Another academic scandal; UNC is f-cked

To prevent the so-called student-athletes from getting their rightful share of the money generated by their labor as determined by the free market.

 

Money talks. BS walks. The NC$$ doesn't like to kill its golden geese.

 

So using the NCAA'S logic from the UNC case programs can now pay players, have their homework done for them and take their tests, throw them hooker and blow parties, whatever. As long as a few non-athlete students are also getting the goods. Then it's not an "extra" benefit.

 

Jim Boeheim must have been right. Syracuse didn't cheat, they just broke some NCAA rules is all. Same for UNC... didn't cheat by having a decade's worth of athletes get A's in African-American Studies, they just helped some kids further their education.

What a corrupt and greedy organization the NCAA is.

 

Trump/Emmert 2016 "You're gonna get fucked. We're gonna get away with it"

 

And make (New) Mexico (St.) pay for it.

 

Dennis Dodd at CBS on the UNC academic scandal: UNC academic scandal leaves university in peril beyond athletics

He's writing about the implications of UNC's academic probation and what SACS may decide to do as they review UNC's accreditation.

I remember that during the UAB shutdown I put some faith in SACS taking some action, as they inspected both UA and UAB in back to back months. A number of you here scoffed at my naivete, and you were proved to be quite right. With all the evidence in the world of boosters of another school interfering with the administration of UAB and four separate votes of no confidence in President Watts, SACS was utterly toothless and unwilling to say a word about it.

In the comment section of the Dodd story you will find this post, by Dr. John Knox, a respected graduate of UAB and a Rhodes Scholar finalist. He writes far better and more knowledgeably than I.


"Do not expect Belle Wheelan or SACSCOC to do anything in the end. This is just posturing.

I dealt with SACSCOC during their whitewashing reaffirmation (not re-examination, but reaffirmation, they call it--i.e., rubber-stamp) of accreditation of UAB, my alma mater, this past year. The SACSCOC VP in charge of the reaffirmation turned out to be a longtime chiropractic institute administrator (!) who was dismissive and biased from the get-go. The treatment I got was so clearly unreceptive to the very stark realities of the UAB situation, in which University of Alabama boosters on the Board of Trustees were interfering in university governance, that I wrote Belle Wheelan about it--documenting how the person in charge of the UAB case was biased. Of course I never heard back from her.

After a carefully staged site visit to UAB in which the team from SACSCOC was shielded from protesters, guess what? SACSCOC gave a glorious reaffirmation for UAB that had not even a single suggestion for changes--visualize the teacher in Ralphie's dream in "A Christmas Story" writing "A+, A++, A+++" on the chalkboard and on the walls.

Those familiar with the multiple votes/statements of no confidence in the administration by the UAB Faculty Senate, the graduate student government association, the undergraduate student government association, and the national alumni society, were incredulous at SACSCOC's willful obliviousness to the crisis at UAB. And that crisis, to steal Wheelan's words, were and are this: "Everybody keeps saying this is an athletic issue. This is much more than an athletic issue." Funny how she chose not to see that at UAB.

This was while UAB had to get rid of senior executives for wrongdoing, losing 2/3rds of the co-chairs of their own capital campaign for wrongdoing, not to mention the whole incredible mess with the sports programs' shutdown and reinstatement which cost tens of millions of dollars for no purpose. The corruption ran, and runs, deep--and SACSCOC saw no evil, heard no evil, and reported no evil.

Anyone familiar with what's happening in Alabama right now with the Governor's scandal--which has deep roots in that same Board of Trustees--should be astounded that SACSCOC would ignore evidence of violations of multiple SACS "Principles of Accreditation," relating to UAB and governance by the UA System Board of Trustees (dominated for over a decade by Bear Bryant's son). There is a mess so deep and wide in Alabama, going all the way to the Governor's backers, that if SACSCOC had done due diligence, they'd have cleaned things up in that state. They could have uprooted a whole brood of vipers in one fell swoop.

But no. Because SACSCOC has itself lost its very first Principle of Accreditation: it has lost its integrity.

I'm happy to tell Dennis Dodd or anyone else more about what I learned about SACSCOC. I lost all respect for the accreditation process here in the South--and I am a tenured university professor at a top Southern university! UNC will get off scot-free, just as the puppet Ray Watts did at UAB.

Tell Belle Wheelan that her organization should be renamed SACSCROCK, and that I said so. Then tell her to read her mail from me, finally.

Dr. John A. Knox
University of Georgia"

 

Dennis Dodd is trying to stoke a fire where there's not even smoke. SACS has already done what SACS is going to do: Put UNC on probation. Maybe that gets extended another year, but there is no way in hell they're revoking accreditation over a problem that was rooted out and fixed five years ago and for which there are now numerous protocols in place to prevent in the future.

 

Yeah, zero chance that happens. UNC losing its accreditation would be devastating for the UNC system, and have major effects in the state.

It was an athletic scandal and should be punished as such. The NCAA's decision to completely shirk its duty doesn't warrant nuking the university.

 

As re: the SACS probation and the reaction (or perceived lack thereof) by the faculty: At a heavy-duty research school such as UNC, the people who handle accreditation are generally the campus dipshits. They're akin to bureaucratic locusts -- every five years or so they appear with the apparent task of annoying the hell out of the faculty. Then, when SACS has done its thing, they disappear into their little cubicles again. It's a huge pain that does little more than ensure the continued employment of a whole helluva lot of worthless minions.

 

I may have wrung my hands prematurely. The way UNC has handled this seems to have pissed off Indianapolis. The NCAA's latest communication to them has smoke coming off it: https://carolinacommitment.unc.edu/...ent-Reply-2016-2nd-Amended-NOA-07-17-2017.pdf

A few highlights:
- The courses were not generally available to the student body - not listed in the course catalog or advertised. You could only find out about them from advisors, Crowder, athletic counselors or word of mouth.
- The courses were closed - you could only get into them with Crowder's authorization. For non-athletes, that meant some sort of personal or family crisis. For athletes, the extra demands on their schedule were enough.
- Athletic academic counselors had the knowledge and relationships to gain special access to these courses, resulting in athletes enrolling at 10 times the rate of the rest of the student body.
- Academic support for student athletes obtained assignments on behalf of athletes and turned in papers on their behalf. On some occasions, support staff even requested courses, suggested assignments and recommended grades for student-athletes.
- Academic support staff mocked a staff member who expressed concerns over the lack of effort from student-athletes. This staff member was told by a colleague that student-athletes only needed to produce a "middle school report."
- Students enrolled in these classes would routinely receive an A or B unless they submitted something out of the ordinary. Grading standards were only that the paper was of the required length, on the assigned topic and had a bibliography. If those conditions were met, the paper received an A or a B.
- Counselors used these courses primarily to help maintain eligibility for athletes who were at risk academically. Along with other benefits, this meant that student-athletes did not have to attend class or meet with academic staff. Not only did this boost eligibility, it also meant that these student-athletes had more time to devote to their sport while also allowing UNC to admit a significant number of at-risk student athletes in the first place.
- Bubba Cunningham violated NCAA legislation by sharing case-related information with the media. NCAA enforcement chose not to cite this as a new violation because it would restart the processing clock.

The ACC is complicit in this, by the way. This entire issue began under the watch of former AD John Swofford, now the ACC commissioner.

 

If I was a big wig at Clemson, I think I'd remind Swofford weekly how the ACC went above and beyond the NCAA to punish the Tigers back in the 1980s.

If UNC's defense works, the NCAA is basically saying do whatever you want as long as a few regular students are in on it. Yeah, the basketball team got BMW's, but so did two kids in the engineering department, so it's not a special benefit.