The Republican Poverty Plan


It's been a while since I talked to conservatives and I never listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, so I haven't heard anything as baldly stated as this lately. I used to hear it in Thomasville, NC from some people, including my husband's family. They used to talk about “Jigaboos,” “welfare queens,” and “bums.” They also talked about the conniving and dishonest nature of Jews. Interestingly, they were not rich, but barely making it financially. Bum was the word at that time for the homeless, who were present even in those days. It was believed that they just didn't want to work.

There are more homeless people now, of course due to the deinstitutionalisation of mental patients. Both political parties have been involved in the deinstitutionalization movement, and the goal was to substitute outpatient care for permanent hospitalization. It was good for many patients, but disastrous for those who simply can't cope alone, and won't or can't remember to take their medicine. For those people, it's like putting an Alzheimer's patient out on the street to care for himself.

Too many whites, rich and poor, have to look down on other people to feel okay about themselves, so they foster these images of poverty and the inferiority of other races and religious groups. The following statement says it all: “Payne, who has a long history of suggesting that the poor live in comfort, that our social safety net keeps people in poverty, and that there needs to be more 'stigma' surrounding food stamps, represents the conservative id surrounding the issue of poverty.”




http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/07/30/mock-the-poor-the-conservative-media-solution-t/195125

Mock The Poor -- The Conservative Media Solution To Poverty
Blog ›››  ››› ARI RABIN-HAVT
July 30, 2013 7:21 AM EDT

As fast food workers in 7 cities walked the picket line fighting for better wages and working conditions the conservative media turned its focus towards a solution to help lift up our working men and women out of poverty -- mock them.

To respond to the day long strike, Fox trotted out Richard Berman, failing to identify him as a highly paid consultant to the food and beverage industry. He proceeded to threaten fast food workers, claiming if they demanded incomes allowing them to live above the poverty line, the only solution would be to replace them with iPads.

On Your World with Neil Cavuto, Fox Business's Charles Payne claimed that the striking workers' demand for a living wage was akin to rewarding "mediocrity."

From an air conditioned studio in Rockefeller Center, the handsomely compensated Fox contributor asserted that a wage of $15 per hour earned spending countless hours on your feet without a break, in front of a hot stove, serving hundreds of customers, would be "cursing" those workers, ridding them of the impetus to "get better," "go to college," or "improve" their lot in life.

At the luxurious wage of $15 per hour minimum wage workers would spend their days "play[ing] video games" and "hav[ing] large families."

Payne, who has a long history of suggesting that the poor live in comfort, that our social safety net keeps people in poverty, and that there needs to be more "stigma" surrounding food stamps, represents the conservative id surrounding the issue of poverty.

While 4 in 5 Americans will "struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives," the right believes the solution to all of their problems is scorn.

The Bostwick Building In Jacksonville, FL
Jaguar Murals
Artist Jim Draper
November 22, 2014



Jim Draper is the painter of one of two murals which I saw every morning as my bus went past the Bostwick Building at the intersection of Main and Bay Streets. The mural is painted on window boarding which has been there since the 1980's. The paintings are of our football team's mascot the Jaguar. This jaguar, because it isn't painted on the outer wall of the building but on the window arches, appears to be crouching inside with its face peering out at the passersby, mouth open and eyes intense. The artwork is so realistic it looks like the cat will jump out at any moment.

Now that the building is due to be renovated, the new owners will have to remove the window boards. I hope they will be placed together at some location so that the artwork will be preserved as well as the historic building. The ideal place for that would be on the inner walls of the building once it is repaired and opened to the public. The proposed use for the Bostwick Building has not been published so far. A restaurant has been suggested. That would make a wonderful setting for a restaurant, with the dramatic painting hung on the walls.

Reproductions of Draper's paintings are available online and one website shows 6 others which are canvas paintings. The images are mainly of Jacksonville's wild nature scenes and native animals, painted with the same photographic style realism as the jaguar. More of his work is available for viewing at CoRK Arts District, Jacksonville, FL I do love painting that is so realistic I am drawn inexorably into its world of beauty.




Preserving Downtown History: Why We Must Save the Bostwick Building - See more at: http://downtownjacksonville.org/blog/2012/10/03/preserving-downtown-history-why-we-must-save-the-bostwick-building/#sthash.VjsJfi56.dpuf

Jacksonville is in danger of losing one of its icons. The Bostwick Building, or as many Jacksonville residents know it, the Jaguar Building at 101 E. Bay St. is slated for possible demolition. This means that visitors coming into the city from the Main Street Bridge heading north could see a hole. An empty lot. A missing tooth in the urban landscape. Vacant since the early 1980s and home to the iconic jaguar mural by local artist, Jim Draper, the building has deteriorated significantly over the years.

In August 2012, the building’s owners applied for a demolition permit. We at Downtown Vision, and many other downtown residents and property owners, believe the building is important to our downtown landscape and should be saved from demolition. Built in 1902, and the first building permitted after the Great Fire, the Bostwick Building, originally know as the Guaranty Trust and Savings Building, is eligible for designation as a Local Historic Landmark. On September 27, the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission (JHPC) reviewed this eligibility and issued an advisory recommendation that the structure receive historic designation, thus preventing its demolition.

