At Risk (Part 2)

This is Part 2 of a 2-part series. Click here for Part 1.

"Academically at risk"
"Academically under-prepared"
"Not ready for college-level work"
"Special Talent exemptions"

These are familiar terms often used for a small segment of collegiate student-athletes when discussing the balance between college academics and athletics.  While each phrase might convey a slightly different tone, each is non-specific and general enough as to not typically ruffle feathers.

But what about...?

"Can't read at the college level"
"Middle school reading equivalent"
"Non-reader"

or the most incendiary:

"Functionally Illiterate"

That's a whole different ball of wax, isn't it? Unless the student-athlete is someone like Dexter Manley -- or Dasmine Cathey -- who is courageous enough to self-profess a reading deficiency, such a characterization as "illiterate" is viewed as disparaging to student-athletes.  It certainly doesn't reflect well on the college, not only if an illiterate student is admitted without first requiring "remediation," but if the student is somehow able to maintain good academic standing and progress toward graduation without that literacy deficiency being addressed.

Illiteracy doesn't mean stupid. Equating reading ability with intelligence is ignorant. There are also varying degrees of illiteracy, making the concept contextual. The threshold for "functional illiteracy" is fuzzy, and how to gauge reading and writing proficiency to be at the "college-ready" level is, itself, a matter of discussion; though many articles seem to consistently set the bar for "at-risk" around 8th grade equivalency. (I'm sure that will be disputed by some, but that's tangential to this article.)

For a couple of years after she'd left the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes (ASPSA) at UNC, Mary Willingham began trying to raise awareness within the University of what she saw as a rot in the education of those student-athletes who were deemed academically at-risk. Hidden behind the softer-toned "at risk" term was an ugly reality which, she claimed, made it impossible to educate these students on a collegiate level precisely because of their reading and writing deficiencies. Either such students needed remedial help first before embarking on a UNC-grade curriculum; or, if that wasn't going to be provided, then they shouldn't be admitted.

It appears that around 2013, she started citing some findings she had somehow derived from analysis of UNC's own test data of identified "at-risk" students, providing metrics on grade-equivalency reading proficiency. How she calculated these levels, she has yet to explain; however, her goal was to increase the heat on an administration and faculty she felt was ignoring the issue, particularly in the context of Universities half-measure studies and investigations about curriculum irregularities that she felt were inadequate or had ulterior agendas. (Critics say she sought the spotlight and failed to give her colleagues and the University a chance to work the issues she was raising.)

I'm the first to charge Willingham with resorting to hyperbole and being a less-than careful researcher. And when Sara Ganim's CNN report in January 2014 hit the airwaves and Internet, and a firestorm ensued, I was, at first, on the University's side, feeling she had been leveraged by CNN's outrage journalism.

She wasn't merely talking about student-athletes not being ready for college-level work anymore. Now she was saying to the public that athletes at UNC couldn't read.

Had Willingham and Ganim gone too far? Had they embarrassed and disparaged Tar Heel student-athletes and impugned the University with such language. Saying the school "might as well have gone...to Glendale Elementary and let all the 4th graders in here-- 3rd graders" she titillated the public's appetite for scandal and delivered to UNC a rhetorical gut shot. Ganim's reporting didn't discriminate between the minority of student-athletes Willingham's findings described and the entire student-body of athletes at UNC.

The reaction was swift, with the University's Vice Chancellor and Provost denouncing the report as a travesty, and Coaching the Mind launching as Willingham's harshest critic. The University sought to refute the claims by contracting with third-party experts to review her data in an attempt to prove Willingham's analysis was grossly overstated and lacking merit.

What was so egregious about her claims?

She said she'd assessed the test results of 183 freshman student-athletes who'd been required to complete the freshman Basic Writing course from 2004 to 2012, and found 60% of them had reading proficiency levels of 4th-8th grade equivalent or below. And that 8-10% of that same group were as low or lower than 3rd grade readers, i.e. effectively functionally illiterate.

Outrageous-sounding, no? But why? Was it really so unbelievable?

Much of the calumny comes from misunderstanding what Willingham was saying; and that was in no small part thanks to Willingham's own silence on the matter, failing to correct media misinterpretations of her claims, not to mention her own exaggerations of the extent of the problem.

Often missed is that Willingham wasn't saying 60% of UNC student-athletes were not college-ready readers. She was saying 60% of a small subset of UNC student-athletes had reading disadvantages, and that small subset group was specifically comprised of admitted student-athletes identified as "at risk" academically. No inferences regarding the entire student-athlete population can or should be made from what could be found in that small, non-random sampling  The 60% was descriptive only of that specific sample group.

The same is true of the 8-10% finding of 3rd grade or below non-readers.

Just to the sake of argument, let's imagine Mary's percentages were right or close to right; how many would she have been talking about?

