WRAL: UNC-CH challenges NCAA authority, admits wrongdoing in response to allegations
There's a lot to go through here, but from what I can gather up front, UNC has admitted to the most serious of athletic charges against them, and that is the charge of Lack of Institutional Control in their reply to the NCAA. However, they are openly questioning whether the NCAA should have any jurisdiction whatsoever in doling out punishments when it comes to outright academic fraud, of which they are also admitting to.
"UNC–Chapel Hill accepts full responsibility for its serious past academic problems, and it has addressed them directly without regard to cost or reputational harm," the response reads. "But... The question is whether the matters raised by the ANOA meet the jurisdictional, procedural, and substantive requirements of the NCAA constitution and bylaws."
Mentioned more than 100 times in the amended Notice of Allegations, was Jan Boxill, former faculty chairwoman, ethics professor and the former athletic-academic counselor for the women's basketball team. Boxill is accused by the NCAA of committing 18 different violations. The sum of Boxill's violations amounts to one of the five Level I infractions the NCAA alleges against the university.
UNC has countered, saying only 15 violations were committed and they should amount to a Level III infraction because "she did not knowingly provide extra benefits as alleged by the enforcement staff."
The university did, however, acknowledge their failure to monitor Boxill.
So... admit they screwed up, admit they really screwed up, admit they had no control over their athletic department, and then taunt the NCAA saying they don't have the jurisdiction to actually punish them for it.
Comments
so...pretty much this:
I will probably continue to hate UNC for the rest of my life because I just don't see them being punished the way they should
This was a planned defense from before they got caught. They made sure there was at least 1 more non-athlete than athletes in every class, so by the NCAA definition of providing specials benefits to athletes they were not. Non-classes were open to all students, not just athletes, so not an NCAA issue, an academic issue.
What a fine, academic institution /s
My solution would be then for board of accreditation to yank UNC's college accreditation. Let's see what that does to their grants, academic reputation, and enrollment when students find out they are attending a university without valid accreditation.
Update:
The NCAA essentially tells UNC to piss off and they're going to still move forward with it all. Basically, they don't care that the class was opened to the whole student body, they have evidence this was geared towards and tailored to the athletes.
Oh boy, expect UNC to get a minor slap on the wrist any decade now.
I have hope there might be more than a slap on the wrist, if only because UNC triple dog dared the NCAA to punish them, and as everyone knows, that is the coup de grace of dares.
I agree that UNC deserves to get the equivalent of a WWII Battleship broadside for this crap but I fully expect it to turn out
But what about the current players, coaches, students, and fans? They can hardly remember all the rule-breaking and cheating.
The current student athletes now even have to go to class!
Why isn't Anne TKP "chick"?
Because TKP already has a girl.
...who is British, and probably doesn't even know what American football is!
Oh, well...who cares, she's gorgeous.
She went to college in the states.
She cried through a song and won an Oscar. Now if we want to consider Dr. Quinn
Psh medicine woman ain't got nothing on Dr Cuddy
total side note, Cuddy was in an episode of Seinfeld.
OH MY GOODNESS I never knew this. Breaks my heart to see her with another man.
She was also in Frasier:
And West Wing
EDIT: ^what he said but with pictures
Cuddy was plenty attractive, but Jane Seymour was a stunner in her James Bond days.
She's STILL a stunner.
This whole subthread...
My life has changed dramatically for the better today, thank you all
Damn she beautiful
Let's be honest, if Emma evert played a doctor, we'd all be going in for checkups.
To all those that think this is too harsh on athletes, coaches, etc., I'll follow General Patton's lead.
If you want to punish the people that committed these acts then you're going to venture into bans on coaches and players from the game. I'd love for the NCAA and professional leagues to agree to not allow offending coaches and players to participate for a number of years. I'd think that would clean up a lot of people's acts real quick. Especially if you could lose a season for things you did that come to light years later.
yup.
NCAA is a PNP because of its academic affiliation. Failure to enforce the academic side of things jeopardizes its PNP status.
From NCAA.org
"The NCAA maintains its nonprofit status because it is an association of colleges and universities sharing a common academic mission."
