UNC BOG panel discusses academic fraud behind closed doors

UNC Scandal38

The N&O is reporting this afternoon that A UNC system BOG panel met for more than five hours behind closed doors, citing confidentiality and privacy issues.  The purpose of the meeting was reportedly to discuss UNC-CH’s current academic fraud issues…

CHAPEL HILL — A UNC Board of Governors panel met for more than five hours behind closed doors Wednesday in its review of the academic fraud case that has dogged UNC-Chapel Hill.

The panel gathered briefly with reporters present, but then went into closed session, citing state law that protects confidential personnel matters, information about the performance of public employees and attorney-client privilege.

Laura Fjeld, vice president and general counsel of the UNC system’s General Administration, was present at the meeting. The review group also cited federal law protecting the privacy of student educational records.

The panel will reconvene Thursday in what is expected to be mostly open deliberation.

Wednesday’s closed door meeting no doubt included discussion of two former employees thought to be at the center of the scandal in UNC-CH’s African and Afro-American studies department — Julius Nyang’oro, a former chairman and professor who was forced to retire in July, and Deborah Crowder, a former department manager who retired in 2009.

 

Thank goodness they met privately so as not to inadvertently violate FERPA.  No word yet if they were allowed to discuss Julius Peppers’ academic record based on transcripts which were already illegally made available to the public.

 

About Wufpacker

A 2nd generation alumnus and raised since birth to be irrationally dedicated to all things NC State. Class of '88 and '92.

UNC Scandal

38 Responses to UNC BOG panel discusses academic fraud behind closed doors

  1. goforit 08/29/2012 at 6:58 PM #

    I looked forward to reading Martin’s heavily redacted report.

  2. TOBtime 08/29/2012 at 7:16 PM #

    Of course it’s behind closed doors. Likewise were the initial plan meetings to put the fraud in place along with the needed meetings to perpetuate the fraud. It makes perfect sense.

  3. choppack1 08/29/2012 at 8:35 PM #

    The fix is in.

    Meet behind closed doors. Hire a friend to conduct the investigation. Have a UNC alumn with a street on campus named after his father rule on the coach’s phone records.

    Nothing is going to happen with this.

  4. TopTenPack 08/29/2012 at 8:56 PM #

    Like most in this community, I have read with interest every article about the UNC Scandal. However, I do believe we as a community should separate the anti-unc from the pro-NC State. When the coverage on the NC State blog about the UNC scandal needs its own section, there is an issue. Can’t this content go to tarheelssuck.com or something.

    I want to be for something, not against something.

    Go Pack!

  5. fullmoon1 08/29/2012 at 9:09 PM #

    Very revealing indeed. I know from my personal work related meetings that meetings are never or rarely happy times. Only things requiring heavy discipline are preceded by a meeting.

  6. packalum44 08/29/2012 at 9:11 PM #

    ^ With all due respect, create your own blog and author all the pro State articles you feel like. This blog is controlled by the authors and they don’t appreciate suggestions on the content, rather you have the choice to read articles or not. Click on the ones that appease you.

    Very strange that Peppers issues public acknowledgement of his transcript, condones the University for releasing it, then donates a quarter million.

    If you love your alma mater so much, why not just say you gave them permission? Who’s dumber, Peppers or his agent/tudor? Stupid shits.

  7. wufpup76 08/29/2012 at 9:30 PM #

    Does anyone else get the feeling that we’re witnessing Bill Clements and the SMU Board’s “secret meetings”, Part II?

    Fraud is the order of the day.

  8. Wufpacker 08/29/2012 at 9:40 PM #

    Or the release of PR statements (read: cover stories).

  9. Wufpacker 08/29/2012 at 9:49 PM #

    Wanted to respond here to what TopTenPack said (rather than a direct reply above) so it would be seen. He is not the only one who feels this way.

    All I can say is that it’s an ongoing story in which many (most?) in our community have a high interest. Frankly, I think it would be an irrational (irresponsible?) decision to not cover it. It’s being discussed everywhere else, and since many of our folks use this as a central hub to talk about many other topics other than NCSU athletics, it makes no sense that it would not be one of those topics.

    And that’s not even taking into account the relationship our alma mater has with theirs. I’ll leave that one alone however, as it has been well covered already.

    As far as the separate section, I had no say in that so someone else will have to kick in here, but I do think it was a fabulous idea. The story is ongoing and doing a little back re-research to recall certain facts is sometimes needed, especially for those of us who (almost) have as much gray on top now as any other color. The section is at the bottom and completely unobtrusive unless one is going there intentionally.

