The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sports scandal involving its African American Studies program and the student athletes who took bogus classes continues to escalate. New pictures have surfaced of a paper that allegedly received an A- from one of the classes in the program, adding more shock to the story.
Many college students, following hours of churning out paper after paper, would only dream of getting an A-. This paper was a one-paragraph speculation on the Rosa Parks story that was poorly researched and written.
Bryan Armen Graham, a Sports Illustrated contributor, posted the photo of the paper on his Twitter feed. The picture is a screenshot from an ESPN video on the problems at the school. According to the video, students were told by advisers to take African American Studies classes, which were listed as independent studies courses, because they allowed students to never meet for class, write only small papers, and get such grades as As and Bs. The easy courses were taken by basketball and football players to keep them eligible to play in the games.
According to an article by Sporting News, former UNC-Chapel Hill employee Mary Willingham became the whistleblower on this scandal, doing extensive research into the studies of student-athletes. She determined that nearly 60 percent of UNC athletes were reading at a fourth-to-eighth grade level between 2004 and 2012 — not exactly the work you’d expect of students who attend the school ranked No. 30 by U.S. News & World Report.
As of now, research into this debacle has been stopped by the university, but it will be interesting to see what news continues to come from this story.