Chapter
Seven
Academic
fraud; AFAM grade changes; Deborah Crowder
In May of 2012 UNC released the report from a faculty-led
internal investigation into the school’s Department of African and
Afro-American Studies (AFAM). According
to a May 4, 2012, article by investigative reporter Dan Kane of the Raleigh News and Observer, evidence had been
found of academic fraud involving more than 50 classes that ranged from no-show
professors to unauthorized grade changes.
The report would give many details, but also seemingly leave just as
many important questions unanswered.
According to Kane’s article, one of the no-show classes
was a Swahili course taken by former football player Michael McAdoo. That same course had earlier been at the
center of the NCAA claims that McAdoo had received impermissible tutoring,
which then led to the discovery of a paper being heavily plagiarized. The vast majority of the suspect AFAM classes
were found to have been taught by former department chairman Julius
Nyang’oro. Along with the release of the
report, the university also said that Nyang’oro would be retiring effective
July 1. According to Nancy Davis, the
Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations, “Professor Nyang’oro
offered to retire, and we agreed that was in the best interest of the
department, the college and the university.”
The report attempted to make it clear that there was no
evidence that student athletes received more favorable treatment (via the
suspect courses) than students who were not athletes. In fact, this would become a common sentiment
to be proclaimed by UNC leadership in the months and years to come, and was the
school’s main argument that its athletic teams should not be punished due to
the academic fraud: because non-athletes were part of the classes as well. Possible insight into why non-athletes were in those classes would eventually be
revealed, but not for over a year after the release of the May 2012
report. As such, that information will
be discussed in a later chapter.
A direct line from Kane’s article stated, “The findings
were so serious that the university consulted with the district attorney and
the SBI about investigating forgery allegations, as some professors said their
signatures were forged in documents certifying that they had taught some of the
classes in question. Professors also said
they had not authorized grade changes for students that the department
submitted to the registrar’s office.”
An immediate set of questions would arise from the lines
in the above paragraph. The most obvious
dealt with the grade changes. For whom
were they changed, and what were the new/old grades? And what effects, if any, did it have on
those students’ overall grade point averages?
If they were athletes, did the changes allow them to keep their
eligibility in a particular sport? More
than a year and a half later, the school has still not revealed that
information.
*
* *
According to the report, law enforcement officials
declined to investigate because they did not think the forgeries rose to the
level of criminal activity. What was
apparently not considered, however, was the fact that some of the forgeries
dealt with classes that were “on record” with the school, and where students
received grades. They were part of the
monetary framework of the university’s financial and bookkeeping
structure. Yet no one taught them –
since the professors’ said signatures were forged. Did anyone receive the pay for having taught
those classes, even though no “teaching” took place?
Jonathan Hartlyn and William L. Andrews were the two
senior faculty administrators who conducted the investigation. In a joint statement they said, “We are
deeply disturbed by what we have learned in the course of our review. Our review has exposed numerous violations of
professional trust, affecting the relationship of faculty and students and the
relationships among faculty colleagues in this department. These violations have undermined the
educational experience of a number of students, have the potential to generate
unfounded doubt and mistrust toward the department and faculty, and could harm
the academic reputation of the university.”
Information that would become extremely important in the
future was that the timeframe covered in the report only went back as far as
the summer of 2007, and ended with the summer of 2011. A reason for this was given in a later
interview by Chancellor Holden Thorp, who said the course review did not go
back before summer 2007 because the university wanted to obtain the most
accurate records and recollections available.
Another possible explanation, though obviously never stated by the
university, was that the summer of 2007 coincided with the first time the
recruits of former football coach Butch Davis were on campus. Furthermore, Davis was fired in late July of
2011, showing that his tenure at the school essentially mirrored the time
period UNC chose to focus its AFAM report.
Many in the social media world would suggest, perhaps rightfully so,
that the school was attempting to pin all of its academic troubles on the
now-ended Davis regime and his football players
*
* *
Much more valuable insight was provided via the report
and the aforementioned article by Dan Kane.
It showed that the AFAM department’s long-time administrator, Deborah
Crowder, would have overseen much of the course scheduling and grade
recording. She retired in September 2009
and declined to be interviewed for the internal investigation. The newspaper reported that she made $36,130
a year before retiring, but she could also not be reached for further comment
by the newspaper. Like the pattern that
followed the initial mentioning of Nyang’oro’s name a year earlier, Crowder
would also soon become a much more central figure in the academic scandal.
