Bradley Bethel is currently the sole source for any information available to the public suggesting that a reason for personnel actions against Mary Willingham and contract decisions pertaining to Dr. Lyn Johnson -- both occurring over the Summer of 2013 -- involved concerns over the ethics and handling of privacy-protected student-athlete personal data. He first recounted his personal anecdote and testimony on his blog, published on April 14th, 2014.
In that article, he was refuting Dan Kane of the News & Observer who, on the eve of the release of the 3rd party review results of Willingham's literacy claims, published an article suggesting a possible link between actions against Willingham and Johnson with their publicizing their study at the April 18th, 2013 College Sports Research Institute (CSRI) Conference.
Bethel sought to refute Kane correlating the two events , saying literacy wasn't even mentioned in Willingham/Johnson's presentation. Bethel suggested an alternative rationale relating to concerns he and "his colleagues" on the staff of the UNC Academic Support Program for Student Athletes (ASPSA) had raised about the "ethics" of the Willingham/Johnson study.
Here are excerpts from his blog article, which covered much more than this particular episode:
The underlined portions of Bethel's account are items I'd like to address here.
1. Primary vs. Secondary Data.
I realize Bethel wrote his article a year after the events he describes, and did so specifically to counter Dan Kane's article. And so it would be understandable why he would choose to focus on this component of his reaction to Willingham and Johnson's brief and not his reaction to the technical merits of the study.
However; it strikes me as more than a little odd that Bethel would be concerned about the nature of the study's data at all, back in April 2013, assuming he didn't already feel antipathy toward Willingham for some reason. Unless he was pre-sensitized to be skeptical or even hostile toward her or the study, why would such a matter even occur to him?
After all, at that point, would he have been aware of the study's standing with UNC's Institutional Review Board (IRB) or the protocols Willingham and Johnson had for handling the data? If so, then it wouldn't have taken the CSRI Conference "poster brief" to raise his concerns.
Bethel arrived on the ASPSA staff in the Fall of 2011, after Willingham had resigned from the same position 20 months earlier. Up to the date of that CSRI presentation (April 18th, 2013), we see no suggestion from Bethel himself, nor evidence in the public records released to date, of his having had issues with Willingham. If their relationship was collegial or even just neutral up to that point, does it make sense that he'd fret over status of the data? Even if it did occur to him to be concerned by it, why not ask her? Why take the end-around and tattle?
Something's just not right about his version of the story.
2. Data Access Authorization.
The briefing didn't reveal any personally-identifiable information. The information presented was aggregated and non-identifiable; however, what Bethel says concerned him and his colleagues -- who I now believe were mainly, but probably not exclusively, Beth Lyons and Jenn Townsend -- was that it was apparent Willingham had had access to educational records and Johnson's test data, which he feels should have been out of her purview once she had left the ASPSA staff in January 2010. The presence of aggregated SAT/ACT information in one portion of the presentation is what he says drew him to this suspicion; evidence of this improper access.
Here, again, Bethel lets slip a predisposed antagonism toward Willingham. At this point, he has no idea if she's been authorized to have access to such data, de-identified or otherwise. Why should he automatically assume her access is unauthorized?
Bethel goes on to say he and his colleagues reported the potential brief of confidentiality, yet his colleagues, Jenn Townsend and Beth Lyons, are seen in internal communications already meeting with another candidate for psychological services that very same day. It's possible their interview was for something completely unrelated to dissatisfaction with Dr. Johnson, but the coincidence is notable.
Also notable is that if their concerns about Willingham and Johnson had been taken seriously by higher-ups in the athletics department, why was this not communicated to either Willingham or Johnson? There should have been no ambiguity about the personnel actions taken against them if privacy rules misconduct had been the reason for the actions; but Willingham would later file an employee grievance over her demotion, which would have been dead in the water had the personnel action been for FERPA, or worse HIPAA, violations. And in internal communications found in the public release, Johnson is found expressing dismay over not knowing the reasons why her decade-long association with the athletics department was being terminated.
Not only that, but even up to a month after this alleged reporting of concerns about the ethical conduct of Willingham and Johnson, the athletics department still processed a renewal of its annual contract with Johnson for the upcoming Fiscal Year. It wouldn't be until July that the contract would be liquidated, without any documented explanation. If the action had been for cause, based on breach of privacy law or school protocols, the school would have been obligated to document that and inform Johnson. Yet there's no evidence they did. In response to a public records request, the University, itself, affirmed there were no records pertaining to the reasons for the actions re. Johnson.
Even if such reasons were, themselves, protected by some privacy governance -- a claim for which I can find no rule or law specifying such information cannot be made public -- the timing of actions in relation to Bethel's account are peculiar. If, as Bethel says, his and his colleagues concerns were taken seriously, the subsequent actions of the department over the next several weeks, and the lack of communication to either Johnson or Willingham as to the nature of those concerns, belie Bethel's claim. Meanwhile, those who had supposedly been a party to reporting those concerns were already moving on plans as if the consequences of their reporting was a done deal.
Bethel very well could be offering a rare public glimpse into actual decisions and rationales made by athletic department leadership that aren't part of the public record. But all we have to go on is his personal testimony that his version is true, and for now it doesn't pass the "sniff test."
