Auburn Football (including academic scandal)

[IronBuckI]

To be fair to Auburn, it would be funny coming from at least 100 different colleges with a big time, brand name football or basketball program, Ohio State included.

To be fair to at least 99 other institutions. Most, if not all of them, could claim a cleaner record than Auburn. Auburn, Alabama and Tennessee are the three programs that I think of when I think, 'dirty program'.

 

[bucafar]

Should someone suggest there is smoke here; I would conclude the implications are bigger than the twin towers.

 

[Dryden]

 

[DiamondBuck]

"But Richardson repeatedly stressed that the issue had nothing to do with Auburn’s athletic department. Richardson said 18 percent of the students taking directed-reading courses in the sociology and the adult education departments were athletes, 7.5 percent of them football players."

Hmmm... Football players comprise roughly 0.4% of the student body at Auburn but took 7.5% of the directed-reading courses. Highly disproportionate participation by football players! It would be helpful to know what proportion of sociology majors are football players.

 

[Zurp]

It would be helpful to know what proportion of sociology majors are football players.

That's not necessarily fair. It's no secret that many of the players on that team (and many other Div-IA and IAA teams) are not in school to get their degrees; they want to be drafted and see how much they can get in the NFL. Is that a bad thing? I, personally, don't think so.

Let's say, for the sake of argument (since I personally don't know anything about sociology, as a major), that sociology is a fairly easy subject to major in. These football players, since they don't actually care to have an important major, might want to choose to major in sociology. It's easy, and they'll have more time to work on their skills, thus increasing their opportunity to be drafted and make their money in the NFL.

Also, pick a more difficult subject. Let's say that Zurpology requires 20 hours of course-work and 60 hours of studying per week. For some odd reason unbeknownst to anyone sane, 10% of the students at University X choose to major in Zurpology. Does that mean that 10% of the football team should have to major in Zurpology?

 

[methomps]

NYTimes

December 10, 2006
An Audit Reveals More Academic Questions at Auburn
By PETE THAMEL

AUBURN, Ala., Dec. 7 ? An internal audit at Auburn University found that a grade for a scholarship athlete was changed without the knowledge of the professor, raising the athlete?s average in the final semester just over the 2.0 minimum for graduation.

The grade, which was changed to an A from an incomplete, was one of four A?s the athlete received in the spring semester of 2003. None of the courses required classroom attendance.

The athlete, who was not identified because of privacy laws, received the other three A?s in directed-readings courses supervised by Professor Thomas Petee. Petee was forced to resign as chairman of the sociology department in August because of ?poor judgment? in the number of his directed-readings classes, one-on-one courses similar to independent study.

Auburn began a four-month inquiry in the wake of an investigation by The New York Times in July, which showed that at-risk athletes had received unusually high grades in directed-readings courses. Petee and another department head resigned from their leadership positions. The university also overhauled its policies on directed-readings courses. Petee still teaches criminology at Auburn.

The university maintained that the courses, which often involved little work but resulted in high grades, were available to all students, not only athletes. Edward R. Richardson, the Auburn president, considers the issue dead, a university spokeswoman said. Richardson declined requests for comment in person and on the telephone this week.

The athletic department has maintained that it does not do scheduling for athletes, but the audit showed that someone with knowledge of the system had helped the athlete who received the four A?s and graduated with a 2.01 grade point average.

?This ain?t over,? said Jim Gundlach, the director of the sociology department, who in the summer revealed Petee?s unusual teaching load to The Times. ?That was my first reaction to this, looking at the academic characteristics of the person involved and how many classes they had with Petee and how much of it was during that last semester, and the grade-change thing was the deciding factor in graduation.?

Gundlach said the student whose grade change was found in the audit was a scholarship athlete but not a football player.

The grade was changed without the consent of the instructor listed for the course, the sociology professor Paul Starr. He said he did not teach the course to the athlete that semester and did not recall ever meeting the athlete.

?It was a phantom student in a phantom class,? Starr said in an interview in his office this week. ?The schedule was a very strange one. You don?t cook up a schedule like that yourself. There was obviously some kind of guidance and special allowances with someone who had that kind of schedule.?

Starr said he found out about the grade change, which occurred May 12, 2003, only eight days ago, when he received an e-mail message as part of the internal audit. The information systems auditor who sent the message, Robert Gottesman, said the audit had nothing to do with the sociology department or the athletic department. It is not known whether the grade changes were widespread, but other sociology department professors received e-mail messages from the auditor this week.

The e-mail message Starr received Nov. 29 said, ?As part of an ongoing audit, Auburn University Internal Audit is reviewing changes made to grades where the documentation was signed by someone other than the instructor of record.?

