Margo Gray
Appearances
48 Hours
Stalking Shadows
College holds a mythic place in American culture, but there are stories you won't hear on the campus tours.
48 Hours
Stalking Shadows
I'm Margo Gray. On the new podcast, Campus Files, we cover everything from rigged admissions to the drama of Greek life and student protests. Listen to and follow Campus Files, an Odyssey original podcast, available now on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Some would say, as the New York Times put it, he has a hobby of provoking his employer.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
The point, he says, is to push the administration to be more transparent in how it operates and to take accountability when it makes mistakes.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
That's exactly what happened after Thaddeus published his report, Silence from the Administration.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Thaddeus had a one-hour Zoom meeting with the president, provost, and several other faculty members.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
When he asked about specific figures, like the supposed $3 billion spent on instruction, he hit a wall. Most of his questions similarly went unanswered.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
the university couldn't bury its head in the sand forever. In July, US News announced that Columbia would be temporarily removed from the rankings until the release of the next year's list, meaning it was losing its coveted number two spot. That same summer, two Columbia students filed class action lawsuits against the university, accusing it of deceiving students by falsifying data.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Then, in the fall of 2022, U.S. News released its latest annual rankings. Columbia had plummeted from number two to number 18, the lowest ranking of any Ivy League school, and its worst position since first appearing on the list in 1988. Thaddeus wasn't happy about his school being embarrassed, but he did welcome the increased scrutiny of the rankings process.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Few investments feel as significant as choosing a college. It's a decision with long-term consequences, one that shapes careers, friendships, and future opportunities. With so much at stake, it's only natural to want to make the best possible choice. But with thousands of universities to consider, the decision is anything but easy.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Columbia's sharp drop highlighted just how easily the rankings could be manipulated. As Thaddeus told the New York Times, if any institution can drop from number two to number 18 in a single year, it just discredits the entire ranking system.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
But if the rankings are so flawed and more people are recognizing those flaws, why do they stick around? Thaddeus believes one reason is that they help prospective students feel more confident about their decisions.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Finally, and maybe most importantly, Thaddeus thinks the rankings persist because of what they offer to individual college applicants, students, and graduates.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
In June 2023, about a year and a half after Thaddeus published his explosive findings, Columbia University announced that it would no longer participate in the US News and World Report college rankings, making it the first Ivy League institution to opt out. While U.S. News would still rank Columbia, it would now have to source data from elsewhere.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
In its statement, Columbia explained, "...synthesizing data into a single U.S. News submission for its best college rankings does not adequately account for all of the factors that make our undergraduate programs exceptional." This decision raised concerns for U.S. News. Losing the cooperation of prestigious schools threatened to undermine its credibility and influence.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
But in the end, fears of a mass exodus never materialized. Elite institutions continued to participate, allowing the rankings to remain a dominant force in college admissions.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast. This episode was written and reported by Margo Gray. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliot Adler, and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprungkaiser and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed, and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss-Berman, J.D.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Crowley, Leah Reese-Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Shuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hilary Van Ornum. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at campusfilespod at gmail.com.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
In 1983, US News and World Report stepped in to fill the void, releasing its first ever ranking of the best colleges. The methodology was rudimentary, to say the least. The magazine sent a survey to university presidents, asking them to name up to 10 schools they believed offered the best undergraduate education. U.S.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
News then tallied the votes and published the results, declaring Stanford the best national university and Amherst the best national liberal arts college.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
The rankings quickly became a lifeline for the struggling US News and World Report magazine. When schools like Amherst boasted about their top spot, it turned into free advertising for US News. And the editors realized they could attract even more attention by making their methodology seem more sophisticated. They began sending out lengthy questionnaires to colleges
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
asking for a range of statistics, things like graduation rates and the average SAT scores of enrolled students.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
US News and World Report had just named Columbia the second best university in the country, right behind Princeton and tied with Harvard. But just as Columbia's new freshman class settled into campus, a shocking revelation surfaced. Their university admitted that it had cheated its way to the top. I'm Margo Gray.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Based on all these different statistics, U.S. News then had to create a formula to measure the quality of an institution.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
In other words, US News had to decide which factors define the quality of an institution and how much each of those factors should matter. For example, if a school has a top tier engineering department, but a subpar humanities program, or has a massive endowment, but limited campus space, how should all of that be weighed?
