Baylor University regents seem baffled about why so many questions remain regarding the school's sexual assault tragedy.

After all, they are quick to remind, the board took unprecedented steps after the Pepper Hamilton investigation into the school's handling of assault complaints. Regents dumped the school's wildly popular football coach, its university president and its athletic director.

But valid questions do persist -- and, in fact, they have grown. Against that backdrop, a handful of regents, with a crisis management PR firm in tow, are working to bend the narrative back in the board's favor.

Let's start by giving regents credit for finally beginning to open up and, importantly, for vowing in their meeting with our editorial board Thursday to continue to talk to us.

Our meeting with regents Ron Murff, James Gray, David Harper and Dennis Wiles largely involved four questions that this newspaper has repeatedly asked since the release of the Pepper Hamilton report in May. Any one of the questions probably deserved its own hour of discussion, but at least the conversation has begun.

1. What is the regents' response to accusations that the board is trying to focus blame on the football program and not acknowledge sexual assault as a campus-wide issue?

In response, the regents revealed that Baylor's general counsel office has begun to review 125 reports of sexual assault or harassment, from 2011-2015 -- 90 percent of which don't involve football players. The school wants to determine whether more needs to be done to support the survivors in those cases and what failures might have occurred in the handling of these reports.

This is a significant step forward, potentially the start of a culture change on the campus.

2. Why have the regents refused to instruct the Pepper Hamilton law firm to produce a written report with details that show the right people were held accountable?

The regents' answers on this one remain far from convincing. They pointed again to the firings of top leaders. They noted worthy programs are now in place. Both statements are true, but neither answers our question.

They also maintained that they needed to move quickly in May, and Pepper Hamilton required nine months to compile a detailed written report. That strikes us as an awfully long timeline; but even so, if the regents had set that work in motion after they made the leadership changes, Pepper Hamilton would be close to having that work done.

Until a comprehensive report is released, the public will never know for sure whether individuals still drawing Baylor paychecks should have been removed -- or whether wrongdoers have moved on to other jobs without being held accountable.

The regents told us that fired football coach Art Briles was aware of an alleged gang rape involving football players and did not report it. Briles' attorney denies this.

3. What about claims by former Title IX director Patty Crawford and others that regents and Dr. Reagan Ramsower, Baylor's chief operating officer and senior vice president, were actually calling the shots?

The four regents were adamant on this one, saying that former football coach Art Briles and other athletic leaders absolutely did not defer to Ramsower and that the Pepper Hamilton report included not a single criticism of Ramsower. The four men sided with Ramsower on every instance we raised, from Crawford's allegation that he interfered this summer in her attempts to do her job to Ramsower's self-professed ignorance of the mishandling of assault accusations by campus police.

Our sense is that this part of the story may never move beyond a heated he said-she said, although we intend to keep digging.

4. What are the details behind Pepper Hamilton's criticism of the board of regents itself?

The regents' answers and actions struck us as genuine and specific. The board has eliminated its athletics committee. Regents acknowledged that some of them had too close a relationship with coaches and administrators. But they also maintained that the report found no inappropriate action stemming from those too-close-for-comfort conversations.

We will hold regents to their promise to continue this conversation. Thursday's hour-long meeting only scratched the surface in providing the public a better understanding of this sexual assault tragedy.