It went on to ask Starr about a course in the spring 2003 term, SOCY4300-001, an internship-type course known as field instruction. The e-mail message asked whether he was aware of the grade change and the circumstances that had caused someone else to change it, and whether he had been contacted by anyone about the change.

Starr replied by e-mail to Gottesman that he had taught it one-on-one to ?no more than three students over the last 20 years.? He also informed the auditor that he was not aware of the grade change submitted on his behalf. Further, he wrote that he did not enroll the athlete or permit the athlete to take the course.

That semester, Starr gave a grade of incomplete to a nonathlete in the same course. That grade became an F six months later, in accordance with university policy for students who do not complete the coursework.

Starr said that he would like to find out who had authorized the grade change but that he had heard nothing since replying to Gottesman on Nov. 30.

?I want to know more about the circumstance,? Starr said. ?If credit is assigned by my name, I should know the background to it, whether it was an error or an inappropriate act, because I?m the instructor of record.?

The same week Starr received the audit notice, other professors in his department, which includes sociology, anthropology, social work and criminology, received e-mail messages from an auditor.

The interim head of the department, Paula Bobrowski, said she was not told formally about the audit and was unsure of how many teachers had received e-mail notices. She did not know the nature of any grade changes or how many might have involved athletes.

Bobrowski appeared surprised when she was told about the grade change in Starr?s course during an interview in her office this week.

?That?s what?s good about having an audit,? she said. ?We?re talking about academic integrity, and if it?s out of whack, I?m extremely happy that we?re having an audit. This will not happen during my term here.?

Gundlach said the manner in which Starr found out about the grade change was similar to how he discovered problems with directed readings.

Gundlach was watching a football game on television when he saw a sociology major honored as a student-athlete of the week.

Gundlach never had the football player in class. He asked two other full-time sociology professors about the player and learned they had never taught him, either. That prompted Gundlach to go through the files, where he found that 18 players on the undefeated 2004 Auburn football team had taken a combined 97 hours of directed-readings courses with Petee during their careers. The courses included core subjects like statistics, theory and methods, which are almost always taught in a classroom setting.

Petee, who declined to be interviewed for this article, had said that he did nothing wrong. He told other news media in the summer that his classes, which included 152 one-on-one courses in one semester, were the only way that he could keep up with rising student demand and a shrinking department budget.

?I will openly acknowledge that I wanted to have more rigor in the classes, but, given the circumstances, I wasn?t able to,? Petee told The Villager, a weekly newspaper in Auburn, over the summer. ?If I gave them each a 40-page paper, I would have had to grade them all. Was this an ideal way to do the curriculum? Of course not.?

He told The Birmingham News in August that he should not have given a directed-readings course in statistics to Carnell Williams, a star tailback now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association received Auburn?s initial internal report, which included an investigation into the athletic and academic arms of the university. It can accept the university?s findings or investigate on its own.

A spokesman, Erik Christianson, said the N.C.A.A. would not comment other than to say it had received the report.

The report was also sent to Auburn?s accrediting agency, the Southern Association of College and Schools.

Auburn?s findings, made public last month, showed that Petee made about 55 grade changes for students from January 2003 to the spring of 2006. The average for professors in the department in that period was 22. The report did not break down the number of grade changes for athletes. It also did not say that Petee changed grades in courses other than his own. Petee gave 24 incompletes during that period, 67 percent to athletes.

The report admonished him for failing to keep accurate grade records, including those involving grade changes.

?Dr. Petee?s lack of course records for some classes violates Auburn University policy on proper maintenance of class documents and records,? the report stated.

Gundlach said that he felt the report should have been tougher on Petee but that he had been generally pleased with Bobrowski?s tenure. He said he told her of a professor in the department who had been giving unsupervised tests by computer for years.

Bobrowski not only stopped that professor, but she also found and stopped another professor who had been doing the same thing.

?There has been a substantial improvement in the academic climate at Auburn since this,? Gundlach said. ?The Auburn faculty hasn?t felt there has been much support for them to bear up against the pressure of grade inflation until this.?

 

[ant80]

Auburn Doesn?t Plan to Forward Its Audit (NYTimes)


By PETE THAMEL

Auburn University does not plan to forward information from an internal audit to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, a university spokesman said. The audit showed that a grade for a scholarship athlete was changed without the knowledge of the student?s professor.

The athlete was not identified because of privacy laws. A New York Times article published Sunday showed that the grade was changed from an incomplete to an A in the final semester, allowing the athlete to graduate.