    EDIT – Almost forgot to say that now that there are many storylines heating up involving NCSU, the ratio of negative UNC to positive NCSU has shifted radically.

  10. fullmoon1 08/29/2012 at 10:05 PM #

    Anti unc is pro NCSU as far as I am concerned.

  11. ancsu87 08/29/2012 at 10:19 PM #

    I am for something:
    1. To hold my head up high as a NC State Alumni (being a 1987 graduate of NC State that was taken away from me for several years just two years after graduation)
    2. To see UNC-CH “Carolina Way” exposed and stopped after more than 3 decades of cheating

  12. Wufpacker 08/29/2012 at 10:27 PM #

    I don’t completely disagree with how TopTenPack feels. That’s one reason I’m overjoyed that the meat of the college sports season is almost upon us. It does get to be a bit disheartening when UNC-CH’s woes are the only thing worth talking about.

    But whether or not one feels as stongly as you do fullmoon1, I think most do agree that the goings on over there do have an effect on us going forward. Again, I’ll avoid going into the potential historical significance.

    Like it or not, we’re the two biggest kids on the local block, and the fates of both schools are intertwined inextricably. Until this story concludes one way or another, enquiring wolf minds will want to know.

  13. blpack 08/29/2012 at 10:57 PM #

    I don’t think anything will happen with this committee. Too many good ole boy connections and politics. It’s window dressing. However the SBI is still on the job. Hopefully they are working hard. About time for Kane to come out with another article detailing further Cheat problems.

  14. Wufpacker 08/29/2012 at 11:02 PM #

    Kane was too busy this week trying to prove to the Carolina halfwits that a one hour orientation class for athletes only is not the same as no show/no teach classes to keep eligibility. He failed miserably because as I already mentioned, they are halfwits.

    Actually, half is way too generous.

  15. runwiththepack 08/29/2012 at 11:20 PM #

    As regular posters have probably noticed, this UNC “thingy” occupies a lot of my time on here as well as on the News&Observer on-line comment sections.

    I look at it this way. There are probably at least a couple hundred recruits that went to UNC that would have gone to NCSU since Dr. Kangaroo became department head and UNC thus began their fraud.

    For each class that UNC athletes took in African Studies, there were 40 times that a tarhole sports hero didn’t have to get out of bed and go to class, as well as take an exam. If you figure that each athlete in African Studies took at least a dozen such courses in 3 or 4 years, then we’re talking about 500 times that one of their guys didn’t have to devote a couple hours to trekking across campus and back to attend classes. That’s about 1,000 extra hours that their guys have to work out, watch game films, rest up after practice, etc….

    … not to mention that they never had to fret about making a grade.

    That is one heckuva recruiting tool, as well as an eligibility magic hat, wouldn’t you agree?

    At 1,000 hours of saved time per ball player multiplied by maybe 300-400 football and basketball players enrolled in African Studies since 1992, we’re talking about nearly 500,000 hours of time that their players didn’t have to be “distracted” by schoolwork since 1992, not even considering the time it takes for assigned reading and studying for exams that they didn’t have to do.

    That extra time to devote to sports has been parlayed into probably at least $200,000,000 more revenue for the Rams Club and hundreds of extra “W’s” on the field. Many of the hats and t-shirts and ESPN coverage brought in revenue that OTHER programs would have benefited from. Instead, UNC’s sports program is one of the very richest in the entire country.

    To think that it probably would have been swept under the rug very early if it weren’t for State Fans on message boards, as well as Dan Kane’s work,

    there’s no way i can agree with TopTenPack.

  16. Wufpacker 08/29/2012 at 11:33 PM #

    “News&Observer on-line comment sections.”

    Fish in a barrel. Have to admit it is fun to mess with them lately. WRALSportsfan’s smack talk threads are great fun too, btw.

  17. Wufpacker 08/29/2012 at 11:48 PM #

    Wanted to go back and double check to make sure I wasn’t talking out of my ass before (don’t say it).

    Currently, there is one UNC-CH scandal related entry (out of ten) on the front page. This one. That last one published before this was a week ago by GAWolf. The one before that (me again, sorry) was the day before that.

    I don’t think that should be particularly objectionable.

  18. runwiththepack 08/30/2012 at 12:10 AM #

    I would suppose that the more commenting placed on the N&O articles, the more likely the N&O is to keep the story at the top of the page.

