| Blog and Media Roundup - Friday, February 28, 2014; News Roundup | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 28 2014, 04:59 AM (328 Views) | |
| abb | Feb 28 2014, 04:59 AM Post #1 |
|
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-27/in-fake-classes-scandal-unc-fails-its-athletes-whistle-blower In Fake Classes Scandal, UNC Fails Its Athletes—and Whistle-Blower By Paul M. Barrett February 27, 2014 Behind this week's coverPhotograph by Adrian Gaut; Jersey lettering by Justin MetzBehind this week's coverSitting in Memorial Hall at the heart of the Chapel Hill campus of the University of North Carolina, Mary Willingham wondered what William Friday would want her to do. Friday’s memorial service in October 2012 drew a large and reverent audience: scholars of the humanities and sciences, national political figures, and university staff members such as Willingham, who’d spent the previous decade tutoring athletes and other undergraduates in need of remedial reading help. The tribute to Friday, president of the state university system from 1956 to 1986, reflected the accomplishments and contradictions of the institution he embodied. Slaves helped build UNC, the nation’s first public university, which opened in 1795. The original Memorial Hall, dedicated in 1885, honored students and faculty who’d died defending the Confederacy. Taking office only two years after the Supreme Court ordered an end to “separate but equal” in Brown v. Board of Education, Friday pushed for desegregation in the face of sometimes-violent opposition. Under his stewardship, Chapel Hill earned a reputation for excellence and became a powerhouse in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. As she listened to the eulogies, Willingham pondered another aspect of Friday’s legacy. In his last decades he’d tried to stir discussion about whether commercialized intercollegiate athletics was distorting higher education. That’s why Willingham had approached Friday in his 92nd and final year. In private conversations, she’d told him about her mounting anxiety that rather than educating its recruited athletes, UNC was playing a shell game to keep them from needing to study at all. She’d told him about basketball and football stars who read at a grade school level. She confessed that she’d helped steer some of these young men—many of them black—into lecture classes that never met. Worst of all, given Carolina’s racial history, the phony courses were offered in the black studies department. Acting as an unnamed source, Willingham had been feeding information since 2011 about academic fraud to a reporter with the News & Observer in Raleigh. The coverage had put UNC on the defensive. But rather than seriously investigate the connection between sports and classroom corruption, top university administrators used vague committee reports to obfuscate the issue. Willingham’s conversations with the elderly Friday hadn’t addressed the tradecraft of whistle-blowing. Still, he’d encouraged her to act on her concerns. “At his memorial,” she says, “I realized I had to speak up.” In November 2012, she went public with what she knew. College sports is a $16 billion business, and it coexists uneasily with its host—nonprofit, tax-exempt institutions dedicated to education and research. The tension has become acute at UNC, in large part because of Willingham’s decision at Friday’s memorial service. What she disclosed has devastated UNC’s image of itself and may potentially hobble its athletic program. Beginning in the 1990s and continuing at least through 2011, UNC’s Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies offered more than 200 lecture courses that never met. The department also sponsored hundreds of independent study classes of equally dubious value. Internal reviews have identified forged faculty signatures and more than 500 grades changed without authorization. The students affected were disproportionately football and basketball players. “I was part of something that I came to be ashamed of,” says Willingham. “We weren’t serving the kids. We weren’t educating them properly. We were pushing them toward graduation, and that’s not the same as giving them an education.” Last summer she was stripped of her supervisory title—an action she’s appealing as retaliatory. In January senior UNC officials took the further step of publicly condemning her for suggesting that some football and basketball stars couldn’t read well enough to get through college classes honestly. While her outspokenness and the vilification it brought make Willingham unique, her role as a secret enabler of NCAA Inc. is hardly unusual. Every Division I sports power employs low-profile advisers like Willingham without whom the facade of academic eligibility would swiftly collapse, says Richard Southall, director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of South Carolina. “We pretend,” he says, “that it’s feasible to recruit high school graduates with minimal academic qualifications, give them a full-time job as a football or basketball player at a Division I NCAA school, and somehow have them get up to college-level reading and writing skills at the same time that they’re enrolled in college-level classes.” Willingham’s experience, Southall adds, shows how “we’re all kidding ourselves.” What’s more, in response to escalating demands that undergraduate athletes deserve pay for their services, the NCAA argues that a scholarship and degree are sufficient compensation. The NCAA position crumbles, however, if the parchment represents little or no real education. Mary and Chuck Willingham didn’t have ties to Chapel Hill when they arrived in 1999. “We just thought this was a great place to raise a family,” Mary, now 52, says. “I love being around smart people, and there are a ton of them in Chapel Hill.” Willingham: “I had to speak up”Photograph by Mark Peckmezian for Bloomberg BusinessweekWillingham: “I had to speak up”The Willinghams met in the late 1980s at Amgen (AMGN), the California biotech company. Chuck worked in finance, Mary in human resources. She’d gone into HR straight out of Loyola University Chicago, a Jesuit school in her hometown. She worked at Mobil and the Arthur Young accounting firm before landing at Amgen. “We were lucky,” she says. “We got together just as the biotech boom took off. There were stock options. We did well.” Once they’d settled in Chapel Hill, some of the Amgen windfall went into a small chain of restaurants Chuck opened. Mary earned a teaching degree and became a reading tutor in the public schools. A few years later, on a lark, she applied for a job at UNC. To her delight, the university hired her in 2003 as a $33,000-a-year staff member in the athletics department. “Everyone in Chapel Hill wants to work at UNC,” she says. “The benefits are great, and you’re part of the in-club.” Soon she was dressing her three children—two sons and a daughter—in Carolina blue for Christmas card photographs. Chuck and the kids became loyal Tar Heels fans. (The nickname refers to the tar and pitch extracted since Colonial times from Carolina pine trees. During the Civil War, the state’s troops were called “tar heels.”) A dedicated runner with a lean physique, Mary didn’t relish football or basketball, but she loved the gracious red-brick campus and the solidarity that bound her family to the place where they lived. “The Carolina Way,” an ethos of pride, achievement, and integrity, is taken quite seriously in Chapel Hill. UNC counts among its alumni James Polk, U.S. president from 1845 to 1849; novelists Thomas Wolfe and Russell Banks; and such business leaders as Hugh McColl, retired chairman and chief executive officer of Bank of America (BAC), and Peter Grauer, chairman of Bloomberg LP, owner of Bloomberg Businessweek. Today the school enrolls 18,000 undergraduates and an additional 11,000 graduate and professional school students. What most people know about Carolina, though, is basketball. The 36-year reign of coach Dean Smith, from 1961 to 1997, is legendary. Michael Jordan led the team to an NCAA title in March 1982 and went on to win six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls. All told, UNC has won five NCAA tournaments, most recently in 2005 and 2009 under current coach Roy Williams. “I grew up in Los Angeles a total nut for sports,” says Chuck. “It’s different here. The intensity in a small town like Chapel Hill when you get 60,000 people in for a football game or 22,000 in the Dean Dome for basketball—it’s like something I’d never seen before.” Conditioned by her HR training, Mary quickly assessed the 800 varsity athletes she was hired to assist. “Four hundred of them at any given time are on the [Atlantic Coast Conference] honor roll or the UNC dean’s list,” she says. “They’re doing great.” Most of these play “nonrevenue sports,” such as soccer, tennis, or field hockey. In NCAA lingo, revenue sports are men’s football and basketball—the ones that generate lucrative TV and licensing fees and ticket sales. Of the remaining 400 UNC athletes, Willingham continues, “another 200 are doing OK, and about 150 to 200 are underperforming—some