In that semester, the student received A?s in four classes that did not require attendance. The grade change was made without the permission of the professor, who did not recall even meeting the student, and it nudged the student?s grade-point average above the 2.0 needed to graduate.

?This is not an athletic issue,? said the spokesman, Brian Keeter. ?The N.C.A.A. has not requested this report. We?ve provided a previous one to them. If they ask us to do for this, we would. But this is an academic issue.?

When asked how an issue involving an athlete?s grade change was not an athletic issue, Keeter said, ?This is not an athletic issue.?

The N.C.A.A. president, Myles Brand, said in an interview yesterday that he had read the Times article but could not comment on specifics. He did applaud Auburn for conducting an internal audit, then added: ?The second point is that academic fraud is, if not the worst, one of the worst offenses that an institution can commit. I mean that as a general comment. I won?t comment on any particular institution.?


Keeter said that the audit was expected to reach the Auburn president, Edward R. Richardson, this week. The audit will include recommendations from the university provost. Keeter said that Richardson would not comment until he read the report, but Keeter said he expected ?substantial news? to come out of the report.


Keeter also stressed that there were now systems in place at the university to prevent a student-athlete from taking four classes that do not require attendance. The student?s three other A?s that semester were in courses taught by Professor Thomas Petee in a directed-readings format, a one-on-one learning style similar to independent study.


After revelations in The Times in July that Petee taught up to 152 of these one-on-one courses in a semester, Auburn overhauled its directed-readings policies. Petee and another department head resigned their positions in the wake of the article.


The question now is who changed the grade and how a student whom the professor, Paul Starr, could never recall meeting could receive an A in one of his courses.


The report that Auburn has already forwarded to the N.C.A.A. reveals that Petee changed 55 grades from January 2003 to the spring of 2006, more than double the amount of the average faculty member in the sociology department. Although much of the information in the report is divided between athletes and nonathletes, the report does not reveal what percentage of grades changed belonged to athletes.


?I?m certain that there is an explanation for that from those that put that report together,? Keeter said. ?I will have to get in touch with them to have that answer.?


Vanderbilt?s chancellor, Gordon Gee, said Auburn was another example of the problems caused when athletic departments are run separately from the university.


?I applaud them for having fixed the problems,? said Gee, who has dissolved the traditional structure of the athletic department at Vanderbilt and blended it with the rest of the university. ?I also think the discussion needs to continue, why that culture existed and what we as universities have to do to prevent that culture. That?s not just an Auburn problem. That becomes a lot of problems for a lot of us.?

 

[BB73]

si.com

Report: Recruits had grades raised
Two Auburn prospects being investigated by NCAA

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) -- Two Auburn football recruits from Mobile had grades raised on their high school transcripts between initial and final versions, prompting investigations by the county school system and the NCAA Clearinghouse, the Press-Register reported Friday.

Superintendent Harold Dodge said one student graduating this week from B.C. Rain High School had several grades changed and a grade of another student was altered at Williamson High.

The two students had higher final grades on their transcripts than they originally earned, said Dodge, who declined to name them. The newspaper reported that the two athletes were Auburn football signees and the changes could have helped them become academically eligible.

Auburn has signed B.C. Rains defensive Ryan Williams and Williamson lineman Nick Fairley.

Cont'd ...

 

[Buckeyeskickbuttocks]

SEC Football... if ya aint cheatin, ya aint tryin hard-a-nuff.

 

[Taosman]

SEC football......"Sure we cheat! It's your(NCAA) job to catch us!"

 

[sandgk]

Well that's Fairley and Williams from Mobile. All they need is something to happen with McNeil and it is a clean sweep in Mobile for Auburn (though McNeil was the only one of the three who reported actual grades and ACT scores in his profile).

Now, how many LOIs did Auburn tender? Oh, yeah, thirty (30 for those who think in numbers rather than words). Five over the "limit" if you prefer, which limit is constantly expanded by the SEC. And who administers the LOI program? Why, none other than the SEC itself.

 

[Taosman]

It's a joke and the NCAA should step up to the plate and even the LOI
playing field.

 

[OregonBuckeye]

SEC Football... if ya aint cheatin, ya aint tryin hard-a-nuff.

Damn straight.

 

[OSUsushichic]

It's all somehow Saban's fault. :p

 

[Zurp]

Now, how many LOIs did Auburn tender? Oh, yeah, thirty (30 for those who think in numbers rather than words). Five over the "limit" if you prefer, which limit is constantly expanded by the SEC. And who administers the LOI program? Why, none other than the SEC itself.

I guess I don't understand the rules. How does Auburn get away with that? Simply because the SEC is the only one watching?