    I haven’t got a WRAL registration. Probably won’t. Not enough time to post any more.

    I still find it hard to believe the heels finally showed the rest of the country what they’re really all about.

  19. wolfpacker 08/30/2012 at 1:39 AM #

    The best suggestion they could ever get would be to tell HOLDEN to COME CLEAN. You would have to be a FOOL to think, that as the Dean of the Department over the curriculum in question that HOLDEN did not have a clue as to WHAT was going on…he SHOULD have known what was going on. How could he NOT KNOW? He was too busy making sure his basketball players were eligible for play. Have you ever noticed that they’ve almost never had a player ineligible for play for academic reasons in like 20 years? Imagine that…

    COME CLEAN HOLDEN!

  20. GAWolf 08/30/2012 at 8:02 AM #

    Wufpacker: Some folks just cannot be happy with their free product. Don’t try to rationalize with those people. It’s a waste of time.

  21. Wufpacker 08/30/2012 at 8:34 AM #

    Rationalizing it wasn’t my intent, but it did kinda drift in that direction I suppose. I guess my better response would have been “change the channel if you don’t like the show”.

  22. beer03 08/30/2012 at 10:02 AM #

    I am for:

    1. Full disclosure of all activities detrimental to the UNC System.

    2. Fair, consistent and impartial scrutiny of all constituent institutions of the UNC System by: involved university chancellors, university boards of trustees, the university board of governors, the university president, North Carolina legislatures and legal functionaries.

    3. Fair, timely, zealous and impartial coverage of said institutions by local and national press.

    4. Rapid and full disclosure of all institutional materials related to ongoing investigations of said institutions in the spirit of cleaning up existing problems fairly and transparently so that the interests of NC citizens who support said institutions are best served.

    I am against:

    1. The concepts of “greater or lesser among equals.”

    2. Differential interpretations of very similar activity patterns by similar public officials (chancellors, let us say) with resultant deferential characterizations: 1. out of control, incompetent rogue, in it up to his eyeballs. and 2. Nice guy, doing his best, caught up in a mess, knew nothing.

  23. Wolfman 9806 08/30/2012 at 10:02 AM #

    GAWolf: Last time I checked “those people” are fellow Wolfpackers! That comment has a real Chapel Hill feel to it. You should probably stick to writing articles and not comment on us riff-raff.

  24. gumby 08/30/2012 at 10:02 AM #

    I for one don’t want to read about any effort to stop the schadenfreude. It’s killing my buzz.

  25. Lumpy 08/30/2012 at 10:08 AM #

    For years, I was one of those guys who just didn’t get all the UNC vitriol. I wondered why we wasted so much time hating on them rather than worrying about what was wrong at NC State (Turner, O’Cain, Monteith, Fowler, Sendek). Don’t get me wrong, I disliked them as much as any red blooded State fan, but endless conversations about wild conspiracies that lead to the Heels success seemed like the kind of nonsense a fanbase with our track record against them in basketball would make up. I’m being proven more and more wrong every day. This whole scandal deserves to be front and center on any State themed site. Not because of simple schadenfreude, or because the “Carolina Way” has been exposed as complete BS, but because it’s time to start getting back to a level playing in field.
    I often think about where NC State would be in basketball if we hadn’t essentially crippled ourselves with ridiculous sanctions and rules that we were essentially guilted into applying by people who believed that the University of North Carolina did it right. While the NCAA was happy with a one year tournament ban and probation, those people at the N&O and on the BOG in 1990 wagged the finger at Valvano and State until the new leader ship “de-emphasized” athletics. We missed out on one of the biggest booms in college sports from 1992-2000. UNC, Duke, Georgia Tech, Wake Forrest, and Maryland were all nationally ranked during that time. They were on Sportscenter every night. They all extended their brands nationally and upped recruiting. Meanwhile we took ourselves out of the spotlight because some players sold shoes and tickets.
    Well now it’s clear that UNC has spent decades keeping players eligible with inflated grades from a completely bogus major, and until Dan Kane picked up this story from NC State message boards, there was a media blackout. The same folks that were so quick to condemn NC State, Clemson, and schools from the SEC for giving athletes perks, were surprisingly mum when the standard bearer of “doing it right” gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
    So until this is the lead story across the news cycle, and on the ticker in Times Square, and ESPN is finally forced to mention the story somewhere in their 24 hours of sports coverage and the NCAA finally gives Carolina what it deserves, I expect to see a “Look what UNC is hiding today” headline on every NC State message board and blog.

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