Author: Hannah Webb

The Baylor Board of Regents approved a $982.2 million operating budget for 2026-27 and a new master’s degree in artificial intelligence during its regular May meeting Thursday, as university leaders celebrated what is expected to be the second-best fundraising year in Baylor history.

The low hum of steel guitars and neon-lit nostalgia will soon echo through Foster Pavilion. On Oct. 2, Baylor will trade sneakers and basketballs for cowboy boots and two-stepping when rising country artist Braxton Keith brings his high-and-lonesome Texas sound to Waco with the “Real Damn Deal” tour.

After a whirlwind of confusion, cyberattacks and shifting finals schedules, Baylor students are reacting to the nationwide Canvas outage with frustration, stress and uncertainty as the university prepares to move Friday final exams online to next Thursday.

Baylor announced this morning that all final exams scheduled for today would be moved to next Thursday and administered online after a nationwide Canvas outage disrupted studying and caused confusion across campus.

What is unsettling about almost is that it feels alive. It sits between reality and fantasy, both possible and lost at once. We replay it in our minds not as something over but as something suspended and frozen, waiting for us to admit we let it slip.

Laura McNutt, assistant director of advising in Baylor’s College of Arts and Sciences, died April 17 at her home in Waco after a three-year battle with colon cancer. She was 38.

All Are Neighbors, held in the Cashion Academic Center, drew 270 ticketed attendees, totaling 352 people, including VIP guests and speakers, nearly filling all available seats. The event was created in response to TPUSA’s presence on campus, but speakers and organizers consistently emphasized that the gathering was not merely reactive. Instead, it functioned as a faith-centered call to action, rooted in Christian teaching and expressed through civic engagement.

For the first time, Baylor hosted “Awake,” an all-night prayer and worship event that ran from 9 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday. The gathering, which began at Wheaton College, invited students to move through structured periods of prayer, reflection and worship in a setting that emphasized stillness over spectacle.

Beginning Sunday, Baylor students will gather on Fountain Mall for FM72, a 72-hour event marked by continuous prayer, worship and outreach. Running through Wednesday, the annual tradition invites students to step away from their routines and participate in what organizers describe as a sustained spiritual focus on revival and renewal.

It is not uncommon to hear someone say, half-laughing, that they didn’t even last a week. The remark is meant to be humorous, but it reveals something deeper. Failure in Lent has become social embarrassment rather than spiritual reflection. Success has become a badge of religious credibility. The language of repentance has been replaced by the language of achievement.

If we are not outraged enough about the Epstein files, it is not because the crimes were unclear. It is because outrage requires something of us. It requires attention, courage and to care more about exploited children than about the comfort of the powerful.

We would argue that the egregious spending is not the result of increased love this year — it’s a crutch. It’s less effort (though not for your wallet) to lavish someone with gifts to make up for where you’ve fallen short than to simply change your behavior. But, as many a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband and wife will learn come Feb. 14, conversation hearts don’t equate to real conversations, and a dozen roses still come with thorns.

Dorm rooms and shared apartments function like small laboratories of adulthood. They are imperfect, crowded and often uncomfortable by design. You learn quickly that no one is coming to enforce bedtime or remind you to eat vegetables. In that absence, habits quietly step in to fill the void. How you wake up, how you respond to mess, how you treat shared space, how you handle tension — these patterns begin to solidify long before you realize they are becoming yours.

We treat friendship like background music: comforting, constant, easily taken for granted. Yet friendship is the architecture holding most of us upright. It shapes us, steadies us, reminds us who we are when everything else feels unsteady. And still, with the people who show up for us most consistently, we hesitate to offer the simplest words: I love you.

Junior cornerback Caden Jenkins has been dismissed from the team for violations of team rules, Baylor Athletics confirmed Monday.

If you’ve watched Baylor football this year, the games seem to roll together with déjà vu. Saturday’s loss to Houston was just the latest chapter in a season marked by promise, collapse, hope and a final sting.

What started as an advertisement in The Lariat morphed into Baylor’s own masked vigilante armed with coconut cream pies. For over a decade, the Pie Man turned campus into his bakery of chaos, leaving laughter, whipped cream and bewildered professors in his wake.

Before there were comments sections and quote tweets, there were letters to The Lariat — and Baylor students have never held back. From chef salad complaints to prison pen pals, the opinion page has always been where the campus found its voice.

Before the Wright brothers took flight or air conditioning cooled a single building, The Baylor Lariat was already in print. Now, 125 years and roughly 12,250 issues later, Baylor’s student-run newspaper continues to tell the university’s story with the same curiosity and conviction that first inked its pages in 1900.

UCF only managed to muster 74 rushing yards Saturday against a rejuvenated Baylor defense. Freshman Caden Knighten had 104 by himself, giving fans a glimpse of a balanced rushing attack of the future.

Every fall, Baylor Homecoming begins in the heart of campus, where the glow of the Eternal Flame stretches across Fountain Mall. The Ten at Ten: A Mass Meeting Experience marks the start of the weekend as a moment when the Baylor Family gathers to celebrate tradition, renew community and reflect on the university’s motto: “Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana, Pro Mundo” — “For the Church, for Texas, for the World.”

Amid banners, flags and music, one element stood out: the growing presence of young people seeking to take part in shaping the nation’s future and the desire of the older generations for the younger ones to get involved.

The nation’s capital feels half-awake. The marble monuments still gleam under the fall sun, but the museums that give them voice stand dark and locked. Tourists wander quiet streets where government offices sit empty—a city paused by a shutdown now stretching into its third week.

Cardboard shields gleam under streetlights, pool noodles whip through the air and laughter mixes with shouts. The apocalypse has arrived, and the Honors Residential College couldn’t be happier.

If I hear one more person groan when the words “Taylor Swift” are uttered, as if her existence is an assault on their eardrums, I might just lose it. But here’s the thing: the people who canonize her as if she’s the sole beacon of light guiding humanity? Also crazy. Neither blind devotion nor knee-jerk disdain is interesting.

Taylor Swift’s twelfth album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” drops at midnight — here’s what we know about it now.

Baylor finished the night with eight team blocks, narrowly edging Texas’ seven, but the Longhorns’ efficiency on offense proved decisive. Baylor never led in the match, and every time the Bears found momentum defensively, errors halted their progress.

With tradition, community and spectacle woven together, the Heart O’ Texas Fair & Rodeo remains one of Waco’s biggest fall attractions. Whether it’s the thrill of bull riding, the rhythm of live music or the comfort of fair food, the event continues to draw crowds — and students — year after year.

The hardest lesson may be permitting yourself to grieve in a place that constantly tells you to achieve. Grief does not fit neatly between midterms and extracurriculars. It interrupts. It blurs. It breaks schedules and refuses productivity.

Original songs, dance routines, beat boxing and a rap about Queen Elizabeth lit up Waco Hall Friday night as students and alumni came together to celebrate creativity during Family Weekend. The show featured a range of performances that highlighted the depth of artistry across campus.