Tarnished Heels -- Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Public documents; Sunshine Day

            The Raleigh News and Observer had never come right out and blatantly said it, but there were certain suspicions that had long been asked via several social media sites: Had UNC intentionally delayed and/or stonewalled the release of certain public documents that could have provided insight into the various scandals, and which also could have caused further damage to the school’s reputation?  Based on the university’s extremely negligent response to numerous document requests that seemed to clearly fall under the Freedom of Information Act, the idea of an orchestrated delay certainly appeared to have merit.  That topic of freedom-of-information laws would arise in early March of 2013 due to the long delays some in the media had been subjected to by UNC.

            A “Sunshine Day” event was scheduled for Monday, March 11 in Raleigh.  A panel of individuals would be there to discuss public records.  An article ran in the News and Observer two days prior to the event, highlighting the frustrations that some in the media had felt over the previous year.  Written by reporter Dan Kane, the article stated that in the 18 months since UNC had first acknowledged academic fraud had permeated its campus, there had been several public reports and open meetings about the issues.  However, Kane noted that much remained unknown, in large part because the university had either not responded to numerous requests for information, or had outright rejected them.

            Kane pointed out that the work of Baker Tilly and Jim Martin did not closely examine paper records of enrollment in more than 40 fraudulent classes identified before the fall of 2011, nor did they identify how many of the 560 overall suspected grade changes involved players on the school’s football and men’s basketball teams – data that could have retroactively affected the eligibility of some athletes.  The newspaper filed a records request with UNC to obtain that information, and got a less than cooperative response: If Baker Tilly and Martin didn’t do the analysis, then it wasn’t going to be made available.  The News and Observer stayed above the belt and didn’t ask an obvious question, but many in social media did: UNC paid Baker Tilly nearly one million dollars, yet the firm couldn’t find the time to sit down and closely examine some paper records?  According to State Senator Thom Goolsby, the lack of information about the scandal was one reason that the university’s academic reputation continued to suffer.  “If the answers had been forthcoming in this, the story would have been over,” he stated.

            In all, university officials said they had received over 900 information requests in the three years since the first stages of the scandal become public, with roughly half coming from media entities.  Chancellor Holden Thorp attempted to address some of the “delay” concerns in a written statement.  “On the whole, we have made what I consider to be extraordinary efforts to provide the public with information about these issues,” Thorp said.  “We continually strive to improve our internal processes and the University’s capacity to respond to and communicate with those who are requesting public records, including members of the news media.  The principle of openness is important, and one about which we can all agree.”

            That “principle of openness” would seem to be a grey area, however, as evidenced by the amount of time it had taken to fill certain requests.  For example, the News and Observer had submitted information requests on various topics pertaining to the school’s scandal on the following dates: June 11, 2012; October 22, 2012; October 25, 2012; and February 14, 2013.  All of those had remained unfilled until just days prior to the March 9, 2013, article – and it was likely not a coincidence that they were filled just days prior to the Sunshine event where the importance of public records would be discussed.  Another request that was noted in Kane’s article – one asking for correspondence, supporting documentation and drafts related to an internal probe of academic fraud, which was submitted on June 20, 2012, remained unfilled.   Almost nine months had passed since its initial request.

* * *

            The March 9, 2013, article said that the newspaper had filed dozens of public records requests related to the scandal.  In some cases, the university had responded by providing revealing information.  For example, certain documents had shown the number of enrollments of football and men’s basketball players in certain no-show courses spanning as far back as 10 years.  Specific information was also revealed about the AFAM independent studies program.  However, despite the media having requested, received, and reported that information prior to the release of the Martin report, the Baker Tilly consultants and Martin excluded virtually all of it from their submitted report – for reasons unknown.  Or, at least, for reasons that could only be murmured by the media, but not proclaimed as outright accusations.

            In the many instances where the university had not filled the requests, however, often the school had not responded at all.  Some of those requested documents included records turned over to the State Bureau of Investigation, as well as documents that may have been generated when former AFAM chairman Julius Nyang’oro first spoke with university officials before he resigned from his position.  The article said that the lack of response on some requests troubled Wade Hargrove, chairman of UNC’s Board of Trustees.  A lawyer who specialized in the media business and public records, Hargrove said he had told university officials to be forthcoming and timely in responding to public records requests.  “On its face, it’s hard to understand why it takes this long to respond to some requests,” he said.  Yet the trend continued.  And if the chairman of a university’s Board of Trustees had no real influence to put an end to potential stonewalling, then that was very telling with regards to the pecking order of leadership at the school.

