Chapter
Fifteen
Martin report
released; immediate criticism and debunking;
Baker-Tilly’s
retraction
On December 20, 2012, former Governor Jim Martin released
a report of the findings that resulted from a three-plus month investigation
into academic fraud at UNC. The basics
were that more than 200 lecture-style classes were either confirmed or
suspected of having never met; dozens of independent study classes had little
or no supervision; and ultimately there would be 560 suspicious grade changes
revealed that dated as far back as 1994.
The biggest – and most important to UNC – proclamation by Martin,
however, was that it was not an athletics scandal, but an academic one.
That infamous quote would be well documented in the days
and weeks to come: “This was not an athletic scandal. It was an academic scandal, which is worse.” What was not addressed was “for whom” it was
worse. The school’s academic
reputation? Perhaps. But worse for the school’s athletics programs? Definitely not. The atmosphere in the room when Martin made
the statement told unaffiliated onlookers all they needed to know. There were smiles around the table amongst
the school’s Board of Trustees, and congratulations could be heard. Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham said, “I
feel like it’s now complete. This report
has been very thorough, an exhaustive study.
From that standpoint, we’ve been looking for closure, and I hope this
gives us the closure we’ve been looking for.” Just how exhaustive and
complete the report actually was, however, would soon be brought under
scrutiny.
An article that appeared on ESPN.com on the afternoon of Martin’s report provided more details
of his findings. The investigation
conducted by Martin and members of the Baker Tilly company found 216 classes
with proven or potential problems. Both
athletes and non-athletes benefitted from those classes, Martin said, which
would ultimately be a convenient way around certain NCAA bylaws. “The athletic department, coaches and players
did not create this,” the former Governor told the UNC Board of Trustees. “It was not in their jurisdiction, it was the
academic side.” Martin also told the board he found no
evidence that any coaches knew anything about the irregularities. However, it would later be shown that very
little research was done to that end. An
NCAA spokesperson did not immediately respond to an ESPN email seeking comment
on the matter.
*
* *
The Raleigh News
and Observer published an article of its own late on the day of Martin’s
report, and immediately began to question some of the findings. The title of the article was “In the wake of
Martin report, what will the NCAA do?” and it provided insight from several
experts with deep knowledge of the NCAA and its rules. Up to that point NCAA officials had taken no
action following a string of athletic/academic-related revelations encompassing
the university, instead having only said that they were monitoring the
developments. Athletics Director Bubba
Cunningham said, “(The report) showed the same irregularities that went back
further, but it didn’t show that there was anything directly related to
athletics.” He was then quick to point out one of the
university’s oft-repeated talking points: “Certainly there were student athletes
involved in classes as were a lot of other groups.”
While Martin and those associated with the school were
telling all who would listen that it “was not an athletic scandal,” parties not
affiliated with the university were not so sure. David Ridpath, an Ohio University professor,
was a former university compliance officer and an expert in litigation
involving college sports issues. In an
email he wrote to the News and Observer
he said that the NCAA’s inaction at UNC had been “unconscionable.” Ridpath continued, “I go back to the ‘but
for’ test. This fraud would not have
happened but for the athletes, many of whom were not prepared to do college
level work.” As documents released
several months later would reveal, athletes likely were the reason the fraud
was originally conceived. Those were
documents Martin and his team had apparently missed, though.
Michael Buckner was a Florida lawyer who advised
universities in NCAA probes. He said
that NCAA rules were broken if an athlete was kept eligible through any type of
academic fraud. “The NCAA may request
specific information on the involvement of student athletes in the illicit
activities,” Buckner said. Martin’s
report, however, didn’t show how many unauthorized grade changes benefitted
athletes, for example. Chancellor Holden
Thorp declined to address whether UNC had examined whether any of its athletes
were kept eligible as a result of the grade changes and other misconduct. He would only say that Martin’s report had
been sent to the NCAA. Ridpath and
Buckner were only two of several experts that the N&O asked to evaluate the report. All said that the NCAA should look deeper,
but they expressed some doubts whether the Association actually would.
