Tarnished Heels -- Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Further depth of the academic scandal; Robert Mercer;

Board of Governors; SACS

            Shortly following the late-January retraction by Baker Tilly, an editorial would appear in the News and Observer written by John Drescher.  That piece would be important for a variety of reasons.  It mixed data and facts with numerous hard-hitting statements about the questionable thoroughness of the Martin investigation.  Of equal importance was the identity of the writer himself.  Not only was Drescher the executive editor of the N&O, but he was also a graduate of UNC.  As a result, he had proven himself to be one of the few individuals with any sort of past association with the school who was not afraid to decry the athletic/academic scandals as a series of deplorable acts which had resulted in little to no consequences.

            Drescher’s editorial recounted the events that led Baker Tilly to drop one of its key findings: that athletics officials and academic support officials had raised questions and concerns with the Faculty Committee on Athletics about certain courses.  That had been one of the main presumed “facts” within the Martin report that had tried to free athletics from taking primary blame in the scandal.  However, it was later shown to have never been the case. 

            Prior to the retraction, former Governor Martin had written: “I believe that findings and conclusions should be based on evidence, not hearsay and imagination.”  Drescher’s editorial responded with, “If only that were what Martin’s report did.”  Drescher talked about his past experience as a reporter on the Capitol beat, which coincided with the time when Martin was governor from 1985 to 1993.  Drescher had interviewed Martin several times, and indicated that Martin was smart and capable.  “But he’s an inexperienced investigator,” Drescher wrote, “and it showed in his report.  After athletic department officials told him they had raised red flags with the faculty committee, neither Martin nor Baker Tilly interviewed any of the faculty committee members, except for the NCAA representative.  That’s right: Gov. Martin never talked to the people he blamed for dropping the ball.”

            Drescher’s editorial went on to state that Martin and Baker Tilly were obligated to interview several members of the faculty committee for two primary reasons.  One was to make every effort to get to the truth.  The second was to give members of the committee a chance to respond to charges that they had heard concerns about possible academic abuse.  “There’s no acceptable explanation for why Martin and Baker Tilly didn’t interview these faculty members,” Drescher continued.  “Martin and Baker Tilly seemed more determined to absolve the athletic department of blame than to get to the bottom of what went wrong.”

            Despite members of the UNC System’s Board of Governors not thinking that the retraction damaged the rest of Martin’s findings, UNC Professor Jay Smith felt otherwise.  “The importance of this event cannot be overstated,” Smith wrote in The Herald-Sun of Durham.  “The validity of Martin’s interpretation of UNC’s troubles as ‘not an athletics scandal’ hinged on the anecdote about the FAC; the discrediting of that anecdote undermines the interpretive thrust of the entire report.”

            With Baker Tilley’s retraction, Drescher wrote, Martin had painted himself into a corner.  As noted in the previous chapter (and reiterated in the editorial), the only officials Baker Tilly had found who knew about the fraudulent classes, other than the department head and his assistant, were from the athletics department and the faculty representative to the NCAA.  “In trying to get to the bottom of the scandal,” Drescher said, “it’s helpful to ask the basic questions… What did he know?  When did he know it?  I’d pose a third question: When he knew, what did he do about it?  Martin and Baker Tilly tried to show that the UNC athletic department was pure.  Instead, cornered by the facts, they’ve unintentionally shown that athletic department officials suspected academic fraud years ago and did little or nothing about it.”

* * *

            Months later the true cost of the Martin investigation would be revealed.  According to a copy of UNC’s agreement with Baker Tilly, the firm was to provide five employees at a combined cost of $1,520 per hour for the work.  Martin himself had reportedly volunteered his services to the university, only being reimbursed for approximately $5,000 in expenses.  Baker Tilly, however, had charged UNC a total of $941,000.  Karen Moon, a university spokeswoman, would later tell the News and Observer that all of the money paid to the firm had come from a university foundation that took in private donations, so no taxpayer dollars had been spent.  And despite the fact that Baker Tilly had been forced to retract one of the most vital claims in the entire report that had aimed to absolve athletics of any wrongdoing, Moon said: “Their analysis was independent, objective and thorough.”

* * *

            Just as Baker Tilly was retracting its earlier backing of that key component of the Martin report, updated data on the scandal was released regarding the information that was uncovered.  In a January 25, 2013, article in the News and Observer, it was revealed that athletes who took a subset of 172 fraudulent classes within the AFAM department had an average grade of 3.56, which was between a B-plus and A-minus.  Those classes had also accounted for 512 total grade changes during the time period that had been examined.  The period covered in the new data did not extend prior to the fall of 2001, because the report indicated that information did not exist in electronic format beforehand.  In all, 216 suspect courses were identified back to 1997, with 560 grade changes that lacked proper authorization. 

