Ostensibly Hoops

[hedge]

"It also said that those advisers pushed Crowder to make exceptions for athletes, including allowing them to enroll in classes after the registration period had ended."

Wow, we deserve the death penalty for that...

[eCat]

UNC isn't going to get the death penalty

If UNC was smart, they'd voluntarily vacate the 2005 title and impose some harsh penalties on the football program like severely limit scholarships for 3 years. The NCAA would accept that and they'd happily put this behind them.

But they aren't smart and they'll just keep trying to keep the NCAA at bay , forcing their hand. Bubba (seriously, his name is Bubba? you can't make this shit up) Cunningham has said no, we won't self impose, we're going to look at reforms.

Seriously, UNC has handled this so badly, so imcompetently that they should consider themselves lucky they still have a chance to be competitive in the sports they love in the near future.

All they had to do is own up to it, accept some relative slap on the wrist, blame it on a rogue professor and people will have moved on given their sterling reputation, but instead they stonewalled to the point freaking Rashad McCants goes on national TV and spills the beans - and THEN UNC rolls out all these players to deny it, knowing full well they were lying - probably at the prompting of UNC administration. They have this Bradley Bethel or whatever his name is running all over the place fighting with anyone in the know on the internet saying none of this happened.

When Rashad went forward, UNC didn't expect the baseball and football players to come forward backing his claims- and this was after a report on Outside the Lines, Real Sports and numerous articles written with specific examples AND Julius Peppers transcript being leaked

Jesus Christ - its sad how badly UNC dealt with this.

Even the mantra now from UNC is "time to move on"

uh...no...its a time for reckoning UNC. They just don't get it.

and to make matters worse, its already been discovered by fans that grades were changes in a Feminist Studies class for at least one athlete in a class taught by the Ethics person at UNC. So that shows it goes beyond the AFAM department.

Stop the bleeding UNC...please.

[AlabamAlum]

The questions re: the NCAA:

1) when were the last infractions? If they've been clean for 4 years, it will be tough for the NCAA. Dirty within that 4-year timeframe can open the door to past misdeeds.

2) did the regular student body have the same no-show classes available?

Finally, along with the above, the NCAA is weakened and I'm not sure UNC would volunteer any sanctions, unless it's to save face with the academic integrity crowd.

[eCat]

The questions re: the NCAA:

1) when were the last infractions? If they've been clean for 4 years, it will be tough for the NCAA. Dirty within that 4-year timeframe can open the door to past misdeeds.

2) did the regular student body have the same no-show classes available?

Finally, along with the above, the NCAA is weakened and I'm not sure UNC would volunteer any sanctions, unless it's to save face with the academic integrity crowd.

I don't think the statute of limitations matters here because its been an ongoing known thing for years - if the NCAA claims statute of limitations because they, themselves dragged their feet, people will line up with torches and pitchforks.

21% of all athletes during that time period took the paper classes, 2% of the student population. But the most damning evidence is the emails saying that athletes needed a specific letter grade in those classes in order to be eligible and were subsequently given those grades.

[AlabamAlum]

I haven't followed this closely, but didn't the NCAA say this was more of an academic issue than an NCAA issue? And I agree that the intermediary who acknowledged potential plagiarism and the instructor who said the paper wasn't even on the topic is damning. Unless general students have that kind of unethical advocacy on their behalf, it would definitely be a compliance issue.

It will be interesting.

[eCat]

that's what they said the first time they came out - relying on information provided to them by UNC.

the public outcry and pressure exerted in the media forced UNC and the NCAA to address it again.

I give UNC credit for the Wainstain report but just an admission of guilt isn't enough.

[sardis]

Too bad Augustwest isn't alive to see this.

[hedge]

"Even the mantra now from UNC is "time to move on"

uh...no...its a time for reckoning UNC."

[youtube]QcpfRpnCHn8[/youtube]

[eCat]

if its any consolation the director of compliance for UNC from 2000-2011 is now employed at Duke.

She isn't going to be employed for very long

[Bklyn]

Who cares, I got my Hornets tickets and can't wait.

Don't want to jump the gun...but those Hornets look sneaky good. The Born Ready pickup is going to be huge for them.

