Chapter
Nine
The
Julius Peppers transcript
The previous chapter in part covered the limited scope of
the university’s look into the AFAM infractions of the past, as it chose to
only go back as far as the year 2007.
The school’s poor reasoning was that past records might be
unreliable. It was clearly detailed, though,
how information could be accumulated from former players’ transcripts in order
to piece together evidence of earlier potential fraudulent classes – if the
school had so chosen. Ironically, the
topic of transcripts would be at the center of the next major turning point of
the school’s worsening academic scandal.
On August 10, 2012, the Raleigh News and Observer printed an article titled “UNC reluctant to dig
deeper on scandal.” It laid out in clear
words the stalling and lack of cooperation UNC had shown ever since data had
surfaced suggesting its storied men’s basketball program might have been
complicit in the academic fraud. Writer
Dan Kane noted that in the previous month Chancellor Holden Thorp had promised
full cooperation with a special UNC Board of Governors’ panel that would be
reviewing the academic fraud, as well as cooperation with others who were
trying to learn what went wrong at the university. “We welcome the involvement of the Board of
Governors’ panel, our trustees, our faculty, and others who care about the
university,” Thorp said. However, the
reporter noted that Thorp and the school had shown little interest in digging
into two separate and very specific matters that had been brought to their
attention by the News and Observer. Those details, Kane said, could have
potentially proven that the scandal involving no-show classes went back several
years beyond what the university had confirmed.
In late July of 2012, approximately two weeks before
Kane’s August 12 article, the newspaper had given the university the name of a
former UNC student who had been in a fall 2005 AFAM class taught by Julius
Nyang’oro. According to the student, the
class had never met – and the newspaper offered emails from that person backing
up his claim. Nancy Davis, the
university spokeswoman who had handled much of the media-relations dialogue
during the summer of 2012, repeatedly said that officials would not investigate
unless the former student came to them directly. Just prior to the newspaper’s article being
published, however, she slightly revised the university’s position in an email
that said: “The former student’s experience was consistent with the patterns we
identified in our review.” She declined,
however, to provide further explanation.
And the school’s review, of course, had only gone back as far as the
summer sessions of 2007; the course the student spoke of had occurred a full
two years earlier.
A second matter the newspaper shared with the university
was also met with indifference, and that dealt with a “test transcript” that an
N&O reporter found on UNC’s
website. In June of 2012 the reporter
showed the university officials the “test transcript,” as it was characterized
on the school’s website, which was purportedly developed to help students and
advisers use a computer program that told them what courses a student still
needed to graduate. The test transcript,
which dated back to 2001, had several distinguishing characteristics that were
consistent with the issues raised in the recent AFAM academic scandal. UNC officials said it was a fictitious
transcript, but they declined to look at records to verify and be certain that
it was not lifted from a real student’s records, either in whole or in part.
As had already been suspected by many in the social media
realm, the News and Observer’s
article verbalized an observation that was becoming clearer by the day: “The
lack of investigation into these and other matters raises questions about
whether the university is seeking information beyond what it has already
reported.” Jay Smith, a history professor at the
school, agreed that the university should have been digging into both of the
new matters because they could have shed light on how long the academic fraud
took place, as well as who was intended to benefit from it. “My sense of it, and it’s only a sense,”
Smith said, “is that they really want to keep this episode to the Butch Davis
era, and conveniently also confined to the football team.” As documented earlier, head football coach
Butch Davis was fired after a prolonged NCAA investigation largely revealed
impermissible agent benefits, but also minimal instances of academic
improprieties. That particular NCAA
investigation did not, however, uncover the mass academic fraud within the AFAM
department.
*
* *
One vital distinction about the fall 2005 class was that
it showed that questionable courses were being offered well over a year before
Butch Davis would ever arrive on UNC’s campus.
The student (who wished for his name to be withheld) provided emails to
the News and Observer that showed he
enrolled in the class primarily because it was originally listed in the
registration records with a Friday afternoon time, which fit his schedule. The student later discovered, however, that
no class time or classroom was given. He
emailed the teacher of record, Julius Nyang’oro, who replied via email, “You
need to come see me.” The former student said that when he met
with Nyang’oro he was told there would be no class, and Nyang’oro instead
assigned him a research paper. The
student said he worked hard on a 20-page paper and received an A-minus. The News
and Observer noted that as of the article’s press time, UNC officials had
still not contacted the student regarding the class.
