Researchers at UNC are exploring the question of how a football player’s transcript got reverse engineered in such a way as to appear plastered all over the national press.
The details of the transcript, particularly the fact that [Julius] Peppers took three independent study courses in the now scandal-ridden [African and Afro-American Studies] department, raise troubling questions amidst the unraveling of one of the most damaging scandals in the University’s history.
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If the transcript does, in fact, belong to Peppers, it digs the university deeper into an already damaging scandal. An internal review of the African Studies Department found that the majority of the aberrant courses were administered beginning in 2007, but this development would mean that the trouble began much earlier. It would also add to the growing speculation that athletes have been specifically pointed toward African Studies classes by counselors assigned to the athletic department.
And speaking of counselors:
Peppers’s agent, Carl Carey was also his academic adviser while at UNC and helped him get a re-test on a failing grade that would have ruled him academically ineligible.
Impressed? Impressed that Carey has worn two hats – agent and counselor? Well, hold on to your hat, because that number is three: Carey also taught at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill!
[AF/AM department chair Julius] Nyang’oro reportedly hired Carl Carey Jr. to teach a course this summer without telling Karen Gil, dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, that Carey is a sports agent.
Wow.
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(UD thanks Dave.)
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Oh – apparently there’s a bidding war for Julius Nyang’oro going on between Auburn and Clemson.
August 13th, 2012 at 1:10PM
Yet another story I wish were actually from The Onion. Even they can’t make up this kind of thing.
I’m trying to imagine an English professor also acting as advisor and literary agent, but it seems too absurd. Hence the Onionness of the UNC story.
August 13th, 2012 at 1:30PM
Joe: I had the same thought. About the multi-purpose English professor.
August 13th, 2012 at 1:32PM
A brilliant metaphor, UD!
August 13th, 2012 at 1:34PM
Thank you, adam.
August 13th, 2012 at 4:10PM
I am going to bet that someone there pissed off about the situation created this, perhaps years ago, with the idea it would be found.
Try as I might, I can’t praise this. The student may have been a slacker dumbass, but breaching his privacy so transparently is wrong.
August 13th, 2012 at 4:32PM
I agree on both points, tp. The player – already mucho rich in the NFL – will probably sue. And he would have a point if he did.