NCAA Ruling on the ND Academic Scandal

[Sherm Sticky]

That's silly. Notre Dame had the worst academic fraud case in the history of the NCAA, not UNC lol


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[Legacy]

Will North Carolina's Challenge to NCAA Authortiy Work: 'Beyond the NCAA's Purview' (Chronicle of Higher Education)

North Carolina tells the sports governance group that it does not have the authority to punish the university for academic fraud. Association may be heading for another fight with one of its high-profile members.

Last week, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill told the National Collegiate Athletic Association that it does not have the authority to punish the university for what is widely seen as the most egregious case of academic fraud in the history of intercollegiate athletics. UNC's argument: the NCAA has no jurisdiction over assessing the quality of an institution's courses, even when those courses were fake and involved more than 1,500 athletes.

"The university does not minimize the extent of the academic irregularities it experienced, even as it emphasizes that those matters are beyond the NCAA’s purview," UNC's lawyers stated in a letter to the NCAA. "These matters concern fundamental institutional, not athletic, integrity, and they are not the proper subject of an NCAA enforcement action."

In a telephone call with reporters last week, Bubba Cunningham, athletics director at UNC Chapel Hill, said that the university's response was part of a larger debate about "the role of the NCAA relevant to academics." How the NCAA responds may determine the association's ongoing role in ensuring -- as the NCAA says in its mission statement -- excellence in both athletics and academics....

Earlier this year, the NCAA's Division I Council adopted new rules designed to update its academic integrity policies for the first time since 1983.

Colleges must now “maintain and adhere to written academic integrity policies that apply to the entire student body.” If a college breaks its own rules, the NCAA would consider that to be a case of “academic misconduct.” At the same time, the new rule redefines “impermissible academic assistance” as “academic conduct involving a staff member or booster that falls outside of a school’s academic misconduct policies, provides a substantial impact on the student-athlete’s eligibility and is not the type of academic assistance” generally available to all students.

“The NCAA absolutely has jurisdiction over classes that were clearly created to obtain athletic eligibility,” said David Ridpath, professor of sports administration at Ohio University and an advocate for reforming the academic side of college sports. “The NCAA influences curricular decisions all the time at its member institutions, whether it's how to measure satisfactory progress towards a degree, or yes, punishing institutions for creating fake classes.”

In 2012, the NCAA announced a series of historic sanctions against Pennsylvania State University following the conviction of Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach, on 45 counts of child abuse. Though the NCAA does not have rules specifically dealing with sexual abuse, the association's leaders decided to fine Penn State $60 million, bar the football program from postseason play for four years, reduce the team's number of scholarships by 10 per year for four years and vacate all football victories from 1998 to 2011.

The decision led to lawsuits against the NCAA from many fronts, and soon the association began rolling back many of the sanctions. It ended the scholarship reduction and postseason ban two years early. That $60 million fine became the focus of one lawsuit, which was originally meant to determine where the penalty should be spent but gradually became a referendum on the NCAA's authority to impose sanctions in the first place. As part of a settlement in that case, the NCAA restored the 112 football wins it had previously vacated. "I think the NCAA has an important function to serve but I don't think they should be the hall monitor for everything that happens on campus involving athletics," Josephine Potuto, a law professor and NCAA faculty athletics representative at the University of Nebraska, said at the time.

Though the type of misconduct at Penn State is wildly different from the fraud at UNC, Edelman said the NCAA would likely prefer to avoid another lawsuit with one of its most storied programs. At the same time, Edelman said, if the NCAA were to agree with UNC's argument, the case could still prove problematic for the association's authority going forward.

"If the NCAA does not have the authority of its members to govern academics as it relates to athletics, then it is truly nothing more than a trade cartel," he said. "Its authority is derived from its members, and its members have long delegated it the authority to regulate academic fraud when that fraud implicates athletics. An institution like UNC challenging the legitimacy of the NCAA's power could substantially weaken the association's future ability to maintain those rules."

 

[NDShark]

Will North Carolina's Challenge to NCAA Authortiy Work: 'Beyond the NCAA's Purview' (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Boils my blood reading that stuff and thinking about what ND faced

 

[Legacy]

UNC’s response to the amended Notice of Allegations: the strongest arguments (Raleigh News & Observer)

In its response, UNC argued, again and again, that bogus African Studies courses and the problems raised by them were beyond the purview of the NCAA. Here’s a look at 10 of UNC’s strongest arguments in its response, followed by an analysis of them:

5. The ANOA raises fundamental questions about the reach of NCAA authority to core academic functions of its members, and about how that authority has been exercised in this case. Further, given the unusual history of events that is discussed throughout this Response, the ANOA raises a number of jurisdictional and procedural issues under the NCAA constitution and bylaws that need to be addressed prior to a discussion of the University’s responses to the allegations.