She claimed to have relied on test data of 183 student-athletes who had been assigned to ENG 100 (ENG 10) from 2004 to 2012; a nine-year period.  Take 60% of that and that's 110 student-athletes with assessed reading level of 8th grade or below. Across 9 years, that's 12 per year.

Doing the same thing for her 8-10% of claimed "functionally illiterate" and you get 1-2 per year.

Now, let's overlay those new "literacy" categories over the previous diagram from Part 1:

The only change from the previous diagram is the addition of Mary Willingham's 60% and 8-10% groupings. Willingham's percentages, when converted to raw numbers, do not exceed the "committee case" totals and cannot be translated to include anyone not admitted "at risk."

It paints the same picture as depicted previously, but now with the granularity of an "illiterate" subset, which could only possibly reflect negatively on a handful of student-athletes each year, but who aren't personally disparaged because their identities are protected by privacy laws.

Yet the University and Bethel chose to react as if all of student-athletes had been disparaged. UNC's own response in the wake of the CNN report cited figures of all student-athletes in contrast, as if Willingham's numbers were inferential.

Bethel and Co. have missed the forest for the trees. Their response to Willingham was probably more an emotional, visceral reaction; one that continues to convince itself that it is motivated in defense against the insult toward student-athletes, but which more likely comes from the sting of the indictment against UNC's academic support, admissions standards, faculty teaching quality, administrative oversight, and the suggestion of athletic exploitation of those failures for the purposes of maintaining student-athlete eligibility.

While carrying the banner for the supposedly disparaged, they've failed to allow that Mary Willingham's underlying message was true. Bethel's own cautionary email to the new Chancellor spoke to the same concern regarding admission of student-athletes not adequately prepared to succeed at UNC.

Were a couple of incoming students in each year's pool of liberally admitted student-athletes functionally illiterate? Does it really matter whether not they were or not, technically speaking? Would it have been all that surprising, given the numbers of special admits and the extreme lows that some of their admissions scores revealed (i.e. low and even sub-300 verbal scores)?  Willingham very easily could be wrong in her precision, but it's hardly the travesty Bethel and UNC have made it out to be. It's not only feasible, but likely that some functionally illiterate "non-readers" were coddled through the system during the 2004-2012 time frame; yet they've used the outrage over such a notion as a red herring, seeking to discredit Willingham's message of a systematic ill at UNC. This, along with charges of ethics violations, character flaws and other classic character assassination and anti-whistleblower tactics, are geared to distract from how the University, itself, failed to respond until called on the carpet and then attempted to minimize the damage and restrict the guilt, all while patting itself on the back for its reforms and Moving Forward.

I'm no fan of Mary Willingham, though I won't recount the reasons why, here and now. That should have no bearing on interpreting the message she was conveying. Admitting students too under-prepared for college-level work without also addressing that capability gap before permitting them to pursue their "special talent" specialty, is THE recipe for the sort of scandalous academic malfeasance that transpired at UNC. Literacy was never the real issue.

At Risk (Part 1)

After reviewing most of the internal documents released by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), I feel confident that it was a common stance among counselors and educational staff that the incoming students who were required to complete UNC's English Basic Writing freshman composition course correlated 100% with those who were deemed to be academically "at-risk."

The vast majority of first year students admitted to North Carolina are exempt from this course, but a small minority are granted admission with test or placement scores well below that of their peers, indicating the need to develop reading and writing skills necessary for navigating the UNC-CH curriculum.

To get a visual sense of the proportion of these "at-risk" first-year students to the rest of their class, I roughed out some average numbers from 2004 to 2012 -- also based on publicly released documents by UNC -- and depicted them in this diagram:

The largest circle (Carolina blue) represents all UNC freshman in a typical year, numbering about 4000 each year. Around 50 to 60 students (the small white + dark gray circles) are placed into ENG 100 (previously ENG 10) during their first year; usually in their Summer or Fall terms. That's about 1-2% of the total student body population.

Even though this is a very small minority of an entire UNC freshman class, the reason why this is, at all, controversial is because of the relatively large proportion of student-athletes in that segment. Though incoming 1st year athletes comprise only 5% of the whole student body (the light gray circle), they have typically represented 75% or more of the "at-risk" students taking Basic Writing.

"Committee cases" are those freshman applicants whose academic credentials are so low that the individual being advocated for admission -- typically by a representative of the athletics department if a student-athlete -- must be reviewed by a faculty committee, which then provides a recommendation on an admissions decision. At the time of this posting, I had not yet located numbers of non-athletes "committee cases" at UNC-CH, though I'm sure it would be some number equal to or less than the non-athlete "at-risk" students, represented by the small white circle.

Athletes, on the other hand, ranged from as high as 23 in the mid-2000s to a more recent low of 9, with numbers trending downward as criteria and admissions decisions at UNC-CH have tightened up in the wake of the scandal and subsequent reform measures. This segment is depicted in the orange circle: a subset of the "at-risk" student-athletes.