The City of Jacksonville is now preparing a report on the historical significance of the building, which will be heard at the JHPC meeting on October 24, 2012. The building has historical significance for a number of reasons:

• It is in a prominent location, at the entry to Downtown from the Main Street Bridge heading north.
• It was the first building permitted following the Great Fire in 1901.
• It is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
• It made the Jacksonville Historical Society’s “12 Worth Saving” list.
• It is located in perhaps the most intact block of historic buildings that exists Downtown today.
• It once housed the office of Henry Klutho, a noted architect who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright and designed many iconic Downtown buildings, including the St. James Building.

If the JHPC finds that the building meets its criteria for designation as a historical landmark, a public hearing will be scheduled and City Council will take up the matter.
 
Please continue to follow this blog as we share ways for our local residents to get involved and have a voice on preserving and revitalizing Downtown Jacksonville.




http://jacksonville.com/business/2014-07-21/story/dixie-egg-co-purchases-historic-bostwick-building-downtown-jacksonville

Dixie Egg Co. purchases historic Bostwick Building in downtown Jacksonville
By David Bauerlein 
Mon, Jul 21, 2014

The owner of the Dixie Egg Co. placed the winning $165,100 bid Monday for the historic Bostwick Building and said he will restore the long-vacant building that stands on a high-profile corner in downtown.

Jacques Klempf previously talked about turning the building into a restaurant, and he has some experience in upscale dining — he worked with partners to open Ovinte at St. Johns Town Center in 2012, followed by purchasing Bistro Aix in San Marco this month.

One of those partners, Chad Munsey, said in an interview last week that at some point the group might open a steak house.

The century-old Bostwick Building is located at Bay and Ocean streets, which is the joint of The Elbow, a collection of restaurants, bars, clubs, shops and art galleries spanning several blocks.

“Our goal is to restore the building so the community can enjoy a piece of our city’s history and to promote economic development in downtown Jacksonville,” Klempf said in a statement issued by his office.

His office said he wouldn’t go beyond the statement Monday in terms of his specific plans for the two-story building, which originally was a bank building.

Chris Hand, chief of staff for Mayor Alvin Brown, called Klempf’s winning bid for the Bostwick Building a “big deal for downtown redevelopment,” made possible by the administration, City Council and Downtown Investment Authority working together.

The building, which stands out because of the jaguar mural painted on its side, faced potential demolition when its former owners, the Bostwick family, said the structure was too far gone to make renovation financially viable.

The City Council refused to grant the Bostwicks a demolition permit and the city filed a foreclosure lawsuit to recover $71,000 in fines assessed for code violations. A judge granted the city’s request for a fast-track ruling on the lawsuit, clearing the way for the foreclosure auction Monday.

The city needed the winning bid to be at least $78,774 to cover the fines owed to the city and the city’s attorney fees related to the lawsuit.

Klempf and business partners in Ovinte had a contract to buy the building last year from the Bostwicks, but that deal fell through. Klempf said in May 2013 the building was at a “great location” and renovating it for use as a restaurant “may even create a domino effect” for restoring other downtown buildings.

It’s not clear whether Klemp’s partners in Ovinte and Bistro Aix will also be involved in the Bostwick Building. The winning bid Monday was submitted by Foodonics Equities LLC, which is related to Dixie Egg Co.

Aundra Wallace, CEO of the Downtown Investment Authority, said the agency is “extremely excited” about Klempf’s purchase and looks forward to working with him on the property.

David Bauerlein: (904) 359-4581




http://www.eujacksonville.com/story2.php?storyid=2453

JIM DRAPER nature to nurture
Jim Draper Paints Pre-Ponce de Leon Florida at His CoRK Studio in Riverside
by JON BOSWORTH
published: January 3, 2012

“Art communities are like animal hoarders. It’s a lot like a cat lady,” says Jim Draper while laughing at the suggestion. “There are good parts and there are significant challenges,” he continues as he describes the new CoRK Artist Community from his own CoRK studio.

Perhaps one of Jacksonville’s most celebrated artists for the caliber of his paintings, the weight of his vision, and his active role in the community, Draper is widely known for his impressionistic palms, rich riverscapes, and even sublime portraits of farm animals. He is also known as an advocate for indigenous Jacksonville culture. He helps local musicians stage shows in the city’s beautiful and under-utilized spaces, he supports up-and-coming artists, ushering them into Jacksonville’s larger art worlds, and generally supports people making art. He is that rare case of a commercially successful artist that makes his living with his painting while creating uncompromising work rich with texture and meaning.

And this isn’t his first rodeo. Draper has been part of Riverside’s art scene for decades. He’s seen these art communities come and go over the years. CoRK, however, is unlike its predecessors in many ways, one of which is that it is home to an artist such as Jim Draper.

“It’s nice having people around. I don’t have to have saws and stuff; if I need something like that I can just run down to Donald. Or Dolf can weld, he has a welder. You can get stuff fixed fast. It’s kind of like ‘it takes a village.’ But it actually works.”

Draper’s favorite aspect of his studio at CoRK is space. It’s a vast open space with giant walls. He has works-in-progress hanging on these walls that are more than seven feet tall and fifteen feet long. CoRK has allowed him the privacy and space to immerse himself in his work.

How’s this for immersion: When you were sitting around a tree unwrapping gifts or sleeping late this Christmas, Draper was kayaking around the southern tip of Florida through mangroves and hammocks and brush. He was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico and climbing over key islands with his camera, capturing Florida’s natural environment the ways he likes to portray it, absent of humanity.

