Chapter
Eight
No-show
classes; internal report reveals more academic fraud
Following the release of the university’s AFAM report in
early May that dealt with academic fraud, the opinions, comments, and fallout
would commence from various entities who were in some way connected to the
university. Some expressed outrage,
while others seemed to offer veiled excuses.
All the while the media (and especially the investigative team at the
Raleigh News and Observer) seemingly
recognized the blatant fraud and cheating for what it clearly appeared to be –
a method to keep athletes eligible via easy and/or nonexistent classes – and
continued to report on various aspects of the story.
A May 11, 2012, article by the Raleigh News and Observer indicated that UNC was
considering taking monetary action against former African and Afro-American Studies
chairman Julius Nyang’oro. It stated
that he had taught a course the previous summer with 19 students enrolled. However, following an inquiry the newspaper
made about summer school payments to Nyang’oro, university officials said they
might seek action against the professor for not teaching a class as they had
anticipated. According to Nancy Davis, a
UNC spokeswoman, “Through our review, we learned that Professor Nyang’oro
provided instruction for a course in independent study format that had been approved
to be taught in lecture format. Had the summer
school been aware that he was treating it as independent study, he would not
have been paid for the course. We are
reviewing appropriate next steps.”
Nyang’oro was the instructor of record for 45 similar
classes, and university officials said they followed the same pattern: A course
typically intended for classroom instruction was converted into an independent
study format, which meant no classes and an expectation that a paper or other
project would be produced at the end.
This would appear to be the format that was followed in the class that
former football player Michael McAdoo took, and in which he turned in a paper
that was heavily plagiarized. That paper
would eventually lead to the NCAA ruling him permanently ineligible. The university refused to investigate how
many other athletes may have followed the same impermissible blueprint as
McAdoo, and to date the NCAA has not investigated the matter, either.
With growing regularity certain words would be spoken by
university individuals in positions of influence that supported the “let’s look
forward, not into the past” plan of action in an attempt to protect the
university’s reputation. Wade Hargrove,
chairman of UNC’s Board of Trustees, said, “All of (the academic issues are) deeply
troubling. My concern at this point is
making sure that measures are in place to prevent these things from ever
happening again at this university.”
Nyang’oro received money for teaching courses during the
summer sessions, as well as $8,400 for being a summer school administrator,
according to university records. The
particular class in question, AFAM 280, reopened questions as to whether
additional investigation was needed, according to the News and Observer. Orange
County District Attorney Jim Woodall said the evidence regarding the prior
forgery allegations did not appear to be enough to launch a criminal
investigation. “But,” he said, “if there
were some payments for a teacher teaching classes that were not taught, well,
that would be a different issue.” The
potential payment information that Woodall referred to was not included
anywhere in the university’s investigative report on the AFAM department.
*
* *
Art Chansky, a graduate of UNC and the author of several
UNC-related books, had been a long-time employee of Tar Heel Sports Properties,
a company that owned and managed the multimedia rights for the university. Chansky had worked for the company for 18
years, most recently serving as Associate General Manager and Account
Executive, according to a story by WTVD-TV.
Depending on which account of the events was true, he either resigned or
was fired from that company almost two years earlier in December of 2010. The break came just days after an email sent
by Chansky to Chancellor Holden Thorp was made public. The email was dated October 6, 2010, which
was several months after the initial football issues arose, and the subject
line was “Private and Confidential.” In
the letter Chansky offered the names and numbers of people who could assist
Thorp with a potential search for a new football coach, should Thorp choose to
fire Butch Davis. Once the email became
public, Chansky’s tenure at Tar Heel Sports Properties quickly came to an
end. (Davis would not be fired by the
university for another eight months.)