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
As if assessing the quality of a single institution wasn't challenging enough, U.S. News set out to rank more than 1,400 schools against one another, lining them up on a single scale from best to worst.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
So was US News up to the Herculean task? Well, in 1997, the magazine hired an outside consultancy to review its ranking methodology, and the feedback wasn't exactly glowing. The consultancy concluded, the principal weakness of the current approach is that the weights used to combine the various measures into an overall rating lack any defensible, empirical, or theoretical basis.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
In simpler terms, the magazine's supposedly scientific formula was largely arbitrary. But that didn't stop US News. Instead, that same year, the magazine blasted out its rankings online for the first time.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
With each year, the rankings reached larger and larger audiences, shaping opinions not just across the US, but across the world. And the rankings proved to have real-world consequences. Studies have shown that a school's ranking can directly impact application numbers, yield rates, and even the average standardized test scores of incoming students.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
So university administrators, whatever their personal feelings on the rankings, have a strong incentive to climb the list.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Penn Law didn't just pay attention to the rankings. They adapted their admissions process in a deliberate attempt to improve their standing.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
In 2022, Columbia University celebrated its most competitive admission cycle to date. Over 40,000 students applied for undergraduate spots and fewer than 6% made the cut. The reason for this unprecedented surge might've had something to do with the school's most recent accolade.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
This week on Campus Files, we explore the extraordinary measures that universities will take to climb the college rankings. Think about the last time you bought something. A vacuum cleaner, a mattress, maybe a water bottle. Chances are you did a little research, sifted through brands, and tried to find the best option out there.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
It's worth pausing to acknowledge how shocking it is that one of the country's most prestigious law schools adjusted its admissions process based on a single magazine's ranking metrics. But Penn Law is hardly alone.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
But there's an even quicker way to move up the ladder. Misreport the data to U.S. News and World Report. And that's exactly what Columbia University did.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
In 2021, Columbia University had big news to celebrate. For the past decade, US News and World Report had ranked the university at number four or number five. But this year, Columbia climbed to the coveted number two spot out of nearly 400 national universities.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
The university's dean of undergraduate admissions enthusiastically wrote on the university website, Columbia is proud of all the factors that led U.S. News & World Report to see us as one of the best universities in the world. We have been working on every level to support our students and are proud to be recognized for this.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
This is Michael Thaddeus. He's been a math professor at Columbia since 1998.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
If Thaddeus knows two things very well, it's Columbia University and numbers. And the number two ranking wasn't sitting right with him.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Thaddeus wanted to understand what had driven Columbia's rise in the rankings. So he subscribed to US News and World Report to access the specific data Columbia had self-reported. For instance, Columbia claimed that 82.5% of its courses had fewer than 20 students, meaning a large majority of courses were seminar style.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
From his experience of more than two decades at the school, Thaddeus was skeptical. So he set about calculating the percentage himself.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Thaddeus found that the real number was far lower than the reported 82.5%. The correct figure was below 67%. As he kept crunching the numbers, more discrepancies emerged. Columbia had reported a student to faculty ratio of six to one, but Thaddeus' calculations suggested it was closer to 11 to one. Then came one of the most startling claims.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Columbia reported spending over $3 billion on instruction and teaching related expenses per year. That would mean, according to his calculations, that Columbia was spending more than $100,000 per student annually.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
How did Columbia arrive at this $3 billion figure? Thaddeus has a theory.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
The list of discrepancies continued to grow. Graduation rates, the percentage of full-time faculty, and the share of professors with PhDs or other terminal degrees, all misrepresented by Columbia. Eventually, Thaddeus compiled his findings into a 21-page report. At the very top, he included a quote from Colin Diver, who we heard from earlier in the episode.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Instead, Thaddeus decided to upload the analysis to his website. And in February 2022, he hit submit. In February 2022, Michael Thaddeus published his findings under the title, An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's US News Ranking.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
But he was wrong. Very few people took notice. So Thaddeus had to reach out to the media himself. He contacted the student paper, the Columbia Daily Spectator.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
This is Colin Diver, author of Breaking Ranks, How the Rankings Industry Rules Higher Education and What to Do About It. He also served as the dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and as president of Reed College.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
In March 2022, following the Columbia Daily Spectator coverage, national outlets began picking up the story. Publications like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Campus Files
Dissension in the Ranks
Thaddeus suspects that the report attracted even more attention because he wasn't an outside whistleblower, but a tenured professor exposing issues at his own institution. For Thaddeus, this wasn't exactly new territory. He had a history of challenging Columbia's administration on a range of issues, from the presence of ROTC on campus to the mismanagement of the endowment.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Almost immediately, the Board of Regents fired Joe Gao from his position as chancellor, seven months before he was set to retire. But the story was far from over, because Joe Gao was not only the chancellor at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, he was also a tenured professor there. And it's really hard to fire a tenured professor, especially at a public university.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Joe and his wife didn't seem phased. In fact, they kept posting videos to various adult sites. And their Twitter feed, at Sexy Happy Couple, which had once featured mediocre shots of vegan food, began showcasing their faces and promoting their OnlyFans and LoyalFans pages.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
