UNC fraud investigation implicates over 3,000 students

Over the past week, grim news surfaced from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  According to a recent report from CNN, The University of North Carolina has come under fire from an independent investigator. The report states that over the past 18 years, approximately 3,100 students attending the University of North Carolina took fake “paper classes”, funneled students into such classes, and inflated their grades in order to keep them eligible for the university’s athletic programs. The investigation took roughly 8 months to complete.  In the report, Primary investigator Kenneth Wainstein had this to say, "These counselors saw the paper classes and the artificially high grades they yielded as key to helping some student-athletes remain eligible". Wainstein is a part of an independent investigative company Cadwalader, Wickersham, and Taft, who was hired by the University of North Carolina to investigate the academic fraud when it was first brought to light back in 2008. For the first time since this investigation began, the University of North Carolina has admitted that the fraud went into more than their academics and indeed went as far as their athletic department. CNN states that Gerald Gurney, president of the Drake Group, whose mission is to “defend academic integrity in higher education from the corrosive aspects of commercialized college sports,” said that this report should give the NCAA more than enough leverage to apply one of the most severe charges a university can have: that charge is a lack of university control. Gurney also stated, “I can safely say that the scope of the 20-year UNC fraud scandal easily takes the prize for the largest and most nefarious scandal in the history of NCAA enforcement. The depth and breadth of the scheme -- involving counselors, coaches, academic administrators, faculty, athletic administrators, etc. -- eclipses any previous case”. 

These charges, should they be made, would be one of the biggest suits that the NCAA has ever been involved in. It also is however not the first academic scandal in recent memory. In 2009, Florida State had a charge of academic fraud. That case however involved 60 athletes and was considered a bombshell. With as many as 3,100 students caught up in this case, it promises to be one the biggest cases of its kind in the history of NCAA. The University of North Carolina has been swift in the indictment of their own staff. CNN has reported that four employees have been fired and five more have been severely disciplined because of their involvement in this scandal. In addition to these nine people, one former employee also has his honorary status revoked. If these reports are true, then the University of North Carolina’s 1993, 2005, and 2009 College Basketball National Championship victories could all be in jeopardy and could very well be revoked, CNN reports. Over the past five years, The University had insisted that the wrongdoings were perpetrated by one professor, former department chair of African-American studies Julius Nyang’oro. As it turns out, Nyang’oro’s assistant, Debbie Crowder, was the one that created the fake paper classes that allowed athletes to have GPAs that they had not earned through merit. Through her, Nyang’oro, and about about five other counselors, one of them in football, funneled at risk athletes and students into these paper classes and were able to figure out what the exact grade they needed to remain eligible to play sports. This investigation and report has sparked national controversy, and will continue to fan the flames of debate as to whether or not college athletics have become corrupt.