Committee cases represent less than 1% of the freshman student body, but they were 5-10% of the incoming athlete population, and, when added with the rest of those identified as "at risk," could account for nearly a quarter of admitted freshmen and 1st year students recruited to play athletics.

I'm all for high school students being allowed to leverage a special talent like athletics to gain an opportunity to pursue a college education. And I firmly believe (until it's explained to me otherwise) that a student-athlete who is given such an opportunity doesn't unfairly deny a non-athlete with better academically credentials his or her own chance for admission.

The problem arises, however, when that opportunity results in the student being put in a situation where he or she is at a disadvantage in the pursuit of academic success. Being admitted 'at-risk' means faculty and counseling staff must take responsibility to see that the student's needs are attended to and adequate resources are applied to make up whatever gap in readiness it was that has put him or her "at risk." The Basic Writing course, while not labeled as "remedial," certainly is designed to help bridge that gap, as are other programs and policies.

The student, of course, must also take responsibility and not have to be spoon-fed. The internal communications documents show multitudes of examples of counselors expressing frustration with student-athletes - probably many identified as "at-risk" - not taking their coursework seriously or who were only too willing to seek out the path of least resistance (at times with counselors and faculty abetting.)

"At-risk" students may struggle academically, but the wrong solution is to dilute the curriculum in order to "grease the skids." It may seem like helping, but it's like giving a child the candy he whines for to stifle hunger. Instead -- like good educational nutrition -- helping means giving those "at-risk" students a real chance to get up to speed in order to extract value from the University's educational offering.

IF there is or was a system that was designed or exploited to keep student-athletes eligible and out of academic difficulty, the liberal use of this "special committee" policy and acceptance of "at-risk" students would be the point of origin for pressure to create it. If admissions staff and faculty committees are willing to make such allowances for special talents, they must be willing to make the hard call to insist that athletic pursuits for those "at risk" be put on the back burner while and until the academic deficiency is adequately addressed. Athletic recruiters and coaches must also be on board and willing to wait for that student until an academic probationary period is completed and the academic gap sufficiently bridged. Otherwise, you wind up with what was uncovered at UNC, whether you want to call it, at worst, "academic fraud" or, at best, "good people just trying to help struggling students."

To other non-athletes or athletes not considered "at risk," failures by admissions, faculty and/or athletic leadership should not be seen as an indictment of the value and quality of their educational experience. Non-athletes need not feel like their education was tarnished if "at-risk" student-athletes were shuffled through the system, even if they did take a sip from the diluted curriculum.

Similarly, student-athletes withing the "at risk" group need not feel stigmatized if they wisely avoided or resisted watered-down curriculum path.

(I'm sure a few perfectly capable and academically prepared student-athletes opted to take the diluted academic path just to make life easier. I know more than a couple of non-athletes at Duke who gladly made the same kind of educationally-lacking, but GPA-inducing, choices.)

Speaking of "stigma", in this day and age, being "at-risk" should not be stigmatizing, particularly if a key cause for that is a learning disability or other well-founded diagnosis. The old "short bus" epithet really should be archaic as we now know that many bright, creative and capable students can succeed when given the right resources to overcome their disadvantages. But we can't sugarcoat "academically unprepared" and "at-risk" evaluations to avoid hurt feelings. Making and applying those assessments isn't disparagement. Such disadvantages have to be addressed honestly and sincerely. It isn't truly helpful to give such students so-called benefits of watered-down curricula that camouflage the core, underlying obstacles to authentic learning and education. College education has to be college-level education and not high school or middle school education masquerading as collegiate-level work, especially at a University seeking to maintain a prestigious academic reputation like UNC's.

The point I'm hoping to make is that even if "at risk" students are a small part of the student population, how faculty and staff  respond in tailoring a curriculum to address them can have wider ranging impact beyond just devaluation of the collegiate educational experience. Admitting "at risk" students isn't bad in and of itself, unless the school fails to follow-through on the responsibility that comes with that admission decision. Frankly, that's a shared responsibility between:

1.  Faculty, who sign up to educate "committee cases" when recommending admission; and,
2.  Coaches, who ask for admissions exceptions; and,
3.  The student-athlete who is granted admission, who should understand academics is the primary reason for being a student and not a necessary evil while being an athlete. 

Diluting a course of instruction is not the proper response, and the counselors and faculty who should be watchdogs for educational quality must be on guard and not let "bean counting" eligibility or faux progress toward graduation "block-checking" guide them. The correct thing to do is to address remediation and make the pursuit of academics a priority, even at the temporary expense of athletics participation. If you're not willing to do that, then don't grant special talent admissions.

(Go to Part 2)

BobLeeSays

This morning, I found this Bob Lee left a comment in his blog article "Forget Star Wars...Here Comes UNVERIFIED"

I think he's clear...and right.

Bradley Bethel Talks About Unverified

Blake Hodge on Chapelboro.com recently interviewed Bradley Bethel who is promoting the premier of "Unverified: the Film" in January 2016.