After leaving Tar Heel Sports Properties, Chansky would
move on to work with various other business entities, and also penned
occasional articles for the Chapelboro.com
website. An article posted on May
21, 2012, touched on the topic of the AFAM investigative report, and
specifically on former chairman Julius Nyang’oro. In the article Chansky began by pointing out
the timeframe of the investigation into the department, and how it coincided
with Butch Davis’s time on campus. This
may have been due to Chansky’s possible dislike towards Davis (based on his
email sent to Thorp that had become public), or it could simply be that Chansky
repeated the party line that many associated with the university had hoped to
suggest at the time: this started and ended with Butch. He even threw in a quote in an apparent
attempt to absolve basketball, when he noted that a week prior coach Roy
Williams had said of his players, “They went to class and did the work that was
assigned them.” To which Chansky followed up with: maybe
all the basketball players did, but apparently not all the athletes; again
insinuating the issue was a football one.
His article concluded with a seeming call for justice. “Let’s hope”… any criminal fraud is detected…
“quickly and the right people are held accountable.” Of course, similar words of
“wanting to get to the bottom of things” had been heard before from others in
positions of administrative and/or media influence. The sincerity of those claims would soon be
put to test, however.
*
* *
Members of the university’s Board of Trustees finally
began to weigh in on the subject after being briefed on Thursday, May 24,
2012. An article that appeared the
following day in the Raleigh News and
Observer indicated that the trustees had asked “pointed questions” about
accountability in the university’s academic operations. Chairman Wade Hargrove described the findings
of the internal AFAM investigation as “major indiscretions that raise serious questions
of unprofessional and unethical conduct.” He went on to say that he read the report
with a mixture of “disappointment and dismay and outrage,” and that “academic
freedom is not to be confused with academic irresponsibility or academic
fraud. We all know the difference.” According
to information the trustees were given, new rules would now govern independent
study courses, and a review of teaching assignments would be conducted annually
– apparently a practice that had not taken place beforehand. Chancellor Holden Thorp was quoted as saying,
“I know that you’re all as deeply troubled as I am, as disturbed as I am and as
angry as I am that these things could have happened. They are completely at odds with what we
stand for as an institution.”
Trustee Peter Grauer asked how courses with little or no
supervision from professors could have gone unnoticed for years. Karen Gil, Dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences answered him, saying, “That’s a good question, and I understand the
concern. There are checks and balances
all over the system, but in this case they did not detect the problems. There were no student complaints about these
courses.”
The obvious follow-up questions were not asked by the trustees, nor
were they offered by the university officials: Why were there no
complaints? What would have been the
possible reasons that students – many of them student athletes on the
basketball and football teams – would continue to take classes that were in
essence fake, and never say anything? More than just “taking” the classes, though,
they were actually signed up for those classes by their sports programs’
academic advisors. But again, those
deeper issues were never sought out by the adult leadership of the university.
*
* *
William Andrews, a senior associate dean who was one of
the investigators, indicated that the AFAM review took nine months and was
difficult to piece together. He said
that lax oversight in the department was part of the problem in reconstructing
what happened. When asked by one trustee
why the review covered only four years, Andrews said it was clear that many of
the problems ended with the 2009 retirement of the department’s longtime
administrator, Deborah Crowder.
Furthermore, four years of data revealed issues linked only to Nyang’oro
and Crowder, he said, and there was no evidence to indicate others would have
been involved even if the probe had covered a longer period. This statement – and reasoning – appeared to
be grossly flawed, however. While
Nyang’oro was the teacher of record of the majority of classes, he was not the
only one. He had been the department
head since 1992, yet the school chose to only look back to 2007? And Crowder had worked for the school since
1979, yet the school chose to only look back to 2007? Essentially the statements by Andrews were
assumptions, and not based on the available data at his disposal. As would be proven less than two months
later, in fact, Andrews was indeed incorrect in his statements regarding the
beginning point of the fraudulent classes.
Bobbi Owen, a senior associate dean for undergraduate
education, said it was hard to know why students ended up in any particular
course. “Word of mouth is potent,” she
said. “Students drift to places where
they understand they will be accommodated.”
What she did not mention, however, was that scholarship athletes of
major programs (such as basketball and football) have team academic advisors
who were largely responsible for enrolling his/her team’s athletes in
classes. The basketball team had such as
person. A much closer look at that
individual will be given later. The
football team also had such a person. According
to a New York Times article that was
published in April of 2012, former UNC player Deunta Williams said that
athletes could only take the classes the athletics department wanted them to
take. It was always better that the
classes not be too difficult, he said – otherwise, there might be eligibility
problems. He went on to indicate that
freshmen football players took Swahili as their language requirement, because
the athletics department tutors were strong in that language. Swahili was one of the main courses taught by
Julius Nyang’oro.
