Everybody knew. The football coach knew. The football team’s lead academic counselor knew. A senior associate dean knew. The chair of the faculty and director of the university’s center for ethics knew. They all knew.
The Wainstein report on Chapel Hill has revealed that faculty and staff participation in or knowledge of the academic fraud scandal was more widespread than originally thought. For nearly two decades, fake classes were created, athletes were funneled into them, high grades were awarded for plagiarized papers, and several fraternity members inadvertently minored in African-American studies.
Athletes made up roughly 47 percent of students enrolled in these ghost classes — which never met and only required one paper for a grade — while the student body consists of only four percent athletes. And the student athletes at UNC are not the only ones who have been short-changed by this scandal, which bloomed from a corrupt desire for glory in an arena over excellence in a classroom.
These findings weigh heavily on the shoulders of the University of North Carolina, the Atlantic Coastal Conference, and the National Collegiate Association of Athletics. UNC is ranked fifth best public university in the country by US News and World report, and this scandal calls that standing into question. One of the main reasons the media has gobbled up this story is that UNC is supposed to be a top-notch academic institution — a member of the Magnolia League. How do these academic disfigurations affect the institutions that have been ranked below UNC for the past 20 years? Arguably, it has robbed them of a place of prestige they might have deserved.
Even UNC students outside the athletic programs have been sold short because of this scandal. The ghost classes were listed in the department of African and Afro-American Studies, and for those students who have majored in that department because it was their true area of interest, the validity of their degrees could be called into question. Resources that were devoted to manufacturing fake classes could have been devoted to building a challenging and meaningful curriculum for students who were prepared to be intellectually engaged with the material.
Coddling athletes with no-show classes also raises the question of whether those students truly deserve to be at that university in the first place. After the ringleader of this operation — the manager of the AFAM department — retired in 2009, the average GPA of the football players dropped to its lowest in 10 years. If ghost classes were necessary in order for these athletes to maintain eligibility, we must ask: how many students may have been denied the opportunity to attend UNC who were stronger academically but weaker athletically? Those rejected candidates have also fallen victim to these corrupt practices.
This is not the first time a university has been shown to prioritize its athletic departments over its academic standards, but to find a scandal like this at UNC is perhaps more surprising because it contradicts our hopes that highly ranked institutions would preserve academic excellence above all else. In a way, the ACC has also played a role in holding out that hope. The University of Notre Dame recently joined the ACC because it wanted to be associated with the strong academic reputations of other members, such as the University. UNC’s prolonged and widespread academic fraud has now put a damper on the reputation of the conference. It raises the question: if this could happen at an ACC school, is there any hope that academia and athletics can coexist?
It remains to be seen what the NCAA will do about this scandal, now that they are obligated to conduct their own investigation. When they first investigated in 2010, the resulting sanction was a one-year post-season ban, but since then new details have emerged which make us realize the gravity of the situation is much stronger. Additional NCAA sanctions against post-season play would motivate UNC to get their academic affairs in order before they can continue playing post-season football and basketball. The NCAA ought to conduct further investigations to ensure athletes are being held to same standards all other students are held to, before the sanctions are removed.
The University has a system in place to review the courses athletes are taking and ensure they are sufficiently challenging. UNC could follow this model, and we hope they will be headed in the right direction, as several officials involved in the scandal have already been fired. One of the values in college sports teams is that they foster a sense of pride, spirit and solidarity among all students at the university. But such pride in athletics has to be equaled in pride for academic excellence. Our University’s teams have had their shining moments on the national stage, and because of that, we remain hopeful that we can be proud of both of those at once.
Read More
KURTZWEIL: True financial aid must be transparent
By Paul Kurtzweil | 4 hours agoThe implications and revelations of the lawsuit should inspire greater transparency at the University in order to ensure that financial aid is properly and equitably distributed.
SULLIVAN: Ramp up physical accessibility on Grounds
By Scarlett Sullivan | 2 days agoThe University must take responsibility for the inaccessibility of Grounds and work to promote accessibility for all students despite misguided laws.
EDITORIAL: Scapegoating students will not stop hazing
By Editorial Board | 4 days agoInstead of retroactively responding to extreme hazing allegations, we, and especially the University, must begin asking more probing questions about the role of fraternal organizations on Grounds.
