The Cavalier Daily
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LEAD EDITORIAL
The 47 percent
opinion Comment of the day To the UVA Family: I have communicated with Connor’s parents again in an effort to understand their present wishes. Although they wish for his services to be private to family, they have explained to me that they welcome any celebration of Connor’s life and they are also supportive of a healthy and respectful discussion of the issue of suicide. I had interpreted earlier discussions with them as indicating an interest in privacy in all respects, but they have clarified that their wishes are as described in my comment here. I am grateful to Connor’s parents for their willingness to allow the UVA community to remember Connor’s life and discuss the impact of suicide on those who knew and loved him. SEAS faculty and students have brought up the possibility of a Hackathon in Connor’s memory (as he loved this), and Connor’s family are very supportive of this idea as a way to remember his life.
Dean of Students Allen Groves, responding to several recent Cavalier Daily articles concerning the death of second-year Connor Cormier.
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UNC’s academic fraud scandal makes the nation wonder whether academia and athletics can coexist Everybody knew. The football coach knew. The football team’s lead academic counselor knew. A senior associate dean knew. The chair of the faculty and director of the university’s center for ethics knew. They all knew. The Wainstein report on Chapel Hill has revealed that faculty and staff participation in or knowledge of the academic fraud scandal was more widespread than originally thought. For nearly two decades, fake classes were created, athletes were funneled into them, high grades were awarded for plagiarized papers, and several fraternity members inadvertently minored in African-American studies. Athletes made up roughly 47 percent of students enrolled in these ghost classes — which never met and only required one paper for a grade — while the student body consists of only four percent athletes. And the student athletes at UNC are not the only ones who have been short-changed by this scandal, which bloomed from a corrupt desire for glory in an arena over excellence in a classroom. These findings weigh heavily on the shoulders of the University of North Carolina, the Atlantic Coastal Conference, and the National Collegiate Association of Athletics. UNC is ranked fifth best public university in the country by
US News and World report, and this scandal calls that standing into question. One of the main reasons the media has gobbled up this story is that UNC is supposed to be a top-notch academic institution — a member of the Magnolia League. How do these academic disfigurations affect the institutions that have been ranked below UNC for the past 20 years? Arguably, it has robbed them of a place of prestige they might have deserved. Even UNC students outside the athletic programs have been sold short because of this scandal. The ghost classes were listed in the department of African and Afro-American Studies, and for those students who have majored in that department because it was their true area of interest, the validity of their degrees could be called into question. Resources that were devoted to manufacturing fake classes could have been devoted to building a challenging and meaningful curriculum for students who were prepared to be intellectually engaged with the material. Coddling athletes with noshow classes also raises the question of whether those students truly deserve to be at that university in the first place. After the ringleader of this operation — the manager of the AFAM department — retired in 2009, the average GPA of
the football players dropped to its lowest in 10 years. If ghost classes were necessary in order for these athletes to maintain eligibility, we must ask: how many students may have been denied the opportunity to attend UNC who were stronger academically but weaker athletically? Those rejected candidates have also fallen victim to these corrupt practices. This is not the first time a university has been shown to prioritize its athletic departments over its academic standards, but to find a scandal like this at UNC is perhaps more surprising because it contradicts our hopes that highly ranked institutions would preserve academic excellence above all else. In a way, the ACC has also played a role in holding out that hope. The University of Notre Dame recently joined the ACC because it wanted to be associated with the strong academic reputations of other members, such as the University. UNC’s prolonged and widespread academic fraud has now put a damper on the reputation of the conference. It raises the question: if this could happen at an ACC school, is there any hope that academia and athletics can coexist? It remains to be seen what the NCAA will do about this scandal, now that they are obligated to conduct their own investigation. When
they first investigated in 2010, the resulting sanction was a one-year post-season ban, but since then new details have emerged which make us realize the gravity of the situation is much stronger. Additional NCAA sanctions against post-season play would motivate UNC to get their academic affairs in order before they can continue playing post-season football and basketball. The NCAA ought to conduct further investigations to ensure athletes are being held to same standards all other students are held to, before the sanctions are removed. The University has a system in place to review the courses athletes are taking and ensure they are sufficiently challenging. UNC could follow this model, and we hope they will be headed in the right direction, as several officials involved in the scandal have already been fired. One of the values in college sports teams is that they foster a sense of pride, spirit and solidarity among all students at the university. But such pride in athletics has to be equaled in pride for academic excellence. Our University’s teams have had their shining moments on the national stage, and because of that, we remain hopeful that we can be proud of both of those at once.
Managing misinformation The Cavalier Daily should be more careful when publishing anonymous pieces Public Editor
There have been a few things published in The Cavalier Daily over the last month or so that I keep thinking about. Most recently, an unsigned letter to the editor, “Concerning our response to tragedy” printed under the name “University of Virginia ’15.” The note at the bottom tells us that a member of the University’s class of 2015 wrote the letter. The letter itself raises important issues about tragedies and our responses to them and the author attempts to address those and call for action. I don’t understand why this letter should be published anonymously. I further don’t understand choosing the name “University of Virginia, ‘15” as it took me a while to decide that it wasn’t purporting to speak on behalf of the entire class. I’ve written previously about being unsure about anonymous comments on the Cavalier Daily web-
site and this goes further than that, allowing anonymity for published pieces. There are certainly cases and situations where anonymity is warranted and, indeed, essential to protect someone’s safety. In this case, though, there is nothing about the
could have had if it had come from a specific person. Ultimately, the anonymity that seems to have made the person comfortable publishing this letter undercuts the very point of the letter. The Cavalier Daily should push for more information even or especially about who is writing what is published. Pushing for more information matters in other areas, too. The University community has absorbed multiple tragedies in the last many There were too many knee jerk responses weeks. Many of the published that were based on hypothetical musing Opinion pieces in in the midst of a specific tragedy or that simply The Cavalier Daily have had to do with lacked basic information. how the University or University compiece that would seem to require munity has responded to those tragprotection in this way. Further, be- edies. The debate about what is apcause it was a call to personal action, propriate and what steps should be to rethinking depression and suicide, taken is a good one to have. Calling the letter loses much of the effect it out what people feel are deficiencies
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Christopher Broom
in the various responses is also good. We will not avoid all tragedies in the future and responding effectively in ways that help people is the best we can do when they occur. That said, there were too many knee-jerk responses published that were based on hypothetical musing in the midst of a specific tragedy or that simply lacked basic information. Comparisons were drawn between the community response to Hannah Graham’s disappearance and Connor Cormier’s death taking the University community to task for its lack of overt, public reaction to the latter. The letter I wrote about, above, also wondered at the lack of a public vigil or some other large, noticeable event following Cormier’s death. The criticism appeared to have missed the mark, as one could learn in the news article published the same day as the op-ed column and the day before the letter. The understanding, at the time, of University administration officials which appears to have been
communicated to Student Council members, at least, was that Cormier’s parents wished for there not to be a public display having to do with Connor. We’ve since learned from Dean of Students Allen Groves, in comments on the Cavalier Daily website, that Connor’s parents would be alright with some sort of public celebration of Connor’s life and recognition of his tragic death. The information was available and The Cavalier Daily doesn’t seem to have had it. Then, information (Connor’s parent’s wishes) was in a news story that obviated much of an op-ed published the same day and an anonymous letter to follow the next day. Assessing pieces in whole context is vital.
Christopher Broom is The Cavalier Daily’s public editor. He can be reached at publiceditor@cavalierdaily.com, or on Twitter at @cdpubliceditor.