            Many critics continued to indicate that the lack of information from UNC suggested that the university was trying to keep the scandal from prompting a second NCAA investigation.  A follow-up visit by the NCAA, Kane wrote, would likely focus on men’s basketball – the school’s holy grail and the commodity it was most closely associated with in the public eye.  Gerald Gurney, a professor and former head of Academic Services for Athletes at the University of Oklahoma, said as much: “It is clear to me that the university does not wish to seek the truth because they are afraid of what the answer might be, and how it might affect their premier athletic program, which is men’s basketball.”

            The News and Observer reported that it had requested all correspondence between the NCAA and the university as it related to the academic fraud scandal.  As of the article’s press time, that request had only been partially fulfilled.  Senator Thom Goolsby said the UNC scandal was a big reason he was pushing legislation that would have created a misdemeanor crime for public officials who refused to provide public records.  Goolsby said he hoped the SBI investigation would answer how the scandal happened, who knew about it and why it took so long to become public.  He conceded, however, that it may not happen, since the SBI investigation pertained to criminal matters and not the extent (and initial intent) of the academic fraud.  “I know that there’s a lot of people in the legislature who are looking out for this, listening for this,” he said.  “We want answers, and I hope we’re going to get them.”  But like UNC’s Board of Trustees chairman Wade Hargrove, apparently state senators didn’t have much influence over the university’s actions, either.

* * *

            Two days later the “Sunshine Day” event panel discussion was held, and the News and Observer provided a recap article of several of the key points.  The March 11, 2013, article’s lead-in tied the topic to the piece that had been released two days earlier, which had detailed how UNC had long delayed the release of certain public documents.  Part of the Sunshine event dealt with discussing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, which the university had long tried to use as an all-inclusive shield to keep from having to release information.  Many of those documents eventually became public anyway based on a judge’s ruling, saying that FERPA had its limits.  “A lot of times, FERPA is used as an excuse not to release anything,” said Lucy A. Dalglish, the journalism dean at the University of Maryland.  “But there is a lot of information that is release-able.  It can get tricky, but I don’t think FERPA protection extends as broadly as a lot of schools interpret it.” 

            Dalglish was among several speakers at the N.C. Sunshine Day event.  Others included Amanda Martin, general counsel for the N.C. Press Association; Dick Baddour, the former UNC athletics director; Kevin Schwartz, the general manager for the Daily Tar Heel newspaper; and Jon Sasser, attorney for former UNC football coach Butch Davis.  News and Observer reporter Dan Kane also had the opportunity to touch on several topics during the event.

            During a panel discussion on the UNC case, Schwartz said he believed the school had used the Federal Education Privacy Act as a tactic to stall media interest in the story, a sentiment long shared by most everyone not associated with the school.  Dick Baddour objected, however: “I don’t think there’s any evidence that the university was hiding behind FERPA.”  Baddour pointed out, though, that he was not speaking for the school; a representative for UNC was invited to join the panel but had declined.

            Despite having possibly been forced into an early retirement from the school, Baddour was still doggedly supportive of his former employer.  He criticized the News and Observer for publishing the transcript of UNC football player Julius Peppers.  Following a moment of stunned, flabbergasted silence by nearly all in attendance, reporter Dan Kane stated the obvious: the transcript had essentially already been “published” by the school itself, as UNC had allowed it to be publicly housed and viewed on its website for years.  Kane also reiterated that he had asked the university several times about a “test transcript,” giving officials a chance to remove it from public view before it was identified and eventually connected to Peppers by fans of N.C. State University.

            The Sunshine Day event brought more attention to the UNC scandal, and also the institution’s practices of withholding information that would likely further damage the school’s athletics programs.  It showed that Baddour stood by the school’s past actions, but also that Kane and others in the media would continue to pursue the truth.  Despite being a graduate from UNC’s School of Law, Amanda Martin, the lawyer representing the N.C. Press Association, said in reference to the past (and continued) legal pursuit of those public records: "I didn’t relish suing my Alma Mater, but sometimes people just need suing.”  Since a formal representation from UNC had declined the invite, an official response from the university on the event’s various topics was left to guesswork.

* * *

            More than a month later two articles came out on April 18, 2013.  The first appeared in the News and Observer and focused on Chancellor Holden Thorp, who would soon be stepping down at UNC and taking a job at Washington University in St. Louis.  The article in part talked about the overwhelmingly negative effect dealing with athletics could have on a university leader.  Thorp went as far as to suggest that dealing with intercollegiate athletics was the most important part of the chancellor’s job.  “That’s not right that it’s that way,” Thorp said.  “We should try to figure out a way to change that.  But for the time being, if you’re running a school that has big-time sports, if there’s a problem, it can overwhelm you.”