6. The NCAA’s constitution and bylaws do not extend to matters related to academic structure, content, and processes on a member institution’s campus. This most basic limitation impacts any analysis of this case.

 

[GATTACA!]

So basically ND should just tell the NCAA to shove it?

 

[ulukinatme]

So basically ND should just tell the NCAA to shove it?

Something tells me they won't, and they'll end up taking this ridiculous punishment while other programs have either begged to relent punishments or laugh it off.

 

[zelezo vlk]

Complete and utter bullshit

 

[SouthSideChiDomer]

Seriously we should just refuse to vacate. What can the NCAA do?

 

[connor_in]

A Letter from the President on the NCAA Infractions Case

 

[Huntr]

NCAA is such a bullshit-ass crooked organization.

I am apoplectic right now.

 

[IrishLax]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...9374188170e_story.html?utm_term=.44490bff00dd

There is no one to blame but Jenkins, et. al. We were punished because we were overzealous in how far we went back and dig into this. There was never a reason to go retroactively calculate grades. I said we were bungling this from the moment the story broke and I was a million percent correct... ND decided to play a game no one else was playing for no reason other than to show how super seriously we take academics. We got what we deserve for being overly-pious idiots who don’t understand how things works.

 

[Meatloaf]

At least the virtue-signaling cowards that run this university get to pat themselves on the back for "doing things the right way". The naivete and sheer incompetence with which they handled this situation is so frustrating.

 

[ThePiombino]

This is baffling yet not surprising in the least.

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[IrishLax]

At least the virtue-signaling cowards that run this university get to pat themselves on the back for "doing things the right way". The naivete and sheer incompetence with which they handled this situation is so frustrating.

It’s truly unbelievable. All they had to do was suspend the players who were currently implicated and not go back retroactively altering GPAs. The end.

We are basically the only school in the country that doesn’t understand how to deal with the NCAA who has no power to do anything unless you give them ammunition. Remember, it was proven that DJ Fluker on that Bama team that won the ‘12 championship was taking money from an agent and NOTHING happened to them but 1 player we years later retroactively calculate grades for and we vacate a full season. It’s a joke. Not even worth bringing up UNC because the contrast between the two situations is comical and everyone knows that.

 

[RDU Irish]

Its like they issue this the day after losing to UNC on purpose.


LOL - you say not to bring it up as I am posting.

 

[Ndaccountant]

meh.

Honestly, one step close to the end for the NCAA. It's like they don't even care that they are dying before our eyes.

 

[SouthSideChiDomer]

Okay, if the issue is the GPA thing, can't we retroactively go back and change the grades back to what they were so the players would have been eligible? I know its highly unlikely the school would do that, but it would be a nice middle finger to the NCAA

 

[koonja]

Jenkins' letter was pretty awesome though. Anyone embed?

 

[RDU Irish]

Okay, if the issue is the GPA thing, can't we retroactively go back and change the grades back to what they were so the players would have been eligible? I know its highly unlikely the school would do that, but it would be a nice middle finger to the NCAA

I like the way you think.

 

[connor_in]

A Letter from the President on the NCAA Infractions Case

Jenkins' letter was pretty awesome though. Anyone embed?

Home > Selected Writings and Addresses > 2018 Writings > A Letter from the President on the NCAA Infractions Case
A Letter from the President on the NCAA Infractions Case
FEBRUARY 13, 2018

Dear Members of the Notre Dame Family,

We are deeply disappointed by and strongly disagree with the denial of the University’s appeal, announced today by the NCAA, of an earlier decision by the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions to vacate Notre Dame’s 2012 and 2013 football victories due to academic misconduct by several student-athletes. Our concerns go beyond the particulars of our case and the record of two football seasons to the academic autonomy of our institutions, the integrity of college athletics, and the ability of the NCAA to achieve its fundamental purpose. I write this letter so that you can understand the underlying facts, the reasons we believe that the NCAA is in error, and how we intend to move forward.