[Dora]

Is this really news? I thought it's been going on forever.

[eCat]

its not news until it becomes punitive


Gerald Gurney, president
of the Drake Group, whose mission is "to defend academic integrity in
higher education from the corrosive aspects of commercialized college
sports," said the findings should provide fodder for the NCAA to levy
one of its most severe charges against UNC: lack of institutional
control.


"I can safely say that
the scope of the 20-year UNC fraud scandal easily takes the prize for
the largest and most nefarious scandal in the history of NCAA
enforcement. The depth and breadth of the scheme -- involving
counselors, coaches, academic administrators, faculty, athletic
administrators, etc. -- eclipses any previous case," Gurney said.

I'm gonna be hanging on to that one for awhile

[Dora]

Too bad Augustwest isn't alive to see this.

He died?

[AlabamAlum]

Yeah. It was in all the papers.

[AlabamAlum]

Tomorrow will be one year since his death. Here's what happened, Dora:


I spent my formative years on the subcontinent, as my father was a major in the British Army and stationed in India during the Second Opium War. Once, while he was away on campaign, I was tasked to eliminate a streak of rogue tigers who had been killing the villagers in a place called Bharatpur. My houseboy, AugustWest, was my faithful servant on this expedition. The journey was a hard day's travel and we made a hasty camp to get some rest. But before I could finish my tea, a village woman named Culay ran in and shouted that tigers were attacking. We quickly followed and after killing three of the beasts, I set my sights on the fourth -and last- but unfortunately my gun jammed. Thinking and moving on instinct, I drew my knife and leapt on the back of the behemoth. My blade found his carotid, and dealt a mortal blow, but not before the tiger had clawed August. As the tiger fell, I rushed to my servant's side and surmised that his wounds would likely prove fatal.

Nonetheless, I thus began a frantic search for help when I happened upon Sgt. Gunny McDonald, a deserter from the Scottish regiment that had been under my father's command. Gunny thought I was a part of a team to bring him back, so he attacked, but I kept my wits about me and killed him with a Kimura Lock.

Afterwards, I rifled through the dead sergeant's supplies to find something -anything- that would help abate Auggie's pain, and found a bottle of Drambuie among Gunny's things. I ran back to my camp faster than I had ever ran before, but upon arrival I found that poor Auggie had died while I was gone. Grief-stricken, I sat down and drank the whole bottle before making my way back to the base.

Now, every October 24th I toast a glass of Drambuie to the memory of Auggie. As god is my witness....

[Dora]

That is so sad!

And you haven't had a glass yet every year.

[eCat]

impressive

[goldenbear]

The questions re: the NCAA:

1) when were the last infractions? If they've been clean for 4 years, it will be tough for the NCAA. Dirty within that 4-year timeframe can open the door to past misdeeds.

2) did the regular student body have the same no-show classes available?

Finally, along with the above, the NCAA is weakened and I'm not sure UNC would volunteer any sanctions, unless it's to save face with the academic integrity crowd.

Less that 50% of the students in bogus classes were athletes this is not an NCAA issue, it is sucks to be a UNC grad but I dont it will really effect your ability to get a job.

If there were 16 kids in a class only 7 played sports with 50% the athletes being football players.

Though Roy should step down that would help

[crotch]

Dan Wetzel on the unc scandal....

North Carolina’s sins here go far beyond the scope of a traditional NCAA case. This isn’t about fancy cars in the player’s parking lot or an agent offering a budding pro some Champagne Room money or some old alum doling out a hundred dollar handshake to a potential recruit.

Those are acts in which a rich person gives a poor(er) person money, an act that in virtually any other segment of society is met with affirmation.

The NCAA bans those in the spirit of a level playing field, but it’s also/mostly about controlling all revenue. It rings hollow as additional billions roll into the overall enterprise, but the player is still getting the same deal from the 1920s: tuition, room and board.

UNC cuts to the core of college athletics and the base point for the NCAA’s own longstanding public relations campaign (student-athletes going pro in something other than sports).

It is, you could say, the one thing that is almost universally agreed upon.

Educate the players. Or at least try.