“I try to leave any references to human beings out, let that be the unknown. References to humans are so obvious. I think they are clearly absent. There’s a human quality, which gets you to the surreal more than the real. These elements (pointing at cypress trees in a painting) become the characters instead of the people being the characters.”

Draper’s dripping-wet riverscapes have always appeared dreamlike. Their vibrancy and glow gives them a surreal quality. However, when he showed me the photographs of his adventure kayaking along the tip of our peninsula, the dramatic sunsets, the solitary dead tree standing alone in the shallows, the untouched tree-lined beaches splashed in the light of sunrise, I realized that his work is less surreal than I thought. Those vivid explosions of color and complexity also come through in his pictures. He’s conveying a sort of life on his canvas that isn’t outside of our window, it’s deep in our woods at daybreak; it’s only apparent when you are wet up to your knees, or drifting silently in a canoe. It is dreamlike. He is representing it well.

This most recent exploration is just one of a series of such expeditions all over the state. Draper is collecting images and sketches of the amazing diversity of Florida’s natural environments for a large upcoming show, which he will call “The Feast of Flowers.”

“It’s about the five-hundredth anniversary of Ponce de Leon, but it’s not glorifying colonialism or imperialism, it’s more about exposing the blatant consumerism of the Feast of Flowers – that Western idea of eating everything you can get your hands on. So this show is about Florida before 1513.”

Certainly, getting out in the water helps him immerse himself in the subject matter, but there is more to discover up close than even the grand imagery.

“The immersion informs, not so much visually, but it’s a background to the visual. If you’re not careful with this stuff, you can wind up copying pictures out of magazines. The innocuous pretty picture is not something I’m interested in. I mean, it’s fine, but I’d rather it be about something a little more significant.”

He finds that significance in the tiny details.

“More than anything, you pick up these subtle little metaphors. I’m interested in these visual metaphors and the relationships in nature... The name of the big painting I’m going to do is Sacrificial Leaves. The mangrove will pick a leaf on every branch, it picks one leaf and sends all of the salt to that leaf and the leaf will die so the rest of the plant can have clean water. I like that idea as a metaphor.”

Because Draper will be spending the coming year putting together this ambitious portrait of Florida’s natural environment, he has no shows or events planned any time soon. Keep a lookout in this publication for news about where and when the Feast of Flowers exhibition will show. In the meantime, if you are craving an artful experience, Jim Draper might suggest you get out into some natural spaces and experience it first-hand.

“You miss a lot when you keep building a shell around yourself. There are some things you can’t buy at Wal-Mart.” 




http://stellersgallery.com/artists/bio/jim-draper

Jim Draper

Born 1953 in Kosciusko, Mississippi
Lives and works in Jacksonville, Florida
Education
1978 University of Georgia, MFA
1974 University of Mississippi, BFA
Teaching Experience
2008-Now
Adjunct Instructor, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL
1997-1998
Installation and Art Handling, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, FL
Director and Curator, Kent Gallery, Kent Campus, Florida Community College of Jacksonville, FL
Professional Service
2012 Strategic Planning, the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL
2010 Long Range Planning Team, Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL

The Demise Of Social Security – Is It Inevitable?
By Lucy Warner, November 1, 2014


If the Social Security system ever does fall apart as Republicans keep saying it's going to, but HUD housing is still being financed, HUD rents will become smaller and a citizen will become eligible for food stamps, emergency cash and Medicaid. The main probable cause that would result in the Social Security system going broke would be if the Republicans were to succeed in allowing those currently working and contributing through their payroll taxes, to withdraw from the Social Security system and set up retirement funds separately instead. That would eliminate the SS income source, and cause havoc. So much for Republican ideas. Their sole goal is to reduce taxes on the rich and the size of our government, even if poor people literally starve. To me that's a very purist, very philosophical goal which would benefit only the rich. I've always been pragmatic instead of idealistic, and generous rather than miserly. Even on my small monthly income I give a few dollars to several organizations each month, just because they need help. That's because I want to, and because I think that's what I should do.

Republicans recently have started calling our Social Security system a Ponzi scheme, but it works as long as people have free access to jobs, because payroll taxes are the only source of income for the SS fund. Joblessness, especially if it continues to grow due to automation and businesses shipping their jobs overseas, is a huge problem which could cripple SS. Of course, many of the wealthy don't have to pay into Social Security even if they do have income from a business because of the ridiculous tax cap, and their income taxes also are lower now due to George W. Bush's tax cut for the wealthy. They can afford to pay more – not less – and there's no good reason for people with incomes over $117,000 to have what is now a very low income cutoff for payroll taxes, considering the amount that many of them actually make – CEOs especially. An article a few months ago on the amount that too many CEOs make, as opposed to their employees, was really shocking. I hate to sound like a real socialist, but that should be illegal.

There are moves in Congress by Democrats now to raise or even eliminate this “cap” on SS taxes enjoyed by CEOs or others including self-employed individuals who are subject to SS taxes. If that happens, the highly paid doctors, lawyers, CEOs and market managers will cry foul, but the Social Security system will have a sizable increase in its funding, so the unfortunately very numerous “boomers” will not have their benefits cut as much. That change would make our system much more fair. The Social Security system is a Ponzi scheme that works well as long as everybody pays into it. It's fair. to my way of looking at it, to require the rich to pay a share, because they will then be eligible to receive benefits upon retirement, though their benefits are “means tested.” See this Fortune article on that subject – “http://fortune.com/2012/02/29/cut-social-security-for-the-rich-we-already-have/” .