            Thorp said he had been so distracted by athletics that it was difficult to accomplish other priorities.  The article said that when he became chancellor five years earlier, he never would have dreamed of the problems he would face in athletics.  One of the biggest ongoing issues was the massive academic fraud scandal that was heavily centered around athletics.  Thorp acknowledged that he was caught up in the egotistical thought that an athletic scandal could never happen in Chapel Hill.  “In order to be vigilant you can’t be telling yourself, ‘Oh we’re one of the places that never gets in trouble,’” he said.  “That’s part of what hurt us.”

* * *

            The second News and Observer article released on April 18, 2013, focused on university employee Mary Willingham.  She had come forward the previous November to reveal a pattern of athletic/academic cheating that she had observed over multiple years.  Despite the fact that much of her information had been inexplicably ignored by former Governor Jim Martin and the Baker Tilly review team, Willingham still won the Robert Maynard Hutchins Award from The Drake Group – validating her as a reputable source.  It was given annually to a university faculty or staff member who defended the institution’s academic integrity in the face of college athletics.

            In her comments after receiving the award, Willingham spoke more about how athletes stayed eligible at UNC, and how many of them were ill-prepared for college level work.  “Many athletes told me what they would like to study,” she said.  “And listen to what we did.  Instead, we directed them to an array of mismatched classes that have a very, very long history of probable (athletic) eligibility.  And sadly, it’s still happening.”

            Willingham went on to talk about her struggle to combat the system at UNC.  She said that NCAA paperwork would arrive annually that required a signature and promise that she hadn’t seen cheating, or been a part of it.  “I’ve got to tell you that most of the time, I scribbled my initials on it,” she said.  “So yeah, I lied.  I saw it – I saw cheating.  I saw it, I knew about it, I was an accomplice to it, I witnessed it.  And I was afraid, and silent, for so long.”

            Perhaps it was that fear and silence that had long kept almost every other member of UNC’s faculty from speaking up about the academic scandal, and the role that athletics had played in it.  Allen Sack, a member of the faculty at the University of New Haven and the president of The Drake Group, said that faculty members should stand up and say, “No, we’re not going to tolerate this anymore.”  That had clearly not happened at UNC, though.

            The article stated that during her 20-minute speech, Willingham strongly criticized the NCAA – calling the organization a “cartel.”  At the time of the article it had been nearly a year since reports of widespread athletic/academic fraud within the school’s AFAM department had arisen, yet the NCAA still hadn’t returned to reopen a formal investigation.  Willingham also expressed frustration at the amount of money the school had paid on consultants and reports related to the various scandals; consultants and reports that had also largely tried to turn the focus away from athletics.

* * *

            On April 19, 2013, the Raleigh News and Observer’s investigative reporting was honored with recognition in two national journalism contests.  In a staff report posted by the newspaper, it stated that the N&O’s reporting on academic and athletic scandals at UNC had won first place in the education writing category of the National Headliner Awards, which had been announced by the Press Club of Atlantic City.  The award honored three staffers – Dan Kane, J. Andrew Curliss, and Andrew Carter.  The UNC reporting also finished third in the investigative reporting category in the annual Associated Press Sports Editors contest.

* * *

The essential (and unanswered) questions:

-- Had UNC intentionally delayed and/or stonewalled the release of documents in an attempt to limit the damages caused by the ongoing scandals?

-- Despite charging UNC nearly one million dollars for its services, why had Baker Tilly not been able to find the time to closely examine paper records that existed prior to 2001?

-- Why had UNC continued to delay and withhold public documents, even after the chairman of its own Board of Trustees told university officials to be forthcoming and timely in responding to records requests?

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?

Tarnished Heels - Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Mary Willingham; AFAM independent studies;

The Faculty Committee on Athletics

            The previous chapter ended with UNC history professor Jay Smith once again speaking out against some of the reported actions of the university, and the apparent lack of concern school officials displayed towards the indiscretions that continued to damage its reputation.  As had been the case for almost the entire multi-year scandal, Smith was virtually the only UNC staff member who had been vocal about his displeasure regarding the events that had transpired.  Considering the university had an academic staff numbering well over 3,000, and that a large part of the school’s mantra was that it did things “the Carolina way,” the fact that he stood alone was rather astounding.  Why had so many others remained quiet?  Was it because they possibly feared for their jobs should they speak out against the university and its athletics program?  Did they perhaps not care about the school’s (and their own) academic reputation?  Or did some of them actually value the national title banners that hung from the rafters of the Dean Smith Center as much as the casual, everyday fans of the school did?  As 2012 drew near an end, though, a separate voice of displeasure finally stepped forward to join Smith and admonish the past academic indiscretions.