For too many athletes, the chance at a college education is a currency they struggle to cash. They arrive unprepared, disinterested or just incapable, like plucking a kid from elementary school ballet class, enrolling them in Juilliard and expecting them to succeed like the others.

That doesn’t mean a school that’s made the devil’s deal of admitting them should give up on them, not attempt to educate on some levels, not try to push them to be better.

Carolina shouldn't brazenly, blatantly and systematically run an assembly line of eligibility. There have been too many success stories to not make an attempt.

For 18 years and over 1,000 student-athletes, including huge swaths of football and basketball players, UNC ran classes that were designed to require little to no academic work. It included academic advisers essentially telling the instructor the grade necessary to maintain eligibility. This was true even in cases when everyone suspected/knew the student in question submitted false or recycled papers for the minimal work required.

So they knew kids were cheating … in a fake class, no less … and they just calculated the needed grade to keep playing and then gave it to them.

Lux libertas, indeed.

[CameronCrazy]

RALEIGH, N.C. -- An alarming lack of institutional oversight at the University of North Carolina allowed an academic fraud scandal to run unchecked for nearly two decades and has the school reeling from the scandal's fallout.

The latest investigation found that university leaders, faculty members and staff missed or just ignored flags that could have stopped the problem years earlier. More than 3,100 students -- about half of them athletes -- benefited from sham classes and artificially high grades in the formerly named African and Afro-American Studies department (AFAM) in Chapel Hill.

A report by former U.S. Justice Department official Kenneth Wainstein indicates that the bogus classes ended in 2011. The university has since overhauled the department and implemented new policies, but it must wait to find out whether the damaging new details lead to more problems with the agency that accredits the school. The NCAA, which has reopened its investigation into academic misconduct, also could have concerns over lack of institutional control.

"Bad actions of a relatively few number of people were definitely compounded by inaction and the lack of really appropriate checks and balances," chancellor Carol Folt said Thursday. "And it was together that really allowed this to persist for such a length of time."

The issues outlined in the report were jarring, including the clear involvement of athletic counselors who steered athletes into those bogus classes. From 1993 to 2011, those classes required no attendance and required only a research paper that received A's and B's without regard for quality, a cursory review often performed by an office secretary who also signed the chairman's name to grade rolls.

Those two people -- retired administrator Deborah Crowder and former chairman Julius Nyang'oro -- were at the center of the scheme. But Wainstein's report also notes school officials failed to act on their suspicions or specific concerns that came to their attention. It all added up to a series of missed chances to stop the fraud and instead allowed it to escalate.

Accreditation questions are now facing the university.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools' Commission on Colleges had placed the campus on its watch list until this summer and required the school to allow students who took a bogus course to take another for free. The commission will send the school a letter in the next few days asking administrators to demonstrate they are in compliance with standards required for the seal of approval, commission president Belle Wheelan said.

"What we would do is ask them is, this is bigger than you thought it was, what are you going to do now? It's a mess," Wheelan said.

The school's response will be addressed by the 77-member board at its meeting in December, she said.

"We are interested in more than anything in making sure that the students don't run into problems trying to explain any degrees that they have after the fact as a result of this," Wheelan said.

The agency's core requirements for accrediting a degree-granting university include clear control over "all aspects of its educational program," including athletics. And the issue of institutional control could affect the NCAA probe, raise questions about what coaches knew, and ultimately lead to possible wins and championships being vacated.

"If we go back with the NCAA in our joint review, and ... if we've identified that we have played students who were ineligible, then obviously we would have to vacate wins at that time," UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham said. "But as long as the courses and the credits and everything count to the accrediting agency, we're very comfortable with our certification process -- that our students were eligible to compete when they competed."

The university's fate lies in someone else's hands now after a hands-off approach by administrators and autonomy for department chairs.

The AFAM department escaped external reviews required every five years because it lacked a graduate program. Nyang'oro was also exempt from peer reviews for tenured faculty because he was a department chairman.

Folt said she believed the school would have caught the fraud sooner if not for those since-removed exemptions.

The report points out there also were other chances to stop it.

Folt is holding everyone accountable.

"It really isn't something that you could look at as only one thing," the chancellor said. "It had the combination, and that's why we have to make sure we can't be complacent about it. We have to accept full responsibility for it."