            The extremely high average grade for athletes in the fraudulent courses should have raised a major red flag.  The transcript of Julius Peppers showed that his grades in AFAM courses were considerably higher than in his other subject areas, and essentially had kept him eligible to participate in sports.  An average grade of 3.56 amongst athletes for over a decade likely had similar effects for some – if not all – other cases involving football and basketball players.  Yet once again, that line of investigation was inexplicably not pursued by Martin or Baker Tilly.

* * *

            On February 7, 2013, the UNC System Board of Governors’ special panel released its own report.  It largely accepted the findings of Martin and Baker Tilly, even after the vital retraction and the updated data that had been released.  The report was met with criticism by some BOG members, and other details emerged from the findings that added more questions to an already ambiguous scandal.

            Articles were released from various local sources on February 7, including wral.com, wncn.com, and several by the News and Observer.  Multiples quotes and valuable pieces of information came forward as a result.  The special panel had been selected by the Board of Governors itself, which as previously noted had a heavy percentage of UNC graduates as members.  In fact, one portion of the report seemed to echo the sentiment that many of UNC’s leaders had been loudly stating over the previous six-plus months: that they would try and make sure nothing of the sort ever happened in the future.  “This panel acknowledges the open question about what might have occurred years ago,” the report said, “but believes that it is immaterial to its focus on current practices in both Academic Affairs and the (academic support program) that reduce the risk for any such anomalies occurring in the future.”  Essentially, they conceded that they didn’t know why the past indiscretions happened, and they weren’t overly concerned with those reasons, either.

            Some of the same types of contradictory remarks that had dotted the Martin report also showed up in the BOG panel’s report.  In the wral.com article, it stated that the panel told the rest of the board that it may never know if athletes were steered to bogus classes, but added that there was no evidence to support a conspiracy between the athletics department and the AFAM department.  Louis Bissette, the board member who led the panel, said: “We are not an investigative body.  We are a review panel.”  That would lead to the same unanswered questions that plagued the Martin report.  Why not look at past email and phone records to determine if there had been collusion between athletics and academics?  And if the BOG (and apparently Martin and his team) were not investigative bodies, then why not hire a real investigative team with experience in that realm? 

            There were other factual and data-driven inconsistencies.  Bissette was told that there were no records that could show how many freshman non-athletes were able to enroll in and complete African Studies courses designed for upper-level students.  As detailed in earlier chapters, past transcripts of UNC students would have clearly shown that distinction.  So in that regard there definitely were records that could have provided that data – though it would have been a time-consuming process to accumulate the information.  Apparently that was not the meticulous type of approach the panel wished to take, even though it would have provided accurate results.

            Board of Governors member Jim Deal called the scandal embarrassing and inexcusable.  “The chairman had a fiefdom and he was the king and nobody ever looked at what the king was doing,” said Deal.  However, he stopped short of questioning the findings of the panel’s review.  Other board members were not as forgiving, though.  Member Fred Eshelman of Wilmington expressed his incredulous doubts by saying: “This stuff was propagated for 14 years basically by two people without additional collusion?”

Burley Mitchell, a former State Supreme Court Chief Justice, was even more outspoken.  According to the wncn.com article, he blasted the consultants who provided much of the legwork for Martin’s report, saying they relied on incomplete statistical evidence and failed to interview key people involved in the scandal.  “It was inconceivable that it was two people who did this.  You have 172 fake classes.  Forty-five percent of the students in there are athletes.  That is way disproportionate for their number on campus, which was less than five percent who are athletes.  Somehow they are being directed to those courses,” Mitchell said.  “There is, to my mind, a good deal of evidence throughout this campus there were a large number of people, particularly in athletics, who knew that these courses did not amount to anything.”

            Mitchell continued by alluding to the allegations that academic counselors had steered athletes to certain courses.  “It was clearly also an athletic problem to an extreme,” he said.  In support of Mitchell’s point, an article appeared in the New York Times during the same timeframe.  In it, former UNC player Michael McAdoo alleged that he and other athletes got special treatment while at UNC.  According to the article (and a recap later published by wralsportsfan.com), McAdoo claimed that despite wanting a different major, counselors at UNC selected AFAM for him because it worked around the Tar Heels’ practice schedule.  He said that he was “assigned” a Swahili course, never attended it, and never met the professor.  That was also the class where (with the help of tutor Jennifer Wiley) he plagiarized a paper and lost his NCAA eligibility.

