Academics And Sports – Where The Two Meet – MONEY

While I have mainly complained about professional football, because I enjoy watching basketball and baseball, I had heard years ago a story about a coach at UNC visiting a professor's lecture where a college sports star was failing, standing at the back of the class and eyeballing the professor in an effort to threaten him. The message, pass the student.

I think college sports programs are suspect as long as those teams bring in as much or more money than student tuition. Alumni love them and so do the student body. It's a win-win until a story like this comes out. College players have been national heroes for more years than I have lived, and their rivalries big news. Harvard-Yale and Princeton vs Rutgers in the past. The cheating is not new, I will wager. It can't be, because the temptation to cheat has always been there.

See this Wikipedia article. List of sporting scandals, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, (July 2009) – a listing of sports scandals from basketball and football to sumo wrestling and the king of all, horse racing. The list is much too long for me to include here. Mobsters have gambled on sports teams resulting in point shaving scandals and the oldest dirty sport of all time since the Roman Empire, horse racing. Doping is all over the news in human and horse competitions and is so commonplace as to be “old news” today.

When “winning is the only thing” the result is bound to be corrupt. Sports is no longer the highly creditable self-discipline and athletic development of a marathon biker with numerous awards, but another case of doping. I have never been big on sports, anyway, but I would like to think international level competitions are beyond cheating and into heroism.

See the article at http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=96963, “Winning is the only thing,” MLA Citation: "Winning is the only thing." 123HelpMe.com. 24 Oct 2014, on American sports since 1945. From this article I quote: “Randy Roberts and James Olson in their book, Winning is the Only Thing: Sports in America since 1945, explored the world of sports since the end of World War II. Their book covers the many aspects of sports, from the athletes and management to the fans and the media. The authors first make clear differences in the way people viewed sports before the war and how they did after the war. The book talks a lot about the astounding transformation of sports in America during the post war era.”

About the UNC case –

Because I am so saddened and disappointed in my Alma Mater UNC-Chapel Hill, but yet I have such fond memories of my days there, I have tried to show the background on college and professional sports (an artificial distinction nowadays) and how this UNC scandal fits in. I can see, however, that the University itself is not guiltless in that it knew about this at least a couple of years ago when it refused to give a news source the photograph of the active agent in the scandal – Deborah Crowder, student-services manager in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM). She has dragged both the sports program and the Afro-American Studies program into disrepute.

Afro-American Studies should be an academically respectable and profoundly interesting field of study if it is presented as it should be. I can only hope the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill recovers from this scandal and retains its student population and teaching staff. It would be a shame if the University became downgraded in its national and international status. I don't think that should happen. The problem here is the overwhelming importance of college sports in a school's financial situation which creates a greater possibility of dishonest dealing. The millions of dollars that it represents has produced a profound temptation to cheat.

The following several stories show the sad situation at UNC-CH, as those who champion academic enlightenment are dragged down by the almighty dollar in a startling way. Kenneth Wainstein is a former federal prosecutor hired to investigate the case when the college first became aware of the situation five years ago who has prepared a 131 page report on his investigation. “Many of the academic-athletic staff who were named and implicated by Wainstein were also named by university learning specialist Mary Willingham, who went public with detailed allegations about paper classes and who, after an assault on her credibility by the university, has since filed a whistleblower suit.”

From USA Today's article below comes the following insight into the delay in investigating the mess: “Though Wainstein found several instances in which others within the African and Afro-American Studies Department or in other parts of campus were suspicious of the classes and Crowder's outsized role in academic matters of athletes, the problems weren't discovered until the media began looking into academic fraud related to the football program in 2011.... 'We found there is a sense in academia back then that strict oversight and strict management might conflict with academic independence and the prerogative of a professor to provide his or her instruction,' Wainstein said. 'I think that's a false dichotomy, but that's why people pushed back against the idea of more oversight.'... For years, people working closely with athletics took advantage, and academic counselors for the football program even pushed Nyang'oro, the department chair, to get the so-called "paper classes" up and running again after Crowder retired in 2009. The semester following her retirement, the football team's average GPA dipped to 2.121, Wainstein found, the lowest in 10 years.”

“The investigation concluded there was more steering from advisers to the classes in football than basketball, where players found the classes more indirectly through 'locker room advising.' Wainstein said his interviews revealed that basketball coach Roy Williams was "uncomfortable with clustering" in the African-American Studies department because of the optics that players were being steered toward that major. Early in his tenure at North Carolina, he asked his assistant coach in charge of academic matters and the basketball team's primary academic counselor not to steer players toward those classes.”

From CNN: “Former football player Michael McAdoo told CNN he was forced into majoring in African-American studies, the department at the heart of the paper-classes scandal. Willingham and McAdoo, who played at UNC for two years, shared their reactions to the report on Wednesday 'I didn't need Wainstein to validate me because the truth is validation enough, but I feel like what I've said for the last five years is in the report,' Willingham said. 'I gave Chancellor Folt credit; she did a good job.'... Willingham also said she believes it took so many years and six previous investigations because 'this is the flagship of the university system and of the state, and to admit we did anything wrong was too difficult. There is a level of arrogance here, and that's part of the culture.'...McAdo said, "An apology would be good for me, or being able to enroll back in college," he said. "I lost an education. I lost trust in the school -- someone I thought had my best interest.”

“For the first time since the scandal first came to light five years ago, UNC admitted that the wrongdoing went further than academics and involved its athletic programs. 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.... The detailed 131-page report is being shared with the NCAA and could have huge implications for the university.... He conducted an eight-month investigation into the scandal, which has plagued the university for nearly five years. Four employees have been fired and five more disciplined because of their roles. One other former employee had honorary status removed, Chancellor Carol Folt said Wednesday.”

