| Blog and Media Roundup - Friday, March 7, 2014; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 7 2014, 05:17 AM (155 Views) | |
| abb | Mar 7 2014, 05:17 AM Post #1 |
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http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-06/unc-responds-to-our-cover-article-on-college-sports-and-fake-classes UNC Responds to Our Cover Article on College Sports and Fake Classes By Paul M. Barrett March 06, 2014 Reacting to our recent cover article on the University of North Carolina’s academic-fraud scandal and how it relates to the big business of college sports, the university, via Vice Chancellor Joel Curran, got in touch to emphasize how Chapel Hill is already responding to revelations that campus academic advisers encouraged top athletic recruits to enroll in fake lecture classes that never met. Here’s Curran’s missive in full: Your March 3 print edition cover story, “In Fake Classes Scandal, UNC Fails Its Athletes—and Whistle-Blower,” tells only part of the story. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill did make well-documented mistakes and has publicly acknowledged and apologized for those transgressions. While Paul Barrett focused on our past, he neglected to fully detail the work we are doing to reform and reshape academic support at Carolina and to ensure this does not happen again. Since the improprieties were discovered in 2011, we have taken decisive action. Carolina instituted a number of reforms, with more in progress, to help us give every student-athlete the opportunity to realize his or her full potential in the classroom and on the field. Initial actions include new governance and accountability standards in our Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes, new systems for classroom audits and course oversight, and revamped department structures and reporting relationships to ensure checks and balances at every level. We are seeing results already. Our 2013 first-year class includes 201 student-athletes, and after the first semester their collective GPA is 2.9. To continue this progress, a task force of representatives from faculty, admissions, and athletics is designing a program for student-athletes that will lead to a new academic support model for all undergraduates. Our goal is to create an academic success program that is one of the best, if not the leader, among peer universities. The University did ask for an independent review of Mary Willingham’s work. That is not an indictment of Ms. Willingham [an academic tutor who spoke out about classroom corruption at UNC]. We agree with her claims that more reforms are needed in collegiate athletics. Yet valid questions have been raised about Ms. Willingham’s methods and conclusions, which she acknowledged. The careful examination of methods, data, and reporting is standard practice at research universities, and the key to ensuring the validity of published findings. It is why we welcome close scrutiny of our reform efforts. We cannot undo the past events chronicled in Mr. Barrett’s article, but we are learning from them and are using them to create a better future for our students and the University. I invited Mr. Barrett and his colleagues to follow up with us and see how we are doing. That is the Carolina story worth telling. NOTE: Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg L.P., which owns Bloomberg Businessweek, is a trustee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and sits on its Foundation Board and the UNC Global Research Institute Board. |
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| abb | Mar 7 2014, 05:18 AM Post #2 |
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http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2014/03/former-administrator-deborah-crowder-in-uncs-african-and-afro-american-studies-department-not-charge Former administrator Deborah Crowder in UNC’s African and Afro-American Studies department not charged By Nicole Comparato | The Daily Tar Heel After one of two people found through multiple investigations to have orchestrated fraudulent courses in UNC’s African and Afro-American Studies department was indicted three months ago, some might have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. But Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall has essentially said it won’t, announcing Tuesday he would not pursue criminal charges against former department administrator Deborah Crowder based on a State Bureau of Investigation probe. Julius Nyang’oro, the former department chairman, was indicted in December for accepting $12,000 for teaching a course that never met. Woodall said in an interview that it is common for initial suspects like Crowder to cooperate and not be charged in criminal investigations. “She had cooperated with the investigation and agreed to continue, has continued to cooperate, and has also agreed to cooperate with Ken Wainstein, who is conducting the independent investigation,” he said. Chancellor Carol Folt announced a few weeks ago that Wainstein, an attorney with 19 years of experience in the U.S. Justice Department, will conduct his own independent inquiry at a $990 per hour rate based on new information discovered in the State Bureau of Investigation’s probe. In August of 2012, former Gov. Jim Martin was commissioned by then-Chancellor Holden Thorp to conduct his own independent review, which resulted in a 74-page