BU reform group to meet with Baylor regents for first time

Representatives of the Bears for Leadership Reform, which is calling for greater transparency on the part of the Baylor Board of Regents, will meet formally with some regents on Monday in Dallas, multiple sources say.

The meeting will be the first between representatives of the group and regents, the sources said.

The group’s directors include Houston attorney John Eddie Williams, former Texas Gov. Mark White; Regent Emeritus Gale Galloway; former Regent Emily Tinsley; Houston lawyer James H. “Rell” Tipton; former Texas state Sen. Don Adams, and Temple businessman; Regent Emeritus Drayton McLane, for whom Baylor’s $266 million riverside stadium is named, and former Regent Randy Ferguson.

White, McLane, Williams and Ferguson will represent the group at the meeting Monday, sources said.

The sources did not know who would represent the Board of Regents.

Vianovo, the Austin public relations firm that represents the group, declined to comment on the meeting Friday morning.

More than 10,000 Baylor supporters have signed up to join the group which was formed in response to the controversy over how the school’s board of regents responded to a scathing review of the university’s handling of sexual assault reports.

Organizers say the group wants to “restore integrity to the world’s largest Baptist University.”

A lengthy review by the Pepper Hamilton law firm led to the firing of head football coach Art Briles, reassignment of Chancellor and President Ken Starr and suspension of athletic director Ian McCaw in May.

But the review was flawed, according to university insiders to whom KWTX talked during a months-long investigation.

Information from sources with direct knowledge of the review, and secret recordings of meetings with athletic staffers obtained by KWTX, suggest that the firm’s investigators came to Waco with an agenda to purge members of the football program and had a racial undertone in their line of questioning.