            A spokesperson at UNC said in reply to McAdoo’s claims, “Number one, I cannot comment on any student’s academic record.  Number two, I cannot comment on Michael’s situation because of ongoing litigation.  As far as the counselors, I would refer you to the Martin report for what counselors did or didn’t do.”  McAdoo’s disdain for the university and how they treated him was clear, though.  He was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “I would still like to get a college degree someday.  But not at the University of North Carolina.  They just wasted my time.”

            McAdoo’s assertions were yet another piece of anecdotal evidence of counselors steering athletes to fraudulent courses, and they supported the stance of Burley Mitchell and others that the reviews by Martin and the BOG special panel had not delved deep enough into the issues in question.  When asked whether the NCAA should be investigating above and beyond what the Martin report and the BOG panel had reported, Mitchell said, “Hell, yes.”  Steve Kirschner, a UNC spokesman, said after the panel’s report: “We do not comment on the specific details of our daily operations.”

* * *

            More damaging information was revealed on February 7, 2013, which dealt with what at first appeared to be a side note of the Board of Governors’ report, but eventually raised more serious questions.  The limelight was once again directed back towards some of the fraudulent courses, and the past lack of action that leaders within the school had taken in terms of identifying and potentially stopping the offering of those courses.  The News and Observer reported that according to university documents, the former director for Academic Support for Athletics had been instructed in previous years to track independent study courses to make sure there were no improprieties.  But Robert Mercer, that former director, had apparently not followed through with that task.

            The initial request of Mercer had been made by the faculty committee following an independent study scandal at Auburn University in 2006-07.  The committee had wanted to be sure that something similar was not happening at UNC.  However, officials from both the school and the overall UNC System said that they could find no evidence that Mercer had followed up.  “He was asked to provide reports, but he did not provide written reports, is all I can tell you,” said BOG member Louis Bissette.  “It’s another failure.”

            As thoroughly discussed in the previous chapter, Mercer was one of four officials with athletics ties who claimed that he raised concerns to the Faculty Athletics Committee in 2002 and 2006 about independent studies classes.  That claim was at the center of the Martin report’s findings and overall validity.  The News and Observer’s Dan Kane pointedly asked in a February 7, 2012, article:  If Mercer was concerned about those classes, why hadn’t he been tracking them as he had been asked?  Chancellor Holden Thorp said, “That should have been followed up on.  I wish it had been, because we would have caught all of this stuff.”  As was often the case with UNC employees during the ongoing scandal, Mercer could not be reached for comment.

            Thorp said he didn’t know whether Mercer’s apparent lack of action on the issue of the  independent studies casted doubt on Mercer’s assertion that he raised concerns about them, the N&O article stated.  Burley Mitchell, the Board of Governors’ member who had been so outspoken about the lack of a true investigation into the university’s issues, said the revelation made Mercer’s assertion look like a “smokescreen.”

* * *

            The university attracted negative attention from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) several days later.  According to a February 12, 2013, article in the News and Observer, SACS was an agency that monitored the academic quality of schools and colleges across the South.  Its board could issue colleges a warning, or worse, probation.  If a school on probation did not clearly address problems, it could lose accreditation.

            In a notice from the accrediting agency, UNC had been told that it must ensure the legitimacy of degrees awarded to an unknown number of graduates who took bogus classes going back to the 1990’s.  One possible solution proposed by SACS president Belle Wheelan would have been for the school to offer those graduates with free courses to take the place of the fraudulent ones.  When asked why any former student would return for an extra course, Wheelan said: “Integrity.  Honesty.  Fairness.  You know, all those things we like to think they learned as part of that academic program in the first place.”  A team assembled by the accrediting agency was scheduled to visit UNC in April.

            As an embarrassing byproduct of the warning from SACS, approximately two weeks later UNC officials confirmed that administrators were performing visual inspections of classes across campus to make sure they were taking place.  The spot checks were part of the university’s efforts to assure SACS that there would be no need for a sanction against the school in the wake of its various academic fraud scandals.

* * *

            As March got underway, there were finally some minor rumblings from UNC’s faculty with regards to the stigma the academic scandals had placed on the university.  According to a March 8, 2013, article in the News and Observer, Professor Jay Smith was again at the vocal forefront.  As a leader of a professors’ coalition known as the Athletics Reform Group, Smith had spoken at a Faculty Council meeting and called for a multi-year, wide-ranging series of town hall meetings to “debate openly and honestly” the university’s commitment to NCAA Division I athletics.  In calling for a faculty-led debate, the news article reported, Smith read an email from an unnamed colleague that ran down a series of events that began as a scandal in the football program and led to the discovery of major academic fraud. 

            At the same meeting, Chancellor Thorp had announced that an outside panel led by Association of American Universities President Hunter Rawlings would hold its first meeting on April 19.  Thorp had asked Rawlings to lead an effort to examine the balance of athletics and academics at the school.  That led to tense moments during the meeting, however, as the article stated that Thorp bristled when Jay Smith suggested the Rawlings panel was “not going to serve the function that most of us hoped.”