John Q Public, even if he does belong to the Tea Party philosophy, does not generally have enough income to set up a retirement plan for himself that will be sufficient to last until he dies, especially if he encounters heavy medical expenses or a tornado destroys his huge house. When those individual retirement plans run out, the retiree will be bankrupt, as medical bills and housing costs come along. The Republicans would say that is just okay, because if the worker had scrimped and saved even more all his life – and of course made sufficient investments in stocks, real estate, or new business development – he would have ended up with enough to retire wealthy. I disagree on that assumption, too, because most people don't know enough about business to really get rich on stocks, etc. It's another form of gambling, and many lose their shirts on the stock market. Many of them invest in some new business venture and then go bankrupt because the business fails.

The market inevitably punishes wrong doers with dire poverty, without a social safety net, even if they have made an honest effort to succeed. And that's just okay to many Republicans, as long as they are not numbered among the failures. To me, it is a mark of an ethical government that the basic needs of all citizens will be met. Of course who defines “basic” has to be negotiated. To lots of Republicans, anyone who is unable to manage his finances in such a way that he becomes rich, deserves to die of malnutrition and live in squalor.

Our social safety net which includes the Social Security system does give guaranteed income with no punishment for factors like drug addiction, with no “work houses” as a requirement to receive their money, though there have been Republicans who advocate welfare payments be based on work. I don't know how they plan to do that unless they would set up a system of government jobs like Roosevelt did with the Work Projects Administration; WPA. Too many of those who don't work today have tried endlessly to find work, and have been unable to do so.

Our current Welfare system includes programs of several kinds for the very poor which takes over before they are at retirement age, though the money is not distributed with a lavish hand. Since Bill Clinton those who receive Welfare and who are physically and mentally able to work, are required to sign up for work after taking job training programs. The number of people who actually are hired will depend on the market, of course.

Any one who politically challenges that basically low guaranteed income called welfare, deserves to be voted out of office, and I will continue to try my best to do that. And those who would eliminate the graduated Income Tax, as some Republicans do tout, who would give ever increasing budgets to the military, work to prevent business regulations to reduce the CO2 in our atmosphere, and other such cynical and uncaring moves, are equally unethical and hopefully will be voted out of office.

Our social safety net which includes the Social Security system does give guaranteed income with no punishment for factors like drug addiction, with no “work houses” as a requirement to receive the money – or a reinstatement of indentured labor as one Tea Partier recently suggested -- though there have been Republicans who advocate welfare payments be based on work. I don't know how they plan to do that unless they would set up a system of government jobs like Roosevelt did with the Work Projects Administration; WPA. Our current Welfare system includes programs of several kinds for the very poor which take over before they are at retirement age, though the money is not distributed with a lavish hand. Since Bill Clinton those who receive Welfare and who are physically and mentally able to work, are required to sign up for work after taking job training programs. The number of people who actually are hired will depend on the market, of course.

Any one who politically challenges that basically low guaranteed income deserves to be voted out of office, and I will continue to try my best to do that. And those who would eliminate the graduated Income Tax, as some Republicans do tout, who would give ever increasing budgets to the military, work to prevent business regulations to reduce the CO2 in our atmosphere, and other such cynical and uncaring moves, are equally unethical and hopefully will be voted out of office.

See the following website for information on the Social Security tax Cap that prevents the wealthy from having to pay into the payroll tax system, even though they have huge salaries or pay themselves a salary from their own prosperous businesses, on which they should have to pay taxes for the Social Security retirement program. If the cap were removed the SS system would last longer. Several Democrats are working toward that goal at this time.


http://www.ssa.gov/planners/maxtax.htm

Benefits Planner: Maximum Taxable Earnings (1937 - 2015)

When you have wages or self-employment income that is covered by Social Security, you pay Social Security taxes each year up to a maximum amount that is set by law. That amount has changed frequently over the years.

For 2014, the maximum amount of taxable earnings was $117,00. In 2015, the maximum amount of taxable earnings is $118,500.

The maximum earnings for each year since Social Security taxes were first collected in 1937 are shown below. If you:

earned more than the maximum in any year but had only one job, the amount we use will be just the maximum amount.
had more than one job, the total that is recorded may be more than the maximum. However, we only use the maximum amount to calculate your benefit estimates.

Note: When you have more than one job in a year, each of your employers must withhold Social Security taxes from your wages without regard to what the other employers may have withheld. You may then end up with total Social Security taxes withheld that exceed the maximum.

Jesus The Original Marxist
Huffington Post on Republicans and Christianity



I have always thought that the comments in this article are the true nature of Jesus, but I've never heard it put this well before. I hope you enjoy reading this.


Sorry Republicans But Jesus Was a Marxist
By Dan Arel
October 03, 2014

There has been a lot of discussion recently about Jesus and his political views. Putting aside the debate about Jesus' existence for a moment, let's assume for this article he did exist, and even was the Son of God. I want to look at the Christian version of Jesus of Nazareth and see if he was, as some have claimed, a Marxist.

If you have read the Bible, you then know much about the story of Jesus and how he helped the sick and poor, asking for nothing in return. According to CJ Werleman,writing for AlterNet:

The Bible makes it clear Jesus was a Marxist before Marxism had a name. He distrusted the rich. "It's easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter Heaven," forewarned Jesus. The credo of the Beatitudes demonstrated Jesus saw the world in terms of class struggle. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth."

