Pepper Hamilton did not provide written report to Baylor

There’s a reason no full version of the Pepper Hamilton investigation at Baylor has been released.

It reportedly doesn’t exist.

According to the New York Times, Baylor did not require the law firm to write a comprehensive report of its findings of its investigation into Baylor’s handling of sexual assault accusations. Instead, the comprehensive report came in the form of an oral presentation.

But at Baylor, the entirety of the publicly available paper trail of the monthslong investigation is a 13-page summary and a list of recommendations. They were published by Baylor’s board, not the lawyers who investigated the university.

A spokeswoman for Baylor declined to say why the university had chosen not to have a written report. “We believe the release of findings and recommendations that so starkly identify the failures of an institution is virtually unprecedented,” said the spokeswoman, Tonya Lewis.

That 13-page summary was released in May, the day that Baylor said it had suspended football coach Art Briles with the intend to terminate (Briles has been fired from the school and the two parties reached a settlement while president and chancellor Ken Starr and athletic director Ian McCaw resigned).

The Big 12, along with Baylor’s alumni association, has asked the school to release the full report.

The summary didn’t provide specific instances of Baylor’s failings. Just a general overview. While the overview gives a good idea of just how badly things were being handled at the school by multiple officials, it raises a lot of questions. Questions that can’t be answered without a written report. And you can bet that’s exactly how Baylor wanted it. The public has to accept Baylor’s possibly sugarcoated general summation as the definitive.

Pepper Hamilton, as the Times piece notes, has done reports regarding investigations at other schools. At Occidental College, it published a 130-page report. Other schools clearly don’t have a problem with written findings being provided.

Baylor has previously said a full version of the PH investigation wouldn’t be released because of privacy concerns, though it’s not much of a stretch to believe public relations has much more to do with the lack of information provided than privacy does.

The school has used privacy as a shield over the entirety of the spring when it comes to the accessibility of unflattering information. It told the Texas attorney general’s office that it could only partially comply with new records laws because of privacy issues.