An investigation into North Carolina academic policies for their student athletes has revealed that bogus classes were pushed by academic advisors to student athletes in order to keep them eligible.
Kenneth Wainstein, a former top U.S. Justice Department official, was in charge of the investigation and discloses that academic counselors had pushed for the easy classes and embraced those started by Deborah Crowder, a longtime manager for the Department of African and Afro-American Studies.
The report describes a fairly broad group of academic and athletic officials who knew about athletes getting better grades in classes that only required papers, yet taking little or no action.
In comments to reporters Wednesday, Wainstein was reluctant to put a label on the scandal. But Chancellor Carol Folt said it was clearly an academic and athletic problem for the university. UNC President Tom Ross echoed that theme.
“From the beginning I think the university has taken the position that these classes started in an academic department by a person employed in the academic side of the university,” Ross said. “Subsequent to that, athletics took advantage of that.”
It’s a blow to learn that pockets of people around the university knew about the bogus classes for years, Folt said.
“Like everyone who reads it, I feel shocked and very disappointed,” Folt said. “I think it’s a case where you have bad actions of a few and inaction of many more. And had actions or processes been in place, we could’ve caught it and stopped it a lot sooner.”
The findings in this investigation prove that academic fraud claims that former Tarheel Rashad McCant’s made earlier this summer have some validity. The only question that remains and the one thing I know Tarheel fans are stressing about is what will now happen to the basketball program. One thing that we can be sure of is somebody, probably multiple people in the athletic department will no longer be employed.
H/T: News Observer
