Baylor Police Put an End to Cheerleading Squabble

The Frat Boy News Daily Police Report

Baylor University (compiled by Tim Woods, WacoTrib.com)

Baylor University police were called to the McLane Student Life Center on Aug. 10 to quell an incident between a former assistant cheerleading coach and the school’s newly hired director of spirit and athletic traditions.

The incident occurred between former assistant cheerleading coach Rachael Johnson and new coach Susie Oliver when Johnson went to the building before the first practice of the year for Baylor’s All-Girl Cheer Team, according to Johnson, who wrote about the incident on her blog.

No arrests were made, and Baylor Department of Public Safety Chief Jim Doak said “it was a nonevent for us, basically.”

Johnson wrote that she and her husband went early to the practice after women from the team invited her to give her a present and say goodbye. After Johnson opened the gift and began talking to team members, Oliver walked in and asked to speak with Johnson outside, Johnson said.

Johnson said she had been trying to contact Oliver for two weeks without a return phone call, so “I politely told her that I was sorry, but I would not be following her outside and that we could talk after I finished saying goodbye to the girls.”

According to Johnson’s account, Oliver then began to yell at her, at which point Johnson’s husband, Aaron, a graduate student at Baylor’s Truett Seminary, “asked her to please refrain from yelling at me.”

Oliver then called campus police, who took down Johnson’s name without further action, she said.

The incident came at the end of a brief period which saw Johnson dismissed as assistant coach and Oliver named to the newly created position of director of spirit and athletic traditions.

Baylor Beta Killed

Gunshot Ends Life of Graduate-to-be

Baylor University is mourning the loss of a senior student and a brother of Beta Theta Pi who was killed in a shooting Friday morning.

Ruidoso Downs, 23, was found dead around 1:45 a.m. Friday at his residence, a report said. The Beta's alumni adviser said the shooting came after a casual barbecue Thursday night at the fraternity house.

"He was a great leader," said a Beta alum. "He was a guy everybody looked up to. He was the reason you joined the fraternity if you were a younger guy."

Don't Make Bad Decisions

The Frat Boy News Daily College Column
By Claire St. Amant, Staff Writer, The Baylor Lariat

Pizza binges, parking tickets, forgotten bills and mysterious tattoos. Some choices in college are worse than others.

"A lot of things kids do in college are not the end of the world," Maxey Parrish, journalism lecturer, said. "But there are some decisions that have a lifelong impact." Parrish identified a newfound sense of freedom and a desire to "test the boundaries" as factors for deviant behavior in the college years.

"For many students this is the first time in their lives where they don't have someone telling them right from wrong," he said.

Dr. Tamara Rowatt, senior psychology lecturer said students in college are particularly vulnerable to impulsive behavior, often resulting in harmful consequences. Rowatt cited unsafe and premature sex as one of the common mistakes students make.

"In college, it's a time where men and women are interested in not only pursuing their identities but also relationships," she said.

Jacob Taylor, a 2006 graduate, said he is already realizing how different things are in the working world than in college.

"I feel like college is the only time in your life when you can act impulsively and get away with it," he said. "In the real world it doesn't work like that." Although Taylor said he didn't do the "typical college party scene," he remembers having plenty of "crazy times" with friends.

"I've done some stupid things that were drinking-related," he said. "I don't really regret it, but I wouldn't do it now."