If you thought Mary Willingham, the UNC academic adviser who publicly criticized the reading levels of student athletes and exposed the university for alleged academic fraud, was just going to ride off into the sunset, you’ve got another thought coming.
Willingham, along with co-author and UNC professor Jay Smith, are coming out with a book titled “Cheated: The UNC Scandal, The Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports,” which gives her account of the academic scandal that rocked the university last year.
In an interview with NPR she described how the scheme worked.
We told athletes to [go] to the African-American Studies Department, to the office manager, and get a prompt. And they would then go to the library or, with our assistance, just cut and paste from online material, or we would put something up on the screen that they would copy. And then they would just turn it in. No one really ever read them. They were always graded A or B.
There are also reportedly talks of making a movie about the book.
Willingham recently received a $335,000 settlement as a result of a suit she filed claiming she was retaliated against for exposing the university and athletic department.
“We believe the settlement is in the best interest of the university and allows us to move forward and fully focus on other important issues,” UNC spokesman Rick White said in a statement.
This is not good for Chapel Hill, which seems content on discussing the topic as little as possible in hopes that it will go away. This book and possible movie will only fuel the fire more.