Thorp Admits that “nobody checked” McAdoo paper; Time for independent investigation(updated AM)

General UNC Scandal57

First of all, major kudos to Mark Armstrong of WTVD for getting UNC “Chancellor” Holden Thorp to comment on last week’s revelation that a large part of Michael McAdoo’s was potentially plagiarized.

Armstrong has done a great job throughout the last 12 months consistently covering each and every break in the scandal.

Anyways…in Thorp’s comments(an email?) to Armstrong, UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp admitted tonight that the message board of PackPride did more research on McAdoo’s paper than the UNC did during their review.

‘You’re right. Nobody checked it, and I wish we had because we wouldn’t have said so strongly in the appeal hearing that the paper was his work.’

If you don’t remember, then here are some quotes directly from UNC representatives during McAdoo’s appeal with the NCAA:

UNC legal Counsel Steve Keady(help again from Packpride):

So what happened here was Michael completed his Swahili paper then he asked Jennifer for help with the citations and as I think you will hear he wanted help because he was worried about plagiarism; he knew that you have to cite ideas that are not yours…

…This work reflects his ideas exclusively. It is not a rip off. This really is his work.

Are Thorp and Dickie Baddour going to make a statement now that they are sorry they trusted Steve Keady?

To help people remember, UNC released Jennifer Wiley in 2009 from the academic support program for what UNC representatives called in the McAdoo hearing being too close with at least 1 student. The theory in having that policy is to avoid potential academic fraud. Yet despite UNC having a reason to believe fraud may have occurred in 2009 due to the inappropriate relationship of Wiley and a student, UNC didn’t investigate to see if any academic fraud actually occurred. The start of a trend.

Anyone wonder why there was no investigation? Or how UNC allowed Butch Davis to hire Wiley to work for him personally which led to Wiley providing more “tutoring” and improper benefits in the form of money(plane ticket and paid for parking tickets) after she had to be released by UNC from the academic-support program?

Back to last night’s bombshell from Thorp – without McAdoo’s lawsuit, then the plagiarism discovery never happens on Packpride which led to multiple stories nationwide. For some reason, it took more time for the local paper to put something in print(Saturday) than Statefansnation, Sports Illustrated, the Daily Tarheel, SportsbyBrooks, and several others.

How can an attorney and an athletics director go into a hearing with the NCAA to claim adamantly that a paper is the work of a student when neither had apparently read the paper in question? Mindboggling. Whatever the reason, heads should roll in Chapel Hill if anyone over there cares the least bit about academic integrity. I can only think of three reasons not to review the paper prior to the hearing:

1. Incompetence.
2. Wanting to avoid what might might be discovered if the paper was read
3. Knew the paper was plagiarized, but figured the NCAA and public would never know because the paper would never be released.

The best case for UNC is another example of incompetence. Butch Davis has already set an incredible standard because somehow Butch had no idea any of these issues were occurring in his program while being the first head coach in the history of college athletics to employ a runner/agent on his staff as an associate head coach/recruiting coordinator. However, Thorp, Dickie, Keady, and the “Honor Court” have approached the standard Davis set with not discovering the plagiarism.

Or did they simply not expect the paper to ever become public?

Even if this latest blunder by UNC was only incompetence (after already not investigating these academic issues in 2009), then UNC has proven incapable of discovering the truth in this investigation. The head football coach didn’t control his players, his associate head coach, or his tutor. All of that happened supposedly without him knowing anything. The honor court, chancellor, athletic director and legal counsel didn’t discover blatant plagiarism that took message board posters less than 5 minutes with a couple of web searches. Again, nobody knew anything.

What about all of the other players who were “cleared” and then allowed to play last season? The fact that they didn’t read McAdoo’s paper brings into question each and every investigation handled by UNC so far. How can the public feel confident that UNC has discovered the truth when the only investigation that has been fully disclosed to the public has been proven incomplete or fraudulent?

Clearly, an independent investigation is necessary to get to the truth. This scandal has shown that cracks exist in the foundation of the entire university. Administrators have refused to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests withholding information that the people of NC have a right to see. They have proven, at best, incapable of investigating themselves and discovering the truth. At this point, nothing any representative at UNC has said can be accepted as fact.

It is time for someone in this state to stand up and do what is right. Don’t hold your breath.

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General UNC Scandal

57 Responses to Thorp Admits that “nobody checked” McAdoo paper; Time for independent investigation(updated AM)

  1. TruthBKnown Returns 07/15/2011 at 2:12 AM #

    This comment from Thorp confirms it… an independent investigation is still needed.

    Thorp conceded that nobody checked McAdoo’s paper. Nobody checked it. The entire paper was blatantly plagiarized, and no one caught it. And they proclaimed that it was the ideas of McAdoo.