I'm sure we haven't heard the last about this. UNC will suffer law suits and sanctions, I am afraid. I personally do wish they would drop their sports program entirely or – better still – go back to accepting only academically competent students into their sports program, letting them lose games if they have to. School sports is supposedly about athletic development and sportsmanship. It should be free of cheating and unwarranted financial bonuses of various kinds.

If they will clean up their program and keep it clean, UNC will have an even prouder claim to fame than their record of winning national sports competitions. Maybe their players will win academic scholarships rather than sports scholarships, and will attain law degrees rather than phony Afro-American Studies degrees. The operant part of that phrase is “phony.”

I just don't believe the idea that academically inclined students aren't able to succeed in sports. Big boys can be smart, too. Maybe the anti-intellectual bias that has taken over many aspects of our nation's philosophy among both blacks and whites will go by the wayside along with the prevalent cheating in sports. Academic achievement by young black kids will no longer be viewed as “acting white.” When I first heard that phrase I was really disheartened. It represents the failure of our educational system in this country from the inside out. Who needs ultra-conservative Congressmen persistently denying funds to the country's grammar and secondary schools. Some of the children have decided not to learn anything. If that sort of thing continues, we are doomed to failure as a democracy and a human society. I hasten to say that not all young black kids feel that way, and too many poor white kids also hate school and struggle to succeed. Those of both races who come from stable homes with good parental guidance and a belief in learning, however, will probably do well in school and be good citizens. If they are also good in sports, then give them a sports scholarship, by all means.



National Review, a conservative publication, boldly recommends here something that I have myself thought about. If colleges stopped having sports teams, they would then be evaluated by their academic rating and competitive tuition rates in drawing students to their door.


http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391068/eliminate-college-sports-ian-tuttle

National Review Online
Eliminate College Sports 

A teacher at Chapel Hill blows the whistle at academic fraud involving administrators and athletes.
 
By Ian Tuttle

National Review Online
www.nationalreview.com/
National Review
Up-to-the-minute conservative commentary on politics, news, and culture. 

I like college sports — that the athletes do not get paid to play, for instance; that the athletes play for their community, for the pride of their place, taking the field in South Bend after growing up watching the Fighting Irish; I like that athletes are “student-athletes,” who leave the gridiron and head to the library.

Well, perhaps I should say that I like what college sports were. Thanks to dogged investigation in the Tarheel State, it is becoming unavoidably clear what many college sports have become.

News first broke in 2010 that some “student-athletes” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the flagship institution of the UNC system, were being shuffled into classes where academic requirements were, to put it gently, minimal. A new 131-page reportjust issued by attorney and former Department of Justice official Kenneth Wainstein displays the true extent of the fraud. Wainstein claims that at least 3,100 students from 1993 to 2011 were funneled into “paper classes,” independent-study-style courses that required nothing except a term paper — which was frequently plagiarized, or written by a tutor. “Students [in these courses] never had a single interaction with a faculty member,” writes Wainstein.

The classes were a creation of Deborah Crowder, student-services manager in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM). Sympathetic toward students who were not “the best and the brightest,” and a diehard UNC athletics fan, she concocted hundreds of classes, issuing paper topics and grading papers — giving, of course, As and high Bs — though she was not a faculty member. The faculty member formally listed, AFAM department chairman Julius Nyang’oro, acquiesced to the scheme, and when Crowder retired in 2009 took up the fraud. Counselors in the know pushed struggling students into the department, and some even mentioned to Crowder what grades a student required to remain NCAA-eligible. Coaches knew. Academic advisers knew. A whole lot of students knew. And no one said anything — except Mary Willingham, an on-campus reading specialist who worked with a number of student-athletes, who says she was demoted for blowing the whistle. She filed suit against the university this summer.

At the Washington Post, Terence McCoy notes that the fraud at UNC is not unique — though in the words of Gerald Gurney, president of the Drake Group, which “defend[s] academic integrity in higher education from the corrosive aspects of commercialized college sports,” UNC’s cover-up may well constitute “the largest and most nefarious scandal in the history of NCAA enforcement.” But athletes have benefited from administrative sleight-of-hand at Florida State, the University of Michigan, Kansas State, and even Stanford, where student-athletes have a tendency to enroll in “Social Dances of North America III.”

No doubt similar preferential treatment is occurring at universities across the country — because, as Mary Willingham’s research suggests, it is necessary. According to Willingham, one in twelve students playing football or basketball at UNC — so-called “revenue” sports — were reading below a third-grade level. That those students were admitted to middle school, let alone an institution of higher learning, is alarming. That not just Crowder but a whole nexus of coaches, counselors, and faculty thought it acceptable to give those students diplomas is appalling.

But it points to the moral and intellectual rot that has taken hold of the typical university, due in large part to the culture of much college athletics. College football and basketball (to name only two) are de facto semi-professional leagues — and revelations that college players regularly receive “improper benefits” from agents and others suggest that they are treated as such. There is no deference to the “student” portion of “student-athlete,” because, for the most part, they are rarely students. Division I soccer players spend the vast majority of their time on the field. Does anyone believe that the star running back for a Rose Bowl–contender SEC school is spending much time in the lecture hall?

Allow me to submit a provocative solution: End college sports — in the interest of both sports and college.



