Picture at UNC Just Gets Uglier

Sunday, November 25, 2012

S eldom has a whistle made an uglier, more unpleasant sound than the one a UNC employee named Mary Willingham has been blowing lately. But it needed to be heard.

Willingham is a reading specialist who once worked with student-athletes - though one feels like putting the "student" part of that term in quotation marks, considering how much scandal has come to light where Chapel Hill is concerned.

Willingham had apparently resolved to remain silent about her experiences in that regard. But after attending the recent memorial service for former UNC system president Bill Friday - who had long worried about the corrupting influence of big-time, big-money sports on academic integrity - she felt a need to speak out. And her words bore, in Shakespeare's phrase, a decidedly frosty sound.

Largely because of impressive investigative reporting by The News & Observer of Raleigh, the public is now aware of the shameful academic slackness (mostly within the Department of African and African-American Studies Department) that allowed students (mostly athletes) to coast to A's and B's in cushy "lecture" classes that involved few or no lectures. Those revelations, plus others, have cost UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp his job.

But Willingham is the first actual participant in these sickening activities to come forward. Actually, she is a former participant, having previously gotten so sick of what she was seeing around her that she got herself transferred to a different learning center that doesn't work with jocks.

In several recent interviews - again, with The N&O- Willingham said the so-called "paper classes" were already in place when she joined the support program way back in 2003. These non-classes were clearly designed for one purpose: to create charades that would make it possible for totally unqualified "students" to make passing grades in academic classes where they had no business being - just so they could be kept around long enough to help make UNC look better on the playing field.

How unqualified were they? So much so, Willingham said, that some of them had never read a book and didn't know what a paragraph was. After her first experience helping a student with his paper, she was so troubled that she discussed the matter with another staffer. She was told not to make waves, and the student ended up making a B.

It only got worse.

"And if you cannot do the course work here, how do you stay eligible?" she said. "You stay eligible by some department, some professor, somebody who gives you a break. That's everywhere across the country. Here it happened with paper classes. There's no question."

The university has separated academic support operations from the Department of Athletics and increased controls in other ways. But more must be done to restore a proper sense of values, to make crystal-clear that this kind of abuse is no longer tolerable - and to begin restoring the once-hallowed image of the UNC system, which has been badly and inexcusably tarnished.

More like this story

Middleman522 5 months, 4 weeks ago

The UNC system is focused on turning out as many liberals and socialists as it can, and has no time for higher learning. Yes that statement was way over the top, but not totally untrue. The Ivory Tower was a good read. Years ago!

emb6683 5 months, 4 weeks ago

Let's just call it what it is, semi-pro sports, and forget the charade of a college education. Pay the players whatever the booster clubs want to and don't waste their time making them go to classes

JD 5 months, 4 weeks ago

And this is new how? In the 90's I remember when the Senegalese student Makhtar N'Diaye took African basket weaving as a major. Athletes (especially at UNC) always get special treatment.

And now for the obligatory. GO DUKE NICE WIN IN NASSAU!

njc17 5 months, 4 weeks ago

GEE where's Dusty on this? Seems to me he'd be on top of this pity the poor athlete story.

truthmatterstome2 5 months, 3 weeks ago

What more should be done? Criticism is easy, finding a solution is hard. The truth is that almost all athletes in the football and basketball programs are African American. Our government and especially the liberal university systems have gone the extra mile to admit minority students, even when it means denying the admission of students who have far more qualifications. The Supreme Court has upheld such admissions. The real problem starts in the home, then in elementary school, middle school, and high school. These "student-athletes" would be able to read and would be able to count, if parents supported public schools and demanded that their children to improve their academic standards. We are kicking the can down the road, if we are going to blame the universitys for trying to figure out a way to make unqualified students successful.

I have employed former athletes from NCSU, Duke, Maryland, UNC, and UVa. None of them were ready for the real world. All of them put forth the effort to become successful in their jobs. They all admit that athletes are given an easier path to graduation. They all express issues with the amount of time that they were required to participate in their sport. They all knew that they were being used to raise money for their school. Only one ever thought that he may have the opportunity to play professionally...he did for two years ..with 3 teams. He made no money. He returned to school and earned his degree.

It is time for the pot to stop calling the kettle black. They are all the same. They just haven't all been caught, yet.