Gerald Gurney, a professor at the University of Oklahoma
and the past president of the National Association of Academic Advisors for
Athletics, told the newspaper: “The findings show that these ‘anomalies’
existed over a long period of time, covered basketball as well as football, was
systematic and pervasive. I was also
struck by the number of grade changes.
Did the changes help to establish athletic eligibility?” Dick Baddour, the school’s former athletics
director who had resigned earlier in 2012, continued to convey some of the
school’s PR messages, though. “Given the
thoroughness of (the report), it’s time to move on,” Baddour said. “I don’t expect (the NCAA) to raise
additional issues.”
*
* *
The News and
Observer released two more articles – one feature and one editorial – the
next day, December 21, 2012. More
questions were asked, and more doubts were raised. The feature article, written by investigative
reporter J. Andrew Curless, said that Martin’s report was notable for what
wasn’t in it, as there were gaps and unanswered questions because the scope of
Martin’s work was limited. Furthermore,
Martin said that he and two consultants who had assisted him had run out of
time. This was a peculiar statement for
him to make, because there had never before been a specified time limitation on
the investigation. In fact, when data
was brought to his attention two weeks earlier by the newspaper, Martin said it
would likely be information he would pursue, “even if it takes us past December
20,”
That certainly did not sound like the type of quote that would come
from someone who had a strict time limit put upon his work.
There were numerous seemingly vital topics that were not
covered in depth in his report. He got
no information from the people he held responsible – Nyang’oro and Crowder –
simply because they refused to speak to him.
Martin said he checked some of their email messages, but that he did not
review phone logs. In terms of
investigative protocol that was an odd course of action, as those two
supposedly held the answers to years of academic fraud. Why would one not thoroughly check the
records of a man who had since 1992 been the chairman of the affected
department, or the records of a woman who had since 1979 worked at the
university and been close to athletics?
According to the News
and Observer article, Martin did not interview any current or former
basketball players or coaches – despite the fact that there were more
independent study courses taken by basketball players in the years 2001 through
2006 (39), than there were actual scholarship players on the team. And despite the fact that Roy Williams had
brought his own academic advisor from Kansas – Wayne Walden – who had
personally overseen the scheduling of courses for all the basketball
players. And despite the fact that
Walden’s replacement – Jennifer Townsend – had been appalled at the no-show
courses that the basketball team had been taking a part of, according to
insider Mary Willingham. Instead, Martin
said he didn’t think he would learn information from talking to others that
hadn’t been obtained elsewhere, or that wasn’t already known.
Martin’s
review also didn’t include inspection of individual student transcripts – even
though the effects of the fraudulent courses on an athlete’s eligibility could
have easily been determined through those reviews. He gave only brief mention to questions of
plagiarism, saying: “This review was not
intended to make academic judgments about whether plagiarism occurred.” Furthermore, Martin said he did not study the
actual work of students in the courses he identified as irregular. He noted in his report than an earlier
university review of suspect classes had not found instances of students
receiving grades without doing work, and that was “an aspect that was outside
the scope of this review.” Essentially,
while there may have been fake grades, plagiarism, and no legitimate work turned
in, the message was that those weren’t things his review team had been
interested in.
As
was pointed out in various realms of online media, the report was received
warmly by many members of the school’s Board of Trustees. The N&O
also mentioned Joy Renner, the chair of the Faculty Athletics
Committee. She said, “I’m a very
skeptical person by nature, so I kind of like to see data, and I like to know
what’s real and not real. So I think I
can feel good about moving forward, that this was more isolated.” Unfortunately,
some of the data she referred to was incomplete and/or erroneous, as would be
shown in the near future.