Below is an essay on the changes in sports since World War II based on a book by Randy Roberts and James Olson.


http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=96963

"Winning is the only thing." 
123HelpMe.com.
24 Oct 2014 

Randy Roberts and James Olson in their book, Winning is the Only Thing: Sports in America since 1945, explored the world of sports since the end of World War II. Their book covers the many aspects of sports, from the athletes and management to the fans and the media. The authors first make clear differences in the way people viewed sports before the war and how they did after the war. The book talks a lot about the astounding transformation of sports in America during the post war era.

The objective of sports before world war II matched up to the original idea of such games. Athletes, for the most part, “played “to do just that- every sports as their hobbies (Roberts, Olson xi) games were intended to be fun for the players; and just as a board game of “candy land,” sports were activities in which the game was on the court, field, diamond, or whatever the “ game board” was. The minds of people were filled with war and the everyday challenges of life (xi). Thus, people found sports to be a way of escape from all that they faced fans as well as athletes. However, in a matter of a few years the entertainment of sports changed dramatically.

After World War II, it could be said that Americans put their identity, worth, and security in sports. They felt the need to stand up to the world to show them who their country was and what it stood for. “Americans came to take sports very seriously, and they watched and played for the highest economic, politic, and personal stakes”(xii).other countries began to represent themselves through sports as well; and, in a sense, the war continued though the means of these “games.” Especially in the Olympics, whole countries fought to win and be seen as the superior. Sports was a way of, not only representing pride in the athletes, but also a way of showing the world who its government, communities, families, and all that America stood for. Roberts and Olson describe athletes during this era as national soldiers of sport (19) as in the defeat of war, when America lost in the name of sports, it was in no way gone unnoticed by the majority of the country. For America, losing many of the medals during the 1960 Olympic games was a reason to make excuses for such an unfortunate happening of the country(22.)

In addition, sports that followed 1945 had a huge impact on the black community. After much exclusion, opposition, and racial oppression, African-Americans were slowly but surely integrated into American sports. The country was in search of becoming bigger and better in the eyes of the world; and eventually, sport authorities began to understand the talent that many blacks could offer their teams. This was a significant part of the civil rights movement, as sports too many black- Americans out of the ghetto life and into highlight of society(187). African-American athletes became heroes and role models for their community, which was a privilege Blacks barely had at all.

In addition, as media began to make athletes more known and the country, its cities and colleges began to realize that athletes represented much of who they were, their careers advanced and their income increased drastically.(70, 160). Compared to the pre-war period, athletes were considered much more as idols and the center of people’s lives. Therefore, media focused on what society was interested in, which was their identity in sports.
To sum up Roberts and Olson’s main point could best be said in the following:
In America, sports were not games anymore, no were they in Olympic competition. Ideologies, systems, religions, races, and nation states all turned to the Olympics for evidence-proof- that they were as powerful or as true or as inevitable as they claimed to be. The cultural currency of American sports-money, power, identity, and status-had colonized the Olympic Games (210).

Winning is the only thing: sports in America since 1945 has helped me to realize how much a world war can alter even the world of sports. Prior to reading this book, I viewed sports as the involvement of merely athletes and fans. I saw a team that had excited supporting fans as only a bunch of people exicted about the sport and the players they enjoyed watching and rooting for. I now better understand how much an impact sports has had, and still has, on America and the world. I learned that sports sincerely represented countries for who they were (are)in the eyes of the world. For the most part, fans included every American all cheering for their own. In addition, I better grasp the effect a war can have on the country and the world; and that it does not just effect the thought of citizens or have an impact on those fighting or only on the government. A war does not end when it is “over,” but rather continues for a long time after. 

Sixty years later, world war II continues- maybe not on the battlefield but through other means such as sports.

I really enjoyed reading the chapter,”The integration of American Sports” the most because it was of great interest to me. I am always interested in learning new things about the experience that the African-American has been through [ as well as other ethnic groups], and so I learned much I did not know before. It was absolutely terrible, yet not surprising, the injustice that Blacks went through and the lack of credit they received from white athletes, coaches, and managers. And even once they did begin to integrate into sports, it still took an incredible amount of time to be fully integrated in the 1960s and 1970s (Roberts, Olson 187). It brought to my mind, the reality of what is happening today. Now that black-Americans are accepted [much more] in sports, they are largely not accepted in other parts of society. This compares to the lack of acceptance in sports that they previously experienced. It is my hope that, just as sports was integrated; other parts of society will continue to do so.

For the most part, I enjoyed reading…………………… I thought Roberts and Olson discussed vital information/history that is important for understanding what sports really is today. It is helpful in broadening one’s view of the effects of war; and also brings interesting topics to the table [of war] that one may not first think would be included. 

Although there are many details of dates, names, cities, etc, which can make reading tedious, the book is beneficial for sharing what has happened in the world of sports since 1945.

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http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/us/unc-report-academic-fraud/index.html

UNC report finds 18 years of academic fraud to keep athletes playing – CNN
By Sara Ganim and Devon M. Sayers, CNN
Thu October 23, 2014

Chapel Hill, North Carolina (CNN) -- For 18 years, thousands of students at the prestigious University of North Carolina took fake "paper classes," and advisers funneled athletes into the program to keep them eligible, according to a scathing independent report released Wednesday.

"These counselors saw the paper classes and the artificially high grades they yielded as key to helping some student-athletes remain eligible," Kenneth Wainstein wrote in his report.

He conducted an eight-month investigation into the scandal, which has plagued the university for nearly five years.

Four employees have been fired and five more disciplined because of their roles. One other former employee had honorary status removed, Chancellor Carol Folt said Wednesday.

Wainstein is the former federal prosecutor hired by UNC to independently investigate the academic fraud brought to light in recent years.