The May 25, 2012, News
and Observer article that covered the Board of Trustees meeting ended with
a quote from Holden Thorp: “I’m
chancellor at this university, but I’ve been a student and a faculty member,
and I’m still a faculty member,” he said.
“These findings are a kick in the gut to those of us who take great
pride in what we do here.” He said he hoped the investigation would
send a strong message that the university took its academic reputation
seriously. Unfortunately for the school,
the stronger message that was eventually sent dealt with the information that
the report purposely ignored.
*
* *
On June 7, 2012, Chancellor Thorp offered a letter to the
university’s Board of Trustees giving an update on the ongoing scandal. In it, Thorp said that the school had sent a
letter informing Professor Julius Nyang’oro that it would be taking back
$12,000 that Nyang’oro had accepted as payment for a summer school 2011
course. The letter went on to explain
that Nyang’oro’s teaching of the course did not meet the university’s
instructional expectations, and they did not believe that he should have been
paid. What was not mentioned in Thorp’s
update to the Board of Trustees was whether restitution would be sought for the
over 50 other courses that apparently did not meet the university’s instructional
expectations, either. A key point that
showed up near the very beginning of Thorp’s letter was the reasoning/rationale
that had already begun to spread amongst UNC leaders and administrators. The chancellor made sure to include that “most
of the irregularly taught and aberrant classes detailed in the review of
courses in the department included both student athletes and students who
weren’t athletes.” As touched on various times before, this
would be key in the university’s eventual insistence that the academic fraud
should not be an NCAA issue.
Thorp said in the letter to the trustees that the school
was trying to determine how the summer school 2011 class was created, and how
students were registered for it. This
uncertainty seemed odd in the current era, where virtually every on-campus
scheduling transaction happened via computer.
Furthermore, as pointed out earlier, most major-sport athletes got
preferential (and early) treatment in terms of signing up for courses in order
to accommodate their practice and game schedules, which was often performed via
the team’s academic adviser. Thorp even
went so far as to confirm that staff in the Academic Support Program for
Student Athletes helped the students (who were all athletes) register. As would become a pattern over the months (and
years) to follow, the university either neglected to check the emails of its
various staff members for clues as to possible motives – or else the university
checked but never revealed those findings.
Thorp also stated his official reason/stance on why the
covered period of the AFAM report was only from the summer of 2007 through
summer 2011, instead of spanning further into the past. The letter said, “The review focused on the last five consecutive summers and four
academic years because we wanted to obtain the most accurate recollections and
records available. We also wanted to
cover the summers of 2007 and 2009, when the first irregularities known to us
had occurred. The further back we go,
the less reliable and available the data become since faculty are required to
keep course records for only one year.
People’s memories also become less clear and less reliable going back in
time.” Many in the social media world
were expecting there to be a punch line after this line of “reasoning,” but it
truly was the actual explanation given to the university’s Board of Trustees –
despite the fact that computer records at major universities are kept intact
for decades, and that any individual student can return to campus and request
his or her past transcript, which would show the classes taken and the grades
received – no matter the year of graduation.
Yet according to Thorp, going back any further than 2007 would have
yielded data that was “less reliable and available.”
As noted above, Chancellor Thorp indicated that older
records of grades given in a particular class would be difficult to
locate. Even if that were the case, a
transcript for each individual student (who took that particular class) would
be available for perusal. According to
the UNC’s “Office of the University
Registrar” webpage, “Transcripts
can be ordered online by current students and alumni of the university. Online
transcript ordering is convenient, can be done from any location 24/7, and
provides emails to inform students/alumni on the status of their request.” Nowhere on the
site does it give a limitation of how far back (in terms of a student’s
graduation year) it can provide a transcript.
