Author: Hannah Webb

Junior quarterback Nate Bennett had waited two years for his shot at QB1. On Saturday, he made the most of it. With junior quarterback DJ Lagway sidelined following an ankle injury suffered in Baylor’s season opener against Auburn, the junior quarterback got his first chance to lead the Bears as the starter.

The sky was blue. So were the ribbons tied around cars; so was the train that Meredith Sutton was supposed to take beneath the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001

It is so very easy to escape nowadays. But we must distinguish when escapism serves as a refuge and when it becomes a new life.

James Talarico will host a campaign event at 7 p.m. Sept. 16 at the Mark and Paula Hurd Center. Baylor extended invitations to Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, and Republican candidate Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general. Paxton’s campaign was unable to accommodate Baylor’s available dates.

The Baylor Line’s claim to fame has always been that it is a “tradition like no other.” College football fans gave Baylor another reason to make that claim, as the Line was named the best walk-out tradition in college football after receiving the most votes in USA Today Sports’ 2026 Readers’ Choice Awards

The Waco-McLennan County Public Health District notified Baylor Wednesday of an active tuberculosis case in the greater Waco community. University officials said there is no ongoing risk of exposure to the Baylor community.

Dean Tanya Sudia assumed the leadership role at The Louise Herrington School of Nursing June 1. She hopes to prepare nursing students for a changing nursing world and, more importantly, to integrate faith into the profession.

Three months after Dr. Nancy Brickhouse announced she would step down as Baylor’s provost and spend a year on sabbatical before returning to teach, she accepted a senior administrative position with the Texas State University System.

As students return to Baylor’s campus, several major developments from the spring and summer have shaped the university. From a new AI degree and a record-breaking fundraising year to changes along I-35, here are 10 things to know ahead of the new semester.

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.”