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  1. #101
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
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    Undisclosed
    Quote Originally Posted by Reilly View Post
    Once a bakery has retroactively crowned a sports champion, it is loath to re-visit the decision. To do so messes with the integrity of the historical record.
    The NCAA could take away the Championship, but vote them another Helms.

    Win-win all around.

  2. #102
    Quote Originally Posted by Kfanarmy View Post
    I can't even imagine the odds of them choosing the same field of study. They had to be directed or encouraged to sign up for it.
    I disagree with this statement. Every student knows which courses are the easy ones. Obviously, "easy" is relative, but we all knew which courses were easiest at Duke, right? Everyone I knew did, anyway. We called them "crip" courses.

    Of course, knowing which courses are easy doesn't mean everybody chooses them. It doesn't appear as if the students in this UNC situation were encouraged to branch out or challenge themselves intellectually. But that's different from encouraging them to sign up for it.

  3. #103
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
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    Durham
    Quote Originally Posted by Kedsy View Post
    I disagree with this statement. Every student knows which courses are the easy ones. Obviously, "easy" is relative, but we all knew which courses were easiest at Duke, right? Everyone I knew did, anyway. We called them "crip" courses.

    Of course, knowing which courses are easy doesn't mean everybody chooses them. It doesn't appear as if the students in this UNC situation were encouraged to branch out or challenge themselves intellectually. But that's different from encouraging them to sign up for it.
    There's a reason Earth & Ocean Sciences 101 (or whatever the number is) is colloquially known as "rocks for jocks"...not to put it on the level of the AFAM courses at UNC...but kedsy is spot on that everyone knows what the easy courses are, and there is no doubt that certain types of people might gravitate towards courses with a lighter workload, especially if all their friends are doing it.
    1200. DDMF.

  4. #104
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    New Bern, NC unless it's a home football game then I'm grilling on Devil's Alley
    Quote Originally Posted by Kfanarmy View Post
    Hansbrough took Swahili for three years to what end?
    He can talk to you over breakfast.
    "Sijambo!" he said. "That's 'good morning.' I wouldn't say I'm ready to go to Kenya right this minute, but I know a little something or two."
    http://www.commercialappeal.com/news...bileRedirect=1
    Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."

  5. #105
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    Sep 2007
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    Undisclosed
    Quote Originally Posted by uh_no View Post
    There's a reason Earth & Ocean Sciences 101 (or whatever the number is) is colloquially known as "rocks for jocks"...not to put it on the level of the AFAM courses at UNC...but kedsy is spot on that everyone knows what the easy courses are, and there is no doubt that certain types of people might gravitate towards courses with a lighter workload, especially if all their friends are doing it.
    The hardest part of that course was getting to Gross Chem by 9 a.m. after kegs.

    OTOH, if you took Bonkistry, you were in for a work-out.

    Every school has a wide range of classes. I don't think we had any easy MAJORS though. I guess I don't know enough about the situation to determine whether there was one bad apple professor with one easy pass, or whether this professor orchestrated the whole thing. How many profs were in the AFAM faculty, and is there any evidence that the other faculty was anything other than straight-up honest?

    Serious questions, I don't know.

  6. #106
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Hot'Lanta... home of the Falcons!
    Before we cast stones, make sure we remember the ESPN report that a large number of Duke basketball players get degrees in Sociology. I don't recall the numbers, but there appears to be at least some "clustering" here at Duke too.

    Also, I recall taking a PolSci class when I was at Duke in the late 1980s, I forget which it was, but there were like 20 kids in the course and probably 12 of them were football or basketball players. I was friends with Alaa and Robert Brickey and they were both in it, which is one reason I took it. Now, it is worth noting that the class was taught by one of the faculty academic advisers for the athletic department, but that was still a case where the enrollment in a particularly class was heavily overloaded with scholarship athletes.

    To me, it is neither the clustering nor the grouping of athletes in these UNC AFAM classes that raises real concern, it is the fact that there appears to have been a concerted effort from the AFAM department to not teach the athletes and just give them an easy "progress toward graduation" credits. Couple that with a tutor (I am sure she was the only one) who was doing work for the athletes in some other classes and you have a system where athletes are pushed through the system without even pretending to be students or learning anything. That is a major problem and one that UNC should be addressing head-on and in a forthright manner.

    -Jason "I am a bit surprised there are not more professors and alums at UNC speaking out... this, as much as anything, hits directly at the core of 'The Carolina Way,' which is supposed to include educating your players" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  7. #107
    Quote Originally Posted by uh_no View Post
    There's a reason Earth & Ocean Sciences 101 (or whatever the number is) is colloquially known as "rocks for jocks"...not to put it on the level of the AFAM courses at UNC...but kedsy is spot on that everyone knows what the easy courses are, and there is no doubt that certain types of people might gravitate towards courses with a lighter workload, especially if all their friends are doing it.
    For info on clustering at Duke, here is a Chronicle article re: football: http://www.dukechronicle.com/article...cademic-majors.

