UNC's lack of control
Published June 6, 2015
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, June 6, 2015.
The NCAA summed up the academic-athletics scandal at the University of North Carolina in its key allegation: lack of institutional control.
Leaders in Chapel Hill know that’s exactly how one academic department was allowed to pass thousands of students through sham classes for nearly 20 years.
Athletes in particular were steered to those classes in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies (known as AFAM).
The NCAA relied heavily on the report produced for UNC last year by former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein.
Wainstein noted: “It was only when media reports raised questions about AFAM classes in 2011 that administration officials took a hard look at the AFAM Department. They were shocked with what they found.”
Only then did the university begin to develop a system of institutional controls that had not existed before.
Chancellor Carol Folt and Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham — who came to their positions from outside the university after the bogus classes had been discovered and stopped — are leading the reforms. One positive measure is to be more forthcoming with information. The university’s initial reaction to reports of academic malfeasance typically was to obfuscate and delay. The result for years was to drag out embarrassing disclosures bit by bit.
Ahead are likely athletic sanctions imposed by the NCAA and perhaps academic penalties handed out by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.
Yet, there probably was relief in Chapel Hill that the NCAA’s allegations didn’t point directly at the Carolina football or men’s basketball programs, and that basketball coach Roy Williams — who brought the university national titles in 2005 and 2009 — was mentioned only in passing.
The university reportedly is even working on an extension of Williams’ lucrative contract. There is no evidence he knew that many of his players were enrolled in classes that didn’t meet and required a minimal amount of real work, if any at all.
Whether he should have known is a question that has not been fully addressed. However, there is collective responsibility for maintaining “institutional control.” Coaches should be aware of their athletes’ academic activities, especially on a small team.
UNC has time to answer the allegations, which largely cover improper activities by former employees Julius Nyang’oro, Jan Boxill, Deborah Crowder and others. The NCAA will respond to the university’s answers and decide on penalties. They could be severe, considering the NCAA’s interpretation that good grades for no work amounted to improper benefits for many athletes. Some competed even though, perhaps, they should not have been academically eligible.
The reforms put in place by the university seem sound. Athletes now and in the future should be taking real classes.
How a university with UNC’s stellar reputation let this happen is a story of negligence more than intent. It was a lack of control. And there will be a price to pay.
