Folt says UNC accepts responsibility

Chancellor Carol Folt wasn’t here for UNC’s academic improprieties, but she accepted responsibility Thursday — and now, she also might face the legal consequences.

Folt said to the Board of Trustees Thursday that it was important for the University to accept responsibility and move forward with changes.

But Folt can’t escape the impropriety that happened years before her tenure. On Thursday, The (Raleigh) News & Observer sued Folt, saying it has been requesting data that UNC sent to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges for months.

“Many students were involved in those courses, and all of those students deserved better from us,” she said at the board meeting. “There was a failure in academic oversight, and this too was wrong. It has undermined…our reputation. It’s created an atmosphere of distrust.”

“We do feel accountable.”

The media firestorm surrounding academic misconduct was exacerbated this month when CNN published a story that claimed a majority of 183 student-athletes between 2004 and 2012 were not college literate.

Student Body President Christy Lambden said he has never met a student-athlete fitting the profile created in the article.

“I have personally taken the time to speak with a number of student athletes,” he said. “Students feel hurt, betrayed by what they see as unmerited accusations.”

Folt told a group of reporters that the University was continuously working to fix the wrongdoing done years ago. The Student-Athlete Academic Initiative Working Group, which was formed by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Jim Dean in August, has evaluated almost nine of the 22 processes associated with athletics.

“Reform requires good analysis,” she said. “We’ll take that research-oriented approach to it.”

Folt was also asked if she thinks the NCAA system as a whole was flawed.

“I applaud the NCAA for taking on its own investigations,” she said. “They are looking very closely at the way they run their processes. They are trying to increase academic preparedness.”

“This may seem like the biggest issue but we’re doing lots of things,” she said.

So rather than talk athletics, board members focused on the positive, impactful areas of the university, listening to presentations on autism research and an advertising campaign by students in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

“We’re all concerned about our reputation,” Folt said to reporters. “These are incidents that have tarnished the reputation of Carolina. And we’re saying directly, we accept responsibility.”

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