Baylor exempt from protecting students?
The Burleson Quadrangle on the Baylor University campus DOE exempts Waco-based university from requirement to investigate complaints of anti-LGBTQ harassment JAMES RUSSELL | Contributing Writerjamesjourno@gmail.com Baylor University is in the hot seat after the Department of Education in July granted the Baptist university in Waco a religious exemption from a Title IX sexual harassment complaint filed by a former student who is LGBTQ.
Baylor asked the DOE to dismiss this complaint and others because, university officials said, the claims were inconsistent with the university’s religious tenets.
Veronica Bonifacio Penales filed a complaint in 2021 accusing Baylor of failing to investigate anti-LGBTQ harassment, according to the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, which defends the rights of LGBTQ students and other marginalized students at conservative colleges, including on Title IX, the federal rule protecting against discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities in federally funded schools.
Baylor University President Dr. Linda Livingstone In her complaint, Bonifacio Penales said that while she was a student at the Waco school, she found sticky notes with homophobic slurs on her dorm room door and had homophobic language posted on her social media pages.