Let me be clear that we in no way excuse the very serious instances of academic dishonesty committed by our students. Academic fraud strikes at the very heart of our educational mission and the values of Notre Dame. That is why, when we first became aware that academic misconduct might have occurred, we spared no effort, consistent with the procedures of our Honor Code, to investigate each instance of possible academic misconduct. After an exhaustive investigation that covered four months, significant but appropriate penalties were administered by our Honesty Committee to all students found responsible for academic dishonesty, including the three members of our football team whose conduct underlies the vacation of wins penalty, as well as students involved who were not members of any athletic team.

The NCAA is not, of course, an academic association with general responsibility for academic integrity at America’s colleges and universities. It is, rather, an athletic association that regulates academic misconduct in certain narrowly drawn cases involving students who are athletes. Two such cases are: 1) when a representative of the university is complicit in the cheating and 2) when a student competes on behalf of the university while ineligible.

Notre Dame disagreed with several aspects of the NCAA’s assessment of this case, but in order to conclude the case expeditiously, we agreed to accept certain findings of violations. Two of those violations, involving three student-athletes, carried mandatory penalties, which the University accepted, and the possibility of a vacation of team records, which was at the discretion of the NCAA to impose. It is to the imposition of this discretionary penalty that the University objects and which it appealed.

In academic misconduct cases, the penalty of vacation of team records has, until now, only been applied in the case of serious forms of institutional culpability: when coaches, administrators, or persons with academic responsibilities are complicit in cheating, or when an institution fails to monitor or lacks control over its athletics program.

In Notre Dame’s case, two of the students had received assistance from a full-time undergraduate student who had part-time employment as an assistant to our athletic trainers. Student-to-student cheating is not normally within the NCAA’s jurisdiction, but the NCAA concluded that the student’s role as a part-time assistant trainer made her a “representative of the institution” and justified a vacation of team records penalty in this case.

There is no precedent in previous NCAA cases for the decision to add a discretionary penalty of vacation of team records in a case of student-to-student cheating involving a part-time student worker who had no role in academic advising. In every other case in the record—meticulously detailed in the University’s arguments—the institutional representative of the university was employed as an administrator, coach, or person who served in an academic role. The Committee simply failed to provide any rationale why it viewed the student-worker as an institutional representative in our case. This is more disturbing given that, in 2016, the member institutions of the NCAA amended the academic misconduct rules to make clear that students who serve in roles identical to that of the student in our case would not be considered institutional representatives. If the Committee members chose to depart both from precedent and the position adopted by the NCAA membership, it was incumbent on them to offer an explanation. They did not.

Regarding the issue of the three student-athletes in question competing while ineligible, rational explanations are again lacking. When these student-athletes competed in 2012 and 2013, the University correctly certified to the NCAA that they were eligible to compete. After the cheating was discovered and the cases adjudicated by the University Honesty Committee in 2014, a framework was painstakingly created to recalculate grades so that students understood the consequences of their actions and did not benefit from them. In the curious logic of the NCAA, however, it is precisely the application of our Honor Code that is the source of the vacation of wins penalty, for the recalculation of the grades in 2014 led to the three student-athletes being deemed ineligible retroactively.

To impose a severe penalty for this retroactive ineligibility establishes a dangerous precedent and turns the seminal concept of academic autonomy on its head. At best, the NCAA’s decision in this case creates a randomness of outcome based solely on how an institution chooses to define its honor code; at worst, it creates an incentive for colleges and universities to change their honor codes to avoid sanctions like that imposed here. If the application of Notre Dame’s Honor Code led to the outright dismissal of these students, or if it had a statute of limitations for past offenses that later are discovered, or indeed if the University imposed no sanction whatsoever for the academic dishonesty, there would, by the NCAA’s reasoning, be no competition while ineligible and no reason for a sanction. By imposing severe discretionary sanctions for institutions that, for good educational reasons, approach dishonesty in one way rather than another, the NCAA infringes on the autonomy of those who write honor codes for our institutions. We believe strongly that a university should make decisions core to its academic mission without having to factor in the possible consequences of an athletic association.

The NCAA has not chosen to ignore academic autonomy; it has instead perverted it by divorcing it from its logical and necessary connection to the underlying educational purpose. As noted above, Notre Dame’s exercise of academic autonomy in the form of the rigorous application of the University’s Honor Code was the source of the underlying violation on which the vacation of wins penalty is based. Although all parties acknowledged that Notre Dame did everything right in response to the academic misconduct, the University is now told that it must live with severe sanctions for its actions.

