Pamela G. Powell had a problem. As she administered a final exam in remedial math at the University of Texas at Austin, she reportedly spotted a high-profile basketball player cheating.
The player, Martez Walker, a freshman from Detroit, was allegedly snapping pictures of test questions with his phone and looking for answers from someone outside the classroom, according to two former academic advisers informed of the incident.
Ms. Powell, a mathematics instructor who had several athletes in her class that semester, the fall of 2013, contacted Adam Creasy, her liaison with the athletic department. The instructor asked what she should do, recalled Mr. Creasy, then an academic counselor for the football team. He spoke with Brian Davis, then head of academic support for football, who advised the instructor to talk with Randa Ryan, executive senior associate athletic director for student services.
What happened next is unclear.
But Mr. Walker passed the class, according to Mr. Creasy. Soon after, the player was named to the
Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll, for earning at least a 3.0 grade-point average. That season Mr. Walker became a key contributor to the team, scoring in double figures seven times, including a season-high 16 points in an NCAA tournament win against Arizona State University.
Mr. Walker, who has since transferred to Oakland University, in Michigan, where he is expected to play basketball this season, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. He withdrew from Texas last fall, after he was arrested and suspended from the team following allegations that he had assaulted his girlfriend.
Ms. Powell declined to speak about the situation, citing student-privacy concerns.
The accusations against Mr. Walker, one of several new claims of academic misconduct involving Texas athletes, illustrate how the university has appeared to let academically deficient players push the limits of its policy on academic integrity as it has sought to improve its teams' academic records.
Like many big-time programs, Texas has dozens of athletes who came to the flagship campus unprepared for academic rigor. Keeping those players eligible without sacrificing academic standards is a balancing act that institutions are finding increasingly difficult to manage.
Among the high-profile programs that have recently stumbled are those at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Syracuse University. At Texas, blurry lines between athletics and academics have raised concerns that the athletic department has intruded too far on academic matters.
When students cheat, faculty members have leeway in determining grade-related sanctions, said Jason J. Thibodeaux, director of student judicial services at Austin. The punishments, he said, can vary. Some professors fail students for any violation; others take a more light-handed approach.
He would not comment on a specific case but said he was not aware of any accusation that a professor had allowed the athletic department to influence a student's grade.
Mr. Davis, whose position was eliminated last year, said it was normal for professors to inform the academic-support staff about problems with athletes. He does not believe that Ms. Powell intended for the athletic department to interfere with an academic issue.
Mr. Creasy feels differently. He said Ms. Powell, who has taught at the university since 1997, was looking for guidance about how tough she should be on Mr. Walker.
If a member of the faculty or athletic department enabled a player’s cheating, the university could face penalties from the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The NCAA views academic fraud as one of the most egregious violations, and it has recently stepped up
efforts to punish it.
The incident is one of several accusations of academic misconduct under Rick Barnes, Texas’ head basketball coach from 1998 until this year. One former academic mentor in the athletic department told
The Chronicle that he had helped write papers for J’Covan Brown, a former guard. A tutor for P.J. Tucker, another onetime Longhorns player, said Mr. Tucker had received impermissible academic assistance while he was preparing for the NBA draft.
Through a spokesman, Coach Barnes, who was fired in March, denied knowledge of problems at Austin. (Texas officials said his departure was not related to the cheating accusations.) But a new NCAA policy requires head coaches to demonstrate an atmosphere of compliance in their programs. If the NCAA were to find violations at Texas, Mr. Barnes — now head coach at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville — could face NCAA sanctions.
The allegations at Texas come amid scrutiny of the university’s academic standards for athletes. In December a
Chronicleinvestigationdetailed how hundreds of college athletes, including two former Texas basketball players, had reportedly gained NCAA eligibility through the use of bogus online coursework. In January the university announced an independent
investigation into the claims.
Texas is also investigating the charges raised in this article. Patricia C. Ohlendorf, vice president for legal affairs, said she could not comment on a student's record, citing privacy concerns. But she said she had doubts about the veracity of Mr. Creasy's claims involving the math instructor. She said she had also looked into the accusations about Mr. Tucker. "Thus far," she wrote in an email, "we are comfortable with how matters were addressed."