As briefly covered earlier, the second item the newspaper
brought to light dealt with the “test transcript,” and especially the various
peculiar traits it displayed. The 2001
transcript was for a fictitious student, according to the university, and
listed grades and a Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) score. The SAT score was 870, well below the 1230
average SAT score for UNC students during the late-1990s/early-2000’s
timeframe. The student was also entering
his/her senior year of college with a grade point average just over 2.0. Seemingly even more coincidental was the fact
that the student was listed as an African and Afro-American Studies major, the
department which was currently at the center of the school’s academic
scandal. The student had completed 12
classes in that department, according to the transcript, with a 2.6 GPA for
those courses. The document also showed
that the student was exempt from taking a physical fitness class, a practice
that was typically granted to scholarship athletes.
There were a number of courses on the 2001 test
transcript that matched up with those shown to be “no-show” classes in the
university’s recent 2012 review of AFAM.
The student received grades of B or better in all of them. For example, the transcript showed an A for a
course known as AFAM seminar, and according to the News and Observer that class had turned up four times as a no-show
class in UNC’s review. The fictional
student also took three independent study courses, receiving B’s or better in
all of them, and notations indicated he/she was registered for a fourth. One of the school’s internal reviews in 2012
had cast doubt on the department’s handling of its independent studies, and
since the emergence of the scandal a stricter limit had been placed on who
could take them. One final
distinguishing factor of the test transcript
was that the student only took a full “five course” load in one fall
semester. The remaining spring and fall
semesters only had four classes each, with classes being taken in summer in
order for him or her to stay on track.
That is also a scheduling pattern often employed by athletes
participating in major collegiate sports.
*
* *
UNC Professor Jay Smith told the News and Observer that even if the transcript was proven to be a
mock-up, it was surprising that someone would draw up one that casted the
African Studies department in such a poor light. He also mentioned the uncanny resemblance to
the current academic scandal. “It’s
either a real transcript, or it is a startling Freudian slip that reveals the
reality of the system,” Smith said. The
most recent university data had shown that athletes made up nearly two-thirds
of the enrollments in the 54 no-show classes identified by the school. In two of those classes, the sole enrollee
was a men’s basketball player.
Despite all of the forewarning given to UNC, and despite
Chancellor Holden Thorp’s quote about welcoming the involvement of others, the
newspaper’s tips on those two matters (the fall 2005 class and the test
transcript) went largely ignored by the university. Neither the current 2012 UNC registrar Chris
Derickson nor the registrar at the time of the transcript’s making, David
Lanier, thought it reflected the transcript of an actual student. Lanier even questioned why a transcript
representing an athlete would be drawn up, since they had special academic
counselors assigned to them. Derickson,
who became registrar in 2010, said there were many test transcripts pulled
together over the years as the university developed the computer program that
tracked progress toward a college degree.
At least one official appeared to show interest in the
newly-discovered fraudulent class and the test transcript. Peter Hans had recently been elected chairman
of the UNC Board of Governors. “I would
like to share this with the members of the review panel and ask them to look at
it,” he said. “Maybe there’s a good
explanation, but we need to ask those questions.” As it turned out, the answers would be
revealed in the very near future, but not from any proactive fact-seeking steps
taken by UNC.
*
* *
The News and
Observer article that introduced the test transcript topic to the public
was published on Friday, August 10, 2012.
It would only take approximately 48 hours for many of the unanswered
pieces to begin falling into place. In
the late afternoon hours of Sunday, August 12, a noted messageboard user on the
PackPride.com site indicated that he
believed he had connected the “test transcript” on UNC’s website to a real,
former student, and that he would be posting definitive news on the site as
soon as a final few details could be verified.
From looking at various archived discussion-board threads from that
evening of August 12th, the PackPride
site began to immediately buzz with anticipation. Often internet messageboards and chat rooms
are filled with wild and inaccurate claims, and much of it can be easily
dismissed. This particular poster,
however, was well known by the users of the site. According to older threads, he had been
largely responsible for the meticulous dissection of John Blake’s phone records
that had resulted in the uncovering of several questionable trends and
connections, and had also posted data and information regarding the AFAM
department and its independent study courses, which lead to further questions
about the longevity of the academic scandal.
