Bob Martin:
Imagine: what if no athletes had ever enrolled in any "paper class" at UNC? Only non-athletes. Still a Scandal? News worthy?
Bob Martin:
What if it had been a Trustee's child's transcript leaked instead of [Marvin] Austin's? Would a story not implicating athletes have gotten traction?
Bob Martin:
What if, somehow, an exposé on overlooked or undetected plagiarism at UNC by non-athletes raised questions about the AFAM department?
Bob Martin:
Would Assoc. Dean Hartlyn have queried Nyang'oro? Would Dean Gil have commissioned the Hartlyn-Andrews review of AFAM curriculum?
Bob Martin:
Would there have been a Martin Report? SACS-COC inquiry? "80 Reforms?" Would the scandal news coverage have died out by the end of 2011?
Bob Martin:
Let's imagine some more: no Mary Willingham or Jay Smith or media pressing athletics motives for the scandal. Soley an academic scandal…
Bob Martin:
…& let's assume Martin Report, SACS review & Nyang'oro's indictment would have all happened, even w/o media pressing suspicion on athletics.
Bob Martin:
What reasonably could have happened next in such an alternate universe? Would the scandal have been resolved? No Wainstein? No SACS probation?
Bob Martin:
Had AFAM scandal involved only non-athletes w/no suspicion on athletics, would things have been as challenging for UNC post-Martin?
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| Martin Report Conclusion, December 2012 |
I think both UNC critics & defenders can agree w/o suspicion on athletics, Martin Report & SACS's 1st review would have been "case closed."
Bob Martin:
With no athletics culpability, what would have provided UNC the incentive to root out the depth and breadth of the negligence in A&S?
Bob Martin:
There would have been nothing to challenge the satisfaction anything more was wrong in A&S than the past practices of Nyang'oro and Crowder.
Bob Martin:
Some of these touted "80 Reforms" https://t.co/dvOrnbqNAx would not have been implemented had "cased closed" at the post-Martin stage.
Bob Martin:
Some of those "80 Reforms" related to athletics would not have been implemented had athletes & ASPSA never been implicated in the 1st place.
Bob Martin:
Without a subsequent investigation post-Martin, SACSCOC would never have revisited and ultimately put UNC on probation.
Bob Martin:
Sadly, in a world where higher education includes big time athletics, an academic-only scandal is NOT worse than an athletics one
Bob Martin:
It took the pressure of scandal to athletics to goad UNC to uncover the breadth of its academic failure.
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