SCORING

When will we say enough is enough?

The statistics are astonishing: 32 rapes by 31 football players in 3 years. At one single college, a Christian college, in football-mad Waco, Texas. Baylor Universitys ascent as a football power coincided with a massive increase in campus violence against women. (Four of the incidents were gang rapes.) It took a tiny California woman, Jasmin Hernandez, to reveal, not just the repeated assaults, but the blind eye turned to them by everyone in power: teachers, administrators and the celebrated football coach, Art Briles.

It turns out the coachs son and former assistant, Kendal Briles, was recruiting athletes with exhortations like, Do you like white women? Because we have a lot of them at Baylor and they LOVE football players. Women were offered up on the altar of gridiron glory, unofficially encouraged by the university to engage in sexual acts with recruits to help secure the recruits commitment to Baylor. What the university didnt offer was any kind of redress for victims, or even any assistance: Jasmin Hernandez says the universitys counseling center was too busy to see her, as was the student health center. I told them Id been sexually assaulted by another student and asked if there was someone I could talk to, like a medical doctor, Hernandez recalled. They told me all their appointments through the end of the semester were taken. I went back several times. Every time they denied me.

To add insult to grievous injury, the academic department offered no accommodation when her grades faltered after the assault. Instead, they took away her scholarship. Hernandez eventually left school, plagued by turbulent emotions that [she] couldnt exactly predict and didnt know how to deal with. She continued to struggle, even as Baylors team surged to victory in the highly competitive Big 12 Conference, winning the title with a season record of 11-2.

Whats remarkable about this story is that it is so unremarkable. It keeps happening, at universities across the country, and has for years. Now some colleges are offering seminars on what to do if you are raped. Shouldnt they be using their resources to prevent rape instead? In 2013, a cohort of womenall survivors of campus assaultsfound each other on the Internet and formed an alliance, End Rape on Campus, to take these institutions to court. They are mounting their own offense under the banner of Title IX, a civil rights law that denies federal funds to any institution where gender-based discrimination or sexual violence denies access to educational benefits or opportunities.

And individual lawsuits are being launched, including at Baylor, this time on behalf of an anonymous victim. The suit alleges at least 52 rapes by at least 31 players between 2011 and 2014. Meanwhile, Jasmin Hernandez returned to Los Angeles to finish college, still reeling from being Tevin Elliotts fifth rape victim, or perhaps his sixth. In 2014, Elliott was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Jasmin Hernandez continues to struggle with a grief more potent, more devastating, than any gridiron defense.

You know those signs that say, Drive like your children live here?

Your childrens lives are also at stake in an environment that doesnt see them as equal; that doesnt advocate for them.

Your children are also at risk when greedfor money, for glorytakes precedence over human decency and mutual respect.

Jasmin Hernandez has done her part, even if it meant weathering a storm of shame. She stopped a sexual predator from preying again.

We, too, must do our part, to show that we wont stand for it anymore.

Glory takes guts.

Justice does as well.