In short, he appeared to be a trusted source, and thus the fans on the
site reacted with great anticipation to the upcoming news.
Within an hour of that initial premonition, a new thread
was started on the PackPride.com site
with the title stating the owner of the “test transcript” had indeed been
identified. The narrative of the post
gave elaborate pieces of data and information, citing years, test scores,
dates, and also a bevy of quotes from past news articles – some of which were
almost a decade old. The data all
culminated in the announcement of the test transcript being the actual, real
transcript of Julius Peppers, a former star athlete for UNC who had played for
both the football team and the men’s basketball team.
The depth of the researched connections in that
messageboard post was extremely convincing.
The final blow of confirmation would seemingly come approximately an
hour later on that Sunday evening.
According to the archived thread, users on the site began to revisit the
UNC webpage where the transcript was housed.
One noticed that the root directory for the transcript could be accessed
by simply removing some of the extensions from his internet browser’s address
bar. Once that was done one was taken to
the root directory where a number of files were listed. After clicking on several of those files a
discovery was made: the authentic transcript of Peppers, with his full name
printed at the top, was there for anyone to see. The school had apparently housed his transcript
in one of the server’s public directories, made a copy of it on another page,
and replaced his name with “test transcript.”
They had not, however, taken the time to remove his real transcript from
the server. As a result, it had
essentially been accessible to the public for over 10 years. News about the PackPride.com connections and discovery began to spread throughout
the social media world, and by the next morning it was one of the top sports
topics being covered on a multitude of reputable media sites.
*
* *
Reporter
Dan Kane of the News and Observer
submitted a blog post to the newspaper’s website in the early morning hours of
Monday, August 13, 2012, with a full article to later follow. He restated many of the findings from the
previous evening’s PackPride.com
thread, along with reiterating important information from some of his earlier
articles. The reporter began by saying a
2001 academic transcript published by the newspaper on Friday that UNC
officials had insisted was fake could actually be the real thing, and it could
also belong to one of the most popular athletes in the university’s history –
Julius Peppers. Specific dates were
given with regards to Peppers’ collegiate career, in that he was a star
football player from 1999 to 2001, and was a member of the basketball team for
two seasons – including one that included an appearance in a Final Four.
If
proven authentic, Kane said, the university could be in far deeper trouble with
regard to an ongoing academic scandal that was still coming into view. At issue, he reminded his readers, was whether
individuals in the university set up a series of bogus, no-show classes that
were predominantly taken by athletes with the possible intent of helping them
maintain their eligibility to play sports.
The Peppers’ revelation would also suggest that fraudulent classes for
athletes may have been going on much longer than university officials had been
willing to look into and confirm.
According
to Kane, a review of the website-linked transcript featuring Peppers’ name at
the top alongside the “test transcript” on the site showed a perfect match for
34 of 36 listed classes. The two that
were not exact showed the same class and semester, but differed on the
grade. The Peppers transcript showed an
incomplete for one of the classes, “Black Nationalism,” while the test
transcript showed the student received a B-plus. For the second and final anomaly, the Peppers
transcript showed he was registered to take an “African American Seminar”
class, while the test transcript showed an A grade. As a reminder of the school’s earlier
investigation into the AFAM department, a number of unauthorized grade changes
had been made to students’ marks from the year 2007 to 2011. This could have easily been the case with the
two minor grade anomalies on Peppers’ transcript, as well.
Kane
would continue to seemingly point out the obvious, but his persistence in
explanation was certainly understandable given the obtuse lack of cooperation
and concern that his newspaper and other media outlets had recently received
from UNC officials. If the information
about the transcript proved true, he wrote, the discovery could cause huge
problems for the school. For one, the
newspaper had reported the test transcript because it shared several
characteristics with the ongoing major academic fraud scandal at the school – a
scandal that UNC officials had been reluctant to determine just how far back it
went.
