The Academic Scandal at UNC

Posted on by Josh Nudell


Tegularius beheld the landscape and, lo,
corruption of college athletics sat,
a plague upon the land.

Once pristine halls of learning,
overflowing with the bounty
of peerless intellect and civic virtue,
now wept from open sores,
tears of brawn.

Former monks of the mind,
they of keen vision, untroubled
by brutish pangs of flesh,
now brought low by the base distractions
of the masses.

The NCAA stalks their halls.

As many people have probably heard, there has been a scandal at UNC-Chapel Hill where, over the course of two decades thousands of students, about half of whom were athletes, took “paper classes” or “independent studies” and received disproportionately high grades. What happened was wrong and a failure on the level of pedagogy, administration, and ethics and there is going to be hell to pay on account of it. But there is altogether too much self-righteous finger-wagging going on right now at what is being construed as “the problems of big-money college athletics.” There are problems with college athletics, and there are problems with what happened at UNC, but the two do not completely overlap.

Some basics, taken from the executive summary of the report.

  1. An administrative assistant in the African American studies program, now retired, with the best wishes of the department chair developed the idea of “paper courses.”
  2. The students enrolled in these courses did not have to attend lectures or meet with a professor, but just turned in a term paper.
  3. The assistant “graded” the papers herself, usually reading only the introduction and conclusion, allowing for a significant amount of fluff or plagiarism. She then assigned disproportionately high grades.
  4. The grades artificially buoyed the GPA of many students, which allowed many athletes to stay academically eligible.
  5. thousands of students benefitted from the program, 48% of whom were athletes and half of those athletes were football or basketball players.

The report, or at least the summary is well worth reading. The news coverage has focused on how members of the athletics staff directed struggling student-athletes to the program to keep them eligible and how the students received excellent grades for shoddy or plagiarized work and one that (sort of) finds it troubling that the UNC officials are “eager” to pass the problem off as an sports one rather than an academic one.

My issue with this characterization is that the courses were open to all students. Athletes made up a huge percentage of the enrollment compared to their percentage of the student body, but the courses were not primarily intended to keep student-athletes eligible. In fact, the courses were designed to help types of at-risk and struggling students: sexual assault victims, people with mental illness, underprepared student-athletes, and students from challenging backgrounds. Although the assistant was described as a passionate supporter of UNC athletics, the inspiration came from her experience as a student where the professors (in her mind) unfairly catered to the “best and the brightest” of the students, leaving everyone else to struggle though. The department chair who took a lax approach to the independent study courses evidently also sympathized with the plight of student athletes because of two of his former students were expelled for academic reasons. One was murdered shortly after expulsion. The other went to jail.

Once the word got out about the program, institutions within the school such as fraternities and athletics departments took advantage of the classes in large numbers, with the result that many fraternity members “accidentally” minored in African American studies–something that the administrative assistant did not like, but wasn’t something that could stop without putting an end to the entire program.

I should reiterate: this is a failure of academics, administration, oversight, ethics, etc, etc. BUT: the students who the programs were designed to help are the students most in need of help and are often left behind by academic programs for cultural, environmental, and institutional reasons. This does not justify what happened, but neither is this only an example of corruption spreading from college athletics into the academy. There are blame and failures to go around, and the exploitation of a deeply flawed, but well-meaning system is not limited to the athletic department. The intent was to keep students enrolled so that they could benefit from the promise of a better life provided by college.

In fact, what troubles me the most is that those same people who the designers of the program intended to help remain at risk, while people who didn’t necessarily need the help benefited from it. There needs to be systemic overhaul on account of what went down, but imagining the academy as a virtuous entity, its integrity encroached upon by money-sports are willfully ignorant and are using the athletics as a scapegoat. Too, this vitriol is often a product simply of not liking sports. Thus they try to sever the connection between athletics and sports. There are a number of problems, but one of the big ones is not the relationship of money-sports with the academy, but the relationship more broadly of money with the academy.

Let me conclude with this. I have an extreme dislike of the rhetoric about democracy, but one of its core principles is an equal opportunity for education. At-risk and underprepared students, whether they are athletes, from inner cities, from poor backgrounds, non-native english speakers, or have mental health problems, are the hardest to ensure that right for and are the ones in need of most support. UNC’s program is not the answer, particularly because it circumvented learning rather than enabling it. Everyone, students, teachers, administrators, support staff–as well as legislators who fund college systems–need to create an environment in which any person who wants an education can get one. Of course it isn’t that simple. Students need to be proactive about their own learning and professors need to be more open to helping underprepared students, but it starts with the environment.