    A quote from RP Warren's All the King's Men comes to mind:

    To find something, anything…a great truth, or a lost pair of glasses…you must first believe there will be some advantage in finding it. I found something a long time ago…and have held on to it for grim death ever since. I owe my success in life to it. It put me where I am today. This principle: What you don’t know won’t hurt you. They called it idealism, in a book I read.

  8. #108
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Cary, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    To me, it is neither the clustering nor the grouping of athletes in these UNC AFAM classes that raises real concern, it is the fact that there appears to have been a concerted effort from the AFAM department to not teach the athletes and just give them an easy "progress toward graduation" credits.
    Totally agree with this. UNC is trying to defend the courses in question by assuring us that "both athletes and non-athletes were enrolled in the course." But the real issue is whether the course is legit to begin with.

  9. #109
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh
    [redacted] them and the horses they rode in on.

  10. #110
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    greater New Orleans area
    Quote Originally Posted by Kedsy View Post
    I disagree with this statement. Every student knows which courses are the easy ones. Obviously, "easy" is relative, but we all knew which courses were easiest at Duke, right? Everyone I knew did, anyway. We called them "crip" courses.

    Of course, knowing which courses are easy doesn't mean everybody chooses them. It doesn't appear as if the students in this UNC situation were encouraged to branch out or challenge themselves intellectually. But that's different from encouraging them to sign up for it.
    If we were just talking a few easy courses, I could/would see it. A major normally entails more than just a few courses of specialty, however...

    Again it is unfathomable to me for someone to think this wasn't orchestrated by someone in authority associated with the team...I bet it would have been difficult enough to get all 7 of them to go to lunch together without administration involvement.

  11. #111
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    Sep 2007
    Location
    Undisclosed
    Quote Originally Posted by devildeac View Post
    I forgot that it gets that cold in Chapel Hill.

  12. #112
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    raleigh
    i prolly coulda laid out of that first course in dynamics...would have gotten the same grade...
    "One POSSIBLE future. From your point of view... I don't know tech stuff.".... Kyle Reese

  13. #113
    To be honest about this thread, I really couldn't care less if UNC football or basketball players took crip courses. I think this goes on at every school in the US of A. BUT, the problem is these are not just "easy courses" where you don't really learn anything, heck I took some very hard courses where I didn't learn anything.

    But this is a little different than just a bunch of ball players rushing down to sign up and getting into easy classes... this was an organized effort to ensure that ONLY ball players got these courses and then had to do little to no work to even get credit... so it acutally may be fraud designed to assist the athletic program... hummm...

    I don't think anything big will come of it, but it is fun to see our friends on the hill do the little tap dance to explain, how the "Carolina Way" is still in place and working as always despite the last years worth of evidence to the contrary...

  14. #114
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    Before we cast stones, make sure we remember the ESPN report that a large number of Duke basketball players get degrees in Sociology. I don't recall the numbers, but there appears to be at least some "clustering" here at Duke too.

    Also, I recall taking a PolSci class when I was at Duke in the late 1980s, I forget which it was, but there were like 20 kids in the course and probably 12 of them were football or basketball players. I was friends with Alaa and Robert Brickey and they were both in it, which is one reason I took it. Now, it is worth noting that the class was taught by one of the faculty academic advisers for the athletic department, but that was still a case where the enrollment in a particularly class was heavily overloaded with scholarship athletes.

    To me, it is neither the clustering nor the grouping of athletes in these UNC AFAM classes that raises real concern, it is the fact that there appears to have been a concerted effort from the AFAM department to not teach the athletes and just give them an easy "progress toward graduation" credits. Couple that with a tutor (I am sure she was the only one) who was doing work for the athletes in some other classes and you have a system where athletes are pushed through the system without even pretending to be students or learning anything. That is a major problem and one that UNC should be addressing head-on and in a forthright manner.

    -Jason "I am a bit surprised there are not more professors and alums at UNC speaking out... this, as much as anything, hits directly at the core of 'The Carolina Way,' which is supposed to include educating your players" Evans

    Jason is spot-on in this. What is relevant is not clustering, but whether what they're clustering in meets some minimum standard of academic pursuit. An independent study with no significant work, no teacher/student interaction, and no oversight does not meet that standard. [PS, Jason, what did you think of that class? Was it substantial?]

