In the NCAA's investigation, UNC-Chapel Hill is a partner
Six months after a report recounting 18 years of academic fraud at UNC-Chapel Hill, few clues have emerged as to where the NCAA is headed with its investigation.
But contacts with at least two potential witnesses show the NCAA is treating UNC as a partner in the case, despite the previous efforts UNC mounted to convince the NCAA and the public that the fraud had no athletic motive.
In one circumstance, the NCAA received documents from a former graduate school admissions director, Cheryl Thomas, that showed a football player had been admitted and given a fourth year of eligibility despite a low GPA and no entrance exam. It forwarded the documents to a lawyer representing UNC, emails show. The lawyer then sought to interview her.
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"It doesn't make rational sense," said Donna Lopiano, a former director of women's athletics at the University of Texas. "I know the institution does have an obligation under NCAA rules to assess itself and report a violation. But as soon as the NCAA comes in, I don't understand the university's participation."
She and others have criticized the NCAA's handling of the UNC case. For more than two years, the NCAA accepted the university's position that the fraud wasn't about athletics because non-athletes were also in the fake classes and received the same high grades.
But Kenneth Wainstein's investigation last fall found athlete eligibility at the heart of the scandal. The former federal prosecutor said that Deborah Crowder, an administrative aide who managed the African studies department, created the fake classes in 1993 after academic counselors for athletes complained that her boss' independent studies were too rigorous.
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