    But they didn’t even check it.

    This from the university that was allowed to investigate themselves.

    An independent investigation is still needed, folks. Even when this paper was at the heart of a court case, they STILL didn’t bother to check it. It took a bunch of wahoos at PackPride to uncover this.

    If there was any doubt, it has been removed. Carolina cannot be TRUSTED to properly investigate themselves. They either messed this up intentionally, or by accident. Either way, the Poole Commission needs to get the band back together, folks!!!

  2. travelwolf 07/15/2011 at 2:44 AM #

    i say we have a seance and bring back the ghost of Jimmy V to head the investigation…

  3. LifeLongWolf 07/15/2011 at 7:31 AM #

    Wouldn’t it be great to hear what Jimmy V would be saying about this? I’m sure he’d have some hysterical, biting one-liners.

    God, I miss V.

  4. Rochester 07/15/2011 at 7:32 AM #

    UNC has been conferring with Roger Clemens’ lawyers. Their strategy is to hope for a mistrial.

  5. choppack1 07/15/2011 at 7:33 AM #

    What do the fearless harbingers of integrity (nc print media) have to say this morning?

  6. TheAliasTroll 07/15/2011 at 7:39 AM #

    I say we let the PackPride posters do the investigation.

  7. TruthBKnown Returns 07/15/2011 at 7:41 AM #

    I just wanted to say that my post at the top of page 2 (above, at 2:12am) was written before the majority of this article. When I got here last night, there were only 2-3 sentences written, and not a word about calling for an internal investigation. At the end, it just said “More to come” or something.

    Just wanted to make sure people know I didn’t just read the article and post a comment making the same point that this article now makes.

    I didn’t plagiarize in that comment! I’m not McAdoo! 😉

  8. triadwolf 07/15/2011 at 7:41 AM #

    No way this is an accident. The “honor court” specifically “investigated” and reviewed the work of this specific player with that specific paper in question. There may be a million reasons why they didn’t publicly discuss the plagiarism, but they had to have caught it.

    If they did not catch it, then UNC should have its’ accreditation as a university revoked.

    Either way how can you not look at this one item as an indication that the tip of the iceberg has barely been exposed, let alone the entire iceberg. This could (should) be the thing that leads to an expanded investigation.

  9. TOBtime 07/15/2011 at 7:53 AM #

    Rest assured Holden (the bag) Thorpe is feeling just as stupid as the above picture of him looks. He now knows he is going to pay a heavy price for incompetence. In his defense,somebody at the hole has been telling him things are going to OK, we’ll handle it. WOnder who? Smilin’ Don Curtis or maybe BOT Bob?

  10. MatSci94 07/15/2011 at 8:54 AM #

    It would be one thing if there were many papers that were under investigation in the lawsuit, and UNC said ‘this is his work’ and one of the dozens was found to be plagiarized. The *one* lawsuit was about *one* paper, and noone caught this.

    I think when they say ‘it fell through the cracks’ they really mean that it was never supposed to leak out, and not that they didn’t realize what was going on.

  11. GoneFishin 07/15/2011 at 9:25 AM #

    PERJURY ???

  12. WolfBlood 07/15/2011 at 9:53 AM #

    G.T got 4 years probation, 100k fine, and a ACC championship stripped for one player getting 300 in benefits. UNC has 9 major violations including academic cheating and what looks like institutional fraud. I dont see how they slip by anything. This has got to be a serious punishment.

  13. wolfpacker 07/15/2011 at 10:31 AM #

    I don’t believe it. I think they are trying to cover up the fact that they are too INCOMPETENT to figure out that the paper was plagiarized. Just remember, they are graduates of unc.

    These clowns are really putting on a show for the entire academic world. I don’t doubt for one second, that had this happened at any other school, the administration would have done their own due diligence to find out what was going on. The problem here is…it’s been going on so LONG, that they all knew about it and it’s just accepted. This had so many channels to go through where it SHOULD have been caught, this just proves that the university is failing in it’s ability to educate students athletes.

    I think it’s totally unacceptable the unc, as a university is even capable of putting people who can’t even talk, spell, or think on the streets. It’s hilarious because these are the people that are representing unc to the world.

    Their procedures in handling the student athlete’s academic affairs are being exposed and it’s just downright HILARIOUS.

    This basically makes unc look like what it truly is…home for the Wal-Mart Fans. They have stooped so low, they are now on the level they deserve. I think Wal-Mart should look into selling unc degrees, online of course.

  14. IamGumbyDammit 07/15/2011 at 11:03 AM #

    You have to believe one of the big numbnuts near the top of the manure pile over there is berating a lower toady with something along the lines of “if you’d just GIVEN them the grades like we told you and not made them write papers, there’d be no plagiarism to catch!”