The frequently-asked-questions page of the site notes that a request can
take up to two weeks to fulfill due to the large volume of transcript requests
it receives, which in reality is a very reasonable turnaround time. But Chancellor Thorp and other administrative
leaders would have the school’s Board of Trustees, as well as members of the
media, believe that it was virtually impossible to get accurate data on AFAM
classes prior to 2007 – despite all of that pertinent information being
available in the registrar’s office if anyone had taken the time and effort to
do the research. The initial
university-sanctioned report on AFAM’s courses would prove to not be the last
time that the school avoided obvious methods of data-collection. Specific methods would have most certainly
led to clarity into the academic and athletic fraud that had taken place over
several decades, yet they would continue to be overlooked in the future. As a result, a pattern of seemingly
deliberate laxity in uncovering the truth would be repeated time and again.
* * *
The Raleigh News and Observer continued its strong coverage of the scandal,
releasing an article on June 8, 2012 – a day after Thorp’s letter to the Board
of Trustees. The article focused on the
summer 2011 class that was filled entirely with athletes (which was also created
just days before the summer session began), and also noted that the academic
advisers had known that there would be no instruction. The academic support staff reported to the
university’s College of Arts and Sciences, the article said, but was actually housed
in the athletics department’s student support center within Kenan Stadium.
Thorp could not be reached by the
newspaper for comment, but new Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham said he was
concerned. “I just think this has
uncovered some information that quite frankly, the university, we’re not proud
of.” He would then repeat a line similar
to one that was earlier spoken by Board of Trustees chairman Wade Hargrove, and
which was the same sentiment that would be repeated later by others in positions
of leadership within the school: “But we’ll continue to work to ensure that it
doesn’t happen going forward.” Future
prevention was clearly in the university’s plans. Past detection and accountability were
apparently not. Members of the Board of Trustees
either declined comment for the article or could not be reached.
Email correspondence that had been
recently released showed that Professor Nyang’oro went to another professor in
the AFAM department, Tim McMillan, on June 14, 2011, to add the summer course
in question (AFAM 280) to the summer calendar.
McMillan was reportedly the one who normally taught the class. “Sure,” McMillan replied via email. “How many students will I have?” To which Nyang’oro responded, “No more than
5. I will be the instructor of record
and relieve you of responsibility and bother.
A big relief for you?????” Nyang’oro then talked to a journalism
professor, Jan Yopp, who also was serving as the dean for summer school that
year. On June 16, 2011, the day the
summer semester began, Yopp sent word to Nyang’oro that the class was open for
registration. Four days later, Nyang’oro
revealed in an email to Yopp that 18 students had enrolled in the class, though
there was no mention that all of them were athletes. “I am totally taken by surprise!” Nyang’oro expressed in his
correspondence.
Nancy Davis, a spokeswoman for the
university, and Jonathan Hartlyn, a senior associate dean who oversaw the
African Studies department and was one of the staff members who conducted the
internal review, were contacted for the News
and Observer’s article. Echoing
almost word for word what Chancellor Holden Thorp said in the previous day’s
letter to the UNC Board of Trustees, both Davis and Hartlyn continued to stress
than non-athletes also took the suspect classes and received the same treatment
grade-wise.
As pointed out earlier, the university had hired a public
relations firm the previous year (which was still employed by the school at the
time – and troubling data would eventually emerge regarding just how much money
the university had spent for PR assistance).
Ben Silverman is a businessman totally unrelated to the UNC
scandal. His past professional experience,
however, helps to put UNC’s use of a public relations firm into perspective. For over six years Silverman was an author
for PR Fuel, an award-winning consultancy that was launched in 2001 and has won
numerous awards. According to
Silverman’s LinkedIn page, his work for PR Fuel was “Author of weekly, best
practices newsletter for the public relations industry.”
In one of Silverman’s past
articles, “Note to PR Pros: Keep Your Key Messages Consistent,” he wrote the
following: “Consistency in public relations is important. Public
relations consultants and corporate executives are often told to ‘stay on
message’ and not to stray from a script. Companies and organizations put an
enormous amount of time and energy into hammering home a consistent key
message, be it through public statements, advertising, or simple branding. Consistency gives comfort to people,
and public relations professionals are charged with providing a comforting view
of a company or client. When a public
relations strategy is inconsistent, trouble usually follows.” That sense of consistency was exactly what
began to emerge through the comments of various UNC officials. They stressed that they would be looking
towards the future to make sure that the issues never happened again (with a
veiled inference being that they did not want to look back). They also stressed that both athletes and
non-athletes were enrolled in the classes (with the inference being that as a
result, the NCAA should not view it as an athletic scandal). These patterns fit standard PR operating
procedures; multiple people were repeating the same message, in an effort to provide
“a comforting view of a company or client.”