of them badly underperforming. Most of the last group are playing football or men’s or women’s basketball.” This distribution shouldn’t surprise anyone. UNC officials acknowledge that historically they’ve enrolled 160 athletes a year based partly on their “special talent.” The highest priorities are football and basketball recruits. An additional 40 special-talent slots are allotted for music and drama. In 2012, UNC reported total sports revenue of $82.4 million, offset by expenses of $81.9 million. According to NCAA figures analyzed by Indiana University’s National Sports Journalism Center and USA Today, UNC ranked 25th on a revenue list headed by the University of Texas at Austin, with $163.3 million. During the seven years Willingham counseled athletes, UNC’s Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes reported to the athletic director. The program’s dozen advisers divide up the 28 varsity teams, with the lion’s share of attention going to football and men’s basketball. A couple of “learning specialists,” including Willingham, serve as floating tutors, focusing on the players most in need. A separate academic support program handles all other undergraduates. In the mornings, Willingham met one-on-one with basketball and football players. “We would work together on reading or writing skills” usually related to class assignments, she says. “It was spoon-feeding the information in, or getting the information out.” After the athletes spent the afternoon lifting weights and practicing, Willingham supervised evening study halls. On game days and during road trips, tutoring ground to a halt. Willingham noticed that some highly recruited revenue-sport athletes lacked basic literacy skills. She won’t discuss individuals by name but will say that beginning in 2003, she taught members of the football and basketball team to sound out multisyllable words and piece together simple sentences. Other athletes who could read somewhat better wanted her help so they could more easily follow sports news online. Willingham says that of the undergraduate sports stars who accepted tutoring—not all did—a number made substantial progress. But the notion that athletes with elementary school skills “would be able to write papers for college classes,” she says, “just made no sense.” A female varsity basketball player showed her a class paper that “was obviously a cut-and-paste job she’d copied from somewhere,” Willingham says. A colleague advised Willingham to allow the young woman to submit the paper for credit, and it received a B. “I came home and told Chuck, but I didn’t stop it,” she says. When she asked more experienced colleagues how to handle their lagging charges, she was told not to lose any sleep. Willingham became, in effect, “an eligibility specialist,” she says, “knowing just how much I could get away with in helping these guys, without actually doing the work for them.” Football players whispered to her about a computer hard drive maintained by the team that contained a bank of term papers. Athletes slightly altered and submitted the inventoried papers for course credit. “There’s no way the professors could not have noticed the same papers coming in from athletes,” she says. By 2005 she’d learned something was seriously awry in the black studies department. Julius Nyang’oro, a native of Tanzania who chaired the department until 2011, offered lecture courses on topics such as Swahili and black history, but the lectures never happened. Athletes and their academic advisers referred to the no-show classes as “paper classes” because all that was required was a single 20-page paper. “We put athletes in the paper classes specifically because they didn’t meet,” Willingham says. “Any kind of paper got an A or a B grade. It wasn’t clear whether anyone was even reading the papers.” A related phenomenon was the profusion of independent study classes that were supposedly tailored to individual students. Nyang’oro supervised hundreds of independent studies, even though he spent extended periods traveling abroad, Willingham says. In 2004-05 alone, members of UNC’s NCAA championship men’s basketball team enrolled in 15 independent studies. Of the 15 players on that squad who declared a major, six listed black studies. Five majored in communication studies. In 2006, UNC announced a major push to improve its football program, including the hiring of former NFL coach Paul “Butch” Davis Jr. “I knew what that meant,” Willingham says. “Recruiting would get more aggressive under Butch Davis, and we’d see more top players who couldn’t do college class work.” Feeling as if she were “drowning,” Willingham confronted Dick Baddour, then the university’s athletic director, at a department meeting. She asked him whether he recognized that making football more competitive would result in graduation rates declining. “He just said yes,” she recalls. Baddour says he doesn’t recall the exchange. Because of his concern for academics, he adds, “I am confident I did not respond as she indicated.” In the summer of 2009, after the men’s basketball team won another NCAA championship, a new adviser took charge of the squad’s academic affairs. In the fall, basketball player enrollments in paper courses and independent studies declined drastically. “That was encouraging,” says Willingham. The adviser to the basketball team, Jenn Townsend, still works at UNC but didn’t respond to interview requests. In contrast, Willingham says, football players were continuing to sign up in large numbers for paper classes. Moreover, in connection with a master’s degree in liberal studies she earned in 2009 from the Greensboro branch of UNC, Willingham had begun analyzing diagnostic tests of incoming athletes. The statistics, she says, confirmed her impression that some football and basketball recruits had the literacy skills of grade school students. “How could we in good conscience place them in no-show classes with a 20-page paper?” she recalls asking herself. “And how could they get Bs and As?” In 2010 she transferred to the general undergrad academic counseling program. The same year Willingham stepped away from athletics tutoring, the UNC football program erupted in scandal. Most of the initial headlines concerned NCAA inquiries into improper financial benefits provided to players. There were also academic violations. A defensive star named Michael McAdoo got pulled from competition because an undergraduate tutor had provided him with excessive help on term papers. The McAdoo case was the first public hint of widespread academic fraud. UNC says the black studies fraud had nothing to do with athletics. For now, the NCAA seems to have accepted that McAdoo had taken an intermediate Swahili class offered by Nyang’oro. As part of a lawsuit McAdoo filed in 2011 seeking reinstatement to the football team, his Swahili paper—written in English—became public. Fans of North Carolina State, a bitter UNC rival, noted online that McAdoo seemed to have plagiarized much of his work. (McAdoo, through a spokesman, declined to comment.) This caught the attention of News & Observer reporter Dan Kane, whose inquiries revealed that lectures supposedly offered for the Swahili class never happened. Kane began investigating rumors of other no-show classes. He interviewed Willingham, who insisted at first on anonymity because she wanted to keep her job. That changed after William Friday’s October 2012 memorial service. By the time Willingham went public, UNC had organized a series of committees to review the black studies department. She, however, saw the overlapping inquiries as a shield and not a serious investigation. The reputational bleeding had already been heavy: In 2011, UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp fired Davis as football coach and accepted the early retirement of athletic director Baddour, who says he wanted his replacement to select the new football coach. Thorp then announced that in penance for the football debacle, he would step down, too. In December 2012, former North Carolina Governor James Martin announced the results of an internal investigation the university had asked him to oversee and which he touted as conclusive. Looking back to the mid-1990s, Martin found 216 corrupted courses, up from an earlier estimate of 54. He also identified 560 grade changes he suspected were unauthorized. A former chemistry professor at Davidson College, Martin acknowledged that athletes were enrolled disproportionately in UNC’s problematic classes. He stressed, though, that he found more nonathletes than athletes in the phony classes. This led to his main finding: “This was not an athletic scandal,” he said. “It was an academic scandal.” Martin also emphasized that the corruption was limited to the black studies department, although it wasn’t clear how he’d reached that particular conclusion. Nyang’oro, who hadn’t explained himself publicly, had resigned. Martin said the corruption began and ended with the mysterious ex-professor and a department aide, who’d also left the university. Jay Smith, a professor of early-modern French history at UNC, studied each university-sponsored report