  15. RegularExpression 07/15/2011 at 11:07 AM #

    PackerInRussia Says:
    “Lack” sounds too passive. They eschew institutional control.

    UNC farts in institutional control’s general direction.

  16. Chief93 07/15/2011 at 11:09 AM #

    Guys, just think how bad it would be if they weren’t so darned cooperative.

  17. AirWolf 07/15/2011 at 11:53 AM #

    Thorp is a pawn in this melee. The BOT set him up as their dupe, knowing that someone so young and gullible would be easy to “mold” to suit the needs of their corrupt plan.
    It is way past time for the Guvna Bev to send the SBI over to the Hill. If it was good enough for the redheaded step child in Raleigh, it’s good enough for the flagship.

  18. Daily Update 07/15/2011 at 12:22 PM #

    Chief93 from the days of Chavis League? Is that you?

  19. BJD95 07/15/2011 at 12:29 PM #

    I have always maintained and continue to believe that Thorp is the man to watch. When he backs off the spin, then the worm is turning. Davis and Baddour are “all in” already, but Thorp could conceivably save his own skin by cleaning house.

    Thorp may have concluded that there’s no way to keep up the charade, regardless of whether it costs UNC some of its large athletic donors. About damned time, if you ask me.

  20. JeremyH 07/15/2011 at 12:41 PM #

    let’s set aside for the moment why the media is not covering this. what do the professors at this professional sports club have to say about all this?

  21. MP 07/15/2011 at 12:42 PM #

    Interesting BJD95….

    Oh, and LOL @ PiR.

  22. Elrod 07/15/2011 at 12:43 PM #

    As I was reading this and was certainly in aggrement with the direction of the logic, a thought occurred to me. The word ‘incapable’ could have a couple of different meanings, as used. It could mean they do not have the personal ability (incompetent) or that they do not have the external means (systems) to discover the truth in this investigation. The more this goes on and the more we see, I am becoming more and more convinced that they WANT the outside world to conclude that they are incompetent, while the reality is that they have deliberately built a system that is not capable of finding and reporting the truth. For example, if they were really incompetent, they would have left the certified “model” compliance system and staff in place when Butch came on board; yet, what they actually did was to completely dismantle that system and install a crippled and impotent system that would not detect and report obvious compliance issues. This is evidenced by the absence of responses to Jennifer Wiley’s termination, Butch’s non-use of the UNC-supplied phones, the extensive presence of high-dollar bling and the apparent non-reporting of certain income by Blake. Any of these could or should have resulted in some form of self-reporting by UNC to the NCAA; yet, they all were ‘surprising’ finds coming to light during this investigation.

    A poster on PP made a statement that caught my eye: They have been cheating so long that they have forgotten how to cheat. I think that has some merit in this way: It is no secret that UNC has cheated in a variety of ways for a very long time. However, they still generally recruited players they could fairly well control within that system. As long as they could control the external, public forces like the media and politicians, they could shield their cheating from the public through “The Carolina Way”. Then along came Butch and the directive to make them BCS-relevant. Butch then proceeded to do two things: cripple the existing systems and bring in a new brand of thugalete that would not be controlled. Those actions in combination with the uncontrollable media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) put them in an uncontrollable situation and now they are paying the price. It is my sincere hope that price is extremely high, with about 50 years of interest added.

  23. Old MacDonald 07/15/2011 at 12:47 PM #

    They look like total clowns.

    Of course Holden “the bag” Thorp is going to say that they did not read the paper. What else is he going to say? He can’t say they read it and didn’t notice because that doesn’t pass the laugh test. They can’t say they read it and lied about it. What he said was the only thing they had left to say.

    How they didn’t read it but got up and said it was his work is the really fishy thing. If I was going to represent that the paper was his work you can be damn sure I would have read it. How/why would they (DB, the UNC atty) make such a representation without checking it, even a little bit? Sort of makes you think they were trying to cover it all up.

  24. highstick 07/15/2011 at 1:21 PM #

    Triad, I had some thoughts about the “accreditation issue” the other night also. That has been a problem at Auburn and UNC is “playing with fire” with the accreditation folks too! We only think about the NCAA when it comes to issues like McAdoo’s, but there has to be some eyebrows being raised on the academic accreditation side also..Or at least, I would think so…

  25. TheCOWDOG 07/15/2011 at 2:03 PM #

    BJD, I’ve been sayin’ that for the better part of 2 weeks. Holden to Charles De Gaulle, ” Vive le Resistance.”

    Or, if one is a Stephen King fan, Trash Can Man to Flagg. ” For you! “

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