As
a first specific example that the scandal may have had much earlier roots, Kane
showed that the “African-American Seminar” class that was shown on the website
transcript was known as AFAM 070 in 2001, but as AFAM 396 during the present
day. It had appeared four times as a
no-show class in the internal review that had found 54 such classes from 2007
to 2011, leading to serious questions as to whether it was a no-show class in
2001 as well. As further evidence, the
transcript showed grades of B or better on two other classes that had surfaced
as suspect classes, and three independent studies in which grades of B or
better were given. The independent
studies were also suspect because university officials could not verify that
anyone taught or supervised the students who took them. The upshot of the multitude of questionable
classes and the high grades those classes provided Peppers was that without
them he likely would not have been eligible to play – either football or
basketball.
The
Sunday night messageboard post on PackPride.com
had also highlighted another confirming detail which Kane made reference to in
his later blog entry: a 2003 ESPN feature story on Peppers in which his agent,
Carl Carey, was described as having saved Peppers from receiving a failing
grade during Peppers’ first semester.
According to the article, Carey convinced a professor to give Peppers a
re-test on the final exam in an “Elements of Drama” class in order to receive
an overall passing grade. The
transcripts (both “test” and real) showed a D for that class. The very first lines from that 2003 ESPN
article by Tom Friend, in fact, were: “Behind every great college athlete is… a
tutor. And behind every great two-sport college athlete is… a miracle
worker.” It discussed various aspects of
Peppers’ time while a student athlete at UNC, including him being thrown out of
UNC’s summer orientation program for repeatedly missing curfew and for ordering
a pair of Air Jordan shoes with his university stipend money, which was
impermissible. It also mentioned the fact
that in the same summer Carl Carey had accepted a job as a UNC academic
advisor, he had essentially been assigned to Peppers in order to “straighten
him out.” Next was the episode of the
discussion with the drama teacher. Then
an anecdote of how Peppers didn’t want to do his school work, and would
sometimes be 12 hours late for study sessions with Carey. Yet, as the article pointed out, “he’d always
stay eligible.”
If
the tutor’s name (Carl Carey) sounds familiar, that is because not only was he
currently (in 2012) Peppers’ agent, but he was also previously mentioned in
Chapter Five of this book. He was the
sports agent who was hired by AFAM Chairman Julius Nyang’oro to teach a 2011
summer class on UNC’s campus – during the ongoing NCAA investigation – and who
also had taught in the AFAM department a decade earlier. Following his initial stint serving as an
academic advisor with UNC and also teaching in the AFAM department, he would
then leave to become a sports agent. He
would sign Julius Peppers – the athlete whom he helped to get through college –
as his premier client in 2002.
On
the Monday morning following the Sunday-night PackPride.com messageboard post, university officials could not be
reached by the News and Observer for
comment. Kane reminded readers once
again that over the previous several weeks UNC officials had repeatedly said
that the test transcript was just that, a mock-up put together to test a
university computer program that helped students learn what other courses were
needed to obtain a degree. However,
those officials refused to check academic records to back up their claims, and
as a result were left to deal with the embarrassing – and potentially damning –
fallout.
* * *
On
August 13, 2012, the USA Today
website posted an article consisting of multiple pieces of information gathered
from wire reports. According to the
article, UNC had released a statement late on Monday saying it had removed the
transcript link and that it couldn’t discuss confidential student information
covered by federal privacy laws. The
school did not confirm the authenticity of the partial grade summary, despite
having the full name “Julius Frazier Peppers” at the top. A released quote said, “Student academic
records should never be accessible to the public, and the university is
investigating reports of what appears to be a former student transcript on the
university’s website.”
Other
information from the USA Today
article recounted some of the previous details from both PackPride.com and the News
and Observer’s Dan Kane, while adding other bits of data, as well. It was pointed out that nine of the ten
classes in which Peppers earned a B-plus, B, or B-minus – grades that helped to
ensure his eligibility – came in the AFAM department where he was majoring. Once again it was made clear that Peppers had
also played for UNC’s basketball team, under former coaches Bill Guthridge – a
long-time assistant to Hall of Fame coach Dean Smith, and then Matt Doherty – a
former player of Smith’s. In June, over
a month prior to the discovery of the Peppers transcript, NCAA spokeswoman
Stacey Osburn had referred questions to the school when asked whether
investigators would return to Chapel Hill in the aftermath of the initial AFAM
university review. Osburn did not immediately
return an email for comment following the newest developments that spanned much
further into the past, the article said.
