July 1: Football player Michael McAdoo files a lawsuit against UNC-CH and the NCAA after being kicked off the team because a tutor had provided footnotes and a bibliography for a term paper. The paper turns out to have several plagiarized passages that were missed by university officials and NCAA investigators. The paper identifies Julius Nyang’oro, chairman of the African and Afro-American Studies Department, as class professor. Chancellor Holden Thorp in a subsequent interview tells The News & Observer he is not going to question Nyang’oro about the paper.

Aug. 21: A partial academic transcript for another football player, Marvin Austin, shows he took an upper level African studies class in the summer of 2007 before taking a full slate of introductory courses in the fall that included remedial writing. Austin received a B-plus in the African studies class. UNC-CH records identified Nyang’oro as the professor.

Sept. 1: Nyang’oro resigns as chairman. University officials launch an investigation into “possible irregularities” in the African studies department after The N&O requests data on independent studies and other courses in which no class is held.

Sept. 16: UNC-CH officials confirm the investigation is targeting independent studies in the department. Data released to The N&O shows that football players are accounting for more than one in five of the enrollments in those classes.

May 4: UNC-CH’s investigation finds 54 classes in the department in which there is little or no evidence of instruction. Among them are the classes McAdoo and Austin took. Nyang’oro is directly connected to 45 of the classes. The report also finds evidence of forgery and unauthorized grade changes, but law enforcement officials decline to investigate, saying there is an apparent lack of financial motive. Data later released to The N&O shows 36 percent of the enrollments are football players and another three percent are basketball players. Nyang'oro is allowed to retire.

May 10: Records requested by The N&O show Nyang’oro received $12,000 in additional pay to teach a summer class that the internal probe found to have no classroom instruction.

May 14: Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall announces a criminal investigation in light of the summer pay, but said the probe would also look into forgery and other allegations related to the case.
 
 

It turns out not so many freshmen had taken upper level classes at UNC-Chapel Hill as a spokesman originally told us in our Sunday story about former football player Marvin Austin's academic transcript.

UNC spokesman Mike McFarland originally said 1,033 freshman had taken a 400 level class in the most recently completed academic year. He has now corrected that to 683 freshmen.

The statistic is significant because McFarland cited it to suggest that Austin's first class at the university -- a 400 level African-American studies course during the second summer session of 2007 -- might not be all that unusual. There were 3,846 freshmen in last year's class, so the original number would suggest one in four freshmen took a 400 level class.

The corrected number indicates it was more like one in six.

That statistic does not reflect how many of those freshmen took a 400 level class in their second semester, when they would have a much better lay of the land and might have taken a prerequisite.  It also doesn't show how many freshman got into a 400 level class after demonstrating they had taken advanced placement classes in high school.

Austin got a B plus in the class, according to the partial transcript we obtained. It was the only class he took that semester before taking a full slate of introductory courses in the fall. Those courses included a remedial writing class.

Austin is one of seven players who had to sit out last season as a result of an NCAA investigation into impermissible perks and academic help.

One of the unanswered questions in the Michael McAdoo plagiarism case is what his professor did when the football player turned in a paper that had numerous copied passages. Even UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp doesn't know.
Professor Julius Nyang'oro was out of town when the extent of plagiarism first surfaced earlier this month. A woman who answered his phone on Monday said he has returned, but he has not responded to phone and email requests for comment since.
Nyang'oro is the chairman of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, and had McAdoo for a student in a Swahili class during the summer of 2009. Nyang'oro did not turn in McAdoo to the UNC Honor Court, a student-run organization that adjudicates academic dishonesty cases and other student misconduct. It took an athletic department investigation a year later into the activities of a former tutor, Jennifer Wiley, to bring the paper to the court's attention.
The court did not get a full picture of the plagiarism from athletic officials. The athletic department's investigation only focused on Wiley's work in adding footnotes and a bibliography. That, too, constitutes plagiarism, but not to the level critics found when McAdoo made the paper public as part of his court battle.
Some contend the university should no longer stand behind McAdoo because he did not disclose the full amount of plagiarism in the paper and allowed athletic officials to tell the NCAA that the paper -- save for the footnotes and bibliography -- was his work.
Chancellor Holden Thorp, in an interview last week, said he is not going to dig into Nyang'oro's handling of the paper.
"It's very unfortunate what happened here, but I don't get into grading for faculty members," he said.
Thorp said the focus should be on what the honor court did. It found McAdoo guilty of plagiarism, and issued a penalty equal to those handed out for cases of broader plagiarism. The court gave McAdoo an F on the paper, an F for the course, academic probation for the Fall 2010 Semester and suspended him for the Spring 2011 semester.
The penalty meant McAdoo missed a full season of football, but the honor court ruling did give him the opportunity to rejoin the team for the upcoming season. The NCAA, based on the information submitted to the honor court, ruled that McAdoo can no longer play football for a member school.
Thorp would not say whether the university has since given more scrutiny to the other papers McAdoo wrote. The athletic department had brought two others to the honor court for possible improper help from Wiley, but the court did not find a problem with them. The NCAA has. They have not been made public.
Thorp's response to the question: "We've done a very thorough investigation on the academic side."