It also comes out that they had published two books under pen names, one titled Married with Benefits, Our Real-Life Adult Industry Adventures, and Monogamy with Benefits, How Porn Enriches Our Relationship. Meanwhile, the strange wheels of justice that are the university discipline system slowly turn.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
You may admit to knowing Nina Hartley from her role as William H. Macy's wife in the 1997 movie Boogie Nights.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
And at the hearing, Joe is representing his side, fighting for his tenured professor position, while UW system lawyers work to persuade the faculty panel to recommend his dismissal. Let's start with the university's argument.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
In one of their books, Chancellor Joe and his wife talk about hiring a male sex worker named Tom, saying, And at the beginning of those, at least one book, maybe both, they say all these events are true and they are presenting them as true stories.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
But when Josh spoke to First Amendment attorneys at FIRE, the free speech group that defended Chancellor Joe back in 2018, they disagreed with that argument.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Don't stop, big stud. You may be less willing to admit knowing Nina from one of her hundreds of adult movies, ranging from Nina Hartley's Guide to Spanking to her role as Hillary Clinton in the satirical pornographic film Who's Naylin Palin? Nina had been invited by the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse's highest official, the chancellor, Joe Gao.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
you might be wondering how Joe could claim he didn't make any money. As it turns out, the type of content Joe and his wife were making came with a hefty price tag. Chancellor Joe has said that between paying performers, videographers, and editors, the couple has spent upwards of $80,000 shooting pornography, making very little of that back via their OnlyFans and LoyalFans profiles.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Because just as this was unfolding, the UW system president had been battling with the Republican-controlled legislature over funding.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
But Joe's coworkers didn't see it that way. And they certainly didn't come to his defense.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
And what about precedent? Josh told us that in recent years, with the rise of OnlyFans and similar platforms, there have been high profile cases involving K through 12 teachers. But at the university level, this may be the first of its kind. That left UW leadership facing an unprecedented question. What happens when a former public face of your institution becomes an amateur porn star?
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
In July of 2024, public hearings on Joe Gao's case came to a close, and a faculty panel of his peers delivered their recommendation to the Board of Regents.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Meanwhile, as the Board of Regents weighed its decision, Joe and his wife kept promoting their adult content on Twitter alongside vegan cooking recipes.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
They were also reposting interviews that they'd given to various news outlets, from the Free Press to the Daily Mail to Wisconsin Public Radio. Then, in September 2024, another hearing took place, this time between Joe and the Board of Regents.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
And after a brief closed session, the Board of Regents came back with a verdict.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Meanwhile, Jogao and his wife continue to promote their adult videos. In the making of this episode, we reached out to them for an interview. And to our surprise, not only did they agree, they invited us over.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Joe Gao's bosses did not approve of his decision to hire Nina Hartley, nor were they pleased with the national attention that followed.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
That's next time on Campus Files. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. Special thanks to Joe Gao and Josh Furco, as well as Dr. Jerry Zoltan and Tom Kider for letting us use their disco version of Fight on State. If you'd like a vinyl copy of this recording, you can find Jerry at jerryzoltan.com. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
This episode was written and reported by Elliot Adler. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliot Adler, and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprungkaiser and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed, and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss-Berman, J.D.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Crowley, Leah Reese-Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Shuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hilary Van Ornum. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at campusfilespod at gmail.com. College holds a mythic place in American culture.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
It's often considered the best four years of your life and hailed as a beacon of integrity and excellence. But beyond the polished campus tours, there are stories you won't find in the admissions pamphlets.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
It's no wonder that college campuses capture the nation's attention, especially in moments of upheaval. I'm Margo Gray. Each week on the Campus Files podcast, we bring you a new story.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
On Campus Files, we cover everything from rigged admissions to the drama of Greek life.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Listen to and follow Campus Files, an Odyssey original podcast. Available now on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Following Hartley's speech, the university's Board of Regents denied Chancellor Gow a raise for that year and audited all of his expenses from the previous three years. To appease his higher-ups, Chancellor Joe Gao ended up paying Nina Hartley's $5,000 speaking fee out of his own pocket. But that was far from the end of the story.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
It turned out that Joe's connection to Nina was far more personal and shocking than anyone could have imagined. I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, UW-La Crosse faces a free speech controversy that goes from unusual to unbelievable. To understand the rest of the story, we first need to do a background dive into the man at the center of it, Joe Gao.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Before he was a headline-grabbing university official, Joe Gao was a student, and we found someone who knew Joe Gao in his earlier years. Would it be all right if we used your voice in the story?