* * *

            Mary Willingham was a reading specialist at UNC.  She graduated from Loyola University in 1994 with a BS in Psychology, and then completed the LD Certification Program at UNC in 2003.  She began working at the school in October of that same year as a tutor in the Academic Center for Student Athletes.  In January of 2010 she transferred to the school’s College of Arts & Sciences and became an Assistant Director for the Center for Student Success and Academic Counseling.  According to the university’s website, the Center was “dedicated to promoting academic excellence to assist students in achieving their academic goals while enrolled at Carolina.”

            Willingham came forward with an exclusive media interview by way of a November 17, 2012, article in the Raleigh News and Observer.  Being the first person from inside the academic support program to go public with details about its operation, Willingham told the newspaper that many past UNC athletes had stayed eligible to play sports because the academic support system had provided improper help and tolerated plagiarism.  Even worse, when she raised questions or made objections to the cheating she saw, she said that no one at the university took her concerns seriously – much like teacher J. Nikol Beckham and the Erik Highsmith case from the previous chapter.

            In the article that was a front-page feature, Willingham said she lodged complaints at least two years before UNC’s academic problems erupted into a full blown scandal.  She would eventually focus some of her thoughts on the matter into a thesis for her master’s degree, which was based on the corrupting influence of big-money sports on university academics.  Willingham kept her complaints in-house for a while, but a recent event had been the last straw for her.  After attending the funeral of former UNC System President Bill Friday, a huge supporter of Carolina yet also a prominent critic of revenue-driven college sports, Willingham saw that no one within the university was willing to admit that they had been aware of an athletic/academic problem.  It was then that she decided to go public via a series of interviews with the News and Observer.

            Willingham clearly stated that there were numerous people in the academic support program who knew that what was going on was wrong, but they looked the other way, helping to protect one of the nation’s most successful (and previously respected) athletic programs.            She said that no-show classes had been offered by the chairman of the AFAM department at least as far back as 2003, when she had begun working for the support program.  Despite being billed as lecture classes, they were commonly known within the program as “paper classes.”  However, those classes never met.  Willingham learned of the irregular courses when she had been asked to work with an athlete on a paper.  She said it was a “cut-and-paste” job, but when she raised questions about it, staff members told her not to worry.  The student later received a grade of B or better.  Ever since the uncovering of Julius Peppers’ transcript there had been strong suspicions that the problems within the AFAM department had spanned further back than 2007.  Through Willingham, confirmation of that hypothesis from someone with direct university knowledge was finally provided.

            Willingham also stated that members of the men’s basketball team took no-show classes until the fall semester of 2009, at which time the team had been assigned a new academic counselor.  It was discussed in a previous chapter that Wayne Walden, the long-time academic advisor for basketball coach Roy Williams at both Kansas and UNC, had left the program in mid-2009.  Willingham said the new counselor was “appalled” to learn of the fraudulent classes, and wanted no part of them.  Willingham declined to name the new counselor, but university records showed that Jennifer Townsend was hired as an associate director in August 2009 and took over the role that Walden had vacated for the men’s basketball program.  According to the newspaper article, the new counselor (Townsend) told Willingham that she would not enroll the players in the no-show classes, stating, “I didn’t come here… to do this.  Everything has to be on the up and up.”

            Townsend’s past work history had indirect connections with prior NCAA violations, so it was likely that she knew fraudulent classes and actions when she saw them.  Her profile on UNC’s website showed she was formerly the academic counselor for men’s and women’s basketball at the University of Minnesota.  She worked there after the school went through one of the most notable scandals in college basketball history, the N&O said.  In 1999, the St. Paul Pioneer Press uncovered a cheating scandal involving a former university office manager who had written papers, filled out take-home exams and done other course work for 20 basketball players over a five-year period.  The NCAA responded with numerous sanctions for the school, and perhaps more importantly erased a 1997 Final Four appearance from the record books.  In comparison, the events at Minnesota at the very least appeared to be on par with some of what had happened at UNC.  At the worst, the events at Minnesota paled in scope with UNC’s infractions, as the events at Minnesota covered a shorter stretch of time and dealt with far less affected athletes.  However, the NCAA had still not revisited UNC to reopen an investigation – one which could potentially cause the erasure of not only Final Four appearances from the record books, but also multiple National Championships won by the school’s basketball team.  Jennifer Townsend, the former Minnesota employee and then-current academic advisor for Roy Williams’ program, did not return messages left by the newspaper.