as it appeared. A rare academic in Chapel Hill who openly expresses unease about the influence of revenue sports, he publicly supported Willingham. “The obvious question raised by all the so-called investigations was why [the university was] so determined to exonerate the athletic department when Mary was providing first-person evidence that athletic eligibility was the motive behind the academic fraud,” he says. “The answer, I’m afraid, is that we’re terrified at the prospect of having to go back and look” at whether members of the 2005 and 2009 championship basketball teams were eligible only because they took bogus classes. That’s not an idle anxiety. In 2009 the NCAA retroactively vacated 12 victories by the Florida State Seminoles as punishment for the ghostwriting of term papers and tests for football team members. The NCAA stripped the University of Memphis of its entire 2007-08 season, including a run to the NCAA men’s basketball finals, because of academic fraud: Memphis star Derrick Rose, now with the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, had his SAT scores retroactively invalidated after allegations that someone else had taken the entrance exam for him. So far the NCAA has refrained from investigating the black studies fraud, apparently accepting UNC’s contention that the problem had nothing to do with athletics. The fear in Chapel Hill that the NCAA might change its mind is normally discussed in hushed tones. Last May, though, former Chancellor James Moeser didn’t restrain himself in an interview with Chapel Hill Magazine. Condemning media coverage of the scandal, he said of journalists: “I think they target people, and they take pleasure in bringing people down. I think their real goal here was to remove banners from the Smith Center,” UNC’s basketball arena. In the summer of 2013, a few months after Moeser’s comments, Carol Folt, a top official at Dartmouth College, took over as UNC’s chancellor. She brought with her Jim Dean, the onetime head of UNC’s highly regarded business school, who became executive vice chancellor and provost. Willingham decided to warn the administration that in addition to the black studies debacle, it needed to address the problem of highly recruited football and basketball players arriving without the tools to do college class work. Click here for a list of academic irregularities related to athlete eligibility at several U.S. collegesPhotograph by Rich Schultz/Getty ImagesClick here for a list of academic irregularities related to athlete eligibility at several U.S. collegesBy this time, she had extended her master’s research and amassed data on a selection of 183 academically “at-risk” UNC athletes from 2004 to 2012. Eighty-five percent were football and basketball players. In an e-mail in July, she told Dean that 60 percent of the athletes she had studied had from fourth- to eighth-grade reading levels. About 10 percent read below a third-grade level. Willingham added: “Of the 183 students, 45 (about 24 percent) had UNC GPAs under 2.0, thus putting them at risk of academic disqualification. Ninety-four of the 183 students, over half, had GPAs under 2.3. Keep in mind that the bogus system of eligibility—UNC’s paper class system—was assisting these players to stay on the court/field.” So far as she knew, the flagrant paper classes had ended with Nyang’oro’s departure, but she wasn’t in a position to know what went on in other departments at the sprawling university. Coincidentally, and without Willingham’s knowledge, Bradley Bethel, a reading and writing specialist with the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes, sent a similar e-mail to Chancellor Folt in July. “There have been many student-athletes who were specially admitted whose academic preparedness is so low they cannot succeed” at UNC, Bethel wrote. Dean asked Willingham to provide raw test data supporting her analysis. She declined, explaining that she’d obtained the confidential information by promising the university’s Institutional Review Board not to share it with anyone. She told Dean he could obtain the data directly from the athletic department, which gathered it in the first place. He declined to do as she suggested. “If she had the proof,” Dean says, “why wouldn’t she share the proof?” Willingham had good reason to be wary. After a performance review last spring (a process that preceded Folt’s and Dean’s assuming their posts), she was demoted from her position as assistant director of UNC’s Center for Student Success and Academic Counseling. She was moved to a basement office and consigned to the paperwork-intensive task of advising students on graduation requirements. Alleging that she was punished for speaking out, she has filed an internal grievance, which is pending. In December the criminal indictment of Nyang’oro, whom the university has cast as a rogue, brought Chapel Hill to a boil. An Orange County (N.C.) grand jury accused the 59-year-old scholar of fraudulently accepting payment for a class he did not teach in the summer of 2011. Eighteen of the 19 students enrolled in AFAM 280: Blacks in North Carolina were members of the Tar Heel football team; the 19th was a former player. Nyang’oro faces as many as 30 months in prison on the charge of obtaining property by false pretenses. His attorney, Bill Thomas, of Durham, N.C., told reporters that Nyang’oro is innocent and has no intention of taking the fall. “There’s been one side of this story that has been put forth in the press,” Thomas said, “but he’s going to have an opportunity to present his side.” Thomas declined to comment for this article, but his meaning was clear: Nyang’oro is threatening to identify others at UNC who knew about his paper courses. In January, CNN (TWX) broadcast a national investigation entitled “Some College Athletes Play Like Adults, Read Like 5th-Graders.” Among its findings, CNN featured Willingham and her 183-athlete study. In the glare of the media spotlight, she got carried away, saying at one point: “I mean, we may as well just go over to Glenwood Elementary up the street and just let all the fourth graders in here.” Stephen Colbert amplified the furor when he satirized athlete education in a segment on his Comedy Central (VIAB) show. After playing a clip of Willingham’s quip about admitting fourth graders, the comedian asked: “Why? How fast can they run the 40? Can they really take a hit?” Many in Chapel Hill took offense. Tar Heel basketball coach Roy Williams suggested at a press conference that Willingham had impugned the moral character of his players. “Every one of the kids that we’ve recruited in 10 years you’d take home and let guard your grandchildren,” he said. Smith, the French history scholar, observes that “getting criticized by the basketball coach in Chapel Hill is a scary thing.” The wave of hostile e-mail Willingham has received included several death threats. In this volatile atmosphere, Folt convened her faculty on Jan. 17 to hear what amounted to an indictment of Willingham led by Dean. The defendant was tried in absentia for defaming the university. Pointing to slides projected on a large screen, Dean, a scholar of organizational behavior, accused Willingham of making slanderous statements about the academic abilities of Carolina football and basketball players. Her assessments “are virtually meaningless and grossly unfair to our students and the university that admitted them,” he said. “Using this data set to say that our students can’t read is a travesty and unworthy of this university.” The verdict, recorded on videotape, was swift: The assembled scholars erupted in applause. “In 25 years of faculty meetings, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Smith said later. “It was a public conviction and an intellectual execution.” At Dean’s order, Willingham turned over her data on the 183 athletes to him. He declared that the diagnostic test she used, the Scholastic Abilities Test for Adults (SATA), assesses vocabulary and isn’t recommended for judging literacy levels. She further muddled her results, he added, by miscalculating grade-equivalent levels. After Dean’s presentation elicited applause, Frank Baumgartner, a political science professor, got to his feet. He mused aloud about the university’s focusing on Willingham as a form of coverup. “President Nixon went down for denial,” he told his colleagues. In an interview later, he elaborated: “What I heard was stonewalling,” he said. “The university is trying to distract us by going after Mary Willingham when there are much bigger issues here about sports and academics, and they’re not unique to North Carolina.” For reasons she didn’t explain, Folt softened UNC’s message when she addressed her board of trustees six days later. She admitted publicly for the first time “a failure in academic oversight for years.” Two days after that, Dean traveled to New York on a Saturday to clarify Folt’s point. “Horrible things happened that I’m ashamed of,” he said, although he noted this was all before he and Folt took over. He outlined a range of nascent reforms: new leadership for and tighter supervision of the athlete-advising