Marxism, of course, is an economic system that puts people first. Unlike capitalism, which is profit-based, Marxism would attempt to create an egalitarian society in which everyone can be prosperous -- a goal that is not unlike that of Jesus.

Reza Aslan, an author and religious scholar who also shares this similar view when discussing "prosperity preachers" like Joel Osteen (who own an $11 million home) told The Huffington Post:

"If there's one thing you can really zero in on when it comes to Jesus' preachings -- I mean the historical Jesus -- was his absolute hatred of wealth," Aslan said. "This wasn't a man who was neutral about it. Jesus wasn't about equality. His preaching wasn't that the rich and the poor should meet in the middle. That's not what he preached. What he preached was that those who have wealth, that wealth will be taken away. Those who are poor, they shall be the inheritors of the earth."

He followed this up by saying that Jesus' teachings are "as close to Marxism as it gets."

How then can the Republican Party, the party that aligns itself as closely as it can with Christianity and the Christian Bible, be so against Marxism or any other kind of social welfare or wealth equality programs?

It may make sense that they may reject Marxism itself as Marx advocated for the elimination of religion saying, "The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion."

Yet socialism itself does not require the elimination of religion and actual socialist organizations outright defend the freedom of religion as a fundamental right.

Yet Werleman looked at the data in a YouGov poll that showed:

[...] Only 18 percent of Republicans believe Jesus would support higher taxes on the rich; taxes that benefit the funding of the common good - schools, hospitals, and safety nets for those the capitalist machine leaves downtrodden. (Sixty-three percent of Democrats believe Jesus would support raising taxes on the rich.)

That seems to imply only 18 percent of Republicans have even the slightest idea about what Jesus taught.

Republicans have fought to bring an end to government funded food programs, to end funding to broader healthcare coverage, women's health clinics, public education, educational programing and all sorts of programs that are used for the betterment of society, all while voting over and over again to protect the wealth of the top one percent of the nation.

Jesus was clearly a Marxist, not by name, but by ideology. He sought tirelessly to end poverty, to feed and house the needy and to heal those in need, and as Werleman noted on his recent appearance on Ring of Fire, Jesus did all of this without asking for a copay first.

The Republican claim to be doing any of their work in the name of God, Jesus or Christianity is an outright lie. They are banking on the fact that the majority of their members are clueless about what is inside the Bible and rely on highly conservative church leaders to give churchgoers a skewed and misleading image of Jesus and Christianity.

The Republican Party has learned to use religion as the sheep-herding tool it was created to be.

Fifty Greatest Teachers From History
By Eric Westervelt
NPR, October 29, 2014



This is the first of a year long series being explored by NPR. I may miss some of the articles, but I will catch as many of them as I can. I have included a number of the reader comments, as I think the comments are often as interesting as the article. I can't wait to find out who the other great teachers are, since I can only think of Socrates, Plato, Jesus and Confucius.


Photograph – Seventh grade students respond to teacher Tim Ogburn's questions about a Japanese creation myth. Their school, Black Pine Circle, in Berkeley, Calif., follows the Socratic method.

Today, NPR Ed kicks off a year-long series: 50 Great Teachers.

We're starting this celebration of teaching with Socrates, the superstar teacher of the ancient world. He was sentenced to death more than 2,400 years ago for "impiety" and "corrupting" the minds of the youth of Athens.

But Socrates' ideas helped form the foundation of Western philosophy and the scientific method of inquiry. And his question-and-dialogue based teaching style lives on in many classrooms as the Socratic method.

I went to Oakland Technical High School to see it in action.

It's the first period of the morning and student Annelise Eeckman is sparring with teacher Maryann Wolfe about Social Security. They get into the roller coaster nature of the U.S. stock market and the question of what role the market should play, if any, in workers' retirement plans.

"It's not influencing me" Wolfe says.

"You're not retired currently," Eeckman counters.

"But I have stock," Wolfe says. "You know what happened Thursday and Friday right? Friday it started going back up again yesterday it went up a little bit more."

"And what if tomorrow it dips?" Eeckman says.

"Well, yeah, but you depend on one day?"

In this 12th grade Advanced Placement American government class, students are not just encouraged — they're expected — to question the teacher ... and each other.

That's at the heart of the Socratic method that's come down to us from the streets of Athens: dialogue-based critical inquiry. The goal here is to focus on the text, ideas and facts — not just opinions — and to dig deeper through discussion.

On this particular Tuesday morning, students are tackling the history of third parties in American politics. They're poring over the platforms of past candidates, including Ross Perot, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan.

"I'm just trying to figure out what the Republicans must be thinking. What Pat Buchanan must be thinking," says Wolfe as she leans on her lectern.

"Well if we look at the group of people that the Republicans tend to focus their opinions on, they're usually of the more wealthy classes," one student says.

Senior Jonah Oderberg confidently pushes back on the idea of school vouchers, which Wolfe is defending.
"If you have that high-enough income to afford that private education," says Oderberg, "that should be coming out of your own pocket. There's already adequate public schools."

"So you want me to pay double?" asks Wolfe, smiling as she walks closer to Oderberg's desk in the back of the room.

"Um, no" Oderberg says. The class laughs.

"Sounds like it," Wolfe counters and turns back to the front of the class.

'The Complexity of The Issues'

This is good classroom jousting.

Ok, one student is falling asleep.

But everyone else is wide awake and into the discussion.