Along with the trailer, the interview provides an advance hint about what the film will be about and what story it will seek to tell, in contrast to the story the general public has gotten from other media outlets.

I've transcribed Bethel's comments about the film without my commentary. (I'll do that later.)

01:27 Bethel: "It's a very human story. It's about people who, I believe, were misrepresented and how they dealt with that misrepresentation and my effort to stand up for them and to, in a sense, set the record straight about this scandal -- what is a complicated story."

02:10 Bethel: "The idea for it came when I was watching another documentary about the Penn State scandal - it was called "Happy Valley" ^{[see note below]} - and I found that so compelling and it so challenged the way I had looked at that scandal --  the Penn State scandal -- that I said to myself 'documentary film seems like a good venue to kind of clear up some of the muddiness that has been part of the coverage of the UNC scandal.' "

02:47 Bethel: "Unverified is not going to answer every question. That would be a boring film if we tried to just answer every question...we really committed to keeping it under 90 minutes. But what we do is we take some questions and we try to answer those. But even more importantly, what we try to do is give people a way of thinking about the story differently. so that as they move forward as other questions are raised they kind of have a different set of assumptions with which to approach the questions about this scandal. And so I think that in that way it really will help clear up, like I said earlier, some of the muddiness of this situation."

04:08 Bethel: "My take and what I think people will come away with is that this wasn't an athletic-driven scandal. I've gotten away from the sort of dichotomizing athletics or academic...it was a university scandal. The question for me is what drove it and it wasn't athletics that drove it. It was some misguided efforts to help struggling students is what drove it. but in the process of sorting through it and trying to report on it it got turned into this very sensational story of athletics corruption. But I think when you kind of peel away some of the  sensationalism you see that it's not so dramatic. It's not so scandalous. It's not so much about corruption as it is a couple of people who were just misguided in trying to help others. And so I think it's getting down to that human element that, again, is going to make this film a compelling, engaging story."

05:35 Bethel: "I think that the public narrative matters insofar as how to move forward...how the university moves forward; what kind of solutions we come up with are going to depend on how we define the problem. And so, I think the university has done a great job in athletics reform, because the public perception has been that this is so much about athletics. I would like to see there be more discussion of the implications what this scandal...what this said about the way academics...the way that teaching quality -- the educational quality -- is addressed at prestigious universities like UNC; you know, what is the university doing on the academic side to make sure that teaching quality is valued enough so that something like this doesn't ever happen."

06:40 Bethel: "I think overall UNC has done a good job moving forward. Now that isn't to say I'm without my criticisms and some of my criticisms come out in the film. I don't want to give any spoiler alerts...but I think it's important for people to understand this too, that I do have my criticisms  and my criticisms are in the film, and that's what makes...this film is not propaganda, this film is not trying to whitewash UNC's guilt or fault or anything like that. From the very beginning we were really committed to having an honest film and one of the ways we did that was including criticism. Another way for example -- and again I'm not going to say too much because I don't want it to be a spoiler -- but there is one interview that I had for the film where it really didn't go my way. It was bad for me. And we could have just not included that interview in the film, but we did include it because it was part of the process of making the film and we wanted to be honest and I put myself out there and I don't want to present myself as better or smarter than I actually am. And through and through I think it's a really honest film and I think that viewers are going to appreciate it for its honesty."

08:42 Bethel: "[The film's story] did change. And that was part of being honest. Making this film honest is showing how my understanding evolved.   Again, because I don't want to give it away, and I don't want to say exactly how it evolved but know that my kind of feelings and beliefs at the end of the film were not the same as they were at the beginning, and I think people are going to really appreciate seeing that development because what it was was honest character development, which is sometimes hard to get in a documentary. In narrative films you script...you write character development. You don't know if you're going to get character development in documentary because you don't know if the person is going to develop in this case I did develop and my ideas evolved and became more sophisticated, I think, and so we put that in the film and I think it's really interesting."

---

Note:
It is unclear whether Bradley Bethel is referring to Amir Bar-Lev's "Happy Valley" or Eric Proulx's "365 Days: A Year in Happy Valley." The producer of "Unverified" Conni Lo Ferrara was an executive producer for the latter.

NCAA Interview Transcripts

I'd been contemplating submitting a public records request for the interview transcripts referenced as Factual Items (FI) in the UNC Notice of Allegation. Even though UNC can claim to not have possession of them, I believe should be releasable per G.S. §132-1 of North Carolina's public records law.

When the NCAA conducts these sorts of interviews, they reportedly keep records of the interviews on its secure server, making the documents available to the member institution. Though the University does not possess a physical holding of the transcripts, I believe Associated Press v NCAA (2010) sets precedents and I see no fundamental difference between North Carolina's open records law and Florida's. (Additional information at http://www.splc.org/blog/splc/2010/05/fsu-ncaa-case-is-a-touchdown-for-transparency-a-fumble-for-ferpa-fundamentalists)

It might seem futile for me to make the request since I'm not a threat to challenge a possible UNC denial in court; but news organizations who have shown a willingness to test UNC's denials might be a different story.