–I am also interested to hear other reactions to this story. The athletics angle is pretty well covered by the national media, but I am willing to hear out the case that athletics are the real problem here.

What’s Making Me Happy: The United States of Amnesia

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Following the model of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour and its final topic, I am using some of these posts as a reminder to myself that there are things that bring me joy and as a means of posting recommendations of things–usually artistic or cultural, sometimes culinary–that are worth consuming. This week: The United States of Amnesia, a documentary about Gore Vidal and Gore Vidal’s America.

I’ve been a Gore Vidal fan going on ten years at this point. Once, while working in the library in college, I successfully persuaded one of the library directors that she should read his novel Creation and she liked it well enough that she pitched the idea of a library-staff-led book club where we would take turns suggesting books and leading discussion. The idea fell through (for which I was relieved), but it felt good that she liked my suggestion.

G.V. is a polarizing, divisive, and compelling character. This documentary, which came out in 2013, the year after G.V. died, marries the large number of T.V. pieces V. did in his lengthy public career, with interviews that he did with the producers in the last years of his life. The result isn’t as restricted a scope as Errol Morris’ work on Donald Rumsfeld, but, at the same time, the outside interviews about G.V. (including with Christopher Hitchens) take a backseat to V.’s outsized, yet reclusive personality.

As any good biographical documentary would, it begins with G.V. as a young man and the relationship with his parents and their relationship to the American Elite–his father, Eugene Luther Vidal, was one of Roosevelt’s aviation advisors (and may have had an affair with Amelia Earhart) and his mother, Nina Gore, was married from 1935-41 to Hugh D. Auchincloss, whose third wife was Janet Lee Bouvier, the mother of Jacqueline Kennedy. This was very much high society. G.V. liked to say that he was desperately trying to escape it.

But other than noting with some regularity, because how could one not, the strata of society that G.V. occupied, the documentary didn’t dwell on these relationships. Nor does it dwell on issues of sexuality and censorship that plagued him. Instead it worked to reconcile G.V.’s intellectualism and aloofness with his charismatic and aristocratic mien and his acerbic wit in the frequent appearances as one of the country’s most prominent public intellectuals. The United States of Amenesia touches on all of the prominent controversies (including one where the BBC called G.V. and William Buckley “Controvertialists” rather than commentators) so that it can cover the broad scope of G.V.’s work and appearances, but (at 83 minutes) it doesn’t drag.

I don’t agree with G.V. entirely, but find him to be fascinating. Ultimately, The United States of Amnesia provides one final rostrum for an exceptionally insightful and utterly unabashed public intellectual to speak from. Love him or hate him, Gore Vidal remains worth thinking about.

On quitting

Posted on by Josh Nudell

At one point in college I was simultaneously reading something on the order of twenty-three books. Then I stopped. Some of the books I finished, others, most of the others, I simply removed the bookmark from, closed, and put away. The problem was not that I couldn’t remember what was happening in the majority of those books, but that it dawned on me one day that I was often going weeks or months without picking up some or most of those books and so my gleeful romps though so many books was doing more to prevent me from finishing a book and getting the pleasure thereof than it was enabling me to read widely.

Since then, I have read at most two books at once and usually just one (class and research excepted, of course). Even when I do read two book at once, it is because I am reading one non-fiction book and one novel, and, as often as not, the non-fiction book is a new monograph on a topic related to my studies or peripherally to my dissertation and thus is me staying current–I have a stack, though I also dream of being able to read some other non-fiction books once I finish these. I justify the novels because they help keep me sane and because most of them help me become a better writer. Too, since I put this policy into place, I have given up on three novels: a thick review novel that bored me to tears, The Brothers Karamazov (during a particularly busy semester), and, most recently, Don Quixote, an unabridged version.

I am almost certainly going to give The Brothers Karamazov another shot when I have a brief respite, although perhaps with a better translation. Don Quixote I am not so sure about. The novel is funny, even beyond the relentless beating taken by the knight and his insistence on tilting windmills. For instance, there is a book-burning scene to rid the house of the novels that rotted his brain, and the hijinks of everyone around the wayward knight. But it is also allusive and repetitive, in a way that I found difficult to read quickly. There is a case to be made that I was simply busy, but I found the repetitive nature of the story and the antiquated language mind-numbing. So I skipped to the end and read the last few chapters, which seemed to lucidly tie the whole novel together. My main problem was that I didn’t know most of the Romances that Cervantes alluded to and without that, I felt that I got the bulk of his satire early on and thus that I was reading filler until the story came to a close some nine hundred pages later.