Mary
Willingham, the UNC academic support employee who had come forward a month
earlier with assertions of long-time cheating within athletics at the
university, told the News and Observer
that she was disappointed that Martin’s report never addressed why athletes
were in those classes. She sat in the
room as Martin spoke to the trustees, the paper wrote, but walked out when he
started talking about the broader topic of grade inflation at UNC and other
universities. “He did the who, what,
where, I guess, but he never answered the why,” Willingham said. “He had the opportunity to expose that, and I
think intentionally he chose not to do it because I don’t think he wanted to
expose the corruption of the NCAA and the athletic program.”
Raina
Rose Tagle, a partner in the firm Baker Tilly which assisted Martin, spoke to
members of the Board of Governors. She
said, “We did what we could. And now
that we’ve reached our conclusions, I think it could sound like we are
championing on behalf of the university.
But I think what we’re doing is, we’re saying ‘This is what we did, and
this is what we found. And it is what it
is.’” Just over a month later, however,
Ms. Tagle and her firm would alter their official stance.
* * *
The
editorial that was featured in the News
and Observer on December 21, 2012, was similar in theme. Written by staff columnist Luke DeCock, it
pointed out the narrow scope of Martin’s review. It stated that “Martin did not discern any
connection to athletics despite considerable anecdotal evidence, but given the
methods used (by Martin), that was unlikely anyway.” As mentioned earlier by
Thorp and other university officials, Martin supposedly had “unfettered access
to University systems, records, and personnel.”
However, Martin chose to use very few of those resources, and instead “relied
heavily and almost exclusively on statistical analysis and interviews with
cooperating parties.” Martin
inexplicably rejected the analysis of phone records, dismissed any thorough
examination of email correspondence, and declined to interview any current or
former basketball players. As stated
earlier, Martin had said, “My opinion was basketball players wouldn’t tell us
anything we didn’t know from other sources.” As the editorial pointed out, that wasn’t
exactly leaving no stone unturned.
The
editorial also pointed out another instance of the “looking forward” talking
point the university continued to employ.
It said that Martin and the members of Baker Tilly were able to give the
university a blueprint for corrective action and prevention. However, the real questions – those with
serious implications – remained: Who
orchestrated the fraud? Why did it
happen? And how did so many athletes end
up in the suspect classes? “You can have
a lot of theories and hypothesis about this,” Martin said, “but in order to
come up with some kind of condemnation you have to have some evidence.” Such
evidence, unfortunately, was not aggressively sought by Martin and his
team. Whether that was by design or due
to a lack of investigative prowess was a matter of opinion.
* * *
An
article from the News and Observer on
December 22, 2012, highlighted a “battle over two cultures” at UNC – academics
and athletics. The media had begun to
pick up on the public-relations messages coming from the school. The article observed that after the release
of Martin’s report, the mantra of everyone at UNC was “moving forward”. While seemingly every leader at UNC wanted to
avoid uncovering too much about the past, not all of the power figures within
the school agreed upon the specifics of the forward motion, however. Chancellor Thorp had said several months
earlier that the university would look to implement plans for tougher
admissions standards for athletics. A
few weeks following that proclamation, though, men’s basketball coach Roy Williams
had contradicted Thorp’s statement when he said he did not think UNC would jump
ahead of others. Apparently Williams
objected to holding a certain subset of athletes to lofty new guidelines. Following the difference of opinions, Thorp
said only, “We’re working on a plan we can all agree on.”
* * *
The
local North Carolina media wasn’t the only faction to cry foul after the
release of Martin’s limited analysis of UNC’s athletic/academic scandal. Across the nation multiple national media
entities conveyed similar feelings. One
in particular came from David Whitley of sportingnews.com. In a December 22, 2012, article, he decried
Martin’s report as being every bit as scandalous as the actual events that had
transpired at UNC for years. It
portrayed what many across the country were saying, and often did it in a
mocking fashion.
Whitley
said, “If you guys ever take another look at North Carolina’s academic scandal,
don’t ask school investigators about (Julius) Peppers or any other player. Based on the latest report, sports had
nothing to do with the scholastic shenanigans.”
