For several years now, the University of North Carolina has been accused of going well beyond special treatment when it comes to educating student athletes. A report that was published in The News & Observer a little less than two years ago claimed UNC football players took phony classes that lacked instruction and involved forged signatures.
Many of the classes in question were from the African-American (AFAM) studies department. Former UNC employee Mary Willingham, who has researched the studies of student-athletes at UNC, spoke with ESPN recently and shared some of what she found. Her findings included the paper you see above, which was allegedly written by a student-athlete for a class that never met and required just one final paper.
“Athletes couldn’t write a paper,” Willingham said. “They couldn’t write a paragraph. They couldn’t write a sentence. Some of these students could read maybe at a second or third grade level. Really, for an adult, that’s considered illiterate.”
Here is the text from the paper that was written for a class called AFAM 41, courtesy of Sports Illustrated contributor Bryan Armen Graham:
On the evening of December Rosa Parks decided she was going to sit in the white people section on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. During this time blacks had to give up there seats to whites when more whites got on the bus. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Her and the bus driver began to talk and the conversation went like this. “Let me have those front seats” said the driver. She didn’t get up and told the driver that she was tired of giving her seat to white people. “I’m going to have you arrested,” said the driver. “You may do that,” Rosa Parks responded. Two white policemen came in and Rosa Parks asked them “why do you all push us around?” The police officer replied and said “I don’t know but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.
The video at ESPN.com is worth watching. It certainly lends credence to the theory that something was going on, which we have heard from former UNC athletes as recently as this past January. I doubt UNC is the only school doing this stuff, but the problem at Chapel Hill seems to be pretty significant.
H/T Sporting News