In all, the report estimates, at least 3,100 students took the paper classes, but the figure "very likely falls far short of the true number."

For the first time since the scandal first came to light five years ago, UNC admitted that the wrongdoing went further than academics and involved its athletic programs.

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.

By comparison, in 2009, Florida State had an academic scandal that was considered huge. Sixty athletes were involved, a far cry from the numbers involved at UNC, he said.

A stellar reputation comes crashing down.

UNC has long been a place where it was believed that athletics and academics went hand in hand. It has enjoyed a stellar reputation, producing basketball greats such as coach Dean Smith and player Michael Jordan.

Now, that reputation has been stained.

According to the report, one former head football coach, John Bunting, admitted to knowing of the paper classes and his successor, Butch Davis, also admitted some knowledge. Current men's basketball coach Roy Williams is steadfast that he did not know, Wainstein said.

The detailed 131-page report is being shared with the NCAA and could have huge implications for the university.

UNC has won three national championships for college basketball -- in 1993, 2005 and 2009 -- that could be in jeopardy along with countless wins.

And it wasn't just the revenue-generating sports that benefited.

The report says that athletes in a wide range of sports were involved, and it notes a noticeable spike of enrollment of Olympic-sport athletes between 2003 and 2005.

UNC in January: We failed students 'for years'

Report spreads the blame around

For five years, UNC has insisted the paper classes were the doing of one rogue professor: the department chair of the African-American studies program, Julius Nyang'oro. Wainstein's report spread the blame much further.

It also revealed that it was Nyang'oro's assistant, Debbie Crowder, who actually created the paper classes out of sympathy for athletes and other students who were not "the best and the brightest." Nyang'oro went along with them when he figured them out.

Crowder was such a fan of UNC sports, particularly basketball, that she would sometimes miss work after a loss, the report says.

It was well-known on campus that Crowder was a lax grader and gave high grades without regard for content, Wainstein said, emphasizing that she never gave a grade unless a student submitted a paper and did not change grades that were already given.

Wainstein did find that five counselors actively used paper classes, calling them "GPA boosters," and that at least two counselors, one in football, suggested to Crowder the grade an athlete needed to receive to be able to continue to play.

Nyang'oro was more hands off. He had initially held legitimate independent studies classes, Wainstein said, but was accused of "being an ass" by counselors who felt he was too hard on athletes. Crowder then took it upon herself to create the first paper classes, naming Nyang'oro as the instructor even though she was managing all aspects of them: Sending out paper topics, giving grades and assigning no meeting times.

"It is not clear whether Crowder ever got Nyang'oro's explicit approval to arrange these irregular independent studies. It is clear, however, that he ultimately learned about these classes and acquiesced in them by taking no action to put a halt to them."

When Crowder announced she was retiring, there was a spike in enrollment in the last year of her classes, because football counselors urged student athletes to sign up. Crowder actively tried to cover her activities, according to the report.

Jan Boxill, the former women's basketball academic adviser, is also implicated in the report, which says she suggested grades to Crowder and helped athletes write papers.
When the scandal was first reported, on a much smaller scale, Boxill came under fire for writing an email obtained by The News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh that suggested the removal of Crowder's name from an internal report on the fraud.

Boxill, who was also chairwoman of the faculty and director of the university's center for ethics, wrote that it would raise "further NCAA issues," the paper reported.

It's not known if she was one of the nine people disciplined for her role. When CNN requested emails from Boxill and other staff members who were named in the Wainstein report, the university did not respond.

Jim Woodall, the Orange County District Attorney, who had charged and then withdrew prosecution of Nyang'oro, told CNN today that it is "very, very unlikely" any charges will come of the Wainstein revelations.

Though unethical and highly improper, Woodall said there was nothing criminal about the actions of the staff involved in paper classes at UNC.

Nyang'oro had been charged with fraud for accepting money for classes he didn't teach. But that charge was dropped after Nyang'oro cooperated with the Wainstein investigation.

UNC fake class scandal and NCAA's response wind their way to Washington

A strategy to keep players eligible

Bunting, the former head football coach, admitted that he knew of the paper classes and said Cynthia Reynolds, the former director of football, told him they were part of her strategy to keep players eligible. Reynolds, who is now an academic program coordinator at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was one of four employees who refused to cooperate with Wainstein's investigation.

The report shows that during Bunting's years as head coach, there was a steady rise of enrollment of football players in the paper classes.

Davis, who succeeded Bunting as coach and was eventually fired in the wake of the scandal in 2011, also admitted to knowing there were "easy classes," Wainstein said.

Basketball coach Roy Williams maintained he had no knowledge of the fraud, Wainstein said, which was supported by a drop in enrollment in the suspect classes by basketball players during his tenure.

There were no findings regarding Smith, the renowned coach who is ill with dementia. For health reasons, the Wainstein team was also unable to interview his longtime No. 2 and eventual successor, Bill Guthridge.

The report does say that Smith's longtime academic adviser, the late Burgess McSwain, and her successor, Wayne Walden, knew about the paper classes.

McSwain, who died of cancer in 2004, was a very close friend to Crowder, the report says.

During the Smith years, 1961 to 1997, the report says there were 54 basketball players enrolled in paper classes, although the paper classes started in the spring of 1993, the year of Smith's final championship.

A whistleblower's saga

Many of the academic-athletic staff who were named and implicated by Wainstein were also named by university learning specialist Mary Willingham, who went public with detailed allegations about paper classes and who, after an assault on her credibility by the university, has since filed a whistleblower suit.

