UNC Chapel Hill hires outside attorney to probe academic scandal involving athletes | abc11.com

UNC Chapel Hill hires outside attorney to probe academic scandal involving athletes | abc11.com

JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:

 UNC Chapel Hill announced Friday it has hired an outside attorney to do a new independent probe of academic irregularities.




UNC has been embroiled in a wide-ranging scandal involving
student athletes since 2010 - when more than a dozen football players
had to sit out all, or part of, the season after allegations of improper
benefits surfaced.

Five people have been indicted on charges
alleging they gave cash and other benefits to players to encourage them
to sign with certain agents when they turned pro.

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Separately,
there were allegations athletes got improper academic help, including
plagiarism, tutors who violated rules, and athletes taking no-show
classes for credit.

After an SBI investigation, Orange County
District Attorney Jim Woodall announced in December the indictment of
the former chairman of the African and Afro-American Studies program,
Julius Nyang'oro, on a charge of obtaining property by false pretenses
in December. Woodall alleges the professor took $12,000 for a class he
did not teach. Nyang'oro has pleaded not guilty.

A UNC review of
classes within the department found 54 department classes that had
little or no indication of instruction along with at least 10 cases of
unauthorized grade changes for students who did not do all the work.

The
classes were popular with athletes. They made up about 45 percent of
enrollments. Nyang'oro stepped down from his chairmanship shortly after
UNC began investigating the classes in 2011. He retired in 2012.

In a joint news release
Friday, University of North Carolina President Tom Ross and UNC-Chapel
Hill Chancellor Carol L. Folt said they intend to address any questions
left unanswered during previous reviews with the new probe.

"We -
the UNC Board of Governors, UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees,
Chancellor Folt and I - have said all along that we would re-evaluate
next steps once the SBI had completed its investigation," Ross said.

They've retained Kenneth L. Wainstein, a 19-year veteran of the U.S. Justice Department, to do the probe.

In
addition to the criminal probes of the scandal, in 2012, UNC
commissioned former Gov. Jim Martin to investigate the academic
irregularities.

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Martin
said his investigation found no link between the school's athletic
department and the alleged academic fraud. He said there was no evidence
coaches knew what was going on.

In the wake of the scandals,
former UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp stepped down. UNC also fired former
head football coach Butch Davis and former athletics director Dick
Baddour resigned. Both men have said they were not aware of - or were
involved - in any of the irregularities.

After conducting its own
investigation, the NCAA said the school was "responsible for multiple
violations, including academic fraud, impermissible agent benefits,
ineligible participation, and a failure to monitor its football
program."

Penalties imposed by the association included a
one-year postseason ban, reduction of 15 football scholarships, vacation
of records, and three years probation.

UNC also recently made national headlines when CNN reported that too many of its student athletes read poorly.

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UNC challenged the accuracy of the report and said it was conducting its own investigation