In a recent Daily Tar Heel (DTH) article about the fallout from the Wainstein report, UNC Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham was quoted as saying: “At some point we’ve got to move forward. And I think we’re to that point.”
As part of our continuing series, “Why we can’t move forward,” we present another reason UNC-Chapel Hill is only treading water when it calls on everyone to help the flagship “move forward.”
Reason #3 Lack of transparency still evident.
In all of the reforms so far enunciated on the University’ website carolinacommitment.unc.edu (we’re up to 70 and counting), not a single one deals with the need for additional data, regularly supplied, concerning the course itineraries and grade histories of recruited revenue-sport athletes. The University continues to use the trumpet sound of FERPA! to drown out all reasonable requests for de-identified data showing the academic pathways followed by recruited football and basketball players and grades earned in the courses taken. The truth is in the transcripts, and if the University is sincere in its claim to want to provide meaningful educations to all students, athletes included, it will need to prove that it is doing so with a much higher level of transparency. Aggregate data about academic performance on the revenue sport teams—and among “committee case” admits, including however many such admits were among the pool of ten recent January admits—must be supplied to Faculty Council at least once per year. Continued use of the meaningless label “student-athlete” to describe and characterize the academic lives of UNC athletes is only a continuing sign of bad faith.
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