* * *
In
the days following the discovery of the apparent Peppers transcript, some
interesting side stories would emerge.
One dealt with News and Observer
reporter Dan Kane, and the matter was discussed in a blog article posted on
August 14, 2012, by one of the newspaper’s editors, Steve Riley. In it he mentioned that Kane had attracted a
lot of attention due to his numerous investigative articles on UNC’s academic
fraud scandal, with one resulting effect being a website that had shown up
earlier in the year called dirtydankane.com. A sports site called The Big Lead had recently raised the question of whether Julius
Peppers’ agent had set up the site in order to vent his anger about Kane. “In a word, yes,” N&O editor Steve Riley wrote. “But the site set up by Carl
Carey Jr. goes back a few months, and it isn’t related to Dan’s work Monday and
Tuesday about the UNC transcript bearing Peppers’ name.” As it would turn out, Carey
was apparently upset when Kane had reported in August of 2011 that Carey had
been hired by UNC to teach a summer course while the school was under
investigation for, among other things, athletes receiving improper benefits
from agents. “Sure, I picked a horrible
time to go back and teach at UNC,” Carey had written the News and Observer in an earlier email. “I was totally unaware of the depth of the
issues going on there.” After the August
2011 article, Carey felt that he had been somehow linked to the agent issues at
UNC and resented it, at one point threatening to sue the News and Observer. That
August 2011 article showed up when a person Googled him, Carey said, and he
wanted something negative to show up when someone Googled Kane. Riley closed his article by saying, “I’m
Dan’s editor, and I can tell you that I’ve never seen a more dogged and
determined reporter. But I’ve also not
seen one any more dedicated to being fair and placing things in their proper
context. He will keep reporting this
story, regardless of the web site assembled in his honor.”
The
website sportsagentblog.com gave some
further details on the matter in an article it posted on August 16, 2012. It stated that Jason McIntyre of “The Big Lead” surmised that Carey was
the owner of the dirtydankane website
based on a whois.com search which
reveals who registered virtually any particular website. It is possible to make a website’s
registration anonymous, but that precaution was not taken, however. The whois.com
search revealed that a Cary Carey of Houston, Texas, registered the dirtydankane website in question. This was information that the News and Observer’s Steve Riley had
alluded to in his article. However, when
sources from sportsagentblog.com
reached out to Carey, he gave the response that “I am not the owner of a
website designed to smear anyone.” Apparently
he was unaware of public internet documentation of website registrations, such
as the whois.com site.
* * *
The
Raleigh News and Observer entered the
fray once again on August 17, 2012, exactly one week after its article about
the “test transcript” that UNC officials had claimed was fictional, and which
the school had refused to look into further.
More research had been conducted by the newspaper, and as the article’s
title referenced, “Transcript shows low hurdles for UNC athletes to stay
eligible.” Details included the
breakdowns of Peppers’ grade point average for each semester, and possible
scenarios for how he had managed to continue playing sports.
The
article began by noting how numerous media members (and also people in the
social media realm) had wondered how an athlete with such poor grades as shown
on the transcript could have remained eligible to play both football and
basketball at a presumably premier academic institution as UNC. The transcript showed that Peppers received
D’s or F’s in eleven classes. He ended
his first full semester at the school with a 1.08 GPA, it never went above a
1.95 during his entire collegiate-playing career, and yet he was never
academically ineligible. The article’s
author, Andrew Carter, pointed out that Peppers often came close to
ineligibility, though. Peppers ended his
spring 2001 semester with a 1.82 GPA.
According to the school’s minimum standards for athletes at the time, he
would have needed a GPA of at least a 1.9 to play football in the fall of 2001. His named transcript did not list any grades
after the 2001 spring semester, but the one identified as a “test transcript”
offered clues about how he kept his eligibility. The N&O
would also remind its readers that the test transcript was an almost exact
match for the one with Peppers’ name.
According
to the transcript, when he was in the most jeopardy to lose his eligibility
Peppers received two very specific and notable grades. The first was a B-plus
in the spring of 2001 in a course entitled “Black Nationalism.” The second was in the summer of 2001 in an African
and Afro-American Studies seminar, in which he received an A. Those two grades – both in the AFAM
department that was embroiled in an academic scandal centered around fraudulent
no-show classes and forged grade changes – were ultimately enough to improve
his GPA as to be eligible to play sports in the fall of 2001, his final season
before entering the NFL.
