Baylor University interim President David Garland wasn't expecting his Monday to center around rumors of Art Briles' possible return as Baylor's head football coach.
"I was really caught off guard by all this," Garland said Monday afternoon. Garland said the conference call among the Baylor Board of Regents, scheduled for 6 p.m. CT Monday night, wasn't even set up to be about Briles. "The meeting was scheduled before, and for a quite different issue."
Garland did acknowledge that some boosters and fans have expressed interest in bringing Briles back.
"A lot of fans love what the coach did on the football field, and you can understand that. But other factors have to be taken into consideration."
Garland made mention of the original decisions the Board of Regents made, removing Ken Starr from his role as President, and suspending Briles with the intent to terminate him.
"I think the Regents were very bold in their decisions, and in releasing the (Findings of Fact) report.
"I'm always interested in people saying 'we need more transparency' when they ask me questions. And I say 'well, if we hadn't been so transparent, you wouldn't have known to ask me that question.' "
"What we are releasing are reports of findings where we fell short. But we can't give the details of individual stories ... we don't want to re-victimize, or re-traumatize the survivors."
When asked why they can't release a redacted version with the other pertinent details of individual cases, Garland said "no, because it's a small community. People can tell."
"I'm coming in, not worrying about the past, but how we fix things for the future," Garland said. He called Pepper Hamilton's "105 recommendations" that were released last week 'mandates' for Baylor going forward. "My goal is that we become a model for the rest of the country, of how to address these issues."
"This is not an institution of football. It is an institution of higher education, and we happen to play football. Our major mission is to educate students. That's what we want the focus to be on. And also to protect the safety of our students."
"Our task is not to blame those who were victimized. It's very hard to understand, and so easy to blame the victims, who now become survivors. And our job is to help them survive, and thrive after this. It's an experience that they will survive, but they have scars. And I'm deeply conscious of that."
"This is going to be the safest place on the planet, because we're so concerned about these kinds of issues."
Mike Leslie works for WFAA, a Tegna property.