            Some professors at the meeting took issue with Smith’s overall proposal, suggesting that faculty had been concerned all along and the administration had launched reforms to deal with the problems uncovered.  However, the past record of printed comments seemed to speak for itself: other than Smith and Mary Willingham, virtually no other UNC faculty members had been willing to publicly decry the prominent role the school’s athletics programs had played in the ongoing scandals.  Greg Copenhaver, a biology professor, argued that Smith cast athletes in a bad light, even though the vast majority of which were “good actors.”  Almost as if scripted, Copenhaver then suggested that the faculty focus on moving forward, rather than looking back – one of the oft-repeated PR sentiments from those at UNC who seemed to want to avoid uncovering any dark athletic secrets of the past.

* * *

The essential (and unanswered) questions:

-- Through the use of nearly one million dollars from private donations, had UNC essentially paid Baker Tilly to try and absolve athletics from primary responsibility in its academic scandal?

-- Considering that athletes received an average grade of nearly an A-minus in 172 fraudulent courses, why hadn’t further research been conducted to determine the effects of those fictitious grades on those athletes’ eligibility?

-- Like Martin and his team, why had the Board of Governors also neglected to closely scrutinize the email and phone records of Julius Nyang’oro and Deborah Crowder?

-- Once the BOG conceded that they were not an “investigative body” and were unable to uncover the answers to key questions (just as Martin and his team had been unable to do), why wouldn’t they insist on the hiring of a true, skilled investigator to look into those matters?

-- What possible motive would Robert Mercer, at the time the director for Academic Support for Athletics, have for failing to track independent study courses as he had been asked to do?

            

Tarnished Heels -- Chapter Fifteen

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?

UNC "investigations": will Wainstein ask the obvious?

     Over the past several years there have been numerous so-called "investigations" into the athletic/academic scandals at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  As more and more information has been revealed through sources outside of the university, however, it has become apparent that each and every one of those reviews somehow missed key (and obvious) data.  Sometimes errors of the multi-month inquiries were revealed within just days of a report's release, such as the case with former Governor Jim Martin's look into the issue.

     Kenneth Wainstein, a partner with the firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, is the University's latest attempt to "get to the bottom of things" -- and they are paying Mr. Wainstein a reported $900 an hour to do his job.  

     Given the gross oversights of every other investigation or review that has come before, it will be extremely interesting to see if Mr. Wainstein asks some very obvious questions, looks at some very obvious documents, and has a simple calculator to deduce some very easy (and obvious) educational equations.  At $900 an hour one would think he has been given very specific directions with regards to his task.  But are they the obvious ones?

     In the past it didn't take long to chronicle the amateur shortcomings of the other investigations/reviews.  They are well represented in the forthcoming book Tarnished Heels: How Unethical Actions and Deliberate Deceit at the University of North Carolina ended “The Carolina Way", as noted below.  

     With regards to Mr. Wainstein, hopefully (for the sake of education and integrity) a higher salary will mean higher accuracy, as opposed to simple loyalty to those who sign the checks.

Inside the book:

Baker Tilly, 168, 171, 244, 252, 268, 273, 274, 282, 283, 285-289, 296, 300, 302, 306, 308, 318, 323, 369

Faculty Athletic Committee (FAC), 119, 258-261, 265, 272, 277-280, 282-284, 286, 287, 293

Martin, Jim (Martin Investigation; Martin Report), 168-171, 179, 185, 189, 196, 207, 227, 232, 237, 239-241, 243-246, 252, 253, 264, 267-293, 296, 300, 302, 306, 313, 318, 323, 345, 359, 368, 369

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), 294, 295, 324, 352

Tarnished Heels has an official release date of June 15, 2014.  The book is available now for pre-order online through Amazon.com: 

Tarnished Heels

UNC Academic Scandal: new investigation, but same old facts

     UNC has announced that they will be starting a new investigation into the school's long-standing academic scandal.  Led by Kenneth Wainstein, a partner with the firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, this new endeavor will try and avoid the mistakes made by numerous investigations and reviews that came before.

     The information and facts needed to solve this athletic/academic puzzle, however, have been held within the university's records all along.  If the prior reviews (which were also sanctioned and appointed by the school) conveniently avoided getting to the root of the problem, then it remains questionable whether Wainstain will be any more successful in uncovering (and reporting) the truth.

     Bits of information on those prior reviews (and their ineffectiveness) have been presented to the public in small doses over the past few years.  In the coming months they will be summarized in a concise and clear manner, yet also with great detail and analysis of their shortcomings.