The article continued with its condemnation of the Martin report,
repeating the former Governor’s proclamation that it was not an athletic
scandal, but an academic one. “UNC would
like you to believe you can have one without the other,” Whitley wrote. “It is determined not to look like some Jock
Factory that cares more about dunking than microbiology. It sure doesn’t want the NCAA back sniffing
around. Though all noses shut down
whenever they get within a mile of (the) Dean Smith Center.”
Like
the local News and Observer
newspaper, Whitley also pointed out that Martin failed to look for true
evidence, and that the report failed to address key questions that had
circulated since the scandal had expanded earlier in the year. Martin’s report said that athletics
department counselors didn’t knowingly funnel athletes into the fraudulent
courses. Whitley then chided that they
probably never noticed how players like Peppers would get F’s in other
departments, but suddenly “turned into an Academic All American” once they
enrolled in AFAM courses. Again stating
the painfully obvious, the writer said there was no telling how many other
“Peppers” there had been over the past 15 years, as Martin’s team didn’t check
athlete transcripts or interview any current or former players.
Whitley
said the results of Martin’s limited review “means UNC can now try to put a
neat bow on the scandal and tell everybody to just move along.” He closed by giving some pointed comparisons
to UNC’s situation and a previous academic scandal at Florida State University,
one which included far fewer athletes over a much shorter time frame. Whitley said, “It doesn’t take a rocket
scientist to see that’s an academic and athletic scandal (at UNC). … Peppers did not major in rocket
science. Neither, it seems, did UNC
investigators.”
* * *
On
December 29, 2012, just over a week after the review’s release, a fact-based
debunking of some of Martin’s findings would begin. An article that appeared in the News and Observer reported that minutes
from several Faculty Athletic Committee meetings failed to confirm details that
were included in Martin’s review. Martin
had said athletics officials had tried to raise red flags about questionable
AFAM courses in both 2002 and 2006. That
apparently was not the case. Dr. Stanley
Mandel, a medical school professor who was committee chairman in 2002, said: “You
won’t find any reference to it in the committee minutes because there was no
reference to it. There was no discussion. Nothing was brought up.” Furthermore, Dr. Desmond Runyan, a former
social medicine professor who was on the committee in 2006 and 2007, said he
never heard anything negative regarding athletics and academics. “It seemed like everyone around the table was
congratulating themselves about what a squeaky clean program they had,” he
said.
The
lack of confirmation from both the meeting minutes and also from actual members
of the committee had major implications.
Martin’s stance that athletic officials tried to alert the committee was
critical to the university’s efforts to convince the NCAA that there were no
violations related to an academic fraud that had spanned over 15 years, the
newspaper said. In essence, such a claim
would have protected the athletics department, as they would have (presumably)
raised concerns only to be told not to worry about them. Now, however, data had been produced to
directly counter those statements by Martin and his team.
Upon
a closer inspection of Martin’s report, it was discovered that his team had
only interviewed one person who had been on the Faculty Athletics Committee –
business professor Jack Evans, who was ironically the university’s long-time
faculty representative to the NCAA. The
newspaper said Evans took the minutes of the meetings in 2002, 2006, and early
2007. He declined to talk to the N&O about what happened on the
committee, or what he told Martin. The
former governor said in an interview with the newspaper that he had based his
findings on interviews with Evans, the former director of athletics, Dick
Baddour, and associate athletics director, John Blanchard, former academic
director, Robert Mercer, Chancellor Holden Thorp, and faculty member, Laurie
Maffly-Kipp. Five of those six people
had direct ties to UNC athletics and/or the NCAA. Maffly-Kipp, the sixth, was one of three
faculty members who authored a special report on academic fraud that had been
released earlier in 2012.
