As a North Carolinian anyone in the state would have agreed – UNC-Chapel Hill was the bastion of outstanding education and sports in the state. Of course, Duke fans would have clearly placed their program ahead of Chapel Hill, but for state funded institutions Chapel Hill ranked at the top. Until…
Deborah Crowder has now, and for years to come, tarnished the name of UNC-Chapel Hill both academically and in their sports franchise. Crowder was a longtime clerical employee at the Department of African and Afro-American Studies who provided athletes fake classes for high grades for 16 years.
In a report released a year ago that made national news Crowder and her boss, African studies department chairman Julius Nyang’oro, ran a “shadow curriculum” of classes that had no instruction. Turn in a paper and you got a high grade. Quite the deal huh? Seems the classes began in 1993 after complaints that independent studies course were too rigorous.
Time Out – Isn’t the concept behind college to have classes that are rigorous?
Four years ago (2011) the illusion began to collapse. Seems that N.C. State fans (a big UNC rival) found a former football player’s paper filled with plagiarism and that paper listed Nyang’oro as the instructor. The Raleigh News and Observer confirmed it with a front page story.
As with most any unethical action the illusion can hold for some time even in the face of the obvious. That is true in this case, as Jonathan Hartlyn, a senior associate dean, Nyang’oro’s boss, sent Nyang’oro an email alerting him to the N&O story. Time to take notice! But that didn’t yet bring down the house of cards.
How did the wall come tumbling down?
In a recent N&O article the following quote outlines the sequence of events that lead to what has become a significant sports ethics scandal…in fact, what’s I’d call the sports ethics scandal of the decade.
It wasn’t until a second N&O story, about an incoming freshman football player who received a high grade in an upper-level class, that the university decided to take a deeper look.Numerous other records show academic officials dismissing or downplaying evidence showing the athletic connections to the scandal, the possibility that the fake classes involved others beyond Nyang’oro and Crowder, or that other departments might be involved.
Several faculty scoffed when the N&O reported in May 2013 on former faculty leader Jan Boxill’s successful effort to remove language in a faculty report suggesting a motive for her friend Crowder’s actions – that she was an athletics supporter with close ties to athletics staff. A second story two months later uncovered an email Boxill wrote showing she suggested the change to keep the NCAA away.
Among the skeptics was Kevin Guskiewicz, an exercise and sports science professor recently named dean of UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences.
“I think he’s running on empty and this article most certainly won’t help him win a Pulitzer,” Guskiewicz wrote of the N&O reporter in an email on May 19, 2013.
Wainstein later found that Boxill, the longtime academic counselor to the women’s basketball team, knew the classes had no professor and steered players to them. Wainstein also determined Boxill sought the changes to the report to “insulate” the athletic department from further scrutiny.
The newly released emails further confirm the tight connection between Crowder and the tutoring program that relied on her to help keep athletes eligible.
One email shows Wayne Walden, the counselor for the men’s basketball team, making arrangements to provide her four tickets to a home game against Rutgers University in December 2008. Another from Mercer, the former tutoring program director, shows Crowder and Nyang’oro being named “guest coaches” for a 2005 football game.
Harold Woodard, the associate dean who was Mercer’s boss, went to him to reserve the luxury box for Crowder’s retirement, the emails show.
“Debby has been a very valuable resource for a large number of our students, and is most deserving of this recognition,” he wrote.
Woodard could not be reached for comment. He told Wainstein he was aware athletes were heavily enrolled in independent studies from the African studies department, but he did not know many of those and others disguised as lecture classes were fake.
Rick White, a UNC spokesman, said in an email the university would not comment on the records.
“While you’ll find references to past events or actions … Carolina has acknowledged and accepted responsibility for the past and has committed to meaningful, long-term reforms that strike the right balance between academics and athletics,” he said.
Boxill and other faculty were also dismissive of Jay Smith, the history professor who publicly and repeatedly pushed for the university to fully investigate the fake classes.
Noting that Smith was on a panel at UNC talking about the scandal, Boxill told another professor in an April 24, 2013, email: “That wouldn’t be so bad if he actually knew what he was talking about.”
While there’s more to the academic story…we won’t explore that here. Rather the question that screams for answers is what motivated so many involved to compromise academic integrity?
Is the business of sports more important than academic integrity?
The N&O report goes on to say:
The NCAA is investigating the fake classes, but in a notice of allegations it sent to UNC in May it did not cite them as evidence of academic fraud. The NCAA instead is calling them impermissible benefits. Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham told Faculty Athletic Committee members in a recent meeting there were “zero allegations” of academic fraud from the NCAA, according to The Daily Tar Heel.The NCAA has not explained its notice of allegations, but President Mark Emmert and others have said in general that the association does not have the jurisdiction to determine the legitimacy of classes. That is left up to the member schools.
UNC’s reports into the fake classes have typically labeled them “irregular,” “aberrant” or “anomalous.” White, the UNC spokesman, recently declined to answer if the university saw them as fraudulent.But the newly released records show at least one official – Thorp – called them that.
In a July 20, 2012, email to faculty, Thorp wrote: “We disclosed this academic fraud, and we are fixing it.”
What about Transparency and Consequences?
I believe in both – transparency and consequences. Perhaps I’m missing something, but it seems to me that UNC-Chapel Hill would be far better served to admit wrong doing, fix the problem and accept some painful consequences (even if that means suspending a sports program for a year or so) in order to restore integrity back to a once great institution.
Sports is big business. But then so is Education and for any college or university it’s important to keep in perspective the fundamental reason they exist. Ten’s of thousands have graduated from the UNC system of higher education. Only a small percentage of them are athletes and only a small percentage of them ever make it to the pros. Yes, sports brings in big bucks, but if the university loses it’s clout then what have you gained?
You can’t have it both ways – a sterling academic reputation and fake classes for a select group that can’t meet the academic muster. After all this is called “higher education”. Seems here that all we taught was how to cheat and act unethically in order to game the system. Sad!
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