office, fewer “special talent” admits who fail to meet academic standards, a fresh “strategic plan” to keep UNC among the top Division I schools academically, and an administrative overhaul of the black studies department. On Feb. 21, Folt announced yet another investigation of the scandal, but this time UNC has hired Kenneth Wainstein, a former U.S. Department of Justice official, to undertake what is billed as an entirely independent probe. Bethel, the reading specialist who warned Folt last July about unprepared athletes, told me via e-mail the latest reforms seem meaningful, adding: “I am confident UNC’s integrity will be restored.” And Lawrence “Bubba” Cunningham, the university’s current athletic director, said in a separate e-mail exchange: “The NCAA scholarships that students have been awarded for the past 50 years are the best scholarship program ever created with the possible exception of the GI Bill. While they’re not perfect, sports scholarships certainly provide great opportunities for an awful lot of students.” The impulse to kill the messenger hasn’t receded, however. During his visit to New York, Dean said of Willingham: “She’s said our students can’t read, our athletes can’t read, and that’s a lie.” Dean grossly distorted Willingham’s statements. What she’s said is that 18 out of the 183 special admit athletes whose records she assessed read at roughly a third-grade level. An additional 110 of the athletes, she said, read at between fourth- and eighth-grade levels. She never said that most, let alone all, of the 800 athletes at UNC are illiterate, and she said nothing at all about the other 18,000 undergraduates. When challenged, Dean conceded he’d misspoken. He also admitted that he doesn’t really think Willingham is a liar and assumes she means well. But would he similarly qualify his assault on Willingham back in Chapel Hill? Willingham stands behind her work and says Dean has mischaracterized it. The SATA diagnostic test on which she relied was administered by a UNC-hired Ph.D. psychologist, she says. It included a writing portion in addition to vocabulary questions. And her assessment wasn’t based solely on the SATA; she also looked at results from athletes’ SAT and ACT entrance exams. UNC has referred her unpublished research to outside experts for analysis. Such a review seems appropriate. Willingham isn’t a professional statistician. She’s an HR exec-turned-reading teacher. That she loves helping students seems beyond dispute. When I walked with her on the Chapel Hill campus in February, undergraduates approached her unbidden to say hello. She knew them by name. She inquired whether they’d followed through on registering for a class or on finishing the work for another one. “Let’s say my data are off a little bit,” she said. “I don’t think they are, but let’s say they are. Set aside the data. Forget about it. The paper classes were still fake, and they existed to keep athletes eligible.” “I’ve sat with these kids,” Willingham continued, referring to heavily recruited athletes. “Some of them can barely read. We have to meet them where they’re at and teach them to read.” That’ll be tough to do, however, while they’re also attending college classes and playing Division I basketball or football. Barrett, an assistant managing editor and senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek, is working on a book about the Chevron oil pollution case in Ecuador, which is scheduled for publication by Crown in 2014. His most recent book is GLOCK: The Rise of America’s Gun. |
![]() |
|
| abb | Feb 28 2014, 05:00 AM Post #2 |
|
UNC won’t release records from Willingham’s research By Dan Kane dkane@newsobserver.comFebruary 27, 2014 Updated 11 hours ago UNC-Chapel Hill officials said Thursday they would not release data at the center of a dispute about the literacy skills of some athletes, citing a federal law that protects student education records from becoming public. The decision to withhold the data is the latest example in which the university has cited the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to prevent the release of records that would help shed light on a long-running academic scandal that has roiled the university for more than two years. Last month, whistle-blower Mary Willingham, a learning specialist who formerly worked with athletes, created a firestorm when CNN reported her findings that 60 percent of 183 athletes specially tested over an eight-year period could not read at the high school level. She said another 10 percent could not read above the third-grade level. Her claims drew a harsh rebuttal from UNC Provost Jim Dean, who called Willingham’s research a “travesty” at a faculty council meeting. He said she had misinterpreted the test scores and had exaggerated the ability of those tests to determine reading levels. Willingham, who blew the whistle on years of no-show classes within the African studies department to The News & Observer in 2011, said she stands behind her research. She has contended, and other records obtained by The N&O show, that the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes used the no-show classes to help keep athletes eligible to play sports. Athletes made up 45 percent of enrollments in the bogus classes, which date as far back as the mid-1990s. The N&O filed a records request to obtain the data, with any identifying information for the athletes redacted. This would have allowed the public to review the data without potentially embarrassing any particular athletes. But Regina Stabile, an attorney for the university, denied the request. “There are no public records responsive to your request,” she wrote. “The records you seek are protected under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974.” The N&O also has asked Willingham to provide the data. She has said she could not on the advice of attorneys. Dean has said the university is hiring an independent consultant to evaluate the special testing. That consultant has not been named. The scandal continues to garner national attention, including a cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek that is now hitting the stands. Kane: 919-829-4861; Twitter: @dankanenando Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/02/27/3659632/unc-wont-release-records-from.html#storylink=cpy |
![]() |
|
| abb | Feb 28 2014, 05:03 AM Post #3 |
|
Porn stars and stigmas: A Duke student's (possibly naive but not dishonorable) choice By Robin Kirk February 27, 2014 Duke University is buzzing about an interview in the campus paper that revealed to the world what every student already knew. A freshman is a porn actress. Someone (of course) recognized her. “Lauren,” as she calls herself, saw a boost in her professional Twitter feed over winter break, when online bullying commenced. I’ve heard (I don’t know this student myself) that she’s been harassed in her dorm and as she makes her way to classes and the cafeteria. In the online magazine xoJane, “Lauren” elaborated. “I couldn’t afford $60,000 in tuition, my family has undergone significant financial burden, and I saw a way to graduate from my dream school free of debt, doing something I absolutely love. Because to be clear: My experience in porn has been nothing but supportive, exciting, thrilling and empowering.” So is this a story about the new feminism, “Girls” for the pre-professional set? I think something deeper is afoot. Our views on sexuality and morality are swiftly changing even as our culture stubbornly limits what is allowed in the realm of female sexuality. Upon enrolling at Duke, every student signs the Duke Community Standard and promises to conduct herself “honorably and responsibly” in all activities as a Duke student. Lauren, to my knowledge, has never identified herself as a Duke student professionally. An adult, she has committed no crime. But the DCS language is broad enough for some to interpret her off-campus activities as a violation. “Honor” is a tricky concept. Someone can engage in behavior that’s perfectly legal but still be considered dishonorable (on Wall Street or a porn shoot). In many places in the world, to be “dishonorable” when it comes to sex can cost your life. In parts of the Middle East, for example, women are killed because they violated an honor code by refusing to enter an arranged marriage, having sex outside marriage or being raped. Writing on women’s rights in South America in the 1980s, I was shocked to learn that a woman who was not a virgin could not legally be raped in some countries. She was considered without honor since she’d had sex. Thankfully, those laws have changed. Men are also subjected to honor codes. In Putin’s Russia, men sleeping with men is a crime. Putin’s defenders say this reflects the views of the Russian people that homosexuality is immoral. A terrifying video released by Human Rights Watch recently showed thugs beating and humiliating people they identified as gay – and for that reason without honor. The abuse Lauren faces in Durham is not physical, though the online commentary is predictably revolting. Lauren has every right to make a legal living in whatever profession