One of the classes that was deemed a “no-show” course was
the 400-level class where Marvin Austin received a B-plus during his first
summer on campus. Kane’s article noted
that Nyang’oro had been unable to produce a syllabus for that class, “Bioethics
in Afro-American Studies,” or the Swahili class that Michael McAdoo had
taken. That was another red flag, according
to the school’s report, because documents provided by other professors teaching
similar courses focused on reading and writing in Swahili, not writing papers
about Swahili culture in English, as McAdoo had submitted.
More problems arose when Nyang’oro told the university
investigators that he did not teach the aforementioned Swahili class, yet the
plagiarized paper McAdoo submitted listed Nyang’oro’s name as the course
professor. The investigation found it was
one of nine classes in which there was no evidence that any professor “actually
supervised the course and graded the work, although grade rolls were signed and
submitted.” And as stated earlier, other professors
who were listed on grade rolls for those classes said their names were forged on
course documents. McAdoo was one of 59
students taking those classes. Yet
again, an obvious question was left unasked and thus unanswered: who were the
other students? Were they athletes whose
eligibility was somehow affected by the fake grades?
The report also found a “strikingly high” percentage of
cases in Nyang’oro’s classes in which temporary grades were converted to
permanent ones. Several other faculty
members said they had not authorized grade changes for students. It was not detailed in the report whether the
newer, “permanent” grades were higher than the “temporary” ones, despite this
being a seemingly obvious set of data to seek in order to uncover motive. And once again, the issue of athletic eligibility
was completely ignored by the report – despite the clear evidence of Marvin
Austin and Michael McAdoo benefitting from taking the classes, McAdoo’s
plagiarism withstanding. As detailed
when discussing Austin’s transcript in Chapter Five, a 2.0 grade point average
was required to be in good academic standing at the school. If temporary grades were later changed to
permanent ones, and the ensuing result was that an athlete’s GPA was bumped
above the 2.0 threshold, then clear intent would be established. Again, none of that was addressed in the
report. Whether the investigators looked
into the matter and then chose to not include it, based on what they possibly
discovered, is unknown.
Indeed, the report did not cast any blame on the
athletics department. However,
information obtained by the News and
Observer showed the AFAM’s independent study courses were popular with
athletes, and that Nyang’oro was often teaching them. Such courses had drawn suspicion in the past
due to the sometimes lax attendance and work policies, and athletic programs at
other universities had gotten into trouble based on some independent study
courses, according to the N&O.
In all, nine courses from the summer 2007 through summer
2011 timeframe were found to be aberrant, meaning there was evidence that
students completed written work, submitted it to the department and received
grades, but there was no evidence that the faculty member listed as instructor
of record or any other faculty member actually supervised the course and graded
the work. Those nine courses had a
collective total of 59 registered students, according to the report. Furthermore, an additional 43 courses with a
collective total of 599 registered students were either aberrant or were taught
irregularly. The latter meant that the
instructor provided an assignment and evidently graded the resultant paper, but
engaged in limited or no classroom or other instructional contact with
students.
*
* *
The AFAM’s long-time administrator, Deborah Crowder, was
earlier mentioned as being the person who would have overseen much of the
course scheduling and grade recording within the department. Crowder began working at the university in
1979, and retired in 2009. Details would
emerge that showed a very close relationship between Crowder and the men’s
basketball program. She had been in a
long-standing relationship with former basketball player Warren Martin, who
played on the 1982 National Championship team.
At the time the various fraudulent classes were being revealed, Crowder
also had a Facebook social media page.
When the report was publicly revealed her Facebook page was still open
to public view, and her “friends” list contained a staggering collection of
former UNC men’s basketball players – many of whom had played on past National
Championship teams.
Included
were:
-- Wayne Ellington
(played from 2006-09, and was a member of the 2009 National Championship team)
-- Bobby Frasor
(2006-09, and a member of the 2009 National Championship team)
-- Tyler Hansbrough
(2005-09, and a member of the 2009 National Championship team)
-- Quentin Thomas
(2004-08, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)
-- Wes Miller (2004-07,
and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)
-- Byron Sanders
(2003-06, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)
-- David Noel (2002-06,
and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)
-- Rashad McCants
(2002-05, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)
-- (The wife of) Jawad
Williams (2001-05, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)
-- (The wife of) Jackie
Manuel (2001-05, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)
-- Will Johnson (1999-03)
-- Terrence Newby
(1997-00)
-- Ademola Okulaja
(1995-99)
-- Donald Williams
(1992-95, and a member of the 1993 National Championship team)
-- Derrick Phelps
(1990-94, and a member of the 1993 National Championship team)
-- Kevin Salvadori
(1990-94, and a member of the 1993 National Championship team)
-- J.R. Reid (1986-89)
-- David Popson
(1984-87)
One other name of note stood out amongst Crowder’s
“friends” list: Kay Thomas. Thomas was a
long-time secretary of the UNC men’s basketball team. According to a 2012 interview with the
website keepingitheel.com, Thomas
worked for the basketball program under Coach Dean Smith until he retired.