CNN interviewed Willingham in January about her years working with student-athletes. She said that she had worked with dozens of athletes who came to UNC and were unable to read at an acceptable level, with some of them reading on par with elementary schoolchildren.

She also said there were many members of the athletic staff who knew about the paper classes, and her revelations contradicted what UNC had claimed for years -- that Nyang'oro acted alone in providing the paper classes.

Willingham said paper classes were openly discussed as a way to keep athletes eligible to play, and former football player Michael McAdoo told CNN he was forced into majoring in African-American studies, the department at the heart of the paper-classes scandal.
Willingham and McAdoo, who played at UNC for two years, shared their reactions to the report on Wednesday.

"I didn't need Wainstein to validate me because the truth is validation enough, but I feel like what I've said for the last five years is in the report," Willingham said. "I gave Chancellor Folt credit; she did a good job."

Willingham also said she believes it took so many years and six previous investigations because "this is the flagship of the university system and of the state, and to admit we did anything wrong was too difficult. There is a level of arrogance here, and that's part of the culture."

McAdoo said it was "just crazy" that Wainstein traced it back 18 years, and he noted that people accused him of concocting his story two years ago.

"For them to own up, that's great, but that doesn't help my situation," said the free agent who was drafted and released by the NFL's Baltimore Ravens before signing with a Canadian Football League team last year.

"An apology would be good for me, or being able to enroll back in college," he said. "I lost an education. I lost trust in the school -- someone I thought had my best interest. I definitely lost out on two seasons of football which would have put me in a better situation than I am now."

Refused to help in investigation

Folt would not say who was fired or being disciplined. Wainstein, however, named those who refused to cooperate:

• Octavus Barnes, academic counselor for football from 2002 to 2009;

• Carolyn Cannon, associate dean and director of academic advising from 1999 to 2010, was the principal adviser for the men's basketball team;

• Cynthia Reynolds, director of football from 2002 to 2010, was called a "critical witness";

• Everett Withers, interim head football coach in 2011, who is now at James Madison University.

Scandal has been unfolding for years

The first hints of scandal began in 2010, with allegations that some athletes were having improper contact with agents. As the university investigated, it found academic irregularities and finally announced, under pressure from The News & Observer, that there were classes where little work was required.

For the next five years, the UNC administration was on the defensive, admitting only to allegations as they surfaced and never digging to the root of the problem.

CNN analysis: Some college athletes play like adults, read like fifth-graders

Wainstein said he found no evidence that administrators tried to cover up anything.

He attributed the five-year delayed response to "insufficient appreciation of the scale of the problem."

Six previous internally commissioned reports had stopped short of systemic accusations.

Folt said that when she took the job as chancellor in October 2013, she decided to hire Wainstein because there were still too many unanswered questions.

"I wanted to be sure that we wouldn't have to do this again and again," she said





http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2014/10/22/north-carolina-academic-fraud/17717243/

North Carolina probe: Advisers steered athletes to bogus classes
Dan Wolken, USA TODAY Sports
October 23, 2014

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS: An early version of this story incorrectly quoted North Carolina chancellor Carol Folt. She characterized the incident as "an inexcusable betrayal of our values and our mission and our students' trust."

An independent investigator found evidence directly tying years of no-show classes at the University of North Carolina to a scheme that helped hundreds of athletes — particularly football and men's basketball players — raise their grades and stay eligible over an 18-year period, according to a report released Wednesday.

Kenneth Wainstein, a former U.S. Attorney and general counsel to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, pinned most of the wrongdoing on Deborah Crowder, a longtime secretary who managed the African and Afro-American Studies Department, and Julius Nyang'oro, who became chair of curriculum for the department in 1992.
Wainstein, however, also found that academic advisers who worked closely with the athletic department regularly steered athletes to these classes for the specific purpose of raising their grades, going so far on some occasions as to advise Crowder what grades were needed to maintain eligibility.

The report also blasted North Carolina's administration for its lack of oversight that allowed the fraudulent classes to go unchecked for years. And unlike previous investigations — including one done by the NCAA in 2011 that found "insufficient evidence of athletic purposes behind the classes" — Wainstein's report makes clear that the motivation was largely rooted in a desire to help athletes.

Student view: : Report about something bigger than UNC academics

The NCAA announced in June it has reopened its investigation in light of the fact that Wainstein was instructed by the university to share any relevant information with the NCAA.

"I am deeply disappointed in the duration and scope of the wrongdoing, missing vital checks and balances that could have corrected this much sooner and saved so much anguish and embarrassment," said North Carolina chancellor Carol Folt, who noted that nine university employees have been disciplined or terminated in the wake of the report.

Wainstein found that more than 3,100 students received one or more semesters of "deficient instruction ... and were awarded high grades that often had little relationship to the quality of their work." North Carolina football players accounted for 963 enrollments in the so-called "paper classes," and men's basketball players accounted for 226 beginning in 1999, when Crowder began listing these independent study-style courses as lecture classes even though classes never met.

The investigation found that Crowder was primarily responsible for creating the classes, enrolling students in them, assigning the research paper topics and giving out grades — "typically with high As or Bs and largely without regard to the quality of the papers," Wainstein wrote — even though she was not a faculty member but rather a Student Services Manager who ran the department's administrative tasks.

Though Wainstein found several instances in which others within the African and Afro-American Studies Department or in other parts of campus were suspicious of the classes and Crowder's outsized role in academic matters of athletes, the problems weren't discovered until the media began looking into academic fraud related to the football program in 2011.