she chooses. While Lauren is a student, the university has a responsibility to protect her from physical harm. But no one can shield her from stigma. In some ways, Lauren’s activity is nothing new: sex for pay. Her brand (and yes, I watched a bit) is choreographed and entirely run-of-the-mill, meant to appeal to precisely the prospective fraternity brother who Tweeted her identity to his peers. Americans consume unprecedented quantities of porn even as they shame those who perform it. Lauren claims to lean libertarian, is a feminist and aspires to be a human rights lawyer. Judging by her writing, she is intelligent and self-possessed. She is also very, very young. The rights activist in me defends her freedom to perform even as the teacher and mom in me fear that she is profoundly naïve about porn, as regimented in some ways as any factory floor. Lauren has actively sought attention, and it’s entirely predictable that the young men who see porn as part of the party scene recognized her. For Lauren, when she applies to law school or for a job – or when she meets the future in-laws or when her children surf whatever the Internet will become – “Belle Knox,” one of her professional personae, will be there. Maybe in the future the stigma around sex and naughty bits will abate. Perhaps porn itself will shed its tiresome and in many ways misogynist predictability and become a more inventive medium. But as former congressman Anthony Weiner can attest, that day has yet to arrive. It’s one thing to have the right to do something. It’s another to call it advisable. The rest of Lauren’s life will be shaped by her decision to enter this industry. I can only hope that she has the fortitude and luck to make her choice a strength. Robin Kirk co-directs the Duke Human Rights Center. Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/02/27/3659411/porn-stars-and-stigmas-a-duke.html#storylink=cpy |
![]() |
|
| abb | Feb 28 2014, 05:04 AM Post #4 |
|
http://www.heraldsun.com/news/x147185652/Durham-magistrate-files-for-Judge-Gordon-s-seat Durham magistrate files for Judge Gordon’s seat Feb. 27, 2014 @ 05:18 PM Keith Upchurch A Durham County magistrate Thursday entered the race for a District Court judgeship held by Nancy Gordon, making it two challengers for Gordon’s seat. Aminah Thompson, who hears cases in Durham County Civil Court, filed paperwork at the N.C. Board of Elections in Raleigh. In an interview this week, Thompson, 32, said she wants to bring a different viewpoint to the bench. “I feel the bench could use a fresh, young perspective, and someone who is fair and impartial,” she said. Thompson has been a Durham County magistrate since 2009, hearing criminal and civil cases. “The main thing I’m concerned about is fairness in the judiciary,” she said. “That’s really what I want to promote.” Thompson lived in Amherst, Mass., and Lawrence, Kan., before coming to Duke University as a student in 1999. She graduated from Duke in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, and received her law degree in 2007 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The other contender for the seat is Durham attorney Fred Battaglia Jr. Battaglia, 57, cited Gordon’s low rating in a recent survey by the N.C. Bar Association that evaluated judges. “We need to raise the bar on professionalism and integrity on the bench,” Battaglia said after filing. A Buxton native, Battaglia has lived in Durham since 1981 and has practiced law here for 28 years. He graduated from East Carolina University and earned his law degree from N.C. Central University. Gordon, 59, would be serving her third term if re-elected. She moved to Durham after graduating from the University of Michigan in 1976 and Case Western University School of Law in 1979. Gordon is board-certified by the N.C. State Bar as a family law specialist. She was in the private practice of law for 26 years before being elected to the bench in 2006. |
![]() |
|
| abb | Feb 28 2014, 05:06 AM Post #5 |
|
http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2014/02/unc-should-seek-definitive-answers-from-this-new-probe UNC should seek definitive answers from this new probe Updated: 5 hours ago With incredibly large paychecks on the horizon for attorney Kenneth Wainstein and his staff as they further investigate academic misconduct in the University’s former African and Afro-American Studies Department, administrators need to make sure their probe accomplishes all that it should, or else it will just be another notch on the investigation belt. This latest inquiry was prompted by new information uncovered by Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall during his criminal investigation of the scandal. Wainstein will receive $990 per hour for this investigation, and his staff will also receive hundreds of dollars an hour, but UNC needs to make sure it gets what it’s paying for. This is a huge sum, especially at a time when budget cuts are already putting a burden on the University. Therefore, this investigation must be so thorough that no stone is left unturned and any future inquiry is satisfied with the information they find. This way, Chancellor Carol Folt and other University leaders can put these academic scandals behind them for good. But based on information released by administrators so far, little is known about how this investigation will work, when it will be completed, and the specifics of what Wainstein will be reviewing. All that is known, it seems, is the probe will likely take months to complete and thus cost UNC a great sum in attorney fees. UNC needs to demand answers during this process, starting immediately. For example, what new information does Woodall have that former Gov. Jim Martin, who oversaw a similar investigation in 2012, did not? Will this still only be limited to a narrow search of one department, or will it be expanded? Why does the public know Wainstein’s name, but not the name of the person conducting an independent review of Mary Willingham’s findings? And finally, what does athletics have to do with all of this? Martin insisted this was only an academic scandal, but with the proportion of athletes UNC knows were part of these fraudulent courses, and the cultural issues that Willingham’s findings — statistically true or not — suggest, will this really be shut out as a factor again? It should go without saying, however, that neither side of this debate should stoop to name calling. Administrators must also demand a definitive starting point as to when Julius Nyang’oro, or others, began engaging in academic misconduct so that the University can be done with uncovering pieces of this scandal, once and for all. It is of note that Folt and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Jim Dean are both new to their positions. Therefore, they must be proactive in ensuring they know enough about the history of UNC’s problems and previous investigations to adeptly review any information Wainstein uncovers. Putting this work in at the beginning and starting with clear and specific expectations will not only reduce billable hours, but also likely improve upon the quality of the results. Ideally, progress reports providing updates on the findings of the investigation would be made available to the public as it is the state’s taxes that help fund this University, and those taxpayers have a stake in the discussion. If thorough enough, this probe is a good step forward. |
![]() |
|
| abb | Feb 28 2014, 05:06 AM Post #6 |
|
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/college/lacrosse/bs-sp-lacrosse-feature-0228-20140227,0,1890023.story baltimoresun.com Maryland men gaining respect as they prepare to face No. 1 Duke By Edward Lee, The Baltimore Sun 3:57 PM EST, February 27, 2014 Advertisement John Danowski coaches a Duke men's lacrosse program that captured last year's national championship, is 4-0, and is the top-ranked team in the country. None of that prevented him from voting for Maryland — fresh off a dismantling of 2013 runner-up Syracuse on Saturday — as his No. 1 team. "I just think they're playing great, and they've been terrific," said Danowski, who participates in the United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association's coaches poll. The Terps' 16-8 victory over the Orange on the road is the most significant outcome in the first month of the 2014 season. And as Maryland (3-0) prepares for the Blue Devils (4-0) for the final showdown between the teams as Atlantic Coast Conference rivals at noon on Saturday at Byrd Stadium in College Park, even the players understand the enormity of their performance nearly a week ago. "It was pretty significant," senior goalkeeper Niko Amato said. "It was our first road test, it was a league game. There are only six teams in our league. So it was a nice early-season win against a top-ranked team, and that's always a positive thing for our program." The Terps' success against Syracuse included some significant individual performances. Junior attackman Jay Carlson and freshman midfielder Connor Cannizzaro each recorded three goals and one assist, junior Charlie Raffa won 19-of-26 faceoffs, collected