A Hands-On Approach
A decade ago Texas faced a different set of academic challenges. Its men’s basketball team had one of the five lowest NCAA Academic Progress Rates of any Division I program, a sign that it was failing to keep players on track to graduate. Three of the university’s highest-profile athletes, including Mr. Tucker, had recently been
ruled ineligible for sports because of poor classroom performance.
The problems prompted the university to rethink its approach to academic support. Ms. Ryan, then head of academic services for women’s athletics, was promoted to oversee all sports but football. (She has since taken on that, too.)
A hard charger who has been known to email colleagues before 6 a.m., Ms. Ryan set expectations high, encouraging athletes to put the same energy into their schoolwork as their sports. She trailed players to classes, made study halls mandatory — up to four hours on some days — and pushed teams to raise their grade-point averages above 3.0.
Faculty members praise her enthusiasm. But several former academic advisers say they did not support her approach, arguing that her expectations were unrealistic for some athletes. According to former athletics staff members, a handful of players had high-school grade-point averages and SAT scores that were half as high as those of their classmates. To expect them to get A’s and B’s in college, the former employees say, was inviting problems.
Christine A. Plonsky, a senior athletics official, takes issue with that criticism, saying that, given the proper academic support and motivation, any student can achieve those grades. "For anyone to say that an underprepared individual cannot do their best work and shoot high," she said, "that is a slap."
Curriculum choices mattered. Ms. Ryan encouraged basketball and football players to choose majors with a high number of electives and to enroll in classes with easy reading and writing requirements, many former athletes and academic advisers say. Ms. Ryan declined an interview request.
"Children’s Literature," one class that is popular with players, has a reading list that includes
Charlotte’s Web and
James and the Giant Peach.The class has no required papers, according to the syllabus. The instructor, though, says she does not give easy A's.
Another popular course, "Documentary Film and Inquiry," has no reading requirements or exams. Instead, students are asked to complete a 20-minute documentary. One year, four athletes made a film about life as student-athletes. The professor says his course requires extensive work, including learning how to interview subjects, use lighting and sound, and understand the basic elements of editing. If students complete all of the requirements, he says, most get A's.
Former athletics officials say classes like those have helped Ms. Ryan meet her goals. Over the past decade, dozens of men’s basketball players have earned spots on the conference honor roll, while the team’s NCAA Graduation Success Rates, which measure the percentage of players who have graduated over a six-year period, have climbed sharply, from 25 percent to 100 percent. (Critics say those rates do not accurately reflect how many athletes complete their degrees, as some players leave college early for the pros.)
Sometimes accommodations have been made for students. In the spring of 2006, during his junior season, Mr. Tucker was enrolled in a class called "Leadership in the Community," in the School of Social Work. The course required him to make regular visits to a local middle school to mentor students. According to Michael L. Lauderdale, who taught the class, Mr. Tucker spent time away from the campus that semester to prepare for the NBA draft, making it difficult for him to meet the attendance requirements.
The course also required a final paper that would count for about a third of Mr. Tucker's grade. But there were questions about whether he actually wrote the paper.
On the day it was due, said Mr. Lauderdale, a professor of criminal justice, he contacted athletics academic-support staff members to remind them of Mr. Tucker’s end-of-the-day deadline. Professor Lauderdale, who said he has taught hundreds of Texas athletes over his nearly 45 years at the university, knew that if Mr. Tucker didn’t submit his work on time, he would receive an "incomplete" in the class, which could harm the team’s NCAA Academic Progress Rate. A low rate can lead to a loss of scholarships or postseason opportunities.
At the time, Mr. Tucker was reportedly out of the state, Mr. Lauderdale later learned. But late that afternoon, the paper showed up in the professor’s office.
According to Mr. Creasy, who was one of Mr. Tucker's tutors, Ms. Ryan contacted him about the player's paper. He said Ms. Ryan wanted to know: How did P.J.’s paper get turned in? (University leaders dispute that Ms. Ryan had knowledge of any problem with the paper.)