Also
of significant interest was the emerging revelation that Crowder was very close
to Burgess McSwain, a long-time academic adviser to UNC’s men’s basketball
team. A story that originally appeared
in the Chapel Hill News in February
of 2004 detailed many of McSwain’s accomplishments involving academics and the
school’s basketball team. There was even
a quote given by Julius Nyang’oro in the article. It followed a lead-in that proclaimed that
McSwain’s efforts and skills as a teacher had won the respect of numerous UNC
faculty members who regularly teach student athletes. Nyang’oro’s remarks immediately followed,
part of which stated, “Burgess has a clear sense of what a teacher needs to do
to convey the key concepts that need to be understood. She is another transmission belt in the
teaching process.” In fact, that specific topic, “faculty
members who regularly teach student athletes,” was immediately changed
following Nyang’oro’s quotes, leaving him as the only faculty member featured
in the section. Later in the article
McSwain was quoted as saying, “I tell people who ask me that it’s not a sham at
Carolina. I can’t say what happens at
other schools, but at Carolina, while we may spoon-feed them a little bit, they
go in and take their own exams and write their own papers. We don’t do their work for them.” Whether she was aware of the fraudulent
activities within the AFAM department that benefitted basketball players is
unknown. McSwain died on July 9, 2004,
after a long illness.
According
to information that would surface later in 2012 via an article from the Charlotte Observer, Crowder had received
$100,000 and some Hummel figurines in 2008 from the estate of Burgess McSwain’s
father. The payment was said to have
arisen from a “close” friendship Crowder had with Ms. McSwain. The money and items were reported to be in
exchange for taking care of the father’s dogs.
*
* *
More notable information from the AFAM investigative
report surfaced just a few days later via another News and Observer article penned by Dan Kane, which made heavy use
of statistics gleaned from the documents.
It revealed that football and basketball players accounted for nearly
four of every ten students enrolled in fifty-four classes at the heart of the
academic fraud investigation. The actual
number of athletically-associated enrollments might have even been higher, as
trainers, volunteers, and other “support” members of the teams were not identified
– only those who were official sports participants. While perhaps shocking to the general public,
there were signs beforehand that should have hinted at the news, what with
Austin and McAdoo’s earlier transgressions, and then Crowder’s close ties with
the basketball program.
Crowder’s
presence brought up another huge red flag once the percentage of basketball
enrollees was revealed, and led to a topic that few in the media (and none at
UNC or even the NCAA) seemed to want to tackle: As previously mentioned, there
were unauthorized grade changes. For
whom were they changed? Were they for
football and/or basketball players? And
if so, how did it affect the GPA’s and eventual eligibility of those
players? Someone at the university – and
likely the AFAM department – changed those grades. A fair line of reasoning to follow up on
would be to look at people who had connections and/or a vested interest in the
athletic programs. Deborah Crowder
unequivocally fit those parameters, especially with the basketball
program. Yet the grades of past
basketball players were never looked into by the university – or if they were,
it was never publicly acknowledged by the university. As explained in an earlier chapter, if
players were found to have participated while ineligible, then victories would
have to be forfeited. The UNC men’s
basketball team won national titles in the very recent years of 2009 and
2005. It also won a title in 1993, which
just happened to be the year after Julius Nyang’oro took over as the chairman
of the AFAM department. And it won a
title in 1982, a team on which Deborah Crowder’s boyfriend, Warren Martin,
played. Yet no questions were asked
regarding this massive set of coinciding and suggestive information.
According
to the News and Observer’s article,
university officials say they found no evidence that the suspect classes were
part of a plan between Nyang’oro and the athletics department for
eligibility-maintaining purposes. And
once again the same reasoning was given that Hartlyn and Andrews had used in
their report: Student athletes were treated no differently in the classes than
students who were not athletes. It
should be noted that in the summer of 2011 the university hired a Raleigh
public relations firm to help with their handling of the ongoing scandal. As time would go on, more and more people
associated with UNC would repeat some of the same phrases over and over again,
emphasizing points that would appear to convey less wrongdoing on the
university’s part, and thus hopefully keep the NCAA from returning to the
school – such as the “student athletes vs. non-student athletes” technicality.
