UNC investigation: Athletes pushed into fake classes by counselors
Academic counselors in North Carolina's athletic department pushed athletes into a system of fraudulent, no-show classes that was used to keep players eligible, a new investigative report released Wednesday shows.
The report by Kenneth Wainstein, a former top US Justice Department official, found that North Carolina athletes made up 47.4 percent of the more than 3,100 students who took the "paper" African-American Studies classes during the 18-year period of the scheme. North Carolina athletes comprise 4 percent of the university student body.
The report paints a picture of the classes being organized by Debbie Crowder, the student services manager of the African-American Studies department. She was such a big Tar Heels basketball fan that she sometimes missed work after a loss. Yet students never had an interaction with a faculty member and only dealt with Crowder, who was not a part of the faculty and assigned grades without considering the quality of work.
A good number of the athletes were "steered" to the paper classes by certain academic counselors in North Carolina's athletic department, the report said.
"Those counselors saw these paper classes as 'GPA boosters' and steered players into them largely in order to help them maintain their GPAs and their eligibility under the NCAA and Chapel Hill eligibility rules," the report states. "At least two of those counselors went so far as to suggest what grades Crowder should award to their players who were taking her paper classes."
For 81 students, the grade-point average boost in paper classes was the margin that gave them a 2.0 GPA that allowed them to graduate at North Carolina. The average grade for all Tar Heels athletes in the AFAM paper classes was 3.55, compared to 2.84 in regular AFAM classes. AFAM is short for the Department of African and Afro-American Studies.
Ten of the 15 players on North Carolina's 2005 national championship men's basketball team were AFAM majors. North Carolina coach Roy Williams told investigators he was "uncomfortable" early on about his players' heavy use of AFAM classes, but he denied knowing the paper classes existed without an instructor.
Williams said he asked assistant coach Joe Halladay to make sure players were not steered to the AFAM classes, and by 2007 their enrollments in the paper classes had decreased. According to the Raleigh News & Observer, Williams previously suggested publicly in October 2012 that players may have stopped enrolling in the AFAM classes because they have had other interests.
Wayne Walden, an academic counselor for basketball, told investigators he sent some players to Crowder and knew that she graded some papers.
Last June, former North Carolina star basketball player Rashad McCants told ESPN that he had papers written for him and that no-show classes helped keep him eligible. McCann's transcript showed that in his African-American classes he had 10 A's, six B's, one C and one D, and in his other classes he got six C's, one D and three F's, according to ESPN. McCant did not respond to interview requests by investigators.
"[Former North Carolina athletic director Dick] Baddour recalled that Williams asked Baddour whether the number of independent studies McCants had taken troubled him, and Baddour replied that it did trouble him and that he wondered how the college had allowed it to happen," the Wainstein report said. Baddour said he did not recall when that conversation with Williams occurred.
Among the athletes who were enrolled in the paper classes, 50.9 percent were football players, 12.2 percent were men's basketball players, 6.1 percent were women's basketball players and 30.6 percent were Olympic and other sport athletes.
The report said that football academic counselors were "painfully aware" that Crowder's retirement in 2009 "would require the whole football program to adjust to a new reality of having to meet academic requirements with real academic work." There was even a PowerPoint presentation in November 2009 by two academic counselors to explain to North Carolina's football staff that Crowder's retirement meant no more paper classes. One slide read:
"What was part of the solution in the past?
* We put them in classes that met degree requirements in which
-- They didn't go to class
-- They didn't take notes, have to stay awake
-- They didn't have to meet with professors
-- They didn't have to pay attention or necessarily engage with the material
* AFAM/AFRI SEMINAR COURSES
-- 20-25 page papers on course topics
-- THESE NO LONGER EXIST!”
Most, if not all, of North Carolina's coaching staff was present at the meeting, including then-coach Butch Davis. The academic counselor later sent the PowerPoint to Robert Mercer, the director of North Carolina's academic support unit for athletes, and senior associate athletic director John Blanchard, according to the report.
Crowder's boss, longtime African-American Studies department chairman Julius Nyang'oro, allowed Crowder to create the paper classes and later continued some of them when Crowder retired.
Nyang'oro was initially indicted by a grand injury for accepting payment for a summer class he did not teach in 2011. The charge was dropped last June. Nyang'oro told investigators he was sympathetic to athletes who flunked out, having early in his career seen one murdered in his hometown and another end up in jail.
The Wainstein report comes at a time when the NCAA has reopened its academic fraud case at North Carolina. Previously, the NCAA said there were no violations of NCAA policies. That was before Crowder and Nyang'oro agreed to speak with investigators.
North Carolina and the NCAA released a joint statement on Wednesday that said both sides continue to engage in an "independent and cooperative effort" to review possible NCAA violations.
"The information included in the Wainstein Report will be reviewed by the university and the enforcement staff under the same standards that are applied in all NCAA infractions cases," the statement said.
