Days after he was stripped of his job as Baylor University president over a scandal about how the school handled accusations of sexual assault, Ken Starr said he has resigned as chancellor of the private Baptist school.
In an interview with ESPN published Wednesday, Starr said he will remain as a law professor at the university.Â
The resignation will go into effect immediately, he said.
“We need to put this horrible experience behind us,” Starr said in the interview. “We need to be honest.”
A school spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Until last week, Starr held the job of president and chancellor. He was removed from his president post by the school’s board of regents after an investigation commissioned by the school found that Baylor failed to sufficiently investigate allegations of sexual assault against students, and football players in particular. The school also didn’t provide sufficient support to victims who reported those assaults, the report said.
The chancellor job is mostly a figurehead role, board members said last week. It doesn’t have any operating responsibilities, and Starr would mostly focus on fundraising and “religious freedom” issues, they said. But the move still generated criticism from people who felt Starr shouldn’t remain in a prominent role after the scandal.
Starr has said publicly that he didn’t know about the numerous cases of sexual assault until last fall, when the investigation into their handling was commissioned. But in the interview with ESPN, he took some responsibility.
“The captain goes down with the ship,” he said.
This article originally appeared in the Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/01/ken-starr-says-he-will-resign-baylor-chancellor/