a game-high 11 ground balls, and scored twice, and Amato finished with a game-best 11 saves while limiting the Orange to 10 goals below their season average. That result propelled Maryland to the No. 3 spot in The Sun's rankings and validated the players who bristled at a preseason poll that picked the team to finish last in the ACC. "I think everyone was doubting us," senior midfielder Mike Chanenchuk said. "Syracuse obviously has a lot of talent. They were the runner-ups last year. We just went into the game knowing that we had to play our best lacrosse to win that game, and I think a lot of people were shocked. We weren't shocked, but it is nice to see a lot of young guys on offense do so well up there. It does kind of open up the eyes of a lot of people." The task doesn't get easier with Duke coming to town. The Blue Devils, who rank 10th in Division I in scoring at 13.3 goals per game, are brimming with confidence after completing their first undefeated February since 2008. The Terps may have the benefit of riding some momentum into Saturday's game, but coach John Tillman is aware of the tenuous nature of emotionally-charged wins. "I think it's tricky," he said. "What we've talked about is just having a short memory, realizing that each week is a different week. You hope that the guys have gained some confidence, but you also can't hang your hat on last week because the next team coming in is ranked No. 1, they're really talented, they won the national championship. You have to move on, continue to get better, realize that this team has a lot of challenges. "Yet team like ours with a lot of new parts, you hope that maybe some of that experience that the guys gained will help a little bit, that the parts working together might be getting better. But I think they realize how talented Duke is and what they've done so far this year. They're really good." Tillman is relying on a group of veterans like Amato, Chanenchuk and senior long-stick midfielder Michael Ehrhardt to set the tone in the locker room, and Chanenchuk said the leaders have emphasized avoiding the kind of letdown that dogged the program in 2012 when that squad followed victories over Duke and Johns Hopkins with losses to UMBC and Duke. "That's the thing you want to stay away from," Chanenchuk said. "I think having Duke at home at Byrd this Saturday, I think everyone's going to be really amped for that. It's kind of tough to let down when you play Duke." Tillman said the positive for Maryland is that the Blue Devils' success should be more than enough to capture the players' full attention. "It's a home game at Byrd Stadium, it's the defending national champion, it's the No. 1 team in the country," he said. "I do think there was a lot of emotional investment, and that's the challenge for us this week. We need to replicate that. We need to come back and that needs to be who we are. I think all coaches would say that's the challenge, trying to get your team there." Much like the game against Syracuse, the Terps are considered underdogs for the upcoming game against Duke. Raffa said that label doesn't stick with the players. "They're still Duke, and we're still Maryland," he said. "Even if we were unranked and they were No. 1, there wouldn't be that big of a difference. … We're both ACC teams, so we know they're going to give it their best shot and we're going to give it their best shot. Hopefully, we'll come out on top when the clock strikes zero." edward.lee@baltsun.com |
![]() |
|
| abb | Feb 28 2014, 05:09 AM Post #7 |
|
http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2014/02/28/storm-media-coverage-follows-chronicle-profile-adult-film-actress Storm of media coverage follows Chronicle profile on adult film actress By Elizabeth Djinis | February 28, 2014 A storm of media coverage has followed The Chronicle's Feb. 14 article profiling an adult film actress in the freshman class. After the article was posted, a number of news outlets covered the story from a range of perspectives—some penned by the film actress Lauren herself. The situation has frequently been portrayed by the media as fitting into a larger narrative of Duke's social culture, hearkening back to the 2006-2007 lacrosse case and Karen Owen's 2010 sex powerpoint. The University, however, does not expect the episode to incur any long-term negative repercussions. David Jarmul, associate vice president for news and communications, said the University's prestige causes scandals to blow up throughout the nation. "Stories catch fire on the Internet every day," Jarmul said. "When they involve students at prestigious universities, they are more likely to attract attention. We’ve seen this before at Duke and we’ll probably see it again." The "infamously worst college for women" Several media outlets have used the situation to describe the University's treatment of women in a negative light. In a Cosmopolitan article published on their website Feb. 19, writer Anna Breslaw used Lauren’s participation in the adult film industry to make inflammatory claims against the University’s supposed sexist and toxic atmosphere for women. “It's no small feat being known as the infamously worst college for women in a country where a number of respected colleges cover up sexual assault reports, but then there's Duke University,” Breslaw wrote. “The elite North Carolina college has a heinous reputation for slut-shaming, double standards and overall sexual hostility towards their female students.” Breslow embedded links in descriptors such as "heinous reputation" and "sexual hostility" to articles detailing previous scandals at the University, such as last year's Kappa Sigma ‘Racist Rager’ party, the Karen Owen powerpoint and Sigma Nu and Alpha Delta Phi’s 2010 Halloween invitations. Although the Cosmopolitan article may have incited further controversy, Ken Rogerson—director of undergraduate studies at the Sanford School of Public Policy—said the important thing to remember is whether or not to consider the piece journalism. “It’s an aggregation of links about Duke…with Anna’s commentary about it,” Rogerson said. “For me, that’s not journalism. It’s not journalistic coverage of anything. It’s somebody else’s version of what they think happened.” Jarmul noted that such coverage of Duke scandals "rarely has lasting impact" and is "more than balanced by all of the positive news that comes out of Duke routinely." He added that tabloid and gossip sites tend to perpetuate stories of Duke scandals, which can then branch out to more "mainstream media." "It's a fairly predictable arc, and tends to play itself out," Jarmul said. Kaitlin Smith, Trinity '11, commented on the Cosmopolitan article, questioning why the magazine had not interviewed any female Duke students before making such claims. “It seems the sole sources of your research for this article were the Duke Chronicle, [CollegiateACB] and googling Duke sex scandals,” Smith wrote. “Perhaps you should dig a bit deeper before proclaiming Duke 'the infamously worst college for women.'" A New York Magazine Q&A with Lauren inquired particularly about how her lifestyle fit in with the national perception of student life at Duke's. The feature's introduction noted the "sensationalism" of the scandal as "somehow familiar," likening it to scandals in the University's past. When asked why Lauren's story became so prominent on campus, Lauren responded by describing the University's "culture that disrespects and slut-shames women" citing the website Collegiate ACB as her primary source for these claims. Lauren has released multiple accounts of her story, including on Develle Dish—the Women's Center blog—and in an article entitled "I'm the Duke University freshman porn star and for the first time I'm telling my story" on XOJANE.com. Still other media outlets have used different approaches to the story. The Washington Post and Forbes have both published blog posts analyzing Lauren's situation through the lens of privacy in the digital age, and she has conducted interviews with RealClearPolitics and WRAL News in Raleigh. Scandals and admissions Some concern has turned towards prospective students reading the media. But Dean of Admissions Christoph Guttentag said that he does not anticipate the scandal affecting this year's admissions pool whatsoever, noting that students come to Duke for the quality of the education and the experience they can get here. He added that this will stay constant despite any scandals the University may weather. “In terms of the broader perspective, I see this from an admissions perspective,” Guttentag said. “[Duke] is a place of incredible opportunities for students and…that will continue to drive decisions.” Regardless, the admissions office is attempting to deflect any possible questions on campus tours, as proven by an email sent to University tour guides Feb. 19 by Undergraduate Admissions Officer Adam Tomasiello, Trinity '13. In the email—which was obtained by The Chronicle—Tomasiello said that after discussions with Guttentag and the Tour Guide Executive Board, the admissions office had reached the decision that all tour guides "will provide a stock response to any questions regarding the pornography actress." “If a visitor asks for your views, you are to respond that 'the University does not have an official opinion one way or the other on the student or her choices, and as a representative of Duke I uphold that stance,'” Tomasiello wrote in the email. “If the visitor wishes to learn more, guide them to The Chronicle’s website.” Tomasiello added in the email that tour guides should never bring up or joke about the topic. Still, it is not very common for parents to enquire about the latest scandal on a campus tour, said junior Stephanie Egeler, the co-head tour guide for the admissions department. Egeler said parents and prospective students will sometimes ask questions that “dance around” the issue but never directly mention it, such as wondering whether Greek life has a negative impact on social culture. She added that the stock answer corresponds with the mission of tour guides, which is to talk about the University rather than supply their own thoughts on a given situation. “It’s not my job to give my opinion,” Egeler said |
