Unc football player essay

The University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill has already been embroiled in a scandal for allowing its athletes to enroll in fake courses for easy credit. Now, the whole controversy has a rather potent visual symbol to go along with it: a 146-word, ungrammatical essay on Rosa Parks that earned an A- for a real intro class.*

As the segment explains, academically troubled UNC athletes were encouraged to sign up for so-called “paper classes”—which were essentially no-work independent studies involving a single paper that allowed functionally illiterate football players to prop up their GPAs, thus satisfying the NCAA’s eligibility requirements.

So instead of evidence of specific academic corruption, the image merely seems to be visual proof that UNC admitted athletes with grade-school-level writing skills and awarded them high marks. In its feature, ESPN interviewed Mary Willingham, the UNC learning-specialist-turned-whistleblower who exposed the fake courses issue to the public.

The student did not earn the A- for the paper specifically, but for the entire, completed class. So instead of evidence of specific academic corruption, the image merely seems to be visual proof that UNC admitted athletes with grade-school-level writing skills and awarded them high marks.