UNC vandals at work.

UNC student athletes vandalized the visiting locker room at Wallace Wade Thursday night following UNC's victory over Duke. Apparently, this was an extension of the celebratory painting of the victory bell. Worse, none of the coaching staff saw a thing and did nothing to stop the damage. Nothing? No, not a thing. Saw nothing did nothing. Well friends, where are the adults? I played football in high school. From the moment we left school on the bus to go on  a road game, through the whole game and the entire ride home, we were under the constant supervision of our coaches and staff. There was also a school official, usually the Principal or the Assistant Principal along too. I did not play football in college, but I did spend enough time around the athletic department as a tutor to know that football players never were left alone on game day. There was always a coach, a graduate assistant, or a football staffer with the players from the time the bus left until it got back. It simply boggles the mind that no responsible adults were present when this was going on.

Larry Fedora, it's time for you to step up and take responsibility. Find out which coaches were "not present" and find out why. Then dismiss them. Find out which players were the ring leaders. Coaches always know who their leaders are. For good or ill, coaches know. Dismiss the ring leaders from the team for the rest of the season. I know it's just the NCSU game and that's a big game for you. But, it's not as big as the school's reputation. Which is in tatters if you haven't noticed. Third, find the participants and make them run the stairs at the stadium, and run and run and run. Run them until it hurts or they are doing physical damage to their bodies. Teach them that doing stupid things have consequences.

Rebuilding UNC

Don Eggleston has an op/ed piece at the Greensboro News & Record today proposing how to rebuild UNC. Don is significant because he is "one of the family." He played and lettered in basketball under Dean Smith. He was a Morehead scholar and he received his law degree from UNC.

Don, a fellow attorney and all around good guy, proposes a scorched earth policy for UNC. Fire or retire everyone who is not clerical staff in any department that touched the scandal. That includes basketball coaches (Roy Williams, Sylvia Hatchell and a hose of coaches you and I have never heard of.) Don would close up the AFAM department along the way. As a side note, two very respected and very liberal college professor friends of mine both questioned how and or why AFAM could survive as a department. Both noted the scarcity of published works as an indication of how little scholarship was really going on. Both said that without scholarship, there is no point in a department because there is no one to teach. Don wants to clean out top administration too. He didn't call for Carol Folt's early departure, but I will add her to the list. Her treatment of Mary Willingham, who was right about everything she wrote, is deplorable. To that list, I would add Tom Ross. He was there for the end of this fiasco. He did nothing. Ross gives empty suits a bad name. It's time for that empty suit to leave the building.

Don's piece is reprinted below:

By Donald P. Eggleston

This open letter to the UNC family is both a reaction and response to the recent investigation and report by former Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth Wainstein. I offer it in the hope that the university can apply appropriate remedies to recapture its academic credibility.

My suggestions are drastic, but only drastic remedies offer a reasonable opportunity for recovery of the respect we have lost, both academically and athletically. Those suggestions include the wholesale replacement of coaches, administrators, tutors and faculty who were complicit in the fraud and a re-examination of the appropriate relationship between intercollegiate athletics and academics.

Inherent in this analysis is a reconsideration of the “student-athlete” model. I have concluded that this term, ubiquitous in the National Collegiate Athletics Association’s lexicon, has been so demeaned by the current atmosphere of major-college athletics as to have no realistic application to the current condition. Therefore, I suggest a total reevaluation of its relevance in real world college athletics.

Who knew when?

I hold to the principle that it does not matter if a coach or administrator or faculty member did not have actual knowledge of the “shadow” nature of the classes. All of the parties involved had a responsibility to know.

There is no doubt that signs were sufficiently apparent to put everyone on notice. If I am a coach who has recruited my players, I am aware of their often-limited academic backgrounds and natural proclivities. When I see more than 80 percent of my players are taking the same course, I have enough information to warrant an investigation.

Further, if I elect to delegate that responsibility to someone else, I must answer to the failure of my delegate to effectively investigate. Constructive knowledge equals actual knowledge, and the blame lies with all.

