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- Up one level
- Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports
Jay M. Smith and Mary Willingham, 2015, University of Nebraska Press. See also Jay Smith's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-sports-ate-academic-freedom-1525125467. A May 1, 2018 email from the NC AAUP states: "Jay shows how years after the University of North Carolina’s academic-athletics scandal, the state’s flagship university continues to let big sports interfere with the curriculum, academic freedom, and institutional integrity. In his op-ed, Jay explains how he developed and taught a course on athletics that was partially based on a book he co-authored on the scandal ... "Once administrators became aware of this course in 2017, they attempted to suppress it. While the course was eventually reinstated, Jay initiated a grievance against the administrators who, he contended, had violated his academic freedom. The grievance committee “decided unambiguously in [his] favor.” Yet UNC-Chapel Hill’s administration simply rejected the faculty committee’s findings. "The lessons of Jay’s experiences are sobering. He concludes: “At UNC, the power of big-money sports led administrators to defend the legitimacy of fake classes that had no professor. It then led them to wage an all-out war against a real class that asked common-sense questions about sports in institutions of higher learning.” "The North Carolina Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) supports Jay’s position."
- Long Before Kaepernick, The 'Syracuse 8' Took A Stand Against Racial Injustice
WBUR Here & Now, Nov 22, 2017 Karen Given (@klgiven) and Shira Springer (@ShiraSpringer) from Only A Game spoke with three of the six surviving members of the Syracuse 8.
- NCAA commission calls for reforms in wake of UNC scandal
Dan Kane, News & Observer, April 25, 2018, Updated April 26, 2018 The NCAA’s infractions committee released a decision saying it could not punish UNC-Chapel Hill for more than a decade of classes that had no instruction and were largely created and graded by a secretary that helped keep hundreds of athletes eligible to play sports, including members of the 2005 men’s basketball championship team. Why? Because UNC said the classes were legitimate, and non-athletes also benefited. ... In UNC’s case, that included the infractions committee sidestepping an accreditor’s finding that the university violated standards such as academic integrity, program content and control of college athletics. Correspondence between UNC and the accreditor showed the university had called the classes “academic fraud.” During the infractions hearing, UNC distanced itself from that correspondence, calling it a “typo,” the infractions report said.
- Take it from a former Division I athlete: College sports are like Jim Crow
Victoria L. Jackson, LA Times, Jan 11, 2018 In big-time college sports, majority-black teams entertain majority-white crowds. Mostly white head coaches make millions, and the mostly black players don't make any money beyond their scholarships. These students have little time for academics and therefore don't graduate at the same rates as the general student body or the nonrevenue athlete peers. This college sports system contributes to the undervaluing of black lives in American society and our institutions. The predominantly white privilege of playing college sports while earning a quality degree comes at the expense of — is literally paid for by — the educationally unequal experiences of mostly black football and basketball players.