September (Web-only) 2003

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After a very bad week at Baylor, good news for president's vision of Christian higher education
What a way to end the week at Baylor University.

It began with three former chairmen of the university's Board of Regents calling for the resignation or firing of President Robert Sloan, saying he could no longer "lead, inspire and unite Baylor's stakeholders in performance of the university's mission." One of the ex-regents told the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram that Sloan's "pious" attitudes driven by "evangelical Christianity" may be blinding his judgment, suggesting that the hiring of now-discredited basketball coach Dave Bliss was all about religion. But, the regent said, the call for Sloan's ousting had nothing to do with the recent basketball team scandals.

That was followed Monday by a similar letter from five current members of the Board of Regents, also calling for Sloan to leave. While in theory continuing to support Sloan's Baylor 2012 plan to make the school a top-tier research university—the only major evangelical Christian research university in the country—the regents backed off from the way it's turning out. "Implementation of the vision, including the establishment of a dual faculty system, what some have perceived as an emphasis on research to the detriment of teaching, heavy and uneven-handed methods in seeking a particular kind of Christian professor, a shift to bonded indebtedness rather than a pay-as-we-go plan of campus construction and exorbitant tuition increases have alienated a broad spectrum of Baylor alumni," they wrote.

That night, an anonymous treatise began circulating criticizing Sloan as scholar and administrator. Its release was clearly timed to do maximum damage at Tuesday's meeting of the Faculty Senate. ...