Women's field hockey gets the death penalty.
Women's field hockey
gets the death penaltyloses two scholarships for two years.FIFY
Texas must've complained.
This quote from the link is perfect:
This argument would hold water if the academic fraud could be demonstrated to have randomly affected the athletics programs. Fact of the matter is that if you estimate the probability of a random event when 75% of the fraudulent grades going to 3% of the student body and this same 3% made up 75% of the fraudulent grades every year over the course of 20 years, you get a number that basically means the athletics programs won Powerball not once, but on two consecutive drawings. Clearly, this wasn't random academic fraud that the athletes just "wandered into". The athletic programs or the tutors for those programs had to have directed the athletes to the courses. I'm not sure as to why the NCAA hasn't presented this fact to UNC, to debunk the garbage that they are spewing.
The NCAA correctly views this level of academic fraud as a legal matter well above it's jurisdiction (people really should go to jail). Problem is, no attorney general (read elected politician) is going to piss off the largest group of voters in his state by doing the correct thing. This is a case of corruption that is literally too huge to fail.
This is where the Feds should be stepping in.
What statute would allow the feds to intervene in any way?
I would assume UNC received Federal education money. Dept of Education regulations would almost certainly allow investigators to look at them.
I'm no lawyer, but from what I have seen in terms of federal investigations, unless there was something blatantly discriminatory (e.g. Title IX), unsafe (Clery Act), or otherwise illegal going on, DOE has no business here. The academic integrity of an institution of higher learning is subject to regulation by its accrediting body, which has already come down on UNC in the form of very harsh probation. That, in itself, is a horrible look for the flagship university of the state. But AFAIK there is no federal law that says a college has to offer classes of a certain caliber. There isn't really a fraud case here, because all students were allowed to take these "classes," but there is an obvious NCAA issue as athletes were given favoritism. So between the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges and the NCAA, I think those are the only entities that should be involved.
With former students filling lawsuits that they were not given a quality or adequate education I would think the DOE would have the same power they went after degree mill colleges to look into UNC.
What federal law says "all students are required to receive an education that they believe is of an arbitrary quality decided by themselves?"
I get the outrage; I have friends that are UNC grads that feel the integrity of their alma mater is tarnished. But they were in different programs that were not participating in the sham course offerings. Therefore, they would be hard-pressed to demonstrate any personal injury on the basis of UNC's actions. That's what would be required to get a federal investigation or worthwhile lawsuit. Are they losing their jobs (or not getting them) because they got degrees from UNC's (now-defunct, I believe) AFAM department? If so, there may be a case. But that would be very hard to prove. If their degrees are in a different department/college/school within UNC, I doubt they have much of a case.
GuitarMan has it largely correct. The US Dept of Education only has investigation and enforcement authorities over matters related to student privacy (FERPA), civil rights aka discrimination (Title VI of the Civil Rights Act; Title IX; ADA; Rehabilitation Act etc.), funding (primarily investigate fraud and conduct mandated audits) and other randos specifically granted by statute (e.g., Clery Act). All determinations of quality are left to the states and accrediting bodies, and athletics is left to the NCAA (unless there is discrimination in athletics, in which case USED has general authority).
I stand corrected.
Appreciate the lawdog insight, ESQ. Glad to know I wasn't totally off-base!
Directing athletes to the fraudulent courses is within the NCAA's jurisdiction. It's virtually impossible for that many athletes to simple stumble across those courses, when the rest of the student body had such a small proportion of students participate in them. The direct implication is that either academic advisors for the athletic program, tutors for the athletic program or coaching staff directed the athletes to the courses.
So the NCAA wouldn't be punishing UNC for academic fraud. They would be punishing the athletic programs for willful participation (even exceptional participation) in said fraud.
Seriously though, this is outright disappointing (but expected) for Institutions of higher learning. More so as it has been pointed out, that the alumni and students who did things the right way are cheated from prestige that comes from associating with a university.
In the end is the game, be it basketball, football, etc., so much more important than doing right by your past, present, and future students? When it's all said and done, it's just disappointing more than it is unfair and frustrating.
Glad I'm a Hokie