love Baylor - or at least I love the Baylor that I was lucky to experience. I did have that promised support, in the form of therapists who bent the rules to give me more sessions than allowed, professors who were brilliant and kind and understanding[2], organizations and friends that became family for me. It’s because I love Baylor, because I love that Baylor, that I’m writing this. I want everyone to have that - I want Baylor to do better.

Back to the letter: “As a community, our care and concern extends throughout every area of our campus life, including our efforts - like those of other colleges and universities across America - to eliminate the scourge of sexual violence. Such despicable violations of our basic humanity contradict every value Baylor lifts up as a caring Christian community.” Well, this is a nice sentiment, except for the fact that every single such incident of the “scourge” has been met with no effort to eliminate it, unless by “eliminate it” you mean “marginalize and silence the victims because, hoo boy, let’s not tarnish that golden halo we’ve set up for ourselves.”

“Our hearts break for those whose lives are impacted by excrebale acts of sexual violence. No one should have to endure the trauma of these terrible acts of wrongdoing. we must never lose sight of the long-term, deeply personal effects of such contemptible conduct has on the lives of survivors. Let me be clear: Sexual violence emphatically[3] has no place whatsoever at Baylor University.”

The previous paragraph is full of the right phrases, the right sentiments, the right words - but what really matters is in what follows. Does Starr lay out a coherent plan for atonement, improvement, and deep, administration-centered, reflection? We’ll have to see!

Also note that there is still no apology. There’s a lot of “This is wrong!” “This is bad!” “We won’t stand for it!” without admitting and begging forgiveness for the fact that...they did.

A summary of the next two paragraphs: Baylor’s Board of Regents hired the law firm of Pepper Hamilton to conduct an external review of the University’s response to reports of sexual violence, a review which started in the fall and will continue to the spring. The goal of this investigation is to create an assessment of past practices and recommendations to move forward. When the review is complete, the Board will determine how to share the firm’s recommendations[4], while conforming to the restrictions of FERPA.

That’s good, that’s something. While the review is not complete, we can’t expect them to say any more than that.

Now we dive right back in to smarm.

“In addition to the media coverage about this review, you may have seen or heard recent news reports that focused on Baylor’s response to incidents of student-involved sexual assault. We were deeply saddened to learn about these instances of interpersonal violence; we acknowledge and commend the great courage these survivors demonstrated by coming forward to share their experiences. Their stories continues to raise consciousness and awareness about these critically important issues.”

“May have seen or heard.” We’re hoping you didn’t! “...deeply saddened to learn...” See, this is almost criminal. Baylor knew. Baylor’s administration knew. The Outside The Lines report was nothing new to the administration. The court case was nothing new. The personal testimony was nothing new. The University knew. They weren’t learning anything. “...share their experiences...” like they’ve been at summer camp. How about “share their testimony” or is that only reserved for talking about how you found Jesus? How about “share their pain?” How about an apology?

The next paragraph is a summation of what the University is bound to by FERPA - they cannot comment on any individual cases, even if a student or former student shares those details publicly. Additionally, they cannot comment on policies and practices until the Pepper Hamilton review is completed, though they say (whether you choose to believe them or not) that they have met with current and former students who expressed concerns.

The next paragraphs describe in broad terms Baylor’s work, beginning in 2011[5], with the federal Title IX office to bring the University into full compliance with the law, including hiring a full time Title IX Coordinator, Patty Crawford, in 2014[6]. Part of Crawford’s responsibilities include “[ensuring] students have unimpeded access to both support and resources, including academic accommodations, access to counseling, residence modifications, “no contact” orders, and other interim remedial and protective measures.” The next paragraphs delineate the Title IX’s responsibilities regarding accusations, including that “[when] a student is found to have committed an act of sexual violence, strong disciplinary consequences ensue in accordance with the University’s Title IX policy.”

This is all well and good, but Crawford wasn’t on campus until November 2014.

