Background Checks on Campus

In the summer of 2003, Baylor University was rocked by the news that one of its -basketball players, Patrick Dennehy, had been murdered. A former teammate of Dennehys, Carlton Dotson, was charged with the crime and pleaded guilty in June.

In May 2004, the university, located in Waco, Texas, created a task force to review its policies on student-athletes. One of the group's recommendations, which Baylor enacted, was that the university perform criminal background checks on athletes who transfer to the school. CSO recently spoke with Ian McCaw, Baylor's athletic director and an ex officio member of the task force, about its background check policy.

CSO: What was the goal of the task force?

Ian McCaw: It looked at two primary areas: assessing academics and character. Under character, we implemented the criminal background checks on transfer students. [The task force was] chaired by Grant Teaff, a longtime Baylor football coach and now executive director of the American Football Coaches Association.

Why did Baylor decide to limit background checks to just transfer athletes?

Laws in Texas don't allow us to access the records of minors, so we focused just on the older students who would be transferring. We want to make sure that they didnâ¬"t have any serious problems before they arrived. We narrowed our check to transfer student-athletes from junior colleges or four-year institutions.

What about incoming freshmen athletes from other states?

In some states, you can access juvenile records; in others, you can't. We found that, after looking at privacy laws in Texas, it wasnâ¬"t going to be a fruitful exercise to seek information on minors. About 85 percent of our students and student-athletes are from Texas. We wouldn't be able to access information on the majority of them.

Are there any other schools doing background checks?

The only one I'm aware of is the University of Oklahoma.

Who performs Baylor's checks?

The law firm Bond, Schoenek and King, based in Kansas.

What happens if something alarming turns up in a -studentâ¬"s past?

We would assess whatever the information was. We haven't had a serious concern with any of the transfer students in the first year that we've done this. We implemented background checks for student-athletes who enrolled last fall; weâ¬"ve done approximately five or six so far.

How many will you do this fall?

Six to eight would be the typical number of transfer student-athletes.

Are those students told during the application process about the background checks?

Yes, applicants are informed.

Have any of the checks resulted in someone being denied admission or not allowed to play a sport? No.