I noticed today that Dan Kane (Raleigh News & Observer) has made just such a request. The 50+ hour estimate, if UNC complies, is no doubt based on the need to review and redact private information from the transcript records. Still, I'll be surprised if UNC, and the NCAA, don't resist and force the issue to court.

There are 31 transcript files listed in the Notice of Allegations that I think the public deserves to review:

FI216: February 18, 2015 – Interview transcript of Whitney Read.
Position: former ASPSA staff
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Read's description of her role as a tutor.
 File: WRead_TR_021815_NorthCarolina_00231

FI217: February 11, 2015 – Interview transcript of Everett Withers
Position: former interim head football coach.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Withers' level of knowledge about the AFRI/AFAM courses.
 File: EWithers_TR_021115_NorthCarolina_00231

FI218: September 24, 2014 – Interview transcript of Jenn Townsend
Position: ASPSA staff
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Townsend's recollection that Owen did not want
AFRI/AFAM independent study courses used as frequently.
 File: JTownsend_092414_TR_NorthCarolina_00231

FI219: September 25, 2014 – Interview transcript of Dick Baddour
Position: former director of athletics.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Baddour's belief that individuals in the college of arts and sciences enrolled student-athletes in independent study courses, not athletics academic counselors.
 File: DBaddour_TR_092514_NorthCarolina_00231

FI220: November 4, 2014 – Interview transcript of Ivory Latta
Position: assistant women's basketball coach.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to [text redacted by UNC]
 File: ILatta_TR_110414_NorthCarolina_00231

FI221: December 14, 2014 – Interview transcript of Roy Williams
Position: head men's basketball coach.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, R. Williams' concern about the number of men's basketball student-athletes majoring in AFRI/AFAM.
File: RWilliams_TR_120414_NorthCarolina_00231

FI222: November 20, 2014 – Interview transcript of Cynthia Reynolds.
Position: former ASPSA staff
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Reynolds' description of her relationship with Crowder.
File: CReynolds_TR_112014_NorthCarolina_00231

FI223: November 5, 2014 – Interview transcript of Corey Holliday.
Position: associate athletic director
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Holliday's description of John Bunting's (Bunting), former head football coach, deference to ASPSA when it came to course selection.
 File: CHolliday_TR_110514_NorthCarolina_00231

FI224: September 25, 2014 – Interview transcript of Travis Gore.
Position: former AFAM admin/staff
This includes, but is not limited to, Gore's description of Nyang'oro's relationship with Lee.
 File: TGore_092514_TR_NorthCarolina_00231

FI225: September 24, 2014 – Interview transcript of Joe Holladay
Position: former assistant men's basketball coach.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Holladay's understanding that Walden helped the men's basketball student-athletes pick courses.
File: JHolladay_TR_092414_NorthCarolina_00231

FI226: August 27, 2014 – Interview transcript of Wayne Walden.
Position: former ASPSA staff
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Walden's explanation for AFRI/AFAM courses with
restricted enrollment, where he would call Crowder to get a student-athlete enrolled.
File: WWalden_TR_082714_NorthCarolina_00231

FI227: August 20, 2014 – Interview transcript of Amy Kleissler.
Position: former ASPSA staff
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Kleissler's description of how the athletics academic
counselors in ASPSA would want her to track AFRI/AFAM courses.
 File: AKleissler_TR_082014_NorthCarolina_00231

FI228: August 12, 2014 – Interview transcript of Jamie Lee.
Position: former ASPSA staff
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Lee's description of her relationship with Crowder and
Nyang'oro.
 File: JLee_TR_081214_NorthCarolina_00231

FI229: August 14, 2014 – Interview transcript of Beth Bridger.
Position: former ASPSA staff
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Bridger's description of ASPSA's relationship with the
AFRI/AFAM department.
 File: BBridger_TR_081414_NorthCarolina_00231

FI230: July 30, 2014 – Interview transcript of Harold Woodard.
Position: associate dean; former director of Center for Student Success & Academic Counseling
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Woodard's recollection that Owen had expressed some
concerns to him regarding the number of student-athletes enrolled in AFRI/AFAM courses.
 File: HWoodard_TR_073014_NorthCarolina_00231

FI231: July 31, 2014 – Interview transcript of Brent Blanton.
Position: former ASPSA staff
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Blanton's description of Crowder's interaction with ASPSA.
 File: BBlanton_TR_073114_NorthCarolina_00231

FI232: July 30, 2014 – Interview transcript of John Blanchard.
Position: former senior associate director of athletics
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Blanchard's 2006 meeting with the faculty athletic
committee concerning the anomalous courses offered in the AFRI/AFAM department.
 File: JBlanchard_TR_073014_NorthCarolina_00231