report detailing academic irregularities dating back to 1997 in the department. The report, released in December of 2012, laid all blame for the fraudulent courses on Nyang’oro and Crowder, who had both already left the University. But Martin was never able to interview either of them. “The people who were suspected of doing this, Professor Nyang’oro and Debby Crowder, neither one of them would talk to us … and we were all at a disadvantage with that,” Martin said in an interview Tuesday. Martin said based on his findings, Crowder had a direct role in the management of the irregular courses. He said several students he interviewed in fraudulent courses claimed they turned in their papers to Crowder, thinking she was the person who graded them, even though she was not a professor. “But we don’t know that for sure because nobody saw the papers being graded, with quotations around the word ‘graded,’” he said. Martin said he is glad Crowder is now cooperating, despite her refusal to do so during his review. “It was just a fact of life,” Martin said. “If you were in their position, your lawyer would advise you not to talk, so I understood that. We made an effort to contact them, and they did not respond.” Woodall said he could not discuss why Crowder was not charged or if she had done anything that would have warranted charges had she not cooperated with the SBI’s investigation. Martin said he could only speculate on what she could have been charged with, if anything. He said Woodall had previously mentioned to him that someone could be charged for forging signatures of eight department professors on grade rolls and changes, but Martin was not able to find evidence of who did the alleged forging. Crowder’s attorney, Brian Vick, released a statement Tuesday saying Crowder was looking forward to working with Wainstein. “She believes that it is important for the full and unvarnished truth to come out and intends to provide Mr. Wainstein with as much knowledge as she has about the independent study classes that were offered during her tenure with the Department of African and Afro-Studies at UNC,” he said. university@dailytarheel.com |
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| abb | Mar 7 2014, 05:19 AM Post #3 |
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http://www.thedurhamnews.com/2014/03/06/3678928/police-probe-conclusions-to-be.html Police probe conclusions: to be continued By Jim Wise jwise@newsobserver.comMarch 6, 2014 What’s next The Durham Human Relations Commission resumes its deliberations on dealing with alleged police racism at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Neighborhood Improvement Services conference room in the Golden Belt complex, 807 E. Main St. The meeting is open to the public, but only commissioners may speak. DURHAM — A city advisory panel investigating alleged police racism thinks Durham needs a stronger Civilian Police Review Board, among other measures. The city’s Human Relations Commission had expected to finish choosing among dozens of recommendations during a two-hour meeting this week, but members agreed to come back Tuesday to finish the list when the meeting ran long. “In my experience,” said City Councilman Don Moffitt, the council liaison to the commission, “as people get tired, discussion tends to expand.” As it was, some ideas sparked lengthy discussion, while others inspired almost none as the commissioners reviewed more than 40 possible recommendations and voted on what to do with each one. The ideas came from five months of public hearings the commission held after Mayor Bill Bell asked members to look into mounting complaints against police, including three officer-involved shootings and a study showing racial disparities in traffic stops, searches and arrests. The commission rejected Chairman Ricky Hart’s suggestion for greater Police Department “transparency across the board,” saying the issue was covered in other suggestions. But it approved ongoing police oversight by the commission, City Council or some other body with “measurable benchmarks” for assessing its performance. By a narrow margin, after lengthy conversation, they rejected the idea of making officers’ patrol-car videos public, for the sake of privacy. “If your child is arrested and her friends get access to that video – you don’t want it made public,” Commissioner Misty Odell said. The commission did hold onto the idea of eliminating officers’ ability to turn off their in-car cameras, recalling the error that left no video record of 17-year-old Jesus Huerta’s death in a patrol car last November. By a larger margin, they lumped seven separate suggestions into one recommending that police do a better public-relations job of telling the public what officers are already doing to engage with citizens aside from making patrols and arresting suspects. Review board The commission has no deadline for finishing its work. Hart and Vice Chairman Phil Seib laid out a process for choosing suggestions to include in a draft report for commissioners’ critiquing before writing a final version and scheduling its presentation to the City Council. Fourteen of the suggestions had to do with the Civilian Police Review Board, which currently receives appeals from citizens dissatisfied with their complaints’ handling by police internal affairs, and decides whether the handling warrants a further hearing. According to city records, since 2003 the