I thank my fellow alum, Mr. Worsley, for passing this along from the Inside Carolina message board. Feel free to send others to my blogspot and read this piece. I wholeheartedly agree and I am glad someone wrote this with specific examples that directly show how the "scandal" is completely an academic issue. The NCAA should 100% recognize this. Please read the following:
"It’s amazing the level of sheer ignorance, and misunderstanding, and sheer bullcrap spouted by a bunch of idiot-faced talking heads about the so-called AFAM –cough cough – “scandal” at UNC.
Take that bumbling blabbermouth Dickie Vitale, and his ill-informed, off-based and ignorant idiotic potshot at UNC during the basketball game against Iowa on Wednesday night. Vitale claimed, foolishly and ignorantly, that credit was given even though no work was done in these classes, a claim that was absolutely refuted by the Wainstein Report.
In fact, here’s what the report says, refuting the slobbering Mr. Vitale:
“Assigning a passing grade for no paper: Crowder was adamant in our interviews that
she never gave a passing grade in a paper class if the student failed to submit a paper. We tested that contention and found no evidence to contradict her statement. To the contrary, we found abundant evidence that Crowder would give a grade only upon submission of a paper.”
Stick that in your big, blabbering mouth Mr. Vitale.
And Bubba, if you’re reading this, you should register a strong complaint with ESPN and with Vitale, personally, and make it clear that until Vitale clears up his bullcrap, and apologizes for misspeaking, that he won’t broadcast any more UNC games in Chapel Hill.
Back on point.
It’s also amazing what we can learn if we really pay attention to details, ask the right questions, and tune out the ignorant crap in the public domain.
For example, did you know that advisers for the Morehead Scholarship, the most prestigious academic scholarship on campus, advised Morehead Scholars, excuse me … “steered” … Morehead Scholars, sometimes, to the Crowder/Nyrango AFAM, as a means of “boosting” their GPA so they could keep the Morehead Scholarship?
Did you know that advisers for the well-publicized Carolina Covenant also advised.. excuse me… “steered” students to Crowder/Nyrango AFAM for the same reason?
Did you know that we had professors… that’s right professors in the Chemistry and Romance Language Departments “steering” kids to the Crowder/Nyrango AFAM to help those kids with their grades?
Let’s take a look at what the Wainstein Report says about all this.
Look at what we find, buried inconspicuously at footnote 132, way deep in the bowels of the report:
“132 As explained above, referrals to the AFAM paper classes were also made by the Morehead-Cain and Carolina Covenant advisers. We have seen nothing to suggest that those advisers knew any more about the workings of the AFAM paper classes than their colleagues at the Steele Building.”
Note the language. “Referrals”… plural..by Morehead and Carolina Covenant “advisers,” again, plural.
So why is it okay for advisers for the most prestigious scholarship in the State of North Carolina, one of the most prestigious in American Academia, to refer kids to the Crowder/Nyrango AFAM courses, but it’s somehow a “scandal” if an academic advisor for a football player does the same thing?
Oh. I get it. Because you say the football player needs to “boost” his average to keep him eligible? And you think that makes the difference?
Well if that’s the case, then how do you reconcile that with the fact that the Morehead Advisers have also used AFAM to “boost” the averages of the Morehead scholars to stay academically eligible for the scholarship?
Oh? That comes as a surprise does it?
Well consider this little nugget from page 53 of the report:
“For example, we heard of one Morehead-Cain Scholar who was referred to Crowder for placement in a paper class when his GPA started to slip and he was in danger of losing his scholarship. Crowder placed him in a paper class, he got an A, and was able to keep his scholarship.”
Well now. Let me see if I can get this straight.
It’s somehow okay for a Morehead scholar to take a crip course to keep his/her GPA high enough to keep getting paid money on a very lucrative scholarship, but it’s somehow a “scandal” as a “GPA booster” if an academic advisor from the athletic department refers a black kid from the football team to the same course to help the kid keep his grades up so he can stay eligible, even though the football player, unlike the Morehead guy, he can’t receive a damn dime in spending money for it?
See the hypocrisy in that?
Guess what. Despite some of the nose-in-the air academic snobbery from some of these self-anointed academic “elitists,” many who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, that Morehead Scholar is not a dang bit better than the black kid with cornrows that plays on the football team. Yet somehow, for some reason, they try to sell this as an “athletic” scandal, and conveniently ignore the fact that non-athletes take crip courses to help with their GPAs too.
Well that’s the biggest bunch of hogwash this side of the Roanoke River.
But there’s more hypocrisy. Like fraternities and sororities enrolling in AFAM as … gasp … an “academic booster!”
Oh the devious intent of it all! Imagine that. A kid taking a crip course to help his/her overall GPA. Who ever heard of such a thing?
Certainly none of us who ever graduated from college did such a thing!
But that’s exactly what the Greeks did with the Crowder/Nyrango AFAM courses.
Check this, also from the Wainstein Report, at page 53:
“Besides the individual fraternity brothers’ desire for an easy class, the fraternities themselves had an incentive to direct their members to these classes. Like the athletic teams whose members
need to maintain a minimum GPA to compete under NCAA eligibility rules, fraternity and sorority houses are subject to minimum GPA requirements to retain institutional recognition.96 We
understand that the need to meet these requirements played a role in the decision among fraternity
members to take these classes.”
Can you imagine that? A college kid taking a crip course to keep his average up!
Say it ain’t so!
So I ask again. Why is it okay for these non-athletes, these frat boys and the Morehead Scholars, even, to take a crip course to keep their grades up, but if an athlete does it, it becomes “UNC-cheat,” and the biggest “scandal” in the latest “gate” since Watergate?
Bottom line, as I’ve said, is that it’s perfectly legitimate for an academic advisor to steer kids to classes to help the kid succeed. That’s their job.
1. More non-athletes than athletes were enrolled in these courses, meaning that AFAM wasn’t even primarily geared toward athletes. In fact, basketball players accounted for only 6 per cent of the classes, while football players accounted for only 26 percent.
2. Non-Athletes, constituting the majority of students in these classes, had higher grades (3.62) in the classes than athletes.
3. Both University and National Academic Procedure and policy actually allowed Nyrango to delegate proxy grading power to Crowder, as a staff member, subject to grade finalization and veto power by the professor. Therefore, contrary to initial ignorant assumption, nothing was wrong with this procedure under academic policy.
4. Both University and National Academic Procedure and policy actually allowed Nyrango to delegate power to Crowder, as a staff member, to actually design courses, which she did, subject to grade finalization and veto power by the professor. Therefore, contrary to initial ignorant assumptions made, nothing was wrong with this procedure, either.
5. There are many, many other crip courses around the university and around the country, as we have now seen, such as NC State’s “Introduction to Textiles” (average class GPA of 3.65 for the course) and “Pollution Prevention” ET 203 (Average Grade Reported 4.0) with grades higher than this crip course. So we know the score given in the AFAM Crip courses, at 3.62 being a high B +, was not even the highest score among dozens and dozens of other crip courses at NC State or UNC, let alone a national average.
6. We now know that even advisors for the Morehead Scholarship program and the Carolina Covenant “steered” kids to these AFAM crip courses, for the purpose of “boosting” GPAs to keep the Morehead and the spending money that goes along with it. Thus, non-athletes actually can benefit more from these courses than athletes.
Bottom line, this is all purely an academic matter, and in the big picture, is much ado about nothing.
Time to move on."
Awesome!
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