FI233: July 7, 2017 – Interview transcript of Robert Mercer.
Position: former ASPSA director; special asst. for operations Johnson Center for Undergraduate Excellence
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Mercer reporting that some of the counselors in ASPSA worried how some student-athletes would stay in school once the institution stopped offering anomalous courses.
File: RMercer_TR_070714_NorthCarolina_00231

FI234: July 8, 2014 – Interview transcript of Jan Boxill.
Position: former ASPSA staff and faculty member
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Boxill's description of how she would turn in papers to
Crowder on behalf of women's basketball student-athletes.
 File: JBoxill_TR_070814_NorthCarolina_00231

FI235: January 9, 2015 – Interview transcript of John Bunting.
Position: former football head coach
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Bunting's description of his relationship and expectations of the ASPSA staff.
 File: JBunting_TR_010915_NorthCarolina_00231

FI236: November 4, 2014 – Interview transcript of Andrew Calder
Position: former assistant women's basketball coach.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Calder's description of his relationship with ASPSA.
File: ACalder_TR_110414_NorthCarolina_00231

FI237: November 4, 2014 – Interview transcript of Sylvia Hatchell
Position: head coach women's basketball
Transcript:  This includes, but is not limited to, Hatchell's description of her relationship with Boxill.
 File: SHatchell_TR_110414_NorthCarolina_00231

FI238: November 5, 2014 – Interview transcript of Joy Renner
Position: faculty member and chair of the Faculty Athletics Committee (FAC).
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Renner's description of the FAC's oversight role of athletics.
 File: JRenner_TR_110514_NorthCarolina_00231

FI239: January 27, 2015 – Interview transcript of Butch Davis 
Position: former head football coach.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Davis' description of the relationship between ASPSA and the football program.
File: BDavis_TR_012715_NorthCarolina_00231

FI240: November 5, 2014 – Interview transcript of Steve Robinson,
Position: assistant men's basketball coach.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Robinson's description of how the men's basketball team handled academic issues.
 File: SRobinson_TR_110514_NorthCarolina_00231

FI241: August 13, 2014 – Interview transcript of John (Jack) Evans.
Position: Kenan-Flagler faculty; former Faculty Athletic Representative to the NCAA
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Evans' description of the role of the faculty athletics
representative.
File: JEvans_TR_081314_NorthCarolina_00231

FI242: July 30, 2014 – Interview transcript of Harold Woodard.
Position: associate dean; former director of Center for Student Success & Academic Counseling
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Woodard's role as a former supervisor of ASPSA.
 File: HWoodard_TR_073014_NorthCarolina_00231 (duplicate of FI230)

FI243: July 7, 2014 – Interview transcript of Roberta (Bobbie) Owen.
Position: faculty and associate dean of undergraduate education
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Owen's role as a former supervisor of ASPSA.
 File: BOwen_TR_070714_NorthCarolina_00231

FI244: November 5, 2014 – Interview transcript of Chris Derrickson
Position: registrar.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Derrickson's description of the history of independent study courses and how they applied to a degree at the institution.
File: CDerrickson_TR_110514_NorthCarolina_00231

FI245: August 28, 2014 – Interview transcript of Betsy Taylor 
Position: student services manager with the academic advising program in the college of
arts and sciences and the general college.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Taylor's understanding that the anomalous courses taught in the AFRI/AFAM department were independent study courses.
File: BTaylor_TR_082814_NorthCarolina_00231

FI246: August 29, 2014 – Interview transcript of Jay Smith 
Position: faculty member; member of ad hoc Athletic Reform Group
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, J. Smith's description of the 12-hour-rule limitation for independent study courses.
File: JSmith_TR_082914_NorthCarolina_00231

FI247: July 31, 2014 – Interview transcript of Susan Malloy.
Transcript: This includes, but is not limited to, Malloy's understanding of the 12-hour limitation on
independent study courses.
File: SMalloy_TR_073114_NorthCarolina_00231

Unverified: The Film (Trailer)

Unverified: the Film is making a final Kickstarter push to raise funds to help reach wider distribution channels. 

You can get a glimpse of what's in store from the trailer:

Update 12/17/2015 - Unverified hit its Kickstarter goal shortly after this article was published, and Bradley Bethel appeared on Chapelboro.com to talk about the film. You can find his comments here.