Coach Williams’ role

With all due respect to coach Roy Williams, it is not about whether the “kids tried to do the right thing.” The problem is not what the “kids” did, but rather what the “adults” allowed, helped and even directed the kids to do.

Deflecting the attention to the “kids” is just an escape mechanism to deflect responsibility off the adults. The really sad part is that this deflection has been present for a long time. We have aided and abetted academic fraud.

We now have a unique opportunity to use this situation as a stepping stone to address a quickly evolving major college athletic atmosphere, study it and determine the appropriate means to adjust to it. As Richard M. Southall, Mark S. Nagel and Ellen J. Staurowsky conclude in a blog post for The Chronicle of Higher Education: “While the stated tax-exempt purpose of big-time college sports is education, we all know it is about entertainment and money. ... The academic fraud at UNC was a calculated cost of doing business, one that every institution with a big-time athletic program pays in one way or another. Some get caught breaking the rules, some don’t.”

The academic/athletic paradigm has changed. In the words of Gerald S. Gurney in his fine article, “Stop Lowering the Bar for College Athletes” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2011): “Because of the time demands of athletics and the deficiencies in academic skills that hinder high-risk athletes from competing in more-demanding curricula, they tend to select majors of least resistance with an abundance of elective coursework: general studies, multidisciplinary studies, interdisciplinary studies. They even resort to acts of academic dishonesty to maintain their athletic eligibility.”

My recommendations for further actions:

The athletics department. As I understand the current university model, the athletics department has been tasked with the overall management and supervision of the various individual sports programs. As such, athletics officials have the primary responsibility of overseeing the entire operation of each separate program, including academic performance. They failed in that role. I recommend the replacement of all non-clerical staff of the department who served in any capacity during the time athletes were enrolled in African and Afro-American Studies, or AFAM , classes. This should coincide with a complete review of the role and mission statement of the athletics department.

Sports program staffs. All non-clerical staff of any individual sports program in which any players were enrolled in any classes within AFAM be replaced. That includes all head and assistant coaches. As suggested earlier, they have succumbed to the disease of performance over academics that has led to the loss of all credibility, outside the community of the fanatic boosters of their respective or collective sports. No amount of finger pointing or gnashing of teeth is persuasive. We are all sorry that we were caught, but some of us are sorry that it happened. The issue is the exercise and acceptance of responsibility. Each sports program should be rebuilt upon a more integrity-based model in conjunction with my recommended restatement of academic standards and goals.

Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes. In recounting the involvement of the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes, or ASPSA, in the scandal, the Wainstein Report describes a program that totally and abjectly lost its direction and understanding of its mission. Or, it could be said, when succumbing to the pressures applied by the various athletics programs, ASPSA chose to redefine its mission in line with that pressure. The outcome was that it accepted as its sole mission keeping athletes eligible.

Whether misled by signals, or lack thereof, from the administration and faculty, the program still failed. I am satisfied that all staff knew the difference between what was right and what they were actually doing. The entire staff of this program should be replaced. Further, the university should re-evaluate the viability and context of this program and, if it elects to continue it, redefine its purposes and policies.

If the program is to be continued, supervision and control over its operation, including the hiring of all counselors/tutors in the program, should be assigned to a division of the general administration and faculty. This program should be independent of the athletics department. Staff performance should be judged by students’ academic performance, not eligibility retention.

African and Afro-American Studies Department. I find it particularly troublesome that AFAM, now renamed African, African American and Diaspora Studies, was drawn into this scheme, given the importance of this department to the university’s diversity program. However, it is inconceivable to me, in the current climate created by this scandal, that AFAM will not struggle to retain any credibility in the academic community. Additionally, given the overwhelming breadth of the abuse outlined in the Wainstein Report, the reasonable conclusion is that no one in the department could have failed to know of or suspect the abuses. My conclusion is that the entire program needs a rebuild. All current faculty and non-clerical staff who were there at the time should be replaced.

