Oh Hello Again Sue Estroff

A little over a month ago an internal investigation revealed evidence of academic fraud (unauthorized grade changes, no-show professors, forged certification documents) in UNC's Department of African and Afro-American Studies. However, the findings of that report didn't suggest that only student athletes were the beneficiaries of the cheating.

The report, released Friday, evolved from the athletic and academic scandal that engulfed UNC's football team, but it said there is no evidence that student-athletes received more favorable treatment than students who were not athletes. It also said that no student received a grade without doing course work. The report has been shared with the NCAA, which could not be reached for immediate comment.

That may no longer be the case. The following was published by NewsObserver.com Friday.

A summer class at UNC-Chapel Hill that lacked any instruction was enrolled exclusively with football players – and it landed on the school calendar just days before the semester started, university records show.

The records show that in the summer of 2011, 19 students enrolled in AFAM 280: Blacks in North Carolina, 18 of them players on the football team, the other a former player. They also show that academic advisers assigned to athletes helped the players enroll in the class, which is the subject of a criminal investigation.

The advisers also knew that there would be no instruction.

Other records show that football and basketball players made up a majority of the enrollments of nine particularly suspect classes in which the professors listed as instructors have denied involvement, and have claimed that signatures were forged on records related to them.

The new information is more evidence that student athletes, particularly football players, were being steered to classes that university officials now say are evidence of academic fraud because there was little or no instruction. An internal review found 54 such classes, and said all but nine of them were taught by Julius Nyang'oro, the longtime chairman of the African and Afro-American Studies Department. In each case, students were given an assignment such as a term paper and told to turn it in at the end of the semester.

It seems like more than a coincidence to have a class comprised entirely of football players. Who, if anyone, prompted the athlete's academic advisers to help the players enroll in the class? Who forged the signatures of the instructors in the other nine suspect classes? Nyang'oro placed AFAM 280 on the academic, but is he the mastermind here? If not, then who is? Will the NCAA get involved?