From the Desk

I am frustrated with UNC, and for the first time in my life, the frustration is not born out of my disdain for the
basketball team.

The school’s logo and the Tarheel symbol — even just the color Carolina blue — automatically elicits a vocal expression of disgust from me as a diehard Duke fan. This time, however, my annoyance is caused by school officials who turned a blind eye to, or participated in, dishonest practices for almost two decades.

According to a 131-page report by former U.S. Justice Department official

Kenneth Wainstein released last Wednesday, 3,100 students — including nearly 1,500 student athletes — were enrolled in paper courses in the former African and Afro-American (AFAM) Studies department between 1993 and 2011. The report states that students in the courses were only required to submit papers and were not required to attend classes.

Wainstein’s report indicates that former AFAM Department Chairman Julius Nyang’oro and retired office administrator Deborah Crowder were most responsible in the academic fraud. According to the report, Crowder was responsible for starting the classes, as she wanted to help struggling students. The classes had no faculty involvement, with Crowder managing and liberally grading each of the papers.

Additionally, while Nyang’oro and Crowder seem to have played the biggest role, several other school officials, including academic advisors for the teams, seemed to have had at least some knowledge of the bogus classes as well.

These facts merely scratch the surface of the findings in Wainstein’s investigation, but they are clear examples of all the things a university should not do.

For such widespread academic fraud like this, in which students — and specifically student athletes — clearly received the benefit of good grades despite a lack of quality work, to go on for 18 years is unimaginable and unacceptable.

Nyang’oro and Crowder facilitated and encouraged dishonesty just to help student athletes be eligible to play.

“For all she did through the years for UNC athletics, Crowder needs to have her jersey hanging from the Smith Center rafters,” Yahoo Sports columnist Dan Wetzel wrote. “Her number can be 4.0.”

It is completely ridiculous that nobody put a stop to the antics of the AFAM duo. The idea of willful ignorance from university officials is displayed in the fact that the paper courses were offered for so many years. Apparently nobody cared that so many students received good grades for classes they put almost no work into at the hands of a non-faculty member. Or at least they did not care enough to do anything about it. Instead, they turned a blind eye to the situation. They showed no integrity.

“This was flat-out, full-on cheating.” Wetzel wrote. “It’s not just breaking UNC and NCAA rules, but the basic tenets of college sports. This was an institutionalized way for students to maintain eligibility and win bowl games and Final Fours while not teaching them a (darn) thing.”

While everyone involved in the scandal may have thought they were helping the university and the student athletes, whose main goal was to just play ball, they have done exactly the opposite. The school’s name has been sullied. Students enrolled in the classes did not gain any knowledge as a result. And while the athletes involved may have left UNC with shiny championship rings on their fingers, they did not leave with a legitimate degree.