"We found there is a sense in academia back then that strict oversight and strict management might conflict with academic independence and the prerogative of a professor to provide his or her instruction," Wainstein said. "I think that's a false dichotomy, but that's why people pushed back against the idea of more oversight."

For years, people working closely with athletics took advantage, and academic counselors for the football program even pushed Nyang'oro, the department chair, to get the so-called "paper classes" up and running again after Crowder retired in 2009. The semester following her retirement, the football team's average GPA dipped to 2.121, Wainstein found, the lowest in 10 years.

The investigation concluded there was more steering from advisers to the classes in football than basketball, where players found the classes more indirectly through "locker room advising."

Wainstein said his interviews revealed that basketball coach Roy Williams was "uncomfortable with clustering" in the African-American Studies department because of the optics that players were being steered toward that major. Early in his tenure at North Carolina, he asked his assistant coach in charge of academic matters and the basketball team's primary academic counselor not to steer players toward those classes.

Indianapolis Colts coach Chuck Pagano, who was North Carolina's defensive coordinator in 2007, was named in the report as one of the people associated with the program who refused to speak with Wainstein.

Until the release of this report, North Carolina administrators had maintained that this scandal was not athletic-centric but rather academic. Wainstein, however, found that athletes accounted for 47.4% of the enrollment in the fraudulent classes, a disproportionately high percentage given that they made up 4% of the student population. Of those, 50.9% were football players and 12.2% were men's basketball players.

Folt acknowledged Wednesday that this is now an athletic and academic scandal.

"I believe we now know what happened," she said "This investigation shows us that bad actions of a very few failed our students and faculty and staff and undermined our institution. It was an inexcusable betrayal of our values and our mission and our students' trust. The length of time this behavior went on and the number of people involved is really shocking. It was a wrongdoing that could have and should have been stopped much earlier."

Wainstein said his group reviewed more than 1.6 million documents and interviewed 126 people, including Crowder and Nyang'oro, who never spoke with previous university investigations because of a criminal inquiry that ended late last year.
​
The NCAA and the university released a joint statement:

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the NCAA enforcement staff continue to engage in an independent and cooperative effort to review information of possible NCAA rules violations as was announced earlier this year. The university provided the enforcement staff with a copy of the Wainstein Reports for its consideration. The information included in the Wainstein Reports will be reviewed by the university and enforcement staff under the same standards that are applied in all NCAA infractions cases. Due to rules put in place by the NCAA membership, neither the university nor the enforcement staff will comment on the substance of the report as it applies to possible NCAA rules violations.



http://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/index.ssf/2014/10/north_carolina_scandal_is_a_cautionary_tale_for_all_college_programs_--_including_rutgers_politi.html

North Carolina scandal is a cautionary tale for all college programs -- including Rutgers | Politi
By Steve Politi | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com 
October 23, 2014

The part that makes my head hurt is the PowerPoint presentation. You would think, if you were engaging in the systematic unraveling of the core values of a once-proud institution, you wouldn't need or want to explain what you were doing on a slideshow.

But no. North Carolina went with the PowerPoint. This is how two academic counselors explained to the football coaching staff that, because the ringleader of the most egregious college sports cheating scandal in recent memory was retiring, the days of no-show classes was over.

Debbie Crowder, the student services manager of the African-American Studies department, was retiring. So the counselors used the PowerPoint to explain how she cheated to give players a passing grade in the past:

We put them in classes that met degree requirements in which:
-- They didn't go to class
-- They didn't take notes, have to stay awake
-- They didn't have to meet with professors
-- They didn't have to pay attention or necessarily engage with the material
* AFAM/AFRI SEMINAR COURSES
-- 20-25 page papers on course topics
-- THESE NO LONGER EXIST!”

So, essentially, the only requirement was breathing. And even that seems like it could be avoided – how would anyone know if the students were alive in a class like that? The likely answer: If they could play sports, who cares?

This is just one of the revelations in a jaw-dropping report that was released this week in Chapel Hill, N.C., and if you're wondering what this has to do with Rutgers ... well, the answer is not much. I'm just an angry alum with a forum to rail on the university I attended, and I'm going to use it.

Maybe, if you're a college sports fan, you've become numb to scandals. Free tattoos. Payments to agents. Baylor once had a basketball coach try to cover up a murder, so it's easy to shrug off the idea of some “paper courses,” as they're being called at North Carolina, as nothing more than another rock on the NCAA's rubble pile.

That would be a mistake, because what happened at North Carolina exposes how easy it is for a proud institution to forfeit the one thing that matters the most – its reputation – in chasing a few precious victories.

This was not a single fixed test. Investigator Kenneth L. Wainstein found academic fraud that lasted nearly 20 years and included 188 classes. Half of the 3,100 students taking advantage of them were athletes, and in some cases, university employees were not only aware of the fraud but steered the players toward those classes.

They literally named the grade. “Did you say a D will do?” Crowder wrote to Jan Boxill in an e-mail about a women's basketball player who had apparently recycled an old paper. “Yes, a D will be fine; that’s all she needs,” Boxill replied.

Boxill, for the record, is director of the Parr Center for Ethics. Ethics!

I don't know what the NCAA should do about North Carolina. If you said the school should take down the championship banners in the Smith Center, or lose scholarships or be put on probation and all that stuff, I wouldn't argue.

Ultimately, UNC has already suffered a bigger loss. It has had its reputation damaged, its “brand” dragged through the mud. That's the deeply disturbing part, and that's the cautionary tale. The wins, the championships, none of that is more important than the institutional reputation.

“The bad actions of a very few and inaction of many more failed our students, faculty and staff and undermined our institution,” UNC chancellor Carol Folt said.