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
For over 40 years, Dr. Zoltan worked in Penn State's communications department, where he focused on the history of standup comedy and rock and roll. He met Joe back in the early 1980s.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
This episode contains references to pornography and might not be suitable for younger listeners. Throughout the year, Americans celebrate all sorts of traditions that many of us aren't even aware of. In the summer, millions of people turn on their TV to celebrate Discovery Channel's Shark Week.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
What you're hearing right now is a disco remix of the Penn State fight song that Jerry released in the late 1970s.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Around the same time, Joe Gao was also trying to make it as a musician. He had a band called Johnny Deadline that he headlined as singer and guitarist.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
As you can hear, Dr. Zoltan sent us a copy. This is track one, titled Joe Cool.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
And I asked Dr. Zoltan what he thought Joe's aspirations were at the time.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
We reached out to a few other people who knew Joe back when he was trying to make it as a musician. One of these people characterized Joe as a ham who enjoyed attention.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Neither Joe nor Dr. Zoltan made it big in the recording industry, but both found their way to successful academic careers. Dr. Zoltan taught at Penn State for over 40 years. He still plays music and recently appeared in Henry Louis Gates Jr. 's documentary, Gospel, which you can watch on PBS.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Joe Gow earned his PhD at Penn State in 1989. From there, he worked as a professor and later took on administrative roles at universities across the Midwest. By 2007, he was appointed chancellor at the University of Wisconsin's campus in the city of La Crosse, becoming the university's top official. And he very quickly won students' hearts with live guitar performances around campus.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
This is tape of a band that Joe Gao fronted that often played shows around campus. In case you didn't catch that, it's Joe saying, quote, I love being a chancellor of the university. It's cool, but I like doing this too. Let me show you a little. Chancellor Joe had a solid 10 years at the helm without controversy. Enrollment numbers at the university increased by 5% in that period.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Each September, educators and libraries host public readings to commemorate Banned Books Week.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
And if you look through quotes in the student paper from the time period, the student body liked him. They seemed to get a kick out of how present he was on campus. but 2018 marked a change for Chancellor Joe. This is when he invited adult film star Nina Hartley to speak on campus, as we heard at the top of the episode.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
In a highly public reprimand, the UW system president, who oversees all 13 UW campuses, said he was deeply disappointed. Chancellor Joe was warned that his future raises would depend on avoiding any similar behavior.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Pretty immediately, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, also known as FIRE, a nonprofit founded to protect free speech on college campuses, accused UW system leaders of engaging in censorship. Chancellor Joe managed to play it off by paying the speaker fee for Nina Hartley, and the issue was dropped.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
He enjoyed six more years free of scandal before announcing that the 2023-2024 school year would be his last as chancellor. He was stepping down. The UW System president heaped nothing but praise on Chancellor Joe, saying, Chancellor Joe told Wisconsin Public Radio he was looking forward to being able to spend more time at home.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
His wife was writing a vegan cookbook while he was experimenting with online video production. And boy, oh boy, was he.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
And every October, college campuses observe Free Speech Week. You might not celebrate this in your everyday life, but universities across the U.S. do. And in 2018, the University of Wisconsin's campus in the city of La Crosse marked this hallowed week by inviting adult film star and sex educator Nina Hartley to speak to the students.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
To help tell the rest of the story, I want to reintroduce Josh Moody, who you heard at the very beginning of this episode. Josh is a reporter for Inside Higher Ed, a trade magazine that covers colleges and universities in the States.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
In 2023, Joe Gao was stepping down from the chancellorship at the end of the academic year. But there was a hitch in soon to be just Professor Joe's plan.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
So here's what happened. Just before Thanksgiving Day, 2023, Chancellor Joe and his wife created a profile on adult websites, Pornhub.com and XHamster.com, and soon began uploading a few professionally shot videos of themselves having sex with titles like Juicy Anniversary and Bedroom Shenanigans.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
A few weeks later, on December 8th, 2023, Chancellor Joe and his wife released a cooking video on their YouTube page.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
Your go-to show for plant-based food. In the inaugural episode, they cooked vegan fajitas alongside adult film star Sophie Marie. The cooking videos also look professional, not unlike what you'd see on the Food Network.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
From there, the cooking video transforms into two women suggestively sharing a glass of wine. The camera peeks up their skirts before fading out. Presumably, that's when the X-rated content begins. Here, a screen pops up that says, to see the full uncut scene, visit our loyal fans page.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