"I think the Socratic Method means that you're going to have a whole bunch of ideas floating to the surface," says Wolfe, who helped build this school's Socratic seminar program, which is part of a national Paideia program that encourages the Socratic method.

"I want them to see the complexity of the issues. I believe the students really learn that way. Because they have to speak, they have to be engaged in what we're trying to learn."

For Wolfe, the Socratic method at its core means getting students to actually listen to each other and to differing opinions. It's been her main teaching tool during her nearly three decades in the classroom.

"Maybe we won't find exact truths in this class," she says. "But we will at least look at all possibilities and they will have a truth right at that moment. And the moment comes when they have to stand up and debate it. When they have to write an essay about it. They have to take a side."

As part of the class, Wolfe requires students to get involved with a local political campaign, ballot measure or issue. Senior Sierra Robbins is volunteering for a local effort to boost the minimum wage ... which she says has changed her views about the power of civic engagement and the role of government.

"It felt so distant and too big to be changed," Robbins says. "And I went out and talked to people and it felt really different. It felt like you could really do something."

'Critical Dialogue'

Socrates didn't write anything down. And details of his life remain largely unknown. Many of his ideas, and life as a teacher and philosopher, are known largely through the writings of his best student, Plato, in his Dialogues.

But we do know that Socrates — the man and myth — valued reasoned, logical oral arguments that sought truth through probing discourse.

Today you can call Wolfe's Oakland classes Socratic. But maybe this is just what good teaching looks like: an engaged, passionate teacher facilitating a critical dialogue and acting as a kind of intellectual coach. Not a teacher merely lecturing or teaching to a test.

I asked 17-year-old Maddie Ahlers what she's gotten out of the program.

"I think that the Socratic method has to be a part of good teaching because it's one thing to write an essay or be able to take a test," Ahlers says. "But later in life you're gonna have to be able to articulate your own views and say verbally what you think about an issue or anything you believe."

Black Pine Circle

At Oakland Tech, Socrates lives on mainly in its AP classes and seminars. At some other schools, he is literally everywhere.
At Black Pine Circle, a private school in Berkeley, Socrates' stenciled face peers out at students from many of the walls and hallways.

"Now remember, in the inner circle we don't need to raise hands," sixth- and seventh-grade teacher Tim Ogburn tells his students. "Let's just try to have a conversation. Outer circle for right now, I just want you guys listening."

Every class is imbued with Socratic style, and the pedagogy includes regular Socratic seminars. (Ok, Socrates likely skips gym class)

"When you hear people tell a story it kind of gives you an idea of who they are" says one seventh grader in Ogburn's class. Students sit in semi-circular rows discussing a Japanese creation myth. One circle is tasked with talking while another is supposed to just listen — and think.

Ogburn's trying to get students to look beyond the basics: that the myth was part of a pre-scientific society trying to explain the world.

"So inner circle tell me, how is this story about balance?"

When done right, Ogburn says, he is facilitating a real dialogue. It's a method he hopes his students can use to approach lifelong learning as well as life itself.

"The Socratic method forces us to take a step back from that and ask questions like, What's going on here? What does this possibly mean?" Ogburn says. "What's important? What's less important? What might be motivating this person to say this?"

Head of School John Carlstrom agrees. "What we're trying to teach kids is to ask the question, 'What makes you say that?' " he says.

"I think that the best scientists and mathematicians — that's the question they're asking in all of their work: 'What makes us say that? What gives us this idea?' "

In the eighth grade, students are expected to take charge. In English class, teacher Chris Chun sits to the side and largely stays quiet while eighth grader Alexander Blau leads a small-group discussion on George Orwell's classic dystopian novel,Animal Farm.

Another group silently listens while a third group will offer critical feedback.

"Does anybody here know what 'beatifically' means and could you guess it based on the context?" Blau asks the group. "Tommy, do you think you have an idea?"

After the discussion, teacher Chun asks the class how they did. The other students comment on the discussion. One student suggests Blau shouldn't have let another student, David, take over as the leader. Then the groups switch, and another student-led discussion begins.

"We really remind our teachers that what we're trying to get at is the process of learning for learning's sake," Carlstroem says. "Let's not make this all about learning to gain information but to learn how to learn. I think that's when the democratic process comes through in all this."

Start 'Em Young

At this K-8 school it's never too early to start a Socratic seminar. At Black Pine Circle, kindergarteners start with a Question of the Day. On the day I visited, first graders were doing basic addition — as a group — using dominos.

"I think of it as the teacher doesn't have the one true answer, the class constructs knowledge together," says first-grade teacher Leila Sinclaire. "They need to learn how to listen to one another and learn from one another and celebrate mistakes. I don't explain things by saying, 'This is what we're doing and this is why.' I ask them: 'What are you interested in and how can we explore that together?'" Sinclaire says.

Principal Carlstroem say young children respond well to this style of teaching.

"Five-, six- and seven-year-olds are so naturally curious that in many ways they may be the most naturally Socratic," he says. "Those of us who have had three-year-olds know that that's a part of what that is when they say, 'Why? Why? Why?' all the time."

Some scholars argue that Socrates was being ironic and playful when he said that all he knows is that he knows nothing. His call for intellectual humility was also meant to poke fun at the pretensions of Athenian society. So maybe it's fitting that the Bay Area has a school dedicated to the Socratic Method. At times Silicon Valley's 'We're saving the world one app at a time' ethos could perhaps use a dose of Socratic humility.