Several final and important pieces of information were
included in the N&O’s June 8,
2012, article. It was now being reported
that 58 percent of the enrollees in the fraudulent classes were athletes, as
opposed to the originally-reported 39 percent.
More insight into the information-gathering process for the report was
also given. Once again the point was
stated that it was unclear how the students – athletes and non-athletes – ended
up in the classes. Jonathan Hartlyn
interviewed students for the probe, according to the article, along with Jack
Evans, a professor who had been a liaison to the athletics department, as well
as university counsel Leslie Strohm.
Hartlyn, however, declined to say what those interviewed students
said. As before, information that could
have given insight into motive was either ignored or was purposely withheld.
* * *
Details would continue to emerge and questions would continue
to be asked by those not associated with UNC.
The university itself, though, would carry on with its obstinate nature
and would deflect direct questions that otherwise might clarify aspects of the
ongoing scandal. On July 8, 2012, the
Raleigh News and Observer reported
that athletes did in fact account for the majority of the enrollees in the
fraudulent courses in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies. Furthermore, data had emerged that suggested
the irregularities within the department and university might go back as far as
1999.
The first parts of the article penned by tenacious
investigative reporter Dan Kane indicated that past students who possibly
wanted to enroll in summer courses taught by Julius Nyang’oro would have been
met with obstacles. This was due to the
fact that of the 38 courses the university said he was responsible for over the
five summers covered in the AFAM report, 26 of them listed a maximum capacity
of just one student. Despite that restrictive
parameter, however, university records show more than one student was enrolled
in most of those courses. Furthermore, a
substantial number of those students were often athletes. Registration records showed that many of the
courses had no classroom or class time.
To augment the confusion of the situation – as well as to
hint at the possibility of a third, influential party being in the equation –
was the fact that Julius Nyang’oro was not officially paid by the university
for 29 of those suspect summer classes.
Professors were typically paid per class because the summer work was
considered beyond their normal nine-month work year. According to summer school Dean Jan Yopp,
faculty were generally only allowed to be paid for two courses each summer, which
might explain why Nyang’oro did not receive payment for some of the 29
courses. It does not, however, explain
why Nyang’oro would so readily agree to take on the workload to teach (or at
least grade papers in) more than two dozen courses for no apparent and
traceable compensation. Overall, 75
courses were linked to Nyang’oro over a four-year period, according to the News and Observer. University officials said that was an
extraordinary number for a professor, let alone a department chairman, to have
responsibility for. No one apparently noticed
the exorbitant number until the AFAM fraud investigation began.
While very few members of UNC’s faculty had spoken out
publicly up to that time about the academic fraud, Professor Jay Smith had made
his opposing opinions known. He and
Willis Brooks, a fellow UNC history professor like Smith, told the News and Observer they were concerned
about the case’s impact on the university’s academic integrity. They said the enrollment and pay data
suggested Nyang’oro had set up a system for athletes to get into classes they
could pass. “The only logic I can
conjure is (Nyang’oro) was protecting seats,” said Brooks, a professor emeritus
who served on the faculty athletic committee in the early 1990’s. “And since the preponderance of people who
took the seats are athletes, there is circumstantial evidence,” he said.
The Raleigh newspaper reviewed a number of archived internet
pages that showed that as far back as 1999, some of the same AFAM class
offerings were listed with a maximum of one student. When questioned about the more than
decade-old pattern, the university said it would be difficult at the current
date to determine how many of the students in those classes were athletes. However, as detailed in an earlier section of
this chapter, the information was readily available to the school via a review
of past athletes’ transcripts. It would,
however, require that the school display not only the effort to determine
whether athletes had taken part in those much older courses, but also the
desire.
