Tar Heels Covered Up Details in Report

Mar 11, 2012; Atlanta, GA, USA; North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Roy Williams huddles with North Carolina Tar Heels guard Kendall Marshall (5) and Reggie Bullock (35) in the second half against the Florida State Seminoles during the finals of the 2012 ACC Men

In an in depth report that should be read by every college athlete fan out there, Dan Kane has reported that there is evidence that UNC tampered with their letter sent to the NCAA regarding their academic investigation.

The original scandal was related to UNC’s offering of African and Afro-American classes that offered odd rules. The classes had no class times or possibly weren’t even existing classes. After an investigation by North Carolina’s governor, Jim Martin, it was deemed that the scandal was academic related and not just an athletic one.

If it had been left at that, it would have been all well and good. An academic scandal is a real problem for a school but at least the blame would not have fallen on the UNC Tar Heels. That is until Dan Kane delved further into the issue and found that African chairman Julius Nyang’oro had exchanged some email with INC support staff regarding classes. After those emails, Nyang’oro created a new summer class and emailed UNC’s staff to let them know about its creation.

That was about a week ago, yesterday Dan Kane released new information. Hours before UNC sent off a report to the NCAA about the scandal, Faculy Council Chairman Jan Boxill sent the authors of the report an email suggesting a change in sentence.

From the article, the sentence was changed from.

"“Although we may never know for certain, it was our impression from multiple interviews that the involvement of Deborah Crowder seems to have been that of an athletics supporter who was extremely close to personnel in Athletics, and who managed to use the system to help players by directing them to enroll in courses in the African and Afro-American Studies department that turned out to be aberrant or irregularly taught.”"

Meanwhile, the final version read.

"“Although we may never know for certain, it was our impression from multiple interviews that a department staff member managed to use the system to help players by directing them to enroll in courses in the African and Afro-American Studies Department that turned out to be aberrant or irregularly taught.”"

The removal of Crowder’s name is important because it directly involves the UNC athletic staff to the scandal whereas the final sentence only indicates that somebody was bending the rules, not specifically someone in the athletic department. Boxill wanted the sentence gone because it directly implicated the Tar Heels and would have been cause for the NCAA returning to UNC and investigating further.

In the article, which again should be read in full, Kane establishes that there is a link between Nyang’oro and Crowder who was the former’s department manager. At the time of the report, Crowder was also in a relationship with UNC basketball player Warren Martin. There are a lot of very grey areas that do not look good for UNC when all put together.

If UNC was creating classes for athletes to get an easy pass, regardless of whether or not other students also had access, they should face stiff penalties. According to Kane, there were 173 registered to these classes, the most being football with 88 and basketball following with 21.

Other schools have been punished in the past for academic failings. Most recently, 11 schools, including the UCONN Huskies, were banned from the NCAA post season because they failed to meet academic standards. If these schools get punishment from the NCAA for failing on an educational, so should UNC. Especially if it is found true that they went to great lengths to cover up the fact that their athletic department was involved in the scandal.
As more news develop, we will make sure to keep you up to date.