The AFAM program was established at UNC in the early 80’s concommitant with a movement by black students insisting on having a Black cultural union. An AFAM studies curriculum was a natural outgrowth of this movement. The program received national attention and served as a model for other colleges and universities. The AFAM prgram morphed into a full-fledged department with its own department head. The department flourished and operated in a very independent manner. In short, Arts and Sciences left it to its own devices. Many black students chose AFAM as their major. The fact that grades given out in this department were generally higher than grades given out in other departments went unchallenged, if not unnoticed, or even ignored. Things began to derail somewhat in the late 1980’s and later, when department head, Professor Julius Nyang’oro allowed the creation of AFAM courses which did not require the students to physically attend class. These courses were custom tailored in many cases to satisfy the time requirements of students who also had jobs, marriied and single-parent students, and student athletes who found it difficult to juggle classtime to allow for participation in athletics - particularly, football and basketball. At some point Nang’oro relinquished administration of these courses to his secretary, Deborah Crowder, a 1975 UNC graduate. While possessed of good intentions, Crowder nonetheless began to succumb to personal requests from students and athletic advisory staff personnel to make these courses available almost ad-hoc. At the same time she lowered the grade standards for these courses which generally only required the equivalent of a term paper in order to receive credit for a course. Papers which passed optics invaribly received high grades, though many were plagarized, and were often recycled among students. While the Wainstein report, commissioned by the University to investigate these “paper courses”, revealed egregious shortcomings in the subject courses, it concluded that while athletes populated these courses in inordinate numbers, there was no evidence that the paper classes were established for the purpose of keeping student athletes academically eligible for continuing their study from semester to semester. The Wainstein Study also found no evidence that UNC coaches encouraged abuse of these courses to keep student athletes academically eligible. (It is only logical that coaches were aware of the easy grades given out in the AFAM courses, and relied on them to help keep their athletes academically eligible. After all, even non-athletes seek out professors who give inflated grades to pad their GPA, and often to remain academically eligible.).
While the NCAA was on the hot seat, and under pressure, to sanction UNC in this instance, it could not. First of all the NCAA is not authorized to assess whether or not courses offered by a university meet standards for academic rigor. SACS was the responsible entity in this case, and it indeed placed UNC on one year’s probation. And secondly, and what has never been discussed, UNC granted degrees for many years to students, primarily black students, whose academic transcripts reflected credits for AFAM courses, to include credits for “paper courses”. In many cases, without the high grades given for said courses, the students might not have graduated. There was no scenario in which the NCAA could declare indivdual student athletes ineligible because they received high grades in courses which it deemed to be unworthy of academic credit. This was particularly disengenious since no one from the NCAA ever examined a single paper written by a student athlete for a paper course. And furthermore, the NCAA could not discredit the student athlete’s paper courses, when non-athletes had received credit for such courses for years and gone on to graduate.
While the NCAA was on the hot seat, and under pressure, to sanction UNC in this instance, it could not. First of all the NCAA is not authorized to assess whether or not courses offered by a university meet standards for academic rigor. SACS was the responsible entity in this case, and it indeed placed UNC on one year’s probation. And secondly, and what has never been discussed, UNC granted degrees for many years to students, primarily black students, whose academic transcripts reflected credits for AFAM courses, to include credits for “paper courses”. In many cases, without the high grades given for said courses, the students might not have graduated. There was no scenario in which the NCAA could declare indivdual student athletes ineligible because they received high grades in courses which it deemed to be unworthy of academic credit. This was particularly disengenious since no one from the NCAA ever examined a single paper written by a student athlete for a paper course. And furthermore, the NCAA could not discredit the student athlete’s paper courses, when non-athletes had received credit for such courses for years and gone on to graduate.
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