Mr. Bethel, like the UNC administration, has emphasized the lack of any evidence beyond "speculation and insinuation" that members of the athletic department or the academic support team that counseled student-athletes were guilty of any collusion relating to the scandal. Though Bethel's tenure with ASPSA post-dates the period of time before which the "paper classes" were discovered, he's been a stalwart defender of the integrity of the support team who had been Mary Willingham's colleagues up until the point she resigned her position as a learning specialist in 2010.
Prefacing the publication and broadcast of Bethel's recent interviews, I sought some answers on his perspective regarding the athletic staff's potential culpability for the academic scandal on Twitter, and as before, he was considerate enough to respond. Our chat, which occurred May 3rd, is transcribed below:
Bob Martin: In our prior chat http://goo.gl/dfuk9x u said "Athletics had problems, too. Many were complicit in neglect." Neglect of?
Bradley Bethel: Some neglected to take seriously the overall rigor of UNC academics and recruit accordingly.
Martin: If recruiting was negligent in that regard, then how did it manifest itself as part of the problem we've been addressing?
Bethel: Some academically underprepared athletes could not succeed in their first majors and therefore felt compelled to choose AFAM.
Martin: And that was indicative of a problem? Other than the aberrant courses, wasn't AFAM a legitimate degree?
Bethel: Absolutely, it was, and some athletes had legitimate interest. Some, however, didn't, and so they chose classes they could manage.
Bethel: From known evidence, paper classes were result of Nyang'oro's "helping" struggling non-athletes (55%) and athletes (45%) alike.
Martin: What's wrong with that? UNC offers the degree/classes. Student chooses a manageable curriculum. How is recruiting negligent?
Bethel: The percentage of athletes in those classes would likely have been lower had Athletics recruited better.
Bethel: Indeed, athletes chose a manageable curriculum they believed was legitimate and from which some of them did learn academic skills.
Martin: Recap: the athl. dept's role in clustering of S-As in the aberrant courses was recruiting some they shouldn't have. Correct?
Bethel: We now know Nyang'oro didn't have approval to teach as he did; presence of underprepared athletes likely one factor affecting him.
Bethel: However, considering more non-athletes (55%), classes likely would have existed without athletes.
Bethel: Had Athletics recruited better, likely fewer athletes would have chosen same paper classes struggling non-athletes taking.
Bethel: Therefore, although Athletics could have prevented as many athletes enrolling in paper classes, classes would have still existed.
Bethel: That brings me back to my main point: UNC scandal is the result of deans neglecting to monitor one department.
Bethel: Unless Wainstein uncovers evidence of collusion, the N&O has spent three years insinuating a non-existent Athletics scandal.
Martin: Negligence you're describing is incidental to the scandal, so brings me back to fault lying "squarely" with faculty.
Martin: I hope you'll entertain my exploring this a little more, since it's the one area where you have had criticism of athletics.
Bethel: If "squarely" means "exclusively," then no. I believe in any institutional scandal many parties bear some culpability.
Bethel: As always, this has been a good chat, but I have to go now. I look forward to the next one.
Some commentary on Bethel's position, which I hope he covers in future articles on his blog or will address in future chats with me:
Though Bradley charges the athletic department with negligence in recruiting some (what I interpret to be a small) number of student-athletes who weren't equipped to handle the rigors of a UNC curriculum, he won't go so far as ascribing culpability to the athletic department in the establishment or even exploitation of fraudulent courses. He categorically rejects any notion of ASPSA counselors participating in the sham, believing they provided choices in good faith, and that if an option ultimately chosen by a student-athlete proved to have been fraudulent, the responsibility for that rests with the professor teaching the curriculum and the deans who should have been providing oversight. The only problem he has with the athletic department is the derivative effect of UNC's relaxed recruiting contributing to the troublesome symptom of student-athlete clustering in the aberrant classes.
Ignoring for now the discovery of email correspondence between Dr. Nyang'Oro and members of the academic support staff that paint a picture of greater contribution by the counselors to the perpetuation of the practice than Mr. Bethel concedes, what still eludes me in Bethel's argument is if the fault doesn't lie "squarely" (exclusively) with faculty, but ASPSA is to be exonerated and the athletic department contribution limited to recruiting neglect, then who, besides faculty, is also culpable? He won't say it falls squarely on faculty, but he specifically rejects the negligence he attributes to the athletic department as being a sign of culpability since there is a lack of evidence of malfeasance. (He doesn't distinguish between "culpability" and "neglect" as it pertains to deans' responsibility.) I don't necessarily agree that lack of intent or actual wrongdoing is necessary to indicate culpability, but if that's the line Mr. Bethel draws, then who else, besides faculty, is culpable?
There's also the curious question of those handful of student-athletes who were admitted under relaxed special policy admissions processes who, according to Bethel, presumably contributed to the clustering symptom. Would these be equivalent to the 8-10% (14-18 in number) in Mary Willingham's sample set:? Or a subset of the 34 student-athletes UNC claimed it admitted from 2004 to 2012 with sub-400-level SAT verbal scores? To be a contributing factor to the clustering phenomenon in Dr. Nyang'Oro's AFAM paper classes, the number would have to be more than 2-4 ill-equipped student-athletes per year matriculating to UNC under special admissions policies.
And as for those few that both Bethel and Willingham seem to suggest were ill-equipped to handle both a UNC-level college curriculum and participate in a for-profit scholarship sport:
- Why is Willingham's charges of literacy considered impugning of the student-athletes, but Bethel's suggestion that those students shouldn't have been recruited/admitted not?
- And why, if admitting those student-athletes was problematic, did that group suffer such a small rate of academic casualties (if any)?