Rutgers has had an impeccable academic track record since Greg Schiano helped reshape the support system there. Officials like Scott Walker, executive director of academic support services for student athletes, have been integral in keeping it that way.

It's something Rutgers fans should think about when they're frustrated with a blowout loss in Columbus. It could be worse. It could be North Carolina.

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.



THE INVESTIGATION OF DEBORAH CROWDER:


http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/04/15/3787302/deborah-crowders-role-in-unc-scandal.html

Deborah Crowder's story could bring NCAA investigators to UNC
BY DAN KANE
April 15, 2014 

Correction: This story could have left the impression that UNC-Chapel Hill professor Reginald Hildebrand suspected prior to the discovery of an academic scandal that Deborah Crowder, the now-retired manager of UNC's African and Afro-American Studies department, was improperly helping athletes. Hildebrand says he didn't suspect anything until he read a university report on the matter.

When academic adviser Jonathan Weiler sat down with Deborah Crowder a decade ago, he knew football and basketball players at UNC-Chapel Hill weren’t showing up in his office for help on what classes to take as most other students did. He also knew that many of the athletes were seeking degrees offered by the African studies department that she had been running since its inception.

He ventured a comment about the athletes’ preference for that major. It brought an uneasy silence among the small group of advisers and departmental staff that unsettled him enough that he offered an emailed apology a short time later.

Crowder, the department manager, wrote back with a response that today is likely to be parsed as a new set of investigators try to determine her role in an academic scandal that spanned at least 14 years and potentially more than 200 classes. Many of those enrolled were athletes.

“I did worry a bit about what you said, fussed some and then got over it,” Crowder wrote. “It is no huge deal, really. We do have a fair number of athletes who are majors and many more who take our classes. By and large, I believe, that is because we try to treat them as regular students.”

That treatment included making room for them in dozens of lecture-style classes that never met and typically required one term paper that usually received a high grade. In some cases, no professor was involved; in others, students had a one-time meeting with the department chairman, Julius Nyang’oro.

Non-athletes also got into the classes, but the disproportionate numbers of athletes enrolled have caused many to suspect Crowder and Nyang’oro created at least some of the classes to help keep athletes eligible to play sports. Of the more than 4,200 enrollments in these confirmed or suspected no-show classes, nearly half were of athletes, with football and men’s basketball players leading the pack.

In the nearly three years since news of the scandal broke, Crowder has yet to say anything publicly about her role in the classes. But now she is emerging as a key witness in a new investigation set up by the university and the UNC system of the biggest academic scandal in the university’s history.

What she says could have ramifications for hundreds of wins and numerous championships by UNC’s athletic teams. If she says she helped create the classes so athletes struggling academically could stay eligible to play sports, her actions could trigger serious NCAA violations. If she can show she paid no attention to who sought to get into the classes, and simply helped anyone who showed up at her door, the NCAA might stay away.

Nyang’oro has been charged with a felony fraud count in the scandal because he took special summer pay for a class that never met. That 2011 class was filled with football players. His attorney, Bill Thomas of Durham, said Nyang’oro is innocent and will fight the charge.

Some of the information produced so far suggests Crowder acted outside of Nyang’oro’s knowledge in creating some of the classes. Nyang’oro had given her broad authority to run the department.

Link to basketball

What’s surprising to those who grew up with her is how someone who often sought to stay out of the limelight – a bookish teenager from Charlotte who dealt with tragedy at a young age – would take part in a broad scheme of academic misconduct.

“The whole thing seems incredibly weird to me,” said Tabitha Hall, a former high school classmate.

Crowder, 61, grew up in a one-story brick home in what was a rural crossroads in eastern Mecklenburg County, not far from UNC Charlotte. Her father, Marshall, was a secretary for a business equipment company; her mother, Dorothy, worked for the county tax office.

On Nov. 9, 1966, shortly after Deborah Crowder’s 14th birthday, her father died of a heart attack. He was 56.

“She continued to miss him every day of her life,” said Elizabeth Cruse, a close friend from the neighborhood, “because there’s something special about a father-daughter relationship versus a mother-daughter relationship.”

Independence High School was entering its third year when Crowder enrolled as a sophomore. She stood just over 5 feet tall, with long curly black hair she often straightened, which was the style back then.

The school was much smaller in those days and had a reputation for cutting-edge instruction, including courses known as independent studies. Such courses there, however, meant rigorous research, said Jane Barnes, a graduate of the school and now a Cumberland County school district administrator.

Crowder’s goal was to gain acceptance to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While UNC was a fit for her academically, she was also a big fan of Carolina’s basketball team, which by then had become a national power under coach Dean Smith.

Crowder majored in English at UNC, and graduated in 1975. Four years later, she landed a clerical position with the university. She was the secretary and sole employee for a professor leading a program in African and Afro-American studies.

The job did not pay well, starting at less than $10,000 a year. But she was back at the university she loved – and working for a program that some athletes embraced.

One of them was Warren Martin, a 6-foot-11 center from Axton, Va., who entered the university in 1981 on a basketball scholarship. They struck up a relationship that continues to this day. They live next door to each other in a two-condo building near Pittsboro.

“He started hanging around her office, and he became a permanent fixture, just hanging around her office at times, kind of like boys with any girls,” Cruse said. “That’s the way it was.”

Martin, now a teacher at McDougle Middle School in Chapel Hill, was also a catch for a fervent supporter of the basketball team. Over the years, Crowder would have special access to basketball games through Martin, and she made many friends in the athletic department, including Smith’s secretary, Kay Thomas, and Burgess McSwain, a longtime academic adviser and tutor to the basketball team who died in 2004.