![]() |
|
| abb | Feb 28 2014, 05:12 AM Post #8 |
|
http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2014/02/28/more-frat-boy More than a frat boy as i see it By Scott Briggs | February 28, 2014 A few weeks ago, I found myself embattled in a heated debate with a fellow Duke student about the merits of greek life on college campuses. And by heated, I mean that I calmly countered her ad hominem and straw man arguments with logical reasoning as she shouted at me. A few minutes after she left the conversation in a huff, she returned to deliver an “apology” of sorts. “I’m sorry we ended up on that topic. I’m sure you could have been a nice person…” The delivery and tone of her voice made the implication obvious. She was sure I could have been a nice person…had I not chosen to join a fraternity—presumably wasting away my college years with excessive drinking, anti-intellectualism, gross mistreatment of women and general hedonism. Since coming to Duke and joining a fraternity, I’ve certainly received my fair share of judgment, but none really hit me the same way this one did. I’ve never shied away from defending my choice to wear greek letters, but never before had a complete stranger so blatantly reduced me to every negative stereotype associated with those letters. This type of pigeonholing—of reducing my identity to that of a “frat boy”—is something that unfortunately happens all too often at Duke and beyond. Whether it’s skin color, religion, gender, sexuality, political viewpoint or, in my case, greek affiliation, we stereotype people based on the most obvious characteristics they display to the world. The difference, though, is that people generally admit that judging people based on those first five traits is unfair, offensive and morally wrong. But when it comes to greek affiliation, no one really sees it as a problem. Since my debate a few weeks ago, I’ve talked to a number of people about why they think this is. The first, most obvious reason is that you can’t choose your ethnicity, gender or sexuality. This is, of course, true. The second, somewhat-related reason is that in choosing to “go greek”—in choosing to allegedly self-segregate into a group of predominantly white, straight, upper middle class, elitist bros—you cut yourself off from diversity and the issues that affect any and all minorities on campus. By doing this, you effectively choose to be labeled as closed-minded and anti-intellectual. And since you decided to label yourself, no one really feels sorry for you. I’d like to address that second reason. My first counter to that point is somewhat of a personal anecdote, so bear with me for a paragraph. I can’t speak to the other fraternities or sororities on this campus, but my particular fraternity is probably one of the most diverse greek organizations, if not one of the most diverse student organizations, on this campus. (I’m fully aware that I’m going to be accused of pulling the “I have black friends” card, but just roll with it for a minute.) One of our founding documents states in part that, “friendship among members, sharing a common belief in an ideal and possessing different temperaments, talents and convictions is superior to friendship among members having the same temperaments, talents and convictions.” The members of our chapter in particular pride ourselves on embodying this tenet. Gender obviously aside, we have brothers of just about every skin color and ethnicity. We have brothers of various religions and sexualities. And we have political viewpoints at every end of the spectrum. But let’s just pretend for a moment that wasn’t true. Let’s pretend my fraternity is predominantly white and straight and Christian and upper middle class as the stereotype would suggest. Would that necessarily mean that no diversity exists at all? My answer would actually be “no.” It’s no secret that diversity is something that is highly valued at any institution of higher learning. Diversity certainly includes race, religion, sexuality and all of the other personal attributes that can usually be defined in a word or two. But the most important type of diversity in promoting intellectualism is diversity of thought, and that’s something that transcends race, gender, religion, sexuality and class. It’s something that you’d probably be surprised to find is present in most, if not all, greek organizations, if you only took the chance to listen before writing “frat boy” across every greek male’s forehead. The bottom line is that we all self-segregate to a degree. We all shut ourselves off to certain viewpoints in our close circle, whether we like to admit it or not. Sadly, it’s sometimes those who accuse others of being closed-minded or intolerant who are the worst offenders of this. (I’ve seen way too many Facebook statuses from such people saying, “If you don’t agree with this, I’m de-friending you.”) I can only speak for myself personally, but my friends in high school didn’t have the diversity of thought that my fraternity does. And I’d hazard a guess that your friend group in college might not either. So, yes, maybe greek organizations do self-segregate in some ways, but they also self-desegregate in ways that you might not. Here’s how I see it: Maybe it’s time to desegregate from that frat boy you’ve pigeonholed. You’re going to have to take that sign off his forehead first, though. Scott Briggs is a Trinity senior and the editorial page editor. His biweekly column is part of the weekly Editor’s Note feature and runs on alternate Fridays. Send Scott a message on Twitter @SBriggsChron. |
![]() |
|
| Quasimodo | Feb 28 2014, 07:15 AM Post #9 |
|
If hiring strippers is "bad enough", what does acting in a porn film amount to? (Can we get a statement from President Brodhead?) |
![]() |
|
| cks | Feb 28 2014, 09:30 AM Post #10 |
|
While definitely (one would think and hope) not either a career or means to finance a college education that one would want one's daughter to pursue, I do not see what business it is of the university administration, professors, or for that matter its student body. |
![]() |
|
| abb | Feb 28 2014, 10:00 AM Post #11 |
|
http://m.kwwl.com/w/main/story/110545866/ U. of Iowa president Sally Mason apologizes for remarks Feb 26, 2014 3:02 p.m. story image + The University of Iowa president has apologized for a remark she made to the student newspaper about sex assaults on campus. In an interview published Feb. 18 in The Daily Iowan, President Sally Mason said she was dismayed by the reports of sexual assaults. She said "the goal would be to end that, to never have another sexual assault. That's probably not a realistic goal just given human nature, and that's unfortunate. ..." Criticism erupted over the phrase that includes "human nature." The Iowa City Press-Citizen says Mason apologized during a President's Forum on Tuesday. Mason said she's been told by several people in the campus community that her remark was hurtful. She said she was "very, very sorry for any pain that my words might have caused." Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
![]() |
|
| abb | Feb 28 2014, 01:19 PM Post #12 |
|