Scholars today are still trying to parse what's truly Socratic from Plato's idealized accounts. Was the great teacher mainly a creation of his student?

Maybe it doesn't matter.

"Would we still do it if it was called Frodo's practice?" asks Principal John Carlstroem. "My answer is yes, because the proof is in the pudding. When we look at what happens in a Socratic classroom and how it works — it's amazing. I think the reason we call it Socratic practice is because, like a lot of things, we're working at it."

They're practicing and refining the techniques of critical thinking all the time, he says. It's a process that's never really finished.




COMMENTS


Yo Teach • 3 hours ago
Wow, look at society's progress in valuing teachers! Now we no longer face the death penalty for doing our jobs!

tim moor  Yo Teach • 33 minutes ago
no just death by a thousand benefit cuts.

Len Lewis • 2 hours ago
Hey, If it teaches my students to listen while others speak I'm all for it. That basic skill is mostly lost in our society today. You can see in people's eyes that they are, if they are polite and not butting in, simply repeating in their head what they want to say to you instead of actually listening to what you are saying. Very difficult to break that habit.

Sophia R.  Len Lewis • an hour ago
Len, this is a big problem. Listening is a skill that should go hand in hand with being able to ask questions. My take is that we as a society are too distracted by technology, we have been trained for instant gratification and we are confusing confidence with knowing. A confident person can admit to not knowing and can feel confident asking a question and listening to the answer. A confident person can take the time to really listen. A person who really listens connects with the other person. A person who doesn't listen is disconnected from the other person.

Contrary  Sophia R. • 43 minutes ago
It seems like one of the skills we need to be teaching today is how to ask a succinct question.

itsdarts • 2 hours ago
I only wish this style of teaching was taught back in the 60s & 70s, i might have finished school, i might have more understanding of authority figures who preach "do as I say, not as I do", I might have had the courage to ask Why? Using critical thinking at work has gotten me in trouble a few times, but in the end, changes were made because of it.

Michael Walling  itsdarts • an hour ago
We should never "finish school".

Class A  Michael Walling • 42 minutes ago
Twain said he never let his schooling interfere with his education. Perhaps it is education that we should never finish. ;-)

torqued8  Michael Walling • an hour ago
Sounds to me like the person you're responding to has been an excellent student - ongoing. Hundreds of thousands of young people in this country do not even get their high school diplomas. This means they most likely will never be gainfully employed. That's the importance of finishing school. A diploma, as lowly as it may seem to some, can be a world-opener for the people who have it. Those who don't, face a smaller, more closed world.

Linda Nichols • 3 hours ago
I wonder how Socrates would do with testing?

bs jeffrey  Linda Nichols • 3 hours ago
he might question it.

ZenderTranscender • an hour ago
Bravo! I wish your series could be piped into administrative offices and teachers' lounges in all public schools.The "What makes you say that?" question is essential to ask, as opposed to 'What do you think about that?" In the real world of earning a living, we often have to use hard documentation to bolster what we say. Just having an opinion about why some project or sales technique might work is not enough.

Michael Walling • an hour ago
learning to learn is a lifelong labor.

Slicktop Texan • 2 hours ago
caught this on the radio on the drive in this morning. Great story, great start to the series... really looking forward to the rest, NPR. Thanks!

tim moor • 44 minutes ago
I found the socratic method in law school to be a waste of time.

Contrary • an hour ago
You say "teaching to the test" like it's a bad thing. If the teachers aren't teaching to the curriculum as measured by test(s) aligned with that curriculum, then what ARE their goals and how do they assess how students are doing?

justateacher • an hour ago
Question-and-dialogue did not start with Socrates. Please. It is natural for a real teacher.

joe pet • an hour ago
Great teacher,what,no i pad?

Mark Kropf • 2 hours ago
Would Socrates believe that true learning was ever completed? Was knowledge to be a set conclusion or more a process?
A problem with the method may be assessing its full benefit.
I have no doubt that students achieve more learning and get better grades. I also suspect that much learning is collateral to the intended syllabus. 
While the last point can be viewed as a dividend, it is important to understand that a Socratic form of Education imparts some non-standardized materials (hardly undesirable!) and that the benefits derived thereby are systemically underestimated.

Isidewith.com





I stumbled upon this website when searching for news on NBC News. I tried the app called isidewith.com. It's easy, offers many choices and a blank box in which you may write your own thoughts. The site shows only Democrat and Republican and “other” as choices. For best results, hit the other choices option, which shows half a dozen possible permutations, from which I was usually able to chose the best option for me, and then write some personal comments into the box provided. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and even though I deviated from a generic Democrat position in a number of the questions, I still scored a solid 90% agreement with my local Democrat candidates. For those who are really “unable to make up their minds,” this would really help, I believe. Several sites besides PBS state that isidewith.com is safe for your computer. Give it a try!



http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/03/political-matchmaking-sites-electnext-isidewith-help-voters-decide-067/

MEDIASHIFT
Political ‘Matchmaking’ Sites ElectNext, iSideWith Help Voters Decide
By Mark Hannah
March 7, 2012

iSideWith offers a way for voters to connect with candidates based on issue-based questionnaires.

Despite the nonstop coverage of the ongoing Republican primary battle on cable news and talk radio programs, the American voter remains notoriously ill-informed.