“We have been equally engaged in prevention and education efforts.” Now, I have not been a student at Baylor University since December 2013, nor have I been able to reach out to current students to inquire as to what these prevention and education efforts entail. I can say, though, that religion-based ideas to which some parts of Baylor, including the administration, adhere, would have “prevention” be somewhere along the lines of “dress more modest, don’t go out after dark, don’t invite boys in, don’t make yourself the victim, ‘Take Back The Night.’” There is something to be said for a level of common sense, but as a woman, you don’t have to tell us that. We’re painfully aware.

I would be incredibly surprised and pleased if the education and prevention efforts instead focused on preventing perpetrators, rather than victims. - on reminding them that their Christian duty involves not forcing themselves on a non-consenting partner, reminding them that even if they aren’t Christian consent is not an option, and making sure that everyone knows the real, enforced consequences for anyone who would do such a thing.

“Needless to say, our work is not done. In this sensitive arena, it may never be. That said, this is an important moment in time for American higher education - and for Baylor. Here at Baylor, we have a unique opportunity to evaluate culture and climate, to identify challenges and to model the faithful Christian community we continually aspire to be.”

All true - though I would have put “Baylor” before “American higher education,” as a style choice. Something about cleaning one’s house first, I suppose, or removing a stick from your own eye. Additionally, some humility might be nice.

“We know from past demonstrations of your gracious support on various matters of crucial importance to our success that you deeply love and treasure Baylor University.” I’ll spare you the next self-serving sentence and instead say, as I did above, that yes, I do deeply love and treasure the time I had at Baylor University. What isn’t needed here, though, is blind support, and definitely not blind, gracious support. What is needed, is, again, a more humble attitude from the University, which seems more concerned with hedging its image with elegant language than service. “So it is that Baylor Nation repeatedly has come forward with linked hands to champion Baylor’s sacred mission, especially in times of challenge.” What’s needed here are linked hands with the survivors who have suffered on your “sacred” campus. What’s needed here is loving admonishment, the willingness to correct and chastise those you love, the clear-sightedness to not let your ideals get in front of your reality.

“We are deeply thankful for your abiding belief in and generous support[7] of Baylor University as a place where a transformational education prepares students for worldwide leadership and service. By God’s good grace, and guided by the vision of our wise Founders, Baylor University has served a hurting world for these past 171 years.” Except for the years when you focused on the external world, the cause célèbre, and not your hurting students. “Through thick and thin, Baylor has come through the storms and vicissitudes of a broken and hurting world.” We’ve come full circle narratively, going back to the Founders and the broken world, and we’re being asked to blame the broken world for a problem that, in all honesty, Baylor caused for itself. This isn’t the armies at the gates of the ivory palace. This is happening from the inside.

“We ask you as an ever-widening circle of parents, alumni[8] and friends to pray for Baylor, for those who have been tragically impacted by ignoble acts of interpersonal violence, and for the continued and faithful pursuit of Baylor’s noble calling - Pro Ecclesia. Pro Texana.”

Baylor wants to be a shining light for the world. We have a responsibility to shine the light on ourselves, first.






[1] How freaking pretentious. Anno Domini? Give me a break.

[2] Including the one who let me put off a final because I was having a nervous breakdown after getting kicked out of my major and the one who let me turn in a paper two weeks late for only five points off because my mental state wasn’t such that I could write it. I had amazing professors.

[3] I’d honestly move the “emphatically” to before the colon, but that’s just me copyediting.

[4] Interesting omission here - they’ll share Pepper Hamilton’s recommendations, but not their reports on previous incidents?

[5] Which feels awful late, but I’m not sure how this compares to other universities, both private and public.

[6] Meaning that Baylor had no Title IX Coordinator for the entire time I was a student.

[7] Translated for you: “Money, pleassseeeeee!!!!”

[8] No Oxford comma. I am disappointed.