The voice-over, montage narration in the trailer provides a taste of the counter-narrative that the documentary will be presenting in contrast to the more widespread narrative promoted by most media, the Wainstein Investigation Report, and other viewpoints that, for the last couple of years, have sought to tie the academic scandal to the UNC athletics program:

"Reporters love a scandal because you get a morality play. You get villains and you get crusaders."
~ Will Blythe (author/editor)

"North Carolina reeling from a blow -- a really big blow -- to its reputation, especially its integrity of its legendary sports program."
~ Ashleigh Banfield (CNN)

"The largest academic fraud scandal in the history of college sport."
~ Sara Ganim (CNN)

"What I would like to see, actually, is for UNC to voluntarily vacate those championships."
~ Jay Smith (UNC History Professor, Athletic Reform Group)

"Former learning specialist Mary Willingham blew the whistle about bogus classes at UNC. Our Tate Frazier spoke to her replacement, Bradley Bethel, who says he's trying to set the record straight."
~ Carolina Week (UNC Student-Run TV News)

"When you see such harsh accusations in print, and you weren't expecting it, it's like a sucker punch. You know, a lot of them felt sucker punched."
~ Bradley Bethel (former UNC learning specialist)

"There's no coach who's in charge of how the academic side works"
~ Jay Bilas (ESPN commentator and NCAA critic)

"We have kids who aren't as academically gifted as others, and the people who tried to help them out."
~ E.J. Wilson (former UNC football player)

"I was just an academic counselor who was just trying to help students figure out how to get through college."
~ Jamie Lee (former UNC student-athlete counselor)

"I don't think there's always room for that compassion. That's the other side of the story."
~ unidentified

"You can't judge all the athletes that went to Carolina because of a couple of guys making some bad mistakes."
~ Dre Bly (former UNC football player)

"I still think this an academic problem, not an athletic problem. I think athletics got drug into it because of the media."
~ Joe Holladay (former UNC assistant men's basketball coach)

"A lot of times when investigations or media interviews -- the person running the investigation and or the media -- they've already got the story written."
~ Butch Davis (former UNC head football coach)

"That report said it exactly how they wanted to say it. It didn't matter what any of us were going to say; let's put it out there."
~ Beth Bridger (former UNC student-athlete counselor)

"This is at a level that you can tread on individuals and not care about the truth or the facts."
~ John Blanchard (former UNC associate athletics director)

Mary Willingham and Amy Kleissler

Last Thursday, I received a response from UNC to a public records request I'd placed over a year ago. It had been so long, I couldn't even remember why I had asked for this in the first place:

"I request a copy of all emails sent from Mary Willingham's @unc.edu email account to any other @unc.edu account with the transmission date of September 4th, 2013."

~request ID #150156

I put in the request a couple of weeks after the release of the Wainstein Report so I thought maybe my request had been sparked by something Bradley Bethel had written.

 As I scrolled through the 30+ pages of emails, it sure seemed like 9/4/2013 must have been a significant day, full of discussions pertinent to the scandal. Maybe it was just a typical day in the life of Mary Willingham at the time while she was on staff at UNC-Chapel Hill.

That was the day NPR's Morning Edition ran a short piece by Frank Deford on "Why Keep Athletes Eligible But Uneducated?" in which he refers to, and related comments from, Mary Willingham. Her email that day had several encouraging and congratulatory messages  referencing that piece.

Also included was the heated email exchange between Bradley Bethel and Dr. Jay Smith (see "Silent Dishonesty: Distinguished Professor Withholds the Truth About Research on Athletes" for Bethel's account of it.)

But it was an email from former tutor/counselor Amy Kleissler that caught my attention, and that's when I remembered why I'd submitted the public records request.

One of Bethel's post-Wainstein Report blogs began with an excerpt from a September 4th, 2013 email note from Willingham to an unidentified former academic support staff member:

"I never doubted you or that you helped students enormously and selflessly loved them and Carolina. The story of how our UNC athletic system worked/had to work and the dedicated people behind the scenes is nothing short of amazing. You played a role in it and you should be proud - our students (and staff) loved you [. . .]. The collegiate sport system (profit sport model) is messed up, not the people (well, maybe some of those guys in Indianapolis)."

This was from Bethel's November 4th, 2014 blog entry titled The Wainstein Report and the (Anti-) Athletics Reform Group.  I believe this and the other lead-off quote were intended to highlight an apparent incongruity between Willingham's public criticisms of UNC's academic support services for student-athletes and what she had expressed privately; or maybe to show an evolution in Willingham's tune having occurred sometime during 2013.

The public records release revealed that it was Amy Kleissler who was the former academic support staff member for whom Willingham was expressing such admiration; but it also provided the email from Kleissler that had evoked that outpouring from Willingham that Bethel hadn't included or perhaps hadn't seen.

Earlier that same morning, Kleissler had sent Willingham the following message:

Mary

I began to compose this email to you in order to touch base with you about [personal detail], but after hearing Frank DeFord's profile of you this morning I had to re-title my email :)

I've been carrying around a lump in my throat for nearly a year over the hypocrisy that is our old office, and hearing Frank's final comment about you, that you still love the university, made me finally break for it is precisely how I feel.

