Huge numbers of non-athletes took the notorious fake courses staged by the chair of African and Afro-American studies and his administrative assistant. Fraternities in particular, given their close connection to athletes, knew all about them. As the report on the almost twenty year hoax notes:
[When interviewed, members of fraternities] said that some of their non-athlete fraternity brothers took so many of the [bogus] classes that they inadvertently wound up with minors in African and Afro-American studies.
This is a great example of an argument UD has encountered ever since she started writing this blog: Big-time athletics benefits the whole university.
October 24th, 2014 at 6:40AM
Remember this at UGA from 1986? The university BRAGGED that their players might never be “university students” but they might become postal workers rather than garbage men!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/education/12kemp.html?_r=0
In Atlanta Federal Court in January 1986, university officials defended their actions concerning the football players, saying the athletes had been admitted to the regular curriculum because they were making progress in their studies. Dr. Kemp, they said, was dismissed for disruptive conduct and for failure to conduct adequate scholarly research.
O. Hale Almand Jr., a lawyer for the defense, offered a justification for the favorable treatment accorded the athletes, citing a hypothetical player.
“We may not make a university student out of him,” he told the jury, “but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbageman when he gets through with his athletic career.”