Mr. Creasy said he did not help Mr. Tucker with the paper. But he believes that someone else did the work.
Mr. Tucker, who was drafted in 2006 by the Toronto Raptors, now plays for the Phoenix Suns. He declined to comment for this article.
Mr. Lauderdale includes the university’s policy on academic misconduct on his syllabus and said he would fail a student who did not abide by it.
He did not suspect anything amiss about Mr. Tucker’s paper at the time. But the player’s whereabouts when it was submitted make him now question the authenticity of the player’s work.
"In the case of P.J., there is that risk that the paper could have been written for him," Professor Lauderdale said. "He may have had no involvement in that at all, but I see how that could have happened."
Trouble Communicating
In other cases at Texas, a pattern of academic misconduct has been alleged over a period of time.
As a high-school senior, J’Covan Brown, the former guard on the basketball team, failed to meet the university’s admissions standards. He spent a year at a college-preparatory school where he was enrolled in an online program at Brigham Young University. Mr. Brown was allegedly helped by a former community-college basketball coach who kept a file of test answers for online classes, according to
The Chronicle’s article in December. Mr. Brown denies cheating.
When he arrived in Austin, in 2009, Mr. Brown was required to take the Texas Success Initiative, an assessment used to diagnose students’ basic skills in reading, math, and writing. He was so frustrated with the material, according to a former academic mentor in the athletic department, that he walked out of the exam early.
Later that semester, Ms. Ryan walked into a study session that Mr. Brown was having with his mentor, according to the mentor, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. The mentor said Ms. Ryan reminded Mr. Brown of a five-page paper he had due, and asked him to turn in a draft by the end of the day.
Mr. Brown had trouble communicating his thoughts, the mentor said, and turned to him for help. Under pressure to complete the assignment, the mentor said, he suggested words and ideas to help Mr. Brown do the work. He said he never typed the words into Mr. Brown’s computer — he made sure the player did that himself — but that part of the work was not Mr. Brown’s. The mentor said he helped with other assignments for the player, too.
During his three years at the university, Mr. Brown made the Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll at least three times. He left the university after his junior season. As of December he had not received his degree.
Mr. Brown, who as of last year was playing basketball professionally in Russia, did not respond to several text messages inquiring about the latest accusations. In a text he sent in December, he acknowledged that he had had many tutors during his time at the university but denied that anyone had crossed the line.
"I took kare of wat I had to in the classroom on my own," he wrote. "Everything else u talk about I dnt kno anything about."
Question of Authority
The allegations at Texas raise questions about whether the university’s judicial system has given the athletic department too much power.
Accusations of academic misconduct are supposed to be reported to the dean of students, said Mr. Thibodeaux, who has worked in student judicial services since 2007.
He was not aware of any reports of an athletics staff member providing impermissible academic assistance to a player.
If such an allegation were raised, however, he said his staff would contact officials in the department where the violations occurred — in this case, athletics — to make sure its leaders were aware of the problem.
"It would be up to the department to discipline the employee," he said.
After
The Chronicle's earlier report on
academic violations in athletics, Texas had an independent investigator look into the concerns. When Ms. Ohlendorf, the university's top lawyer, learned of the additional allegations, she began a review of those through her office. She believes that some of the accusations are without merit.
In an interview, she said the charges involving Mr. Tucker do not appear to rise to academic fraud. She also disputed Mr. Creasy’s characterization of Ms. Powell, the math instructor, and her handling of the alleged cheating incident in her class. According to Ms. Ohlendorf, the instructor resolved the situation the way she would with any student, and did not provide special treatment to an athlete.
The Longhorns’ lawyer said she planned to investigate the additional claims about Mr. Brown and the work allegedly done for him, and "take corrective action if needed."
The alleged complicity of staff members in an athlete’s cheating raises the specter of NCAA involvement. The university, Ms. Ohlendorf said, would hand over any findings of violations to the association.