On College Campuses, a Presumption of Guilt By Peter Berkowitz - February 28, 2014 SWARTHMORE, Pa. -- On Feb. 22, in celebration of its sesquicentennial, Swarthmore College proudly hosted “The Liberal Arts in Action: A Symposium on the Future of Liberal Arts.” In what seemed an unrelated event, a month before, a former Swarthmore student expelled by the college in the summer of 2013 filed a lawsuit in federal court of the eastern district of Pennsylvania. The student, identified as “John Doe,” was found guilty under campus disciplinary procedures of sexual misconduct. (Pseudonyms were used to protect both the accused and the accuser.) His legal complaint alleges that Swarthmore “failed to follow its own policies and procedural safeguards” and violated his “basic due process and equal protection rights.” The litigation was not mentioned at the high-minded, if self-congratulatory, afternoon symposium. Yet the future of liberal education is closely connected to John Doe’s assertion that in the course of expelling him Swarthmore trampled on fair process—and to the willingness of the federal judiciary to examine it. Liberal education is the culmination of an education for freedom. Among its crucial components are the offering of a solid core curriculum, the promotion of liberty of thought and discussion, and the cultivation of intellectual diversity. Another vital feature of liberal education consists of fostering an appreciation of the principles of due process. They are principles free societies have developed over the centuries to adjudicate controversies, establish guilt, and mete out punishment in ways that justly balance the rights of those who claim they have been wronged with the rights of those who have been accused of wrongdoing. In cases involving serious accusations, due process requires a presumption of innocence, settled rules and laws, timely notice of charges, adequate opportunity to prepare a defense, the chance for the accused to question the accuser, and an impartial judge and jury. Although college disciplinary procedures have been roiling campuses for decades, none of this was discussed at the Swarthmore symposium. Instead, the keynote address, “The Role of the Arts in Liberal Arts Education”—delivered by Mary Schmidt Campbell, Swarthmore class of ’69 and dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University—as well as the subsequent panel discussion on “The Future of Knowledge” and the concluding panel on “Fostering a Democratic Society Through Education,” were of a piece. The speakers—Swarthmore graduates who have risen to prominence in the world of college and university administration—properly praised the importance to liberal education of certain skills: questioning effectively; thinking critically; weighing evidence and analyzing arguments; solving problems; seeing things from a multiplicity of perspectives; taking the initiative; innovating and creating; collaborating; and working across interdisciplinary boundaries. Yet with the notable exception of Tori Haring-Smith, president of Washington & Jefferson College, who spoke compellingly about the vigorous measures adopted by her institution to teach students the importance of listening to opinions different from their own and of learning to live with the people who hold them, the panelists spoke as if our liberal arts colleges are doing a bang-up job. The only question they raised was how to extend to broader segments of the nation the lessons of freedom and democracy that Swarthmore is purportedly already teaching so well to its own students. John Doe’s lawsuit gives a different impression of the school’s commitment to the principles of freedom. He contends that 19 months after three separate consensual sexual encounters—a kiss, sexual conduct not including sexual intercourse, and sexual intercourse—a fellow student reported to Swarthmore the first two and claimed she had been coerced. The accuser, according to the complaint, “offered no physical or medical evidence, and no police or campus safety reports.” After a two-month long investigation, Swarthmore appeared to conclude the matter without taking disciplinary action. Approximately four months later, according to John Doe, Swarthmore suddenly re-opened the case against him. The college did this, he maintains, in response to public accusations—including a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education by two Swarthmore female undergraduates—that the school mishandled a number of sexual misconduct cases. And John Doe asserts that in the second round of hearings, which culminated with his expulsion based on a finding that he had merely “more likely than not” committed sexual misconduct, Swarthmore repeatedly and egregiously violated its own rules for disciplinary procedures explicitly set forth in the official student handbook. John Doe’s lawsuit presents one of the nation’s finest small liberal arts colleges acting in haste and panic, railroading a young man in order to convince the public and the federal government that it had, in the words of Swarthmore President Rebecca Chopp, “zero tolerance for sexual assault, abuse and violence on our campus.” Swarthmore, for its part, has filed a motion to have the John Doe complaint dismissed. “The College believes that the suit is without merit and will vigorously defend the litigation,” Swarthmore’s attorney Michael Baughman said in a written statement. “The College is committed, and always has been committed, to providing all students with a fair process of adjudication in student conduct proceedings.” A trial court will determine the merits of John Doe’s allegations, but in light of the sorry condition of due process at our colleges and universities, the charges against Swarthmore are plausible. For example, in 2006, the Duke faculty and administration were quick to treat as guilty three lacrosse players accused of rape by a black woman whom their fraternity had hired as an exotic dancer. After a year-long investigation, the North Carolina attorney general dropped all charges and took the remarkable step of pronouncing the accused players innocent. In 2010, a campus tribunal found University of North Dakota student Caleb Warner guilty of sexual assault. The Grand Forks police department investigated the case and not only declined to charge Warner but charged his accuser with making a false report. Nevertheless, the university refused to reconsider its verdict. Only when the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education stepped in a year and half later was the school impelled to revisit the case and eventually overturn the judgment. Just a few weeks ago, Dartmouth Sexual Abuse Awareness coordinator Amanda Childress asked at a University of Virginia conference on campus sexual misconduct, “Why could we not expel a student based on an allegation?” To clarify where she stood on the question, Childress went on to say, “It seems to me that we value fair and equitable processes more than we value the safety of our students. And higher education is not a right. Safety is a right. Higher education is a privilege.” Safety, however, is not a right. It is a goal. Due process is a right. Moreover, history has shown that honoring it is the best way over the long run to achieve the greatest amount of safety and security for all. John Doe’s account of his encounter with Swarthmore disciplinary procedures suggests the invidious effects of Ms. Childress’s reasoning—and of allowing the verdicts of pseudo-judicial proceedings to stand without legal review. An honors student in high school (with an excellent record in college) who chose Swarthmore over other elite schools because his parents met and married there, Doe is now effectively blackballed from higher education. He had completed his junior year when the school abruptly ordered the second investigation. After being expelled, he inquired about admission to some 300 colleges, all of which told him that Swarthmore’s verdict rendered him ineligible for transfer to their school. Of the 19 colleges that didn’t have such bright-line rules, 18 required disclosure. Only one of those accepted him—and required him to enroll as a junior. This case occurs in a context in which our colleges and universities have aggressively eroded due process protections for those accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Over and over, colleges and universities have transformed disciplinary procedures into kangaroo courts that appear to operate on the assumption that an accusation creates a presumption of guilt and the burden is on the accused to prove his innocence. Due process is equally offended, it should not be necessary to add, when universities cover up for star athletes accused of sexual misconduct. For the sake of genuinely liberal education, faculty and administrators must get out of the business of investigating the most serious forms of sexual misconduct, particularly sexual assault. Professors and university officials must be educated to recognize their woeful lack of the expertise necessary to properly gather and analyze evidence, establish guilt, and ensure fairness for the accuser and the accused. And they should be taught to promptly advise all students who believe they have been sexually assaulted to report their allegations to the police. And as an indispensable element of their obligation to teach the principles of freedom, colleges and universities must be persuaded to restore to disciplinary procedures that they rightly conduct the presumption of innocence—a cornerstone of justice—and all the ancillary protections that follow from it. // Peter Berkowitz, a graduate of Swarthmore College with a major in English literature, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His writings are posted at www.PeterBerkowitz.com. Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/02/28/on_college_campuses_a_presumption_of_guilt.html at February 28, 2014 - 12:18:55 PM CST |
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · DUKE LACROSSE - Liestoppers · Next Topic » |







7:36 PM Jul 10