* * *

            Willingham made other assertions in her interviews with the News and Observer.  She stated that some of the athletes she had worked with told her they had never read a book or written a paragraph, but were placed in no-show classes where the only required assignment was a 20-page paper – and yet they came away with grades of B or better.  Willingham did say that most of the athletes in the nonrevenue sports were capable of doing college-level work.  However, the lowered academic standards for football players and men’s basketball players – known as “special admits” – brought in athletes who lacked the academic ability, while still being expected to devote multiple hours a week to their sports.  She said that was a dynamic destined to produce cheating.  The special admissions for football and basketball players went back at least as far as the early 1990’s, according to the article.  An earlier chapter noted that UNC had refused to release data on the number of special admits its basketball program had allowed.  “There are serious literacy deficits and they cannot do the course work here,” Willingham said.  “And if you cannot do the course work here, how do you stay eligible?  You stay eligible by some department, some professor, somebody who gives you a break.  Here it happened with paper classes.  There’s no question.”

            Other information she told the N&O was that roughly five years ago, Bobbi Owen, the senior associate dean who had oversight of the Academic Support Program, tried to get control over the number of independent study classes offered by the AFAM department.  At the time they had averaged nearly 200 such classes a year.  Independent studies required no class time and often not much more than a term paper.  Past data showed that they were immensely popular with basketball and football players.  The transcript of Julius Peppers, for example, showed that he had taken four such courses, and former star basketball player Sean May had also mentioned taking courses where he didn’t actually have to be in attendance.

* * *

            According to the November News and Observer article, in October of 2012 Mary Willingham had started a blog called “Athletics vs. Academics, a Clash of Cultures.”  Former Governor Jim Martin and a representative of the accounting firm Baker Tilley interviewed her a few days later.  Martin declined to talk about what she said, but he was no longer standing by what he had stated prior to her interview: that no one in the program had seen a problem with the no-show classes.  Instead, his new stance was that he couldn’t comment.

            When questioned about Willingham’s assertions, Chancellor Holden Thorp declined to discuss them.  He said, “I’m not going to talk to you about this stuff because we’ve got this thing going on with Governor Martin, and that’s where our focus is right now, and these are the kinds of matters we’re working on.  That’s all I’ve got to say about it right now.”  Calls and emails from the newspaper to other university officials, former and current Academic Support Program staff and others to address Willingham’s claims were either not returned, drew no comment, or no response.

            As pointed out earlier, Steve Kirschner, an athletics department spokesman, had said in prior email messages that the last basketball player to major in African and Afro-American Studies graduated in 2009.  He said interest had declined in the department’s majors after 2005, and chalked it up to “different players have different interests.”  However, what he failed to mention was that 2009 was also the year that men’s basketball academic advisor Wayne Walden also left the program.  And as Willingham asserted, that was the year that the new counselor (Jennifer Townsend) refused to take part in the AFAM no-show classes that had long littered the schedules of UNC’s basketball players.  UNC officials continued to claim that coincidence was the root of many of their athletic/academic problems, but the data and details continued to strongly suggest otherwise.

* * *

            After her early negative experience with an athlete’s paper, Willingham told the News and Observer that she avoided papers from the African Studies department by spending most of her time working with athletes in the nonrevenue sports.  The issue of plagiarism arose again, however, when she was asked to look at a history paper for a football player.  She said it, too, did not look like the student had written it.  Willingham believed the athlete’s tutor had done the work, and she told the program director about the issue.  The program director was Robert Mercer, and the tutor was Jennifer Wiley.  Mercer would eventually refer Willingham to another academic counselor, who denied a problem and took no action, Willingham said.

            After that frustrating episode of non-action, Willingham told the newspaper that she began seeking jobs outside of the academic support program.  It was in early 2010 that she began working for another learning center at UNC that served non-athletes.  Two years later, the NCAA would find that Wiley had written parts of papers for three football players.  One of those athletes, Willingham said, was the same player she had previously reported.  Jennifer Wiley had long refused to comment on any news articles, and Robert Mercer – who had been moved out of the academic support program earlier in the year – could not be reached for comment, either.

            Willingham said she met with UNC attorneys at their request in mid-2010.  That was during the NCAA investigation, and the meeting was to discuss what had happened in 2008.  Afterwards she said they thanked her for coming, but never talked to her again.  Furthermore, Willingham said she never heard from the NCAA at all during the entire time the Association was on campus looking into the athletic/academic scandal.  It was unknown whether the NCAA had even been made aware of Willingham and her claims.  Since that knowledge would likely have been relayed to the NCAA via university officials, there was significant doubt of it conveyance.

            The bombshell November 17, 2012, N&O article closed by saying that for the most part Willingham did not blame the athletes.  She conceded that some were uncooperative and troublesome, but many wanted to succeed on the field and in the classroom.  “It’s not right,” she said.  “It’s the adults who are not doing what they are supposed to do.”