* * *
At the end of the News
and Observer’s June 8th article a month earlier, the percentage
of athletes in the fraudulent courses had risen from the school’s initial
reporting of 39 percent up to 58 percent.
In a newer July 8, 2012, article, the percentage had risen yet
again. The university said that athletes
and former athletes made up 64 percent of the enrollments. While it may have been frustrating to the
media that the initial numbers had been incorrect and continued to change, what
was more troubling was the fact that, according to the News and Observer, UNC officials had released little information
beyond the enrollment figures to back up their claims that athletes didn’t
receive special treatment.
The university had not released any of the information about
its interviews with students regarding how they got into the classes. Furthermore, it revealed very little from its
interview with Nyang’oro, an individual who seemingly would have been able to
give some very insightful details into the courses and the reasons for their
fraudulent nature – especially considering that he had chaired the department
for twenty years. At a recent UNC Board
of Governors meeting, the News and
Observer attempted to ask Chancellor Holden Thorp about what Nyang’oro said
in his interview. University spokeswoman
Nancy Davis quickly interjected, preventing Thorp from answering. “You need to talk to (Nyang’oro) about that,”
she said. “That’s not for us to answer.” It
was well known at the time that Nyang’oro had given no comment to virtually
every question and interview request by the media – something that Nancy Davis,
given her important position as university spokeswoman, was likely very aware
of.
That blocking of information was a far cry from Holden
Thorp’s claims from the summer of 2010.
When the football program was first being scrutinized for impermissible
benefits and academic irregularities, Thorp and many other influential figures
surrounding the university boldly proclaimed that they would do whatever it
took to get to the bottom of the issues.
Former Athletics Director Dick Baddour felt that the school had handled
the football investigation in “The Carolina Way,” and had used certain guiding
principles during the process – one of which dealt with integrity. Now, however, lawyers were being hired, PR
firms had their fingerprints on quotes and statements, and information was
being withheld from the media.
Another person whom UNC officials could have interviewed had
they truly desired to discover the nature and intent of the fraudulent athletic
courses was Deborah Crowder, the AFAM department’s former manager. The school had claimed that she and Nyang’oro
were the only two in the department suspected of improper behavior, and that
Crowder had responsibility for scheduling classes. Once again, the extensive degree of Crowder’s
longstanding (and easily uncovered) ties to the school’s basketball program
should have been all the school needed to ask pointed questions on the matter. Whether they ever spoke to Crowder, however,
is unknown.
The PackPride.com
message boards once again helped with portions of a news story, as the July 8,
2012, article in the News and Observer
noted that a fan on that website posted other information regarding some
archived registration records. The data
showed that 44 of the suspect AFAM classes listed the maximum seating at one
student. Other university records show
that 31 of those one-seat-maximum classes had athletes as the majority of the
enrollees. University spokeswoman Nancy
Davis and others said there were several possible legitimate reasons why a
class might be listed as having only one seat available. One example given was that a teacher might be
trying to protect seats for students who needed the classes to complete their majors. This was, unfortunately, yet more speculation
and hypothetical excuses on a matter that could have been definitively verified
through a simple review of past records and data. Those suspect class rosters could have been
pulled, and the students’ majors reviewed.
If there were situations that did not fit the legitimate reasons Davis
offered, then there would obviously be another explanation. Were the students who did not fit those
legitimate parameters athletes? Did they
benefit by taking the courses by way of receiving a high grade that boosted
their grade point average? Simple
questions and simple methods of getting the answers, yet the university chose
to ignore that logical and morally-correct path.
* * *
Following the report and data
regarding the AFAM program and the 54 fraudulent courses from 2007 to 2011, UNC
had a special faculty committee look into the academic fraud scandal at the
university. The 13-page report was
released in late July, and its authors were Steven Bachenheimer, a professor of
microbiology and immunology; Michael Gerhardt, a law professor; and Laurie F.
Maffly-Kipp, a professor of religious studies.
The Raleigh News and Observer ran
an article on July 26, 2012, to cover the findings of the report.