But then, all of a sudden, you're looking at slow motion shots of vegetables being sauteed before being welcomed back by Joe.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 1
The next day, sexy happy couple posted another cooking video with another porn star with another cut to an adult scene and a link to their loyal fans page. Four days later, another video, this time featuring their old friend, Nina Hartley. These videos were online for three weeks, completely unprotected by a paywall before anyone at the university caught wind of them.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
The money would have kept flowing, and the guys could have continued living above the law, if not for the events of March 4th, 2016. Events that revealed just how reckless and out of control their operation had become. On the afternoon of March 4th, 2016, two College of Charleston students were playing Call of Duty in their off-campus apartment when a real gunshot rang out.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Their housemate and fellow College of Charleston student, Patrick Moffley, had been shot in the chest. Instead of administering first aid, Patrick's housemates frantically set about destroying evidence, flushing drugs down the toilet, and burying their pills in the neighbors' trash.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
By the time police arrived, Patrick was drifting in and out of consciousness, pressing Chipotle napkins against a gaping wound in his chest. Scattered around his body were hundreds of loose white pills.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Max has written for a bunch of publications, including The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and Esquire. And back in 2016, he was working on a story for GQ about cocaine smuggling in Ho Chi Minh City. it got him thinking about a different drug, a drug that he'd seen everywhere back when he was in college, Xanax.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Patrick was rushed into surgery at a nearby emergency room, but by that evening, he was pronounced dead. The coroner found Elprazolin in his bloodstream. Seemingly unfazed by their friend's death, Patrick's housemates left the next day for their spring break trip to Puerto Rico.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
But in the wider Charleston community, the murder sent shockwaves and dominated local headlines, especially because of the Moffley name.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Police were under intense pressure, not just to find out who killed Patrick Moffley, but also to trace the source of the pills scattered around his body. As it turned out, the two were deeply connected. Investigators soon discovered that Patrick had been murdered by two men he'd met through off-campus drug deals. They'd shown up that night, intending to rob him of his Xanax supply.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
While Patrick himself wasn't a member of a fraternity, he was tied to the fraternity-run drug operation. And as police dug deeper into where Patrick got his pills and who else was selling, they began to unravel the massive drug operation featuring dark web alprazolin powder, freshman pledges recruited as drug runners, and distribution networks spanning the Southeast.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
In June 2016, six months after Patrick's murder, the Charleston police chief held a press conference. He announced that the investigation had resulted in one of the biggest drug busts in the city's history.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
The suspects, three of whom were KAs and two SAEs, were facing a combined 29 counts of state narcotics charges.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
For the first time, it seemed like fraternity guys at Charleston might actually face some real consequences.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
And it felt like the reckoning with fraternity culture was taking place not just at the College of Charleston, but all across the country.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Xanax is an anti-anxiety pill, and it's often referred to as a bar because of its rectangular shape.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Adding to this sense of shifting tides was the 2016 election, when a lot of people believed we were about to have our first female president.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
By November 2020, just four years after Patrick Moffley's murder, Kappa Alpha Order, a key fraternity in the drug operation, was back on the College of Charleston campus.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
In the end, of the eight guys arrested, only one, Mikey Schmidt, served time in prison. The others were given suspended sentences in exchange for helping the police arrest Mikey.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Most of the young men arrested in the drug bust have not faced life-changing consequences.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
When Max was several months into his reporting, a source told him something truly shocking. He learned that back in 2012, less than five years before Patrick's murder, multiple members of the Kappa Alpha fraternity had died due to drug-related issues. In fact, the fraternity had lost three brothers in less than six months.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
What made this revelation even more startling was that no one else he'd spoken to had thought to mention it. Several fraternity brothers had never even heard about these deaths before. And in the wake of these deaths, the school had never launched an investigation into the fraternity.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Xanax has been around since the 1980s, but it's only in recent years that it's become so popular as a recreational drug.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast. This episode was written and reported by Margo Gray. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliot Adler, and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprungkaiser and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed, and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss-Berman, J.D.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