While people may be increasing their attention to the high-profile horse race of presidential politics this year, it’s clear that most voters’ knowledge of local politics has sharply declined. This is doubtless related to the dwindling amount of local news consumption among most Americans. A Pew Research Center report, which I recently cited, found that, for the first time ever, people are regularly getting their campaign news more from national cable news programs than from local television stations, and more from the Internet than from their local newspapers.

Fortunately, at least two websites have emerged in this election cycle that hope to narrow the information gap and help voters decide on a candidate by surveying them on a host of questions and then matching them with the candidate whose policy positions accord most closely with their own.

If you’re like me, you’ve often walked into a polling booth on Election Day ready to pull the lever or push the button for the person running for president (or governor or senator), and then been confronted with dozens of names of candidates you never heard of for positions you didn’t know existed (“Tree Warden”? really?). What most of us do, in that case, is simply vote for whichever name shares our party affiliation and cross our fingers that they’re the right guy or gal for the job.

Historian Rick Shenkman recently chronicled some examples of voter ignorance in his provocatively titled book “Just How Stupid Are We?“ (like the fact that most Americans can’t name their own member of Congress). And economist Bryan Caplan argued in “The Myth of the Rational Voter“ that most of us vote under the influence of faulty beliefs.

ElectNext and iSideWith.com have set out to correct that.

ElectNext, started by Keya Dannenbaum and Paul Jungwirth, describes its mission this way: “Imagine if you could cast an informed vote in every one of your elections, all the way down your ballot. Rather than relying on party or guesswork, you could choose candidates based on knowledge.” Taylor Peck, who started iSideWith.com with his good friend Nick Boutelier, expresses frustration with the media’s tendency to focus on the “fight of the day between the top two candidates,” which eclipses substantive reporting on policy positions and leaves an “information gap between voters and candidates.”

Closing that gap is exactly what both ElectNext and iSideWith seek to do. iSideWith is piloting its site with the presidential election, but it plans to expand its scope with key congressional and mayoral races in the coming weeks. ElectNext is currently live with elections for president and both houses of Congress, and remains ambitiously committed to its overarching goal of “creating a world in which every voter in every election is using ElectNext to easily vote his or her values all the way down the ballot.”

POLITICAL MATCHMAKING DEMYSTIFIED

When discussing how ElectNext matches voters with candidates, Dannenbaum pulled back the curtain for me. First, there’s a matching algorithm that calculates one’s closeness to a candidate based on the similarity of answers and the rank of importance that a person ascribes to each question (much like the way dating websites function). Then, there’s a dynamic survey algorithm that generates new questions based on your answers. This is how many computer-based standardized tests work. Finally, it has a “candidate profiling algorithm” using a political interest alliance graph that pulls data from the Federal Election Commission, special interest group ratings, and correlations among survey responses in its own database.

While ElectNext uses sophisticated algorithms from diverse datasets (indeed, it’s in the process of hiring a “chief data scientist”) that may help it bring its site to scale, iSideWith takes a simpler and more straightforward approach. Peck and Boutelier conduct the editorial research on their own, evaluate the candidates’ positions by the “official statements” that they or their campaign make, and personally comb through every debate transcript.

PUTTING POLICY ALIGNMENT BEFORE PARTY AFFILIATION

The guys at iSideWith also take pains to include little-known candidates from obscure political parties. (Don’t be surprised if the presidential candidate with whom you most closely align isJimmy McMillan of the “Rent Is Too Damn High” party.) Peck complains that “the media has shut out third-party candidates in this election cycle. In South Carolina, Buddy Roemer was tied with Rick Perry in several polls but was never invited to the debates.” They hope that their users who get matched with lesser-known candidates might take a moment and research them.

And why not? After all, one of the key reasons people rely so strongly on political parties is because they’re helpful proxies for inferring where an otherwise unknown candidate stands. But sites like ElectNext and iSidewith promise to enable voters to learn where each (and every) candidate stands … and which stand with them. These sites may not eliminate the power or usefulness of political parties completely, but they do hope to replace it with a more precise and informative shortcut for voter decision-making. As ElectNext’s Dannenbaum told me, “Why pull a party lever on election day when you can just as easily pull a customized issues lever? That is what we’re building for you.”

Asked whether these algorithms might, in an effort to restore rationality to our voting, discount important character traits that aren’t easily quantified, Dannenbaum said, “We couldn’t agree more that there is more to choosing a candidate than pure issue alignment. It is absolutely the case that qualities like leadership, experience, charisma, and other social/intangibles enter into the calculation. In our ultimate vision of ElectNext, those intangibles will also be part of our matching.” At that point, Americans will have to be able to look at a survey in front of them and answer honestly, as they do on OkCupid and Match.com: “What’s your type?”

Mark Hannah is the political correspondent for MediaShift. Mark’s political career began on the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign, where he worked as a member of the national advance staff. He’s more recently done advance work for the Obama-Biden campaign, the Presidential Inaugural Committee and the White House. In the “off-season” (i.e., in between campaigns) he worked in the PR agency world and conducted sensitive public affairs campaigns for well-known multinational corporations, major industry organizations and influential non-profits. He serves on the board of directors of the National Association for Media Literacy Education, is a member of the Public Relations Society of America and was a research fellow at the Society for New Communications Research. He is a graduate of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and received a master’s degree from Columbia University. His personal website iswww.mark-hannah.com, and he can be reached at markphannah[at]gmail.com. Follow Mark on Twitter: @MarksTerritory

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.

How to Cite this Page
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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/.