* * *

            An article appeared in USA Today a few days later on November 20, 2012.  It covered some of the fallout from Willingham’s claims about the depth of UNC’s past knowledge regarding its own athletic/academic indiscretions.  The article noted that all of the recent revelations had yet to spark a new probe from the NCAA, but that one state senator would like to see an actual criminal investigation, as well.  Republican State Senator Thom Goolsby had recently written on his blog, Carolina Columns, that UNC’s continued academic integrity issues merited a tougher approach than had been taken up to that point.  “The reputation of the state’s flagship university is at stake and someone must take this matter seriously,” Goolsby wrote.  “Any prosecutor worth his salt would turn detectives loose on staff and administrators involved in the fraud and subsequent cover-up.  If necessary, the General Assembly could consider legislation to make prosecuting this type of academic fraud easier.”

            Goolsby, who had received his law degree from the very school he was admonishing, continued with his blunt comments.  “The UNC academic fraud scandal is like a pesky staph infection that just won’t go away for university officials – nor should it.  As reporters at the Raleigh News and Observer continue to dig, they uncover more and more dirty little secrets.  The latest problems swirl around a pus pocket called the Academic Support Program.”

            He would end his diatribe by stating what many in the public had long wondered: why had several of the applicable governing bodies not stepped forward and demanded the truth?  “The UNC Board of Governors should seriously consider asking for the resignations of current UNC Trustees who failed to safeguard academic integrity,” wrote Goolsby.  “They have shown little willingness to get to the truth of this scandal and cure the infection.  When UNC comes to the General Assembly for more funding, university officials should expect that legislators charged with representing the taxpayers will demand answers.”

* * *

            What initially seemed to be a minor article appeared in the News and Observer on December 1, 2012, regarding the resignation of UNC’s Associate Athletics Director for Compliance, Amy Herman.  According to school officials, her move was not related to the ongoing problems within the athletics department.  Instead, Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham and athletics department spokesman Steve Kirschner both said Herman was resigning for personal reasons.  Despite those claims, there were past connections between Herman and the ongoing issues plaguing the athletics department.

            The N&O article said that Cunningham had reorganized the compliance department in August of 2012.  It was then that he had hired Vince Ille to lead it.  Ille was covered in an earlier chapter, and his connections with current NCAA officials were detailed at that time.  Since that August reorganization Herman had reported to Ille. 

            Herman’s tenure coincided with the initial NCAA investigation that had found impermissible benefits involving agents and academic fraud within the UNC football program.  In a September 2011 deposition, Herman said that she had been inexplicably advised by school officials to avoid creating documents that would have been subject to North Carolina’s open records law, meaning that they could later be legally requested by the media. 

* * *

            Following Mary Willingham’s mid-November assertions that academic staffers at the school had known all along about the fraudulent courses, more information would eventually surface to back up those claims.  A December 8, 2012, article in the News and Observer reported that various documents and interviews suggested some faculty and athletic officials were aware of higher-than-expected Independent Study enrollments by athletes in the African Studies department.  The dates of the knowledge were as early as mid-2006, but the voiced concerns apparently never reached top academic officials at the school.

            The article stated that from 2001 through 2006, independent study courses offered by the Department of African and Afro-American Studies showed up with regularity on the schedules of men’s basketball players.  In one year alone, in fact, basketball players accounted for 15 enrollments.  That particular year was when the team won the 2005 NCAA Championship.  Two years later, athletes from the basketball program all but disappeared from those independent study classes – classes which did not meet and typically only required a paper for credit.

            A university athletics department spokesman attributed the decline in enrollments to a waning interest in African Studies among basketball players, wrote the N&O.  Evidence had recently emerged that suggested there may have been other reasons, however.  Those documents of evidence showed that officials within the department and within the Academic Support Program for athletes started having concerns about independent studies in 2006, which coincided with a lengthy story in the New York Times about an independent study scandal involving athletes at Auburn University.

            The News and Observer article indicated that Robert Mercer, the former director of the Academic Support Program, and John Blanchard, a senior associate athletics director who oversaw academics, said they saw higher-than-expected independent study enrollments from athletes in the African Studies department.  UNC records showed more than 1,400 enrollments of athletes and regular students in that department from fall 2001 to summer 2006, with some professors listed as teaching dozens of students at a time.  Blanchard and Mercer reported the enrollments to Dick Baddour, the athletics director at the time.  They said they and Baddour then took the information to the Faculty Committee on Athletics, but the committee told them there was nothing to be concerned about.  That appeared to be where the momentum stopped for a deeper look into the enrollments and the African Studies department, the article said.  It is important to note that there would later be significant concerns raised regarding the accuracy of those recollections.  Namely whether those athletic officials truly raised “red flags” to the Faculty Committee on Athletics.