Nevertheless, putting down Don Quixote was an admission of defeat. What has made the decision easier to bear was to move on and read other, shorter books. Most importantly, reading these other books has reminded me why I read these novels, not to slog through something that just wears me down, but because there are fantastic books that help me escape from those things that stress me. Thus it was the right decision to quit.

American Icons: Fiddler on the Roof

Posted on by Josh Nudell

This past weekend, Studio 360, a radio program from WNYC, ran the latest in its “American Icons” series. In the series, they run a story that digs into the creation of the piece of culture and then try to explain how it qualifies as an “American Icon” and how it is changed over time. For instance, in the installment about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the host looked into how the portrayal of Uncle Tom changed from one of sympathy to one of spineless compliance and betrayer–and why the term remains virulent while the actual readership of the novel has fallen off.

The latest installment is about “Fiddler on the Roof.” The piece explains how a series of stories about Tevye the Milkman, written in yiddish by Sholem Aleichem about a particular place and time and set of circumstances in the Russian Empire became one of the most successful Broadway plays of all time (once holding the record for longest running play). The piece makes the argument that the play was conceived around the idea of tradition, change, and generational struggle that became and remain particularly resonant with immigrants to the United States (note: the play concludes with the emigration to the United States). Thus, while the individual details and songs are those of Jewish life, the story is a universal one for the American experience.

Find the story (written and audio) here. If you like this story, I also recommend the documentary about Sholem Aleichem, Laughing in the Darkness, which goes further into the author and his stories than does the Studio 360 piece.

Local Advertising and Concussions

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Despite the national sports media members who loudly protest that they played through concussions and were just fine, concussions are serious. Of course players are going to try to go back into the game if given a choice, competitors are driven to compete and do not like being forced to watch, particularly once they reach a level where past performance validates their ability. That is why the coaches, the officials, and the support staff need to step in and protect the players from themselves. And, as Stephania Bell used to remind the hosts of ESPN’s fantasy focus podcast, it is a misnomer that there are “mild” concussions. Concussions are brain injuries that range in symptoms, but that are all serious and get worse with repeat occurrence.

Michigan football has a number of problems right now and while the fans are angry for any number of reasons, it was the procedure (or lack thereof) for a concussed quarterback, Shane Morris, who was allowed to go back into the football game when visibly in need of his teammates to stand upright after a vicious hit, that landed Michigan football on national TV morning shows. It was an NFL concussion lawsuit that saw a judge reject a 870 million dollar settlement because she believed the the settlement would not be able to cover all the damages (she approved it when they removed the cap on payouts). A new book, Boy on Ice, details the life of Derek Boogaard, an enforcer in the NHL, who suffered multiple concussions and then died of a drug overdose at 28; Boogaard’s family donated his brainstem to science because he underwent a personality shift in the last years of his life. Major league baseball has had issues with players hit in the head, colliding with walls and players, or getting kneed in the head while sliding into a base, which has derailed the career of a number of excellent players.

The list goes on, the point is just to illustrate that concussions are not an isolated issue and are hardly limited to contact sports. This is the context in which I am actually outraged at the radio ad run by one of the local car dealerships.

Fletcher Honda in Columbia, Mo, currently has on air a commercial imitating a football game. A player gets taken out in a vicious hit and the coach comes out to ask if he knows where he is. In a dim and woozy voice the player asks for a combo meal. The coach asks a second question and the player says he wants a super-sized combo meal. Then the coach asks if he knows where to get the best deal for his trade-in vehicle, to which the player more confidently replies that the answer is Fletcher Honda. Because the player gets the third question right, the coach proclaims he is good to go.

My problems here are that the ad is completely tone-deaf and that if I heard someone legitimately answer the first two questions I would diagnose him with a concussion over the radio, without needing any training or further confirmation. But then they imply that he is going to go right back into the game. Because he knows a bit of trivia that may or may not be true about a car dealership here. At least if anyone questions them about their message, they can say that their spokesman had a brain injury when he asserted it.

I am not in advertising and I am aware that local dealership ads are not easy and that this is their attempt at provide a humorous, catchy spot. And I have given some thought to how they might revamp this same concept in a way that relieves my concern, but I don’t see one. Making light of concussions is beyond tacky and I cringe whenever I hear it come on.

September Reading? Hardly.

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Things have gotten a bit hectic around Casa de Nudell, so I didn’t read a single book cover to cover in September. What sealed the deal is that I played a deeply ironic joke on myself by starting an unabridged translation of Don Quixote. Mired somewhere in the middle, but before the second part, I am feeling every iota of the delusion, futility, and sardonic humor, but have not yet been able to extricate myself. I find myself wanting to read something lighter–at least physically–after this one, but we will see.