board has received 31 appeals and granted two hearings. City attorneys have said empowering the board, such as by giving it subpoena and disciplinary authority, would require state legislation, but the commission members liked proposals to study other board models with such power. They also favored moving oversight of the review board from the city manager to the City Council; annual training for board members by the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement; and appointing members through the five Partners Against Crime groups, which are organized according to police district. “To make sure that people from all parts of the city are represented,” said Commissioner Susan Austin. “I think it’s important.” Made the list Among other suggestions passing muster last week: • Preference in hiring for Durham residents • Supporting programs for youths convicted of minor offenses to have their records cleared • Educating citizens on their rights when police ask search permission • Encouraging the Police Department to finish the strategic plan required of all city departments • Ensuring proper investigation when citizens who have complained about police claim officers have retaliated against them. Wise: 919-641-5895 |
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| abb | Mar 7 2014, 05:26 AM Post #4 |
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DA Jim Woodall has served well in UNC investigation March 6, 2014 At the heart of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s troubles with athletics and academics is the delusion that a university’s prestige is related to, and perhaps even dependent upon, its success in the most prominent sports: football and men’s basketball. This delusion has led universities not to honors but disgrace. And yet it persists, arising with each new season, and it has ensnared a university that should have seen through it. What ultimately distinguishes a university isn’t its teams, or even its campus, its professors or its research. A university’s greatness is measured by its fruit, by its graduates. That truth is easily seen on the other side of UNC’s athletic-academics scandal. The man leading a criminal investigation into the matter is Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall. He earned both his undergraduate and law degrees from UNC-CH. He met his wife when she was a nurse at UNC Hospitals. He has served the surrounding communities of Orange and Chatham counties for 24 years in the district attorney’s office and as district attorney since 2005. It has been uncomfortable for Woodall to investigate his alma mater. Woodall said in a recent profile by The N&O’s Anne Blythe, “The fact that this involved UNC, it didn’t cause me any difficulty going to the grand jury. Where it had an effect was, I was just a little generally upset that this involved a university that I attended and I loved.” It takes integrity to push an investigation into the dominant institution and largest employer in a district in which he must stand for election. But where UNC’s leaders have come up short in pursuing the scandal to its roots, its alumnus has been diligent and thorough. His work may do the most to restore honor lost by a system of no-show classes and grade changes that kept players eligible. “People who love that university want to see that it stands for something,” he said. “When all this is said and done, they will be closer to that than they are today.” Woodall has overseen two recent investigations involving UNC athletics and academics. He’s carried out an investigation launched by the secretary of state into illegal contacts between sports agents and UNC football players that has resulted in five indictments. He also initiated an investigation into phony courses set up in UNC’s Department of African and Afro-American Studies. That has led to the indictment of the department’s retired former chairman Julius Nyang’oro, who is accused of obtaining $12,000 for classes he did not teach or require students to attend. In the course of his investigations, Woodall has uncovered situations and actions at UNC that were not criminal but appear improper and long-running. The district attorney could have ignored those findings. Instead, his work investigating Nyang’oro and Deborah Crowder, a former manager of the African studies department, led to the new independent investigation into what happened at UNC. Woodall’s findings will be turned over to the outside investigator hired by the university: Kenneth L. Wainstein, a 19-year veteran of the U.S. Justice Department. In addition, Crowder, who was not charged, has agreed to cooperate with Wainstein’s investigation. The transfer of information and Crowder’s cooperation give a strong start and credibility to Wainstein’s effort. The odds are now much higher that he will accomplish his charge from UNC Chancellor Carol Folt to pursue this scandal to its roots, or, as Woodall likes to say of leads, “Follow this to ground.” Woodall’s work is nearing an end. It won’t lead to a flurry of indictments involving academic abuses. But it has set a strong foundation for an inquiry that could reveal the extent of the problem, the people who initiated it and those who allowed it to fester by ignoring it. Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/06/3679972/da-jim-woodall-has-served-well.html#storylink=cpy |
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7:36 PM Jul 10