            Members of that Faculty Committee on Athletics, which had oversight of athletic matters on campus, told reporter Dan Kane that they did not recall such a warning.  Committee minutes from 2006 reflected some discussion about independent studies and included a reference to the New York Times report, which was published on July 14, 2006.  In that Auburn University case, many athletes had used the independent studies courses to boost their grade point average. 

Regarding that 2006 meeting of UNC’s Faculty Committee on Athletics from November, “The committee has conducted a review of student athletes’ registrations in independent study courses and has an interest in receiving current information in this regard,” the minutes said.  Two months later, the committee inexplicably reported:  “No sense exists of a current problem.”  Robert Mercer was then tasked with tracking independent studies, the discussion apparently never went beyond the faculty athletics committee, and the African Studies department was not looked at any further.

            The Faculty Committee on Athletics appeared to be comprised of eleven members in 2006, and several athletics department personnel also attended many of its meetings.  There were several interesting ties between some of the committee members and UNC’s basketball program.  Barbara Wildemuth was a professor and associate dean for academic affairs at the School of Information and Library Science.  She was also the academic advisor and a former teacher of Byron Sanders.  Sanders was a member of the 2005 National Championship team.  Committee member Rachel Willis was an American Studies professor, and on a university webpage she was pictured posing with star basketball player Shammond Williams in 2003.  English professor George Lensing was featured in an article from the university’s General Alumni Association website.  It said, “Former UNC men’s basketball coach Dean Smith asked Lensing to talk with his players each year during a break in practice.”  Whether those various past connections contributed to the quick absolving of any problems within the basketball program is unknown.

* * *

            The December 8, 2012, article in the News and Observer went on to say that the university did eventually launch a formal probe into the AFAM department in August of 2011 – but that was five years after the Faculty Committee on Athletics was first notified of concerns.  Furthermore, the 2011 probe was only initiated after the News and Observer had obtained a transcript for football player Marvin Austin, which showed that he received a B-plus in an upper-level African Studies class before beginning his first full semester as a freshman at UNC.

The new information about the events of 2006 raised more questions about how much concern some university officials and faculty had about academic standards being lowered to help athletes remain eligible to play sports, reporter Dan Kane wrote.  It also raised serious questions about the willingness of university officials to report what they knew about the problems in the African Studies department, and potentially other curriculums, as well.

            Considering that the May 2012 internal probe was conducted by academic officials within the College of Arts and Sciences, which was home to the African Studies department, it would have stood to reason that the 2006 independent studies issue would have been included.  No mention was made that there had been prior concerns about the department, however.  At the very least that oversight suggested a lack of record-keeping and/or communication; a worst-case scenario would be that there had been a deliberate withholding of information.

            A report was released in late July of 2012 from a special faculty subcommittee.  A reference was made in the report about Robert Mercer and John Blanchard meeting with the Faculty Athletics Committee all the way back in 2002 to discuss the teaching of independent study courses.  The two athletic leaders were told that “faculty members have great latitude to teach courses as they see fit.”  The report also stated that academic counselors who worked with athletes therefore concluded that it was “not their responsibility to question decisions made within academic units about specific courses.”  Minutes from that meeting did not, however, show concern about the independent study courses.  Also, for some reason they did not show Mercer in attendance, either.  As mentioned before, the legitimacy of certain claims would be questioned in the future.  Was “red flag” information truly passed on to the Faculty Committee on Athletes on various occasions? 

* * *

            As mentioned earlier, the December 8, 2012, N&O article reported that the years of 2001 through 2006 had a high volume of independent studies enrollments in the AFAM department.  Records show that there were 1,433 in five years, with huge numbers of the enrollments being for particular professors.  In spring 2002, for example, one African Studies professor was listed as having 70 independent study students under his guidance.  The documents say the instructor of record was “not necessarily (the) instructor of supervision.”  In at least 20 other circumstances, either a professor or staffers in the department were assigned 20 or more independent study enrollments in a semester.  Often those were for sections that had originally been listed during the registration period as having a maximum limit of one student.

            During that time period, the newspaper said, football players accounted for 172 enrollments, or 12 percent.  Basketball players accounted for 39 enrollments, or 3 percent.  While those were a relatively small percentage of the overall number of students signed up for the classes, they were much higher than either team’s representation of the entire student body.  The basketball breakdown can be taken even further.  During the five years in question (2001-2006), the basketball team had less than 30 different scholarship players.  Based on the fact that basketball players had accounted for 39 enrollments, then it is possible that every single player who was on scholarship from 2001 to 2006 took a fraudulent independent study course.  Even if the 39 enrollments were limited to a smaller pocket of individuals, the odds that at least one player from each season took a course is mathematically high.  Furthermore, an earlier chapter established that seven players from the team’s 2005 National Championship team was majoring in AFAM, and earlier in this very chapter data revealed that 15 independent study courses were taken by basketball players during that title year.