The
News and Observer article interviewed
one of the very few faculty members willing to speak out against the academic
embarrassment, UNC history professor Jay Smith.
He had studied Peppers’ transcript with interest, and said, “Assuming
it’s a legitimate transcript – and I guess everything suggests that it is – I
was struck by the very poor showing in the student’s very first semester. And (by) the pattern that quickly developed
of the student doing a kind of high-wire act – barely staying eligible, or even
falling under the eligibility bar in the course of the academic year and then
getting back over the bar with courses over the summer.” And the courses that always allowed Peppers
to retain his eligibility? They were
classes in the fraudulent AFAM department.
Indeed,
the data mined by the N&O showed
that Peppers carried a 2.16 GPA in AFAM courses. Not a stellar academic performance by any
means, but suitable enough to balance out his non-AFAM courses – in which he
received a cumulative 1.41 GPA. Other
stark contrasts were shown between his work in the more standard fall and
spring semesters when compared to his work in summer classes. He produced a 1.65 GPA in his first six fall
and spring semesters, but a 2.93 GPA in the four summer classes for which
letter grades were listed on the transcript.
At the time of the article, UNC officials were still not confirming that
the transcript was Peppers’. They had
said, however, that Peppers was academically eligible to compete during his
career at the school.
The
article reported that to ultimately remain eligible during Peppers’ years at
UNC the university required athletes to have at least a 1.5 GPA entering their
third semester, a 1.75 entering their fifth semester, and a 1.9 entering their
seventh semester. It wasn’t until
athletes entered their ninth semester – their fifth year of eligibility – that
they would have needed a 2.0 GPA to be academically eligible. “In retrospect,” Professor Jay Smith said,
“it’s kind of amazing that the floor was ever that low.” Coincidentally or not,
Peppers managed to stay just above the eligibility threshold entering each of
those semester benchmarks, and it was always thanks to high grades received in
AFAM courses. He left for the NFL prior
to his ninth semester.
In
the fall of 2006 UNC adopted stricter academic eligibility requirements. Jay Smith praised the school’s improved
standards but questioned what it really meant.
“I guess that’s one thing that has changed for the positive in the last
few years,” he said. “Although, I doubt
that the stricter GPA guidelines have done much to change the nature of the
overall game that is played. The game is
still, it seems to me at most big-time sports universities, to find course
schedules that will keep players eligible.”
* * *
There
was also a legal angle to consider regarding the possible inadvertent
publishing of Peppers’ transcript by the school. According to an article on wral.com, the simple fact that the
document appeared online could have been a violation of a federal law. At the time of the article UNC had still not
confirmed or denied that it was in fact authentic, but were reportedly looking
into the validity of it and were seeking answers to how it may have ended up on
the university’s website. According to a
U.S. Department of Education official, the Federal Educational Rights and
Privacy Act “protects the education record of the student who is or has been in
attendance at the school.” The official
told wral.com that it made no
difference whether the student was current or former. “Under FERPA, a consent for disclosure of
education records must be signed and dated and must specify the records that
may be disclosed; state the purpose of the disclosure; and identify the party
or class of parties to whom the disclosure may be made,” the official said in a
statement. “If a student contacts this
office alleging that his or her rights under FERPA had been violated, we may
open an investigation.” In extreme
cases, an institution that violated FERPA could even lose federal funding.
Professor
Jay Smith spoke on a morning radio show two days after the transcript’s
discovery. “I have come to the conclusion
the problem is a systemic one,” he told hosts on 99.9 The Fan ESPN Radio. “It is a systemic problem across the (UNC)
campus.” Board of Trustees Chairman Wade
Hargrove also spoke up on the matter, though he was noncommittal. “The university is continuing this
investigation. (It) is not over, and
when there is factual information to disclose it will be discussed.” UNC
did not answer any additional questions for wral.com,
and multiple calls to Peppers and his agent had gone unanswered. A U.S. Department of Education official said
that a student would have to complain about a potential FERPA violation before
any potential action could be taken against an institution. Once Peppers finally spoke up, however, it
quickly became apparent that restitution from the university would not be
sought by its former star athlete.
