Date: March 25, 2014
Whitsleblower, Mary Willingham was featured on Outside the Lines on ESPN. The interview covers the academic scandal at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Watch the ESPN video, to hear Mary and former football player, Deunta Williams, discuss the paper class system at UNC-CH and “the fake classes that student-athletes were allegedly encouraged to take” to maintain an eligible status to play sports.
Liz Arredondo
VP of Communications at Paper Class Inc.
Liz is the VP of Communications for Paper Class Inc. under the direction of PCI's President, Mary Willingham. Liz is a strong believer in the promise of higher education and the goals of PCI to support college athletes' rights to a real education.
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Mary,
You do know there’s another side to this story, especially regarding Deunta. I’m curious to hear if you’re actually interested in that being told or if that’s not in your best interest.
Scot,
You are missing the point. Deunta, MW, Prof Smith, the N&O, ESPN, and BusinessWeek aren’t the issue at hand. NONE of those people/organizations created HUNDREDS of classes that didn’t require attendance or any coursework other than a largely plagarized 1 paragraph final paper. Submit your paper……or more accurately, your “paragraph”, and you get an A and 3 credit hours towards a UNC degree and eligibility. None of those individuals orchestrated or benefitted from the 500+ unauthorized grade changes (a # btw that is probably overly conservative considering that it came from a incompetent, incomplete, and poorly conducted PR stunt named the Martin Review).
Sorry, but there isn’t another respectable school in the COUNTRY that has taken cheating and corrupting its academic mission to UNC’s level. Not only did they cheat at such an imaginable level and on such a large scale, they actively TRUMPETED the resulting ill gotten high graduation rates for over a decade— Ill gotten gains that came by sacrificing the educational opportunity of the same athletes they liked to brag about. The widespread unethical behavior by UNC employees and athletic officials at UNC is disgusting. It’s even more disgusting that UNC continues to publicly lie about what happened and attack the media and individuals curremtly reporting about it. UNC itself CHOSE to break the rules and sacrifice its academic integrity—- they need only look in the mirror for someone to blame.
Hi Scot Sr,
Your comments are a bit inaccurate as you are narrowly focused on UNC. Were there issues? It’s been acknowledged and they have been addressed. I bet you have no idea that UNC prospectively raised admission requirements to the new levels mandated by the NCAA 3 years in advance of this directive being implemented.
If you want to look at a systematic farce in academics, look to Raleigh where all athletes take a 3 hour intro to college life course which is an automatic “a”, many of the revenue athletes have a general studies major going into their senior year and academic posterboy Mike Glennon had a semester of no-show classes so he could focus on football.
Let’s not throw stones. It’s a systematic issue across all college revenue sports.
I have one simple question. Did the paper given to the media (the Rosa Parks essay that was one paragraph long) by Mary Willingham receive an A- like she implied and the media is reporting? I ask because it is being reported all over the media that the paper got an A- but now there is some weasel tweet stating:
Clarification on RP paper that went viral.It was a final essay for an intro class.Final grade in class A-.Not a real education. #ncaareform
What is the answer? Did the paper get an A- or not? If not, when will Mary do a follow-up interview and apologize for misleading everyone?
All good points, Jon. I would also add other problems with how Mary presented the essay on OTL.
1. I take issue with the “no show” moniker that Mary, Jay, the N&O, et al use, but AFAM 41 in no way was a “no show” paper class. It was an introductory survey lecture class.
2. UNC renumbered courses in 2006, so AFAM 41 hasn’t existed for over 8 years now.
3. No (redacted) name, PID, or grades that would suggest that it was an original essay that a student-athlete wrote.
Quite frankly, given Mary’s trouble with the truth (i.e., lying on NCAA forms, contradicting herself in her declaration submitted in the O’Bannon case, providing multiple contradictory statements about her dealings with the IRB), I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to be skeptical about this essay.
Are you aware that this videos cannot be seen even though it has been two weeks?