McSwain’s father died in 2008, and the will indicated Crowder was in line to receive $100,000 and a set of Hummel figurines in exchange for taking care of his dogs, but Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall said the money and valuables went elsewhere.

Despite Crowder’s athletic connections, UNC officials and a UNC-sanctioned investigation determined she was not specifically aiding athletes with the bogus classes. Former Gov. Jim Martin, who led that investigation, said Crowder was a kind of “Lady Liberty” for all students, letting into the classes anyone who asked.

Crowder’s friends say Martin’s characterization fits her personality – always seeking ways to help others. When Crowder couldn’t make her 40th annual high school reunion, she quietly gave her ticket to another graduate that she knew was struggling financially.

“She’s a really good person, and she’s always thought of others,” Cruse said.

Favoring athletes

UNC correspondence and an interview with a former adviser not affiliated with the academic support program for athletes show the advisers sent Crowder students in need of a class to graduate or to keep their full-time status. But the advisers did not show the level of awareness about the classes that the athletes’ tutoring program had.

Other evidence indicates Crowder wasn’t willing to help everyone get into the classes. One email suggested Crowder was struggling to manage all the students enrolling in independent studies classes and sought to ramp them down. An academic adviser said in the email that Crowder was concerned knowledge of the independent studies had “sort of gotten into the frat circuit.”

Two professors in the African studies department said in correspondence that they suspected Crowder favored athletes. Kenneth Janken told a special faculty review that Crowder was an athletics “booster.” Reginald Hildebrand, in an essay titled “Anatomy of a Scandal,” chastised The N&O and other media over their coverage of the scandal, but he also suspected Crowder had overstepped her authority to help athletes in ways that should have been called out by athletic officials.

“Over a thirty year period, our former department administrator accumulated far too much power, in part because the former chair was often disengaged,” Hildebrand wrote. “She used that power to become a major supplier of academic wiggle room, but she also helped all kinds of students in legitimate ways.”

Mary Willingham, the former learning specialist for athletes who blew the whistle on the no-show classes, said the academic support program for athletes used Crowder routinely to enroll athletes in the classes. When an athlete struggled academically or would be away from the university for long periods of time, such as a baseball player participating in a summer league, they contacted Crowder to get the athlete in a no-show class.

Crowder’s 2004 email to Weiler, the former academic adviser, suggests she sought to help those in need, but she particularly defended athletes. Weiler, who left advising in 2005 and is now a professor, said he knew nothing about the no-show classes until the scandal was exposed.

“Some of all of our students come in for advising, or cause us problems, or are wonderful, or whatever, but sometimes I think the athletes get too much scrutiny in relation to the average student population,” Crowder wrote. “That being said, we try to accommodate their schedules, just as we do the single moms, or the students who have to work two jobs to stay in school.”

By the time Crowder retired in September 2009, the department had grown to 22 faculty members, nearly all of whom taught legitimate classes and said they were unaware of the no-show classes. University investigations found the frequency of no-show classes declined after Crowder retired, and at that point no basketball players were taking them.

On Aug. 7, newly hired Chancellor Carol Folt wrote a letter to Crowder seeking to talk to her about “the problems” that were in the department. Her lawyer responded in a Sept. 5 email that Crowder wouldn’t meet. UNC forwarded the response to the NCAA’s enforcement division four days later.

Roughly three weeks ago, Crowder spent a day in a local legal office explaining her role in the scandal to Kenneth Wainstein, a former high-level U.S. Justice Department official who is leading the new probe. He has also handled a probe into NCAA misconduct.

Her attorney, Brian Vick, said Crowder “is a kindhearted person. She’s a really good person who just really hasn’t deserved any of this.”

THE STORY SO FAR

In 2011, an academic transcript obtained by The N&O of a former football player prompted a UNC investigation that found lecture-style classes in the African studies department that never met. A second investigation found more than 200 confirmed or suspected classes and more than 500 confirmed or suspected unauthorized grade changes that stretch back to the mid-1990s.

UNC officials have said two people are to blame: former department chairman Julius Nyang’oro, who was forced to retire and now faces a criminal fraud charge; and his former department manager, Deborah Crowder, who retired in 2009. But records obtained and interviews of others connected to the scandal suggest the tutoring program for athletes knew the classes were suspect but used them to help keep athletes eligible. Athletes made up nearly half of the enrollments.

Since Jan. 1, the scandal has drawn sustained national coverage, leading to a new investigation led by Kenneth Wainstein. He has been tasked with trying to find out how the fraud began and why it went unchecked for more than a decade. He has not been given a timetable to complete his work.

UNC: NO PHOTO

Typically, government photos of employees, past or present, are public record. The News & Observer and other news organizations receive them routinely from state and local agencies upon request.

But UNC would not share its photo of retiree Deborah Crowder. Officials there claimed it was a personnel record, calling it her “official employee identification photo.”

State law identifies personnel records as those related to an employee’s “application, selection, promotion, demotion, transfer, leave, salary, contract for employment, benefits, suspension, performance evaluation, disciplinary actions, and termination.” It also says that information in a personnel file such as “home address, social security number, medical history, personal financial data, marital status, dependents, and beneficiaries” are private.

What a public employee looks like doesn’t fit any of those categories, but UNC officials still would not release the photo.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/04/15/3787302/deborah-crowders-role-in-unc-scandal.html#storylink=cpy


Here ends this blog, but I will clip news articles when I see them in the future for my daily news blog "A Day At A Time," at website lucywarner2013.blogspot.com/.