* * *
On Saturday, August 18, 2012, numerous
articles began to be published indicating that Julius Peppers had released a
statement to the Chicago Tribune, the
hometown paper of the NFL’s Chicago Bears, for whom Peppers played at the
time. He confirmed the transcript was
his, and displayed disappointment that it had been inadvertently
published. He did not, however, indicate
that he would be taking any sort of legal action against UNC. Instead, the statement was largely void of
negativity towards the university; he even thanked the school’s academic and
athletic staff for their help and guidance during his time at UNC. He said he was currently “thinking of ways
that I can use my experiences and resources”
to help support students early in their college career. The meaning behind that quote would become
apparent two days later.
According
to an August 20, 2012, article on ESPN.com,
the school announced that Peppers had earlier that day donated $250,000 to
UNC’s “Light on the Hill Society” scholarship fund, which supported
African-American students. Peppers had
previously donated $100,000 to the scholarship fund in 2009. “This gift is indicative of the kind of man
Julius Peppers has become,” Richard Williams, chair of the Light on the Hill
Society board, said in a prepared statement.
“I am very proud that he credits his experiences at Chapel Hill for
helping to shape him.”
* * *
Once
again questions would arise from the media regarding just how long the academic
improprieties had been occurring at UNC.
Chancellor Holden Thorp had repeatedly defended the school’s decision to
only look as far back as 2007 in its search for fraudulent classes. His reasoning had already been proven to be
tenuous due to the abundance of available student data at the university’s
disposal. With the virtual assurance of
past indiscretions dating back at least to 1999 (by way of the information held
within Peppers’ transcript), the poor choice of the school’s limited 2007
timeframe was further exposed. Based on
an article published by The Daily Tar
Heel on August 21, 2012, Thorp also appeared to be showing some signs of
agitation on the matter. When questioned
about how long the academic deceit had been occurring at the university, Thorp
replied, “We never said it just started in 2007,” offering yet another deflection away from the inadequate in-house
investigation the school had sanctioned earlier in 2012.
In late August UNC would finally reveal how Peppers’
academic transcript ended up on the university website. Based on an article by triangle.news14.com, Thorp told a five-member UNC Board of
Governors panel that two staffers had made a mistake more than a decade earlier
that resulted in the transcript’s display.
“Neither staff member protected student confidential information to the
degree that they should have,” Thorp said.
“The first staff member has been disciplined; the second no longer works
at the university. These incidents
happened a long time ago and the university has long since changed the protocol
for how test student records are set up and maintained.” Thorp indicated that the staff members had
been updating the university’s old student information system at the time.
In that same article it was revealed that beginning with
the 2013 school year, the Department of African and Afro-American Studies would
have a new name. It would be called the
African, African American and Diaspora (AAAD).
The change had been approved by the administrative board, and the
department reportedly felt the new name better reflected what they taught. Chancellor Thorp said he felt that new
safeguards could turn the university into a model for other schools struggling
with similar issues. He also took the
opportunity to repeat one of the school’s key PR themes of “looking forward”
when he said, “We will fix this and it will never happen again.” The
damage of the release of Peppers’ transcript – and all its deep insinuations –
had begun to spread, however. Multiple
factions within the media were finally coming to the full realization that
numerous basketball players of UNC’s various national title teams had almost
certainly profited from the dishonest academic system that was being exposed.
*
* *
The essential (and unanswered)
questions:
-- Why did the
university refuse to look into a student’s claim that he took a no-show course
in AFAM in 2005, which was two years prior to the earliest search parameter of
the school’s internal review?
-- Why would the
university not take the time to verify if the “test transcript” that had been
brought to its attention actually belonged to a real student?
-- Why was a
messageboard user able to research and connect the test transcript to Julius
Peppers in a matter of hours, yet the school had been unable – or unwilling –
to previously come to the same conclusion?
-- How many of the
nearly twenty AFAM courses that Peppers took during his college career –
courses that were responsible for allowing him to remain eligible to
participate in athletics – were fraudulent?
-- Why was the NCAA
remaining silent regarding obvious and blatant instances of academic fraud
involving athletes?
-- Why was Professor
Jay Smith the only UNC faculty member willing to speak out regarding the
embarrassment that athletics continued to cause the university?