    Suppose most athletes in top revenue sports at every major college took a major that went deep into contract law, nutrition & physiology, coaching for high schools, labor relations, financial management, communications/marketing (including salesmanship), etc. That's probably a big step up from the situation today! They'd be better prepared both for a professional career, should they be among the lucky ones, and a backup plan, should they not make it to a sports paycheck or get injured along the way.

    And regarding casting stones, I seem to remember Kyle Singler telling Dan Patrick that he was taking the foreign language of Wolof - which struck me as more obscure than Swahili, though Wikip's "native speakers" numbers seem to suggest the opposite is true. All I can say is, while I really hope UNC gets what is coming to them, I hope even more that we are as clean as everyone here seems to assume we are.

  15. #115
    Quote Originally Posted by oldnavy View Post
    ...heck I took some very hard courses where I didn't learn anything...
    I hear that, hahaha, double heck, there are days when I try to remember what my entire chemistry major was about and I can't recall a tootin' thing, except don't add gushing water to drain cleaner.

  16. #116

    Nicks gets an asterisk

    From N&O: "UNC star Nicks ineligible during 2008 season, records show"
    http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/07/...le-during.html

    nice to see UNC taking the issue seriously, accepting responsibility and doing more than the minimum to appease the ncaa (sarcasm).
    what the asterisk's note will be says it all: "participation later vacated due to NCAA penalty."
    interpretation: "these records have a taint because of the ncaa, not UNC and not nicks"; why not put the truth in there or remove his name entirely (okay, i get why taking his name out entirely would never happen despite the fact it should, but if you were at all serious you would at least assign some blame beyond that darned ncaa); how about "record stripped due to ineligibility of player resulting from his participation in academic fraud".

    i know, i know, why would i expect anything less from chapel hill after witnessing everything else to date? truth is i don't, but i still can rant.

  17. #117
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Cary, NC
    I stumbled across this article, it tells some anecdotes of UNC players and their "academic" requirements and then poses a larger question of what schools should do about the paradox of the very concept of the student-athlete.

    link

  18. #118
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Arlington, VA
    Quote Originally Posted by weezie View Post
    I hear that, hahaha, double heck, there are days when I try to remember what my entire chemistry major was about and I can't recall a tootin' thing, except don't add gushing water to drain cleaner.
    Well, honestly, that's probably of much more practical importance than most of what most of us learned in college. And I'm only sort of kidding.

  19. #119
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Arlington, VA
    Quote Originally Posted by UrinalCake View Post
    I stumbled across this article, it tells some anecdotes of UNC players and their "academic" requirements and then poses a larger question of what schools should do about the paradox of the very concept of the student-athlete.

    link
    Joe Nocera has devoted a lot of thought and column space to these issues. Interestingly, many of the comments on this article got sidetracked onto a debate about whether or not Swahili was a worthwhile college course, and Nocera's tone might have prompted this response. But they missed the point--which was that the UNC athletes were TOLD to take Swahili rather than another language, supposedly because it matched the expertise of athletic department tutors. Course steering like this, which I believe goes on at a lot of schools even when no academic fraud is involved, definitely undercuts the value of the "free education" that many people--and I have been one of them--hold up as the benefit athletes receive in return for their play. Swahili, or any other course, is of no value to a student who doesn't really have an interest in it, though it may be of great value to one who does.

    The explanation also leads to an obvious question about UNC--the tutors they hired were all good at Swahili, rather than, say, French or Spanish? Really? That was surely not an accident.

  20. #120
    Although this situation isn't as extreme, it brings back the memory a bit of an "Outside the Lines" piece ESPN did several years ago about a basketball player, Kevin Ross, who was illiterate, yet went through four years of college at Creighton. He had a secretary basically do all of his work and just had to write his name on tests. However, after four years of an injury-plagued career, when the basketball season ended, the "tutor" stopped and Ross had to do the work himself, so he failed all of courses, not surprisingly. He got a 9 on the ACT apparently, but somehow the athletic program convinced admissions to let him in. Ross became a substitute teacher (after learning how to read presumably) as you only needed three years of college in Kansas in order to do so. At the time, he was hoping to finish his degree. This show made it seem like Ross wanted to learn, but the school basically told him everything would be taken care of and he did not have to exert any effort in the classroom - until they didn't need his basketball play anymore and then they stopped. Just very strange how something like that could come to pass.

    http://sports.espn.go.com/page2/tvli...ranscript.html

    Having said all that, the athletes I knew at Duke (not basketball or football players admittedly) were really hard workers and smart individuals - they are given no "free lunches" in the classroom and have to earn it. I'm always mightily impressed with the balance they show succeeding in both facets, but of course they are given a bit more flexibility when it comes to course selection and scheduling.

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