University of North Carolina's Fraud Running Deeper?

Forbes:

In early December, former Governor of North Carolina, Jim Martin, declared the University of North Carolina free from any wrongdoing in an alleged athletic scandal, which revolved around questionable classes within the Department of African American Studies. Martin claimed that officials tried to raise red flags on a couple different occasions. Specifically, Martin said that in 2002 and 2006, officials informed the Faculty Committee of Athletics of the abnormally higher than expected number of independent enrollments and lecture courses that had all of a sudden turned in to independent studies. Martin reported that this committee responded by stating that the professors operated with “high latitude on how to teach a course”, and Martin firmly stated that while the courses were filled with mainly athletes, there was no athletic scandal.

After the proclamation by the former Governor, the University of North Carolina seemed to have mitigated some of its potential damage. However, a recent review of the faculty minutes do not allude to any such red flags ever being raised. In fact, several faculty members have specifically addressed the proclamation and asserted that the alleged red flags were never raised or that they do not remember them existing.

A former committee chair in 2002, Dr. Stanley Mandel, commented on the alleged red flags being brought up. “You won’t find any reference to it in the committee minutes because there was no reference to it,” said Mandel. “There was no discussion. Nothing was brought up.” A former committee member from 2006 stated, “It seemed like everyone around the table was congratulating themselves about what a squeaky clean program they had.”  With this recent news about the red flags never being brought up via the evidence of the committee minutes, it seems as if Martin has potentially made some borderline fraudulent statements. Still, Martin’s report showed that 216 classes had either proven or potential problems, and 560 classes were suspected to have incurred unauthorized grade changes. The opposite of squeaky-clean.

Full article by Darren Heitner can be found here.