UNC faculty worry about investigation's impact

Butch Davis couldn’t help but laugh when asked Monday if his team would be as good if his recruits had to be as strong in the classroom as they are on the field.

The head coach’s laughter faded quickly and somewhat uncomfortably before he weaved through an answer on the value of academics.

So far, most faculty get the joke. To compete at UNC’s level in football requires accepting that the best players aren’t always the best students, they said.

In interviews, faculty said they support athletics and student-athletes but dislike that a sports team has now called the University’s academic integrity into question.

“The immediate reaction is, ‘Oh my goodness, the University is in trouble because of the football team,’” pathology professor Charles Bagnell said.

Without condoning the alleged improper conduct with agents — what brought NCAA investigators to UNC — faculty express significantly more alarm over the academic side of the investigation.

“I’m certainly very disappointed to hear about this being part of the investigation,” business professor Wendell Gilland said.

Another professor, history department chairman Lloyd Kramer, said colleagues find themselves having to defend the school or endure ribbing from their peers at conferences.

“You know how people are,” he said. “They say ‘Oh what’s going on over at Carolina?’

“People are concerned that it casts the University in a negative light, and anyone who represents the University is put in the position of having to explain or deal with this.”

The business of athletics

When they questioned Chancellor Holden Thorp at last Friday’s Faculty Council meeting, professors brought up two main concerns: Is football success coming at the expense of academics, and are athletic salaries fair?

“There is a connection between aspiring to be a top-10 football program in the country and the problems you’ve encountered here,” microbiology professor Steven Bachenheimer said then.

Bagnell reiterated the concern, but said he sees benefits as well. The program keeps alumni invested in the school and provides financial support that lets students participate in nonrevenue sports.

Rita Balaban, an economics professor who played Division I basketball at Saint Joseph’s University, said that her time playing was an incredibly valuable experience she hoped others could have as well.

“The thing that worries a lot of the faculty, me included, is that sports is a business,” Bagnell said. “And you have to ask, should the University be involved in a business?”

Toward coaches’ salaries, faculty are more resigned. The numbers are high — Davis’ contract boasts an annual salary and compensations valued at roughly $2 million a year ­— but they accept it as market rate.

Still, anytime “someone gets a severance package that’s more than (professors) earn in a year,” it’s hard not to question the size, Bagnell said.

Associate football coach John Blake, who resigned suddenly in the midst of the NCAA’s investigation, will take home $74,500 in severance pay.

“We obviously put a very high value on assistant coaches, more so than we would put on philosophy professors,” Balban said.

“It is what it is. It gives you an idea of where society places its value.”

Trust in Thorp, system

Still, faculty members speak in glowing terms of the way Thorp is handling the situation.

They see Thorp, a professor and department head before he became chancellor, as one of their own.

“He knows what faculty value, and he values the same thing,” religious studies professor Laurie Maffly-Kipp said.

They also say they appreciate the way Thorp has updated faculty and involved them in the investigation. Veteran professors Jack Evans and Lissa Broome are leading the internal academic investigation.

Thorp has pledged administrators will conduct a thorough review to look at ways the situation could have been prevented.

Overall, faculty say their experiences with student-athletes in their classes and with the athletic academic support services has been positive. Common tensions come when faculty have to reschedule exams around away games.

Balaban said she was encouraged last year when a member of the academic support staff followed up on a comment she made in an evaluation.

“That was reassuring to know they read my words,” she said.

Kramer, who served on the faculty committee on athletics several years ago, said what he learned then about the processes in place to prevent academic misconduct left him with “confidence in the way the system was working internally.”

He said the situation now, with a tutor accused of giving unauthorized aid, strikes him as something that happened outside of the system.

“I can’t understand how this would happen,” Kramer said, emphasizing his “incredible respect” for the University’s athletic administrators.

“Clearly in this case something happened that they did not approve. What concerns me is that it can happen.”

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.