* * *
Former
State Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, at the time an attorney, was quoted as
saying, “These kids are putting in enormous amounts of time, and in at least
some of the sports that are very physically demanding, they are missing a
number of classes because of conflicts, and then if they are a marginal student
to begin with, you’ve got to send them to Professor Nyang’oro’s class. I think the academic counselors realized that
and the tutors realized it and frankly the folks up the food chain for the most
part recognized it. But nobody wants to
rock the boat because it’s big money.”
Kane’s
article went on to further break down the reported enrollments in the suspect
classes. Of the 686 students, 246 of the
enrollments, or 36 percent, were football players, and 23 enrollments, or three
percent, were basketball players, according to UNC. Kane went on to point out that football and
basketball players accounted for less than one percent of the total
undergraduate enrollment – about 120 of the more than 18,500 undergraduate
students on campus – yet they accounted for nearly 40 percent of the
enrollments in fraudulent classes.
Some
in the social media realm tried to immediately downplay basketball’s
involvement, pointing to the relatively low “three percent” statistic (23
enrollments). That argument was
statistically flawed, however. The short
timeframe of the school’s investigative report into AFAM classes was from 2007
to 2011. During that same time period,
there were 26 total scholarship players who participated on the four men’s
basketball teams that covered the same timeframe. There are several counterarguments that could
shed a different light on that data: If
each of those 23 basketball AFAM enrollees only took one fraudulent class
apiece, then all but three men’s basketball members from 2007 to 2011 would
retroactively lose their eligibility (assuming the academic fraud was
appropriately acted upon by the NCAA, or even the university itself). If a group of players took two classes
apiece, that would still mean that at least 11 players would retroactively lose
their eligibility – 42 percent of the players from 2007 to 2011. In either scenario, the team would be forced
to vacate all of its victories during that timeframe – including the 2009
National Championship. So once again, it
became increasingly apparent why the university was unwilling to dig any deeper
into the AFAM fraud. The basketball team
and its past accomplishments were coming close to being placed at the center of
the microscope, and those glories were as much a part UNC’s image as any
academic reputation had ever been.
* * *
As
more dissecting of the university’s investigative report continued, even more
questions appeared to be left unanswered.
According to the May 7, 2012, article in the News and Observer, university officials could not say why no one
brought the suspect classes to their attention before the previous summer. Jonathan Hartlyn and William Andrews, the two
UNC academic officials who conducted the probe, did not interview students for
the report – despite the fact that they must have known all of the students’
names who were in the classes, as they reportedly had open access to all past
records. However, Nancy Davis, a
university spokeswoman, said the university’s counsel, Leslie Strohm, and its
former faculty athletics representative, Jack Evans, did talk to students. Inexplicably, those interviews were not
reflected in the report. As noted
before, other information that was not reflected in the report was for whom
specific grades were altered. While the
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) would prevent the report from
naming specific students, it could have very easily indicated whether the
grades of athletes were changed – and what effect it had on those athletes’
overall GPA. But once again, that was
not pursued by the report’s investigators or by the university as a whole.
Tom Ross, the UNC system president and a graduate of
UNC’s School of Law, stated a theme that would be oft-repeated in the coming
months by those closely associated with the university: It was time to look
forward, and not backwards. He said in a
statement that he saw no need to look further into the academic
improprieties. “I believe that this was
an isolated situation,” Ross said, “and that the campus has taken appropriate
steps to correct problems and put additional safeguards in place.” On what information he was basing his
assumption that it was an isolated situation, however, was certainly
unclear. Hannah Gage, chairman of the
UNC System’s Board of Governors and another UNC graduate, said she would not
know if the board would be seeking more information until she had talked to
others. As pointed out in Chapter Two,
UNC graduates held a significantly higher percentage of the BOG seats than any
other university in the 16-institution system.
*
* *
The essential (and unanswered)
questions:
-- Who changed the
grades for the students?
-- Who forged the
professors’ signatures?
-- Who was ultimately
paid for the various classes where the teacher was “unknown?”
-- How many athletes
took part in the fraudulent classes, and for which sports?
-- Did those grades
affect their GPA’s, and if deemed impermissible, then retroactively their
eligibility?
-- Had the matter been
pursued, would team wins need to vacated, even if it meant national
championships?
-- Even though Deborah
Crowder retired in 2009, the fraudulent AFAM anomalies continued for at least
two more years. Was Nyang’oro solely
responsible? If not, who else played a
role in the improprieties now that Crowder was gone?
-- Why did the
university and its on-staff investigators refuse to ask the above questions and
seek answers in a manner that would appear to uphold the honorable and high
standards it had long claimed to hold for the institution?