It
would eventually be revealed that Maffly-Kipp received much of the information
that had been included in that July, 2012, report not from the actual minutes
from the 2002 and 2006/07 meetings, but instead the information was “paraphrasing
what we heard from Thorp that had transpired there,” according to email
correspondence with the newspaper. So
while she was the lone interviewee by Martin who was not directly connected to
athletics, she had apparently gotten her information second-hand – directly
from the chancellor. Thorp could not be
reached for comment, but a spokeswoman said Thorp provided the meeting minutes
to Maffly-Kipp’s committee. Along with
Evans and Thorp, none of the others—Mercer, Baddour, or Blanchard could be
reached for an interview, either. The
contradictions were puzzling, to say the least.
With members of UNC’s leadership refusing to speak and clear up the
matter, it was hard to know who was being truthful.
Despite all of the contradictions to a very key component
of his report, Martin told the N&O
that he still stood by his findings. He
offered one additional vote of support: Law professor Lissa Broome, who
replaced Evans as the NCAA faculty representative in 2010, was chairman of the
Faculty Athletics Committee in 2006, and was also a member in 2002. Martin did not interview Broome for his report,
but said she came up to him after his presentation to the Board of Trustees and
told him he was “on the mark.” That
would again prove to be the beginning of a contradiction, however. Broome had told the News and Observer in early December that she did not recall any
specific warnings or concerns in the FAC meetings. Also, on the same day that Martin said she
gave him the supportive endorsement, the paper again asked about the committee
meetings. “I just don’t recall myself,”
Broome had said. “I wish I did.”
*
* *
Following the various national media articles mocking his
report, and specifically the late-December piece from the News and Observer, former Governor Jim Martin wrote a “letter to
the editor” that was published by the N&O
on January 2, 2013. He made several
claims in an effort to justify his work and counter the newspaper’s assertions,
and did so in a sometimes condescending nature.
Martin said that regarding many issues, he and his team
dug “as far as our powers allowed.” He did not, however, discuss the fact that
he virtually ignored the emails and phone records of not only former UNC
athletic coaches and support personnel (such as Wayne Walden), but also the key
figures of Julius Nyang’oro and Deborah Crowder. Regarding those latter two individuals,
Martin said he did not interview them, but “neither did (the N&O’s)
excellent reporters.” He also tried to downplay the potential
usefulness of Professor Jay Smith, who had complained of not being asked back
for a second interview with Martin. “My
judgment,” Martin said, “was that he was not a useful source”. In closing, Martin said he had found “answers
to the issues we were asked to investigate,” a statement which may have held
the key to many of the issues at hand.
What, exactly, had they been asked to investigate – and by whom? Or more importantly, were there aspects of
the scandal they had been told to avoid?
A day later aspects of the former governor’s work – in this case, his
letter to the editor – would again be debunked by the newspaper.
*
* *
The rebuttal to Martin would appear on January 3, 2013,
from the investigative reporter who had spent the most time on UNC’s past
issues: Dan Kane. Virtually all of the
major points that Martin had raised in his letter were countered with facts and
data. On the charge that the newspaper
only found three members of the committee who denied concerns were raised by
athletic officials, Kane had this to say:
“Readers should know that our stories don’t always include every
interview that we do for our reporting.
In this case, we interviewed five members of the 2002 committee who said
they either did not recollect such a warning or say it never happened.” A
sixth member briefly said he had no recollection before his wife hung up the
telephone. Regarding the 2006 and 2007
committee meetings, Kane said the newspaper interviewed three faculty members
at a November 2006 meeting, as well as the then-Chancellor, James Moeser. He said four faculty members who were present
at a January 2007 meeting were interviewed.
“None remembered being warned about suspect classes,” Kane wrote. He then clearly re-stated that Martin had
interviewed none of those people – not the six from 2002, or the seven
different individuals from 2006-07.
The issue of Laurie Maffly-Kipp getting her information
second-hand from Chancellor Holden Thorp was reiterated. Regarding John Blanchard, whom had said he
twice raised concerns to the committee in 2006 about the independent studies
courses (and presumably told Martin those same things), the newspaper asked
Blanchard if he had any records or correspondence to back up that
assertion. “He said he had none,” wrote
Kane. In closing, the newspaper posted
the minutes of the committee meetings online for its readers to judge for
themselves. That two-day exchange would
essentially mark the last major involvement Martin would have in terms of
conversing with the media.
