Photo: ESPN
While Barack Obama is spearheading the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, an effort to interrupt negative ideals of achievement potential for young men of color in America, administrators at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, are being blasted for their fake courses that are passing athletes while all the while failing them.
The controversy brings with it some evidence: a 146-word essay on Rosa Parks that is littered with grammatical errors and speaks more about the lack of civility in the higher education system than it does about the lack during the Civil Rights Movement.
Mary Willingham, former tutor and advisor to UNC athletes, blew the whistle on the evidence that has been circulating social networks and news sites, during an interview with ESPN.
She explained that student athletes who were having trouble maintaining the grades required for NCAA eligibility, were encouraged to enroll in classes where attendance would not be a factor and the only graded work was a final paper for which students would either receive an A or a B.
Here is the text of the paper that secured the students final grade of A- for an Intro to African American studies class:
“On the evening of December Rosa Parks decided that she was going to sit in the white people section on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. During this time blacks had to give up there seats to whites when more whites got on the bus. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Her and the bus driver began to talk and the conversation went like this. “Let me have those front seats” said the driver. She didn’t get up and told the driver that she was tired of giving her seat to white people. “I’m going to have you arrested,” said the driver. “You may do that,” Rosa Parks responded. Two white policemen came in and Rosa Parks asked them “why do you all push us around?” The police officer replied and said “I don’t know, but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.”
Many who have responded to this paper would agree, whoever allowed this to be accepted as a final paper for a college academic class should be arrested for perpetrating an instructor and perpetuating the miseducation of college athletes.
Clearly the concern of the institution is the money and prestige gained from its sports program, not the provision of a quality education to student athletes, who are foremost—students.