I will admit that I have not had the courage and stomach to speak out so publicly the way you have done. For all the disappointment, disillusionment, and grief I feel over all the crap that has transpired, I cannot begin to fathom the degree to which others have forced these feelings on you. For that I am very sorry and wish I could have supported you more somehow. Plenty of people suffer unjust personal and professional disappointment or criticism, but it somehow feels that it cuts more deeply when you love what you do and believe with all your heart and experience that you are doing honorable work. Sometimes I wish I had never come forward with what I heard and saw, that I had not been so foolish as to believe that at its heart academic support was an honorable endeavor, and that I hadn't trusted that if I backed up what my department told me that they would back me in return. You could write the book on that! I could provide the anecdotes :) Hang in there and keep swinging.

Best
Amy 

---

Mary Willingham and Dr. Jay Smith, in other emails that same day, refer to some event or issue that Kleissler obliquely touches on in her email about the University's treatment of Amy. I can't decipher what that might have been, but at least in September 2013, both Willingham and Smith seem to empathize with something about Kleissler's treatment by the University and maybe some reason for her departure.

In the ensuing months and years after that email from Amy, Mary would become notorious, particularly after her CNN appearance in Sara Ganim's report in January 2014. In October 2014, the Wainstein investigation came to a close; and the Willingham/Smith book Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports would be released March 2015.

I tend to think Willingham's tone and at times hyperbolic public criticisms during that period -- that often left behind feelings of perceived disparagement of student-athletes and former ASPSA staffers -- may have burned some of the collegial bonds she may have had with those former students and counselors.

This is just speculation on my part, but at some point between that September 2013 email from Kleissler and Bethel's November 2014 blog, I believe the relationship and mutual admiration between Willingham and Kleissler may have soured, at least on Kleissler's part.

Even before knowing who Willingham was writing to in that email excerpted for Coaching the Mind, I'd wondered how Bethel had gotten a hold of Willingham's email in the first place. My guess was someone had shared it with him; most likely the author.

Bethel has often cited defense of "his colleagues" as a main motivator for his criticisms of Willingham, and it's possible Kleissler is one of those colleagues. Kleissler and Bethel remain work colleagues to this day, even after their days employed by UNC.

Whatever it was that happened (if anything), I'd be most curious to know more about what Amy was referencing in her 2013 email to Willingham and what her perspective is, today, in the post-Wainstein world. I'm hoping -- and anticipating -- that her voice will be included in "Unverified: the Film."

Rhetoric & Hyperbole

On November 7th, 2015, Bradley Bethel posted a Tweet saying "UNC History Professor Jay Smith Wishes Plane Crash for Provost".

On November 28th, Mary Willingham posted a blog entry on PaperClassInc.com in which she reports InsideCarolina's Buck Sander's said she "should be drenched in gasoline and lit on fire in a parking lot."

Here we have two bitter antagonists characterizing the hyperbolic comments made by a supporter of each's opponent. Are they guilty of doing the same thing or is one different from the other?

Here is the January 29th, 2014 email to which Bethel refers. Is Jay Smith really "wishing" for a plane crash like Bethel says?

And here is the clip from the November 11th, 2015 podcast with Buck Sanders comment Willingham mentions. Does Buck Sanders really think  Willingham "should be" lit on fire?

If your answer to both isn't "no," then you are guilty of taking something literally that was meant to be hyperbole and an expression of frustration.

There is no sense of a communicated threat or even a true passive desire for harm in either Smith's or Sanders' comments. Jay's was an exaggeration, communicating a desire his nemesis would just be gone, akin to the idiom of wishing he'd "take a long walk off of a short pier." Buck's was a hyperbolic metaphor, illustrating his and his audience frustration but setting up the discussion for Bethel's more reasoned approach.

Were they ill-advised, mean-spirited comments? Sure. Sanders made his in a public podcast, with an audience hostile to Willingham. Smith made his in an email with an audience of one that he thought would remain private; but given he used his University email account, it's a matter of public record, and Bethel made it so. But neither was ever even a veiled threat or desire for harm.

We don't know whether or not Smith regrets the email comment, but we might assume InsideCarolina thought better of Sanders' and pulled the November 11th Sander's podcast from its archive.

Between Bradley Bethel's tweet highlighting Smith's "plane crash" email and Mary Willingham's blog referencing Sanders' "lit on fire" comment, one of the two is informing his or her readers that there's something literal about the objectionable utterance, and it's not Mary Willingham.

Yet it's Bethel who claims Mary is taking Sanders literally and misrepresenting the comment, while simultaneously trying to rationalize Smith's comment as wishing literal harm. He not only misrepresents Jay Smith's email, but he misrepresents Willingham's blog by claiming it's saying something that it's not. And all the while, he's guilty of doing precisely what he's chiding Willingham for.

What's it called when you criticize a behavior, yet in so doing, engage in the very same behavior you were criticizing? I suppose it's a form of situational irony.

InsideCarolina removed the audio from the podcast and Bethel has since unpublished his November 7th and December 3rd blog articles. He's now, at last, moving on past Mary Willingham and Jay Smith. Excellent idea and long past due. Maybe now we'll get somewhere.

(The article was reformatted and edited on December 12th, 2015. The original is preserved here.)