According to Dan Kane’s article, the
committee found “an athletics program divorced from the faculty, academic
counselors for athletes improperly helping them enroll in classes and poor
oversight of faculty administrators who have wide latitude in running their
departments.” Bachenheimer, Gerhardt,
and Maffly-Kipp called for an independent commission of outside experts in
higher education to review athletics and academics at the school. The report was almost entirely focused on
what it called an atmosphere of distrust on a “campus with two cultures,” one
academic and one athletic.
The report said an unidentified “departmental
staff manager” within African Studies
may have directed athletes to enroll in the no-show classes, and that “it seems
likely” someone in the department was calling counselors for athletes to tell
them “certain courses” were available.
Deborah Crowder was clearly the referenced staff manager, as that was
the position she had long held up until her retirement in 2009. No mention in the report, however, was made
regarding her extremely close ties with the basketball program. Neither her email nor phone records were
checked in order to verify the suspicions, either. The report went on to say, “We were told that
athletes claimed they had been sent to Julius Nyang’oro by the (Academic
Support Program for Student Athletes).”
The report in many ways described an
athletics program that had too much control, noting that the admissions office
under its then-current director had never rejected a student athlete with a
subpar academic record that had received a recommendation from a special
advisory committee. The report’s authors
went on reveal a troubling side note: the academic support program for athletes
was supposed to be run by the College of Arts and Sciences, but its funding
came from the athletics department. And
its director, Robert Mercer, also reported to John Blanchard, a senior
athletics director. “This reporting
system is ambiguous, lacks clarity, and is likely not very productive,” the report said.
The report went on to suggest that
the university should examine athletes’ course selections over a period of
roughly 10 years to see if they were clustering in certain classes and
departments with the intent of protecting their eligibility in sports. According to Chancellor Holden Thorp’s
earlier words, however, that would be a very formidable task – and was the main
reason why the initial AFAM investigation did not go back any further than
2007. Yet there were three respected
university professors, who presumably were well versed in the data-collection
methods currently at the university’s disposal regarding past records and
results, who were suggesting a larger view of the past be taken.
In a section of the report with the
heading “Need for Institutional Transparency Regarding Athletics,” the
following bold statement was made:
“Generally, (the faculty) call for an external review of athletic
advising, independent of the athletics department, as well as more forthright
statements from the administration about the compromises made to host Division
I athletics at UNC.” Ironically, it
would later be shown that prior to its release the three-member report had been
altered and partially censored by people within leadership positions at UNC in
yet another attempt to shield the school’s top athletic programs from future
penalties. Those details would not
emerge for another year; another, different startling discovery would be made
less than two weeks later, however.
* * *
The essential (and unanswered) questions:
-- Why
weren’t papers from athletes in other AFAM classes ever checked for the same
types of plagiarism that showed up in Michael McAdoo’s assignment?
-- How had the university managed for years to
overlook dozens of unsupervised courses?
-- Who
was ultimately responsible for the decision to only go as far back as 2007 in
the initial AFAM report?
-- Why
did the school seek restitution for only one of Nyang’oro’s improperly-taught
classes?
-- Why
didn’t the university simply look at past students’ transcripts if they wanted
information on older AFAM courses and grades?
-- Why
were the information and data gathered from the student interviews (conducted
during the AFAM report) never released?
-- Why
did Professor Nyang’oro agree to teach (or at least have his name connected to)
so many classes filled primarily with athletes, yet apparently do so without
compensation?
-- Why
did the university refuse to state what its interviews with Nyang’oro had
revealed regarding the originations and motives behind the fraudulent,
athlete-filled classes?
-- Why did Chancellor
Thorp and others in positions of leadership offer full transparency and
cooperation in 2010 during the football portion of the scandal, but then in
2012 block the release of so much pertinent information?
-- Why was Deborah
Crowder never contacted and interviewed by the school? Or if she was, why was the resulting
information withheld from the public?
-- Why had the school
purposely avoided mentioning Deborah Crowder’s personal ties to the basketball
program?
-- Did the athletes who
eventually enrolled in the “one-seat-maximum” courses benefit, in terms of
athletic eligibility, from the fraudulent classes and final grades they
received?
-- Why did the athletics
department fund an academic support program that was supposed to be run by the
College of Arts and Sciences?