*
* *
A brief update on UNC’s scandal was given by NCAA
President Mark Emmert in mid-January in response to questions he was asked at
the Association’s annual conference.
Based on a January 19, 2013, article in the News and Observer, Emmert said that NCAA interest would hinge on
whether the fraudulent scheme particularly benefited athletes. He did not say, however, whether the NCAA
would actually be looking to determine that information itself.
Emmert said he was troubled by many aspects of the
scandal, such as freshman athletes being enrolled in African Studies classes
that had been billed as being for experienced students and which did not
meet. “Sure it does,” Emmert said when
asked if those types of activities raised a red flag. “And we will continue to talk more with North
Carolina.” Again left unanswered,
though, was why the NCAA would not simply investigate the matter themselves and
get the answers firsthand.
As had been parroted by the university leaders for the
prior six months, their various in-house reviews had claimed the scandal was
not about athletics because non-athletes had been enrolled in the bogus AFAM
classes as well. Critics, however, said
the NCAA was being shortsighted in ruling out academic fraud investigations
based on that point. Those critics told
the N&O that it sent the message
that those who want to cheat on academics to help athletes stay eligible to
play sports merely need to enroll non-athletes as well. Gerald Gurney, an expert with various past
experiences with academic matters who has been quoted in earlier chapters,
said: “If I were to be an athletic academic counselor trying to keep an impact
player eligible I would make sure that some equipment manager or some non-athlete
were in a course. That’s a ridiculous
argument.”
The conflict in reports between athletics officials,
Martin, and the Faculty Athletics Committee had also sparked a new
controversy. According to the News and Observer, some faculty members
had become concerned that the university had made them scapegoats to prevent the
NCAA from investigating. Lloyd Kramer,
the history department chairman who attended the meetings in question, had
asked the university’s Faculty Council to take up a resolution that disputed
Martin’s finding.
*
* *
Following the tense exchanges between the News and Observer and Martin and the
various contradictions of information that were exposed, an article appeared on
January 25, 2013, that made an important announcement. Baker Tilly, the management consulting firm
that had helped Martin in his review, withdrew its assertion that athletics
officials had raised concerns about independent study courses during meetings
in 2002 and 2006. As stated before, that
earlier finding had been significant to Martin’s report because it indicated
that those athletics officials had tried to fix what later became known as a
major part of an academic scandal. Raina
Rose Tagle of Baker Tilly told a UNC Board of Governors panel that she wanted
to “clarify” that finding. She said the
athletics officials “asked a question of the Faculty Athletic Committee as a
whole but sort of offline.” As a result,
one of the most significant findings of Martin’s report was deemed incorrect,
and was officially no longer included.
*
* *
The essential (and unanswered)
questions:
-- Why hadn’t Martin’s
report shown how many of the 560 unauthorized grade changes since 1994 had
benefited athletes and their eligibility?
-- Why did Martin say
he and his team had “run out of time” for their investigation, yet only days
earlier there hadn’t been any indication of a time limit?
-- Why didn’t Martin
thoroughly check the email and phone records of the two individuals he presumed
were the cause of the academic fraud?
Was it to avoid discovering intent?
-- Was that the same
reason why he didn’t interview any current or former basketball players or
coaches?
-- Was that the same
reason why he hadn’t inspected any individual student transcripts?
-- Why had Martin
interviewed only one member of the past Faculty Athletic Committees, despite
meetings from those committees being vital to the validity of his overall
findings?
-- There were several
stark contradictions between UNC administrators and faculty members. Who was telling the truth?
-- What, exactly, had
Martin and his team been asked to investigate – and by whom? And more importantly, were there aspects of
the scandal they had been told to avoid?
-- Why had the NCAA
opted to “continue to talk more with North Carolina” as opposed to simply
reopening an investigation and getting some factual answers for itself?