Dear Stephen A. Smith,

First, I'd really like to know, does the A stand for "absolutely unaware and informed?" I'm just wondering, and I wanted to ask before drawing a blanket statement about you and defaming your name—kinda like what you did to my school. See what I just did there? Did you notice how I asked you the question and gathered ALL the information about the situation that I could before making statements about something. Yeah? Maybe you should look into that and do it more often. Anyway, I feel like we're starting off an a bad foot right now, so I'm just gonna start over, if that's ok with you.

Dear Stephen "Always thinking he's right" Smith,

I'm just wondering, what makes you think that you can tell parents not to send their children to Baylor? My research (and since I'm guessing you don't really know what that is, I'll tell you that research is a process in which you gather information about a situation from multiple sources to ensure that you get the full picture of the situation) concludes that you yourself do not have any children. Hmm...interesting. So, if we're being honest with ourselves here, you really have no idea how to properly raise a child, or how to make a valid argument for that matter either.

Now, I'm not going to say that the information you provided about Baylor's cases of sexual assault, harassment, and various other violations that the school has recently committed isn't true, because it is. You never really mentioned anything about what Baylor is doing now in order to ensure those things never happen again, though, so I'm more than happy to inform you.

Currently, any student enrolled at Baylor University is required to complete an online Title IX course, which clearly defines sexual harassment and assault, and also gives students tips on how to prevent these situations from occurring, intervene, and more. Also, each syllabus that a student receives includes information about the Title IX office, and provides phone numbers and information about what they can do to file a report or receive help of any kind from the university. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that police officers are constantly seen around campus, especially at night, to ensure that each student is protected from any type of danger that can occur. Some other things that I'll mention just for the heck of it are that Baylor offers several self-defense classes to its female students to help them learn techniques to fight of an attacker, provides free rides at night to allow students to get from place to place on campus safely, AND continues to keep its students updated in regards to the schools leadership positions and progress on resolving pressing issues.

So, Mr. Smith, please tell me again why parents should discourage their children from attending a nationally ranked research institution and the oldest continually operating university in the state of Texas. Because last time I checked, a school's football program does not define it's entire student body. I think most students invest in attending Baylor because they want to learn, grow, and thrive in a place that sees an incredible amount of potential in each and every one of their students, no matter how well the football team plays on Saturdays in the fall.

My heart and deepest condolences go out to those who were affected by the tragedies surrounding Baylor. I'm so deeply saddened that those women won't have the same memories about Baylor that I will. There is no way for us to take back what was done to them, but we can do our best to move forward and ensure that it never happens again.

So, Mr. Smith, before you try to persuade an entire nation not to send their kids to a university, maybe you should ask the people that already attend the university how they feel about the matter; I'm sure that most of us can agree that deciding to attend Baylor University was one of the best decisions many of us have ever made.

Sincerely,

A proud member of the Baylor Bear family