Bob CollinsGive the University of Minnesota basketball players who had staff members write their papers for them years ago a little credit: At least they knew they’d flunk if they turned in the kind of academic work they were actually capable of. Sure, it was academic fraud but at least they put some effort into covering it up.
How will the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill explain this third-grade level essay, turned in by one of its football players?
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.
That got an A-.
“Some of these students couldn’t read at a third-grade level,” Mary Willingham, a tutor at UNC tells ESPN. “It was just a scam.”
She says the dean of the college, the African American college, and the coaches were all complicit in the scam. That’s set off a debate over whether African American educators are appropriately appalled.
She says the NCAA, which stripped the U of M of its Final Four record for its corruption, won’t talk to her about the situation.
So far, few people seem to be pointing out that some high schools are graduating illiterates.