Notre Dame’s case stands in striking contrast with another recent high-profile academic misconduct case in which the NCAA Committee on Infractions chair explained that even though certain classes “more likely than not” were used to keep athletes eligible with fraudulent credits, the legitimacy of those classes was beyond the jurisdiction of the NCAA’s enforcement process precisely because that question must be left to the determination of the university in the exercise of its academic autonomy. The notion that a university’s exercise of academic autonomy can under NCAA rules lead to exoneration—or to a severe penalty—without regard to the way in which it is used defies logic and any notion of fundamental fairness.

We are deeply disappointed that the NCAA failed to recognize these critical points. Yet we are committed to work with partner institutions to introduce NCAA legislation that will lead to more reasonable decisions—decisions that will support rather than discourage institutions that do their best to uncover and respond to academic dishonesty in accord with their respective honor codes. We will also do all we can to protect the autonomy of institutions to fashion and follow their honor codes in accord with academic, rather than athletic, considerations. We call on the NCAA administration to work with member institutions to both 1) establish policies and practices that will support member institution efforts to address academic dishonesty and that will delineate the lines between the NCAA’s athletic jurisdiction and the academic autonomy of its member institutions, and 2) reform its enforcement process to provide a level of transparency, consistency, and fairness that it currently lacks.

What is at stake here is the academic autonomy of our institutions and the integrity of college athletics. What is at stake is the ability of the NCAA to achieve its basic purpose, “to maintain intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as an integral part of the student body” (NCAA Constitution, Article 1.3.1).

Sincerely,

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
President

.

 

[connor_in]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">UNC blatantly cheats and hides it, NCAA backs down. Notre Dame finds cheaters, punishes them, self reports and the NCAA hammers them.<br><br>Message NCAA is sending is clear: We don't care if you cheat, just make us money and keep that crap to yourself.</p>— Bryan Driskell (@BGI_CoachD) <a href="https://twitter.com/BGI_CoachD/status/963461918613823488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 13, 2018</a></blockquote>
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[ACamp1900]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">UNC blatantly cheats and hides it, NCAA backs down. Notre Dame finds cheaters, punishes them, self reports and the NCAA hammers them.<br><br>Message NCAA is sending is clear: We don't care if you cheat, just make us money and keep that crap to yourself.</p>— Bryan Driskell (@BGI_CoachD) <a href="https://twitter.com/BGI_CoachD/status/963461918613823488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 13, 2018</a></blockquote>
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It’s true tho... learn. From. This.

 

[BoredIrish]

It’s truly unbelievable. All they had to do was suspend the players who were currently implicated and not go back retroactively altering GPAs. The end.

We are basically the only school in the country that doesn’t understand how to deal with the NCAA who has no power to do anything unless you give them ammunition. Remember, it was proven that DJ Fluker on that Bama team that won the ‘12 championship was taking money from an agent and NOTHING happened to them but 1 player we years later retroactively calculate grades for and we vacate a full season. It’s a joke. Not even worth bringing up UNC because the contrast between the two situations is comical and everyone knows that.

USC fans might disagree with you on that point.

 

[Irish#1]

LAX is right and of course Jenkins won't pursue this in court. The mere thought of a lawsuit would probably get the NCAA to reverse their ruling on vacating the wins.

 

[T Town Tommy]

Wasn't it Jenkins that offered up the possibility to vacate wins pending the results of the investigation? In hindsight, he should have dealt with the one issue at hand, suspended the player involved, and moved on. But from my perspective, he went too far in trying to protect the brand. Perhaps he didn't calculate the depth of the NCAA's pending involvement in the matter. And the NCAA is not known for their consistency or logic in any matter they decide to pursue. Either way, it is just another in a long line of ridiculous rulings from the NCAA.

 

[greyhammer90]

It's kind of interesting because after reading that letter I'm inclined to say that they should take the NCAA to court. If the NCAA in 2016 specifically stated that a student-assistant was not a representative of the institution, then this ruling seems pretty arbitrary.

 

[connor_in]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Moral of the story: Never do something silly like "enforce your Honor Code" or "self-report minor infractions" or "play by the rules" because you're gonna get whacked. But hey, making fake classes is totally cool - just don't, y'know, *tell* anyone! <a href="https://t.co/R1UWXTlcCb">https://t.co/R1UWXTlcCb</a></p>— 1st Down Moses (@1stDownMoses) <a href="https://twitter.com/1stDownMoses/status/963483190907240449?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 13, 2018</a></blockquote>
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[phork]

There are no words.

 

[NorthDakota]

Notre Dame.... goodness. Just refuse to do it. Or launch a smear campaign. Billboards all around NCAA HQ.

 

[Irishize]

I had no idea Stanford counts athletics as an accredited course. I assume ND does not, correct?