Faculty Athletic Council. The failure of the Faculty Athletic Council is not just an athletic failure. It is clear that academic politics played a part in the failure of that group to closely supervise both AFAM and athletic performance. Wainstein suggests that the members of this committee were persuaded against close investigation of AFAM because of academic autonomy. Irrespective of the motivations, there is no doubt that it refused to exercise the very purpose of the committee. Quoting Wainstein: “Although the committee noticed that an AFAM class, AFAM 190 (AFAM Independent Studies), was one of two courses that accounted for the majority of student-athlete independent study enrollments, it ‘did not find any cause for concern in this situation.’ ... It would be more accurate to say, however, that the FAC did not try to find any cause for concern.”

Regardless of the primary justification, one must conclude that the council exercised the same “plausible deniability” defense to excuse its lack of oversight. This was once again a failure of mission. To regain credibility, the university must restate and reinforce the purpose of this committee, replace its members and recharge the replacements as to purpose.

Of course, it may not be appropriate or necessary to replace personnel who been brought in since the uncovering of the scandal, e.g. the new chairwoman of AFAM. But I agree with Luke DeCock’s statement in his recent commentary (Raleigh News & Observer): “The challenge now is whether North Carolina can become the national example of how to put athletics in their proper place going forward.”

I choose to believe that this fiasco can serve as an opportunity for UNC to lead by example. And one way to lead is to open a new dialogue as to the appropriate role of “big college sports” in the university community.

I believe we have a responsibility to every student who enrolls at the university; and we have abrogated and abandoned significant portions of that responsibility in the relentless chase for attention, athletic success and money.

If, indeed, “(W)e thought we were doing the right thing, felt very comfortable about it,” as coach Williams contended, we need to re-examine our comfort level and realign our thinking as to what is appropriate. I would like for UNC to be a leader in that much-needed examination and realignment.

Donald P. Eggleston is a member of the UNC-Chapel Hill Class of 1971. He was a John Motley Morehead Scholar, a basketball letterman under Dean Smith (1967-71) and received his law degree from UNC in 1974.

I see this on facebook and other places: ""Gas under $3 a gallon – under $3 a gallon. Unemployment under 6%, whoever thought? Stock market breaking records every day. No wonder the guy is so unpopular.” Putting aside whether the White House gets credit for any of the developments, what exactly would a country moving “in the right direction” look like? Shouldn’t current conditions meet that standard?"

I got this latest version from a friend of mine, who is both liberal and reasonably well informed. Assuming she is serious, here is my answer:

1. Median income is down according to the Census Bureau and CNN.

2. Poverty in 2013 showed its first decline in the Obama years, down from 15% to 14.5% according to the same source. 

3. At the beginning of the Obama administration gas prices were $1.89. So today's sub-$3.00 price is not an improvement. 

4.The fact that the stock market is going well doesn't benefit Americans who are not investors and most investors are going to vote GOP anyway. 

If the poster is serious, the reason people think the country is going in the wrong direction is, because it is going in the wrong direction. No amount of selective amnesia or cherry picking statistics will make people will less income feel like they have more. 

Walt-in-Durham

Being liberal.org, seems to be a favorite facebook page of some people still on my friends list. A posting forwarded to me, poses this: "Food Stamp Cuts     A country that expects the elderly to eat on $15.00 per month to avoid taxing the wealthy is morally bankrupt and has no future."

This message is obviously aimed at low information voters. But, it really is only persuasive to the truly stupid. First, Social Security has significantly reduced elder poverty. Add in Medicare and you have a situation where the elderly are among America's most well off groups of people. Second, food stamps are "means tested."  That means, if an elderly person gets $15 per month in food stamps, that means they can otherwise afford food without specific government assistance.That is good for people who cannot afford food as there is money available for them and not being spent on people with more need. The message takes the lowest dollar amount of assistance, and implies it would be all the assistance available. That is patently false. Food stamp assistance can be quite substantial. If, and I emphasize, the IF, the need is there. Less need, less assistance. Food stamps are not a giveaway. They are meant to help those in need, not to feed everyone who is a certain age. Let me make this final point, FOOD STAMPS ARE NEED BASED ASSISTANCE, NOT AGE BASED ASSISTANCE.

Walt-in-Durham