            Julius Peppers played basketball for the last time in 2000, just before the search parameters of the above data.  His transcript that was inadvertently made public, however, gave an idea of how the independent study courses may have benefitted star athletes at UNC.  His transcript showed that he was allowed to enroll in four independent studies within the AFAM department – the first of which was in the summer after his freshman year in which he had received an F, two D’s, two D-pluses, two C’s and one B.  On the verge of not having a high enough GPA to participate in sports in the fall, he got a B in his summer independent study course, a class that was supposed to have been available only to “advanced undergraduate and graduate students,” according to UNC registration records and the N&O.  Peppers would go on to receive a B and a B-plus in two other independent studies, again allowing his GPA to rise about the bare minimum that was needed to continue playing sports at the school.  His transcript showed that he was enrolled in the fourth class, but he would ultimately leave for the NFL without graduating.

* * *

            James Moeser, UNC’s chancellor from 2000 to 2008, told the N&O that the high enrollment numbers in the independent study courses were clearly an indicator of a problem and should have been brought to the attention of the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.  “That’s excessive, and it’s not normal,” he said.  The dean during the time period in question, Madeline Levine, said no one came to her about the issue.  She reiterated that the concerns of Mercer, Blanchard, and Baddour should have come her way.  “I would have expected them to go to a particular senior associate dean, or to have gone to me, or to simply call the college and say, ‘We’ve got a problem,’” said Levine.  “If it had gone to one of the senior associate deans, then I would expect that that dean, with something as irregular as that, would have let me know.”

                        The N&O had sought explanations for the independent study enrollment decreases since receiving the data more than a year earlier, the newspaper said.  Chancellor Holden Thorp and other administrators declined to talk about it.  Thorp was Madeline Levine’s successor as dean of the Arts & Sciences College, but said he was unaware of any problems with the independent studies until 2011.  Attempts to reach the professors in the African Studies department who had the highest numbers of enrollments were unsuccessful.  Former Governor Martin had been scheduled to present his findings at a UNC Board of Trustees meeting less than two weeks from the time of the N&O’s early December article.  He said he was trying to pinpoint what the discussion was back in 2006 and determine if it was the cause of the enrollment drop.  “I think you can expect that that’s something that we have to pursue,” Martin said, “even if it takes us past December 20.”  A closer look must not have happened, however, as Martin’s findings would ultimately be released on the 20^th as earlier planned.

* * *

The essential (and unanswered) questions:

-- Why had virtually every member of UNC’s faculty and academic staff, which numbered over 3,000, chosen to remain silent regarding the ongoing athletic/academic scandal that had encompassed the school for more than two years?

-- Why had no one at the university taken Mary Willingham’s initial claims of plagiarism seriously?

-- Despite apparent attempts to change the academic culture within UNC’s basketball program and to do things on the “up and up,” why had Jennifer Townsend refused to comment for any of the News and Observer’s articles?

-- The NCAA never spoke to Mary Willingham during its 2010 investigation into the school.  Did university officials even tell the NCAA about her past observations of cheating?

-- Why were so many associated with the UNC Board of Governors and the UNC Board of Trustees unwilling to publically demand answers to the roots of the ongoing scandals at UNC?

-- Why had Amy Herman been advised by school officials to avoid creating documents that would have been subject to the state’s open records law?

-- In 2006, did the Faculty Committee on Athletics take a true and thorough look into the high number of independent study enrollments?  And if so, then how did they apparently miss the disproportionately large number of basketball players who were taking those questionable courses?

-- Did the connections between some members of the Faculty Committee on Athletics and the school’s basketball program have anything to do with the lack of attention that was drawn to the independent study courses?

-- The preceding two questions are both based on assumptions that the Faculty Committee on Athletics had truly been informed of concerns regarding athletes and independent studies.  Was that the actual case?

-- Were players enrolled in the possibly fraudulent independent study courses solely for the purpose of raising their GPA’s – so that in turn they would remain eligible to compete in athletics?

-- Players from UNC’s 2005 National Championship basketball team took 15 independent study courses that year.  How many of those 15 courses were potentially fraudulent, yet kept them eligible to compete athletically?

-- Despite the abundance of information from Mary Willingham and also the independent study data from 2001-2006, all of which pointed to direct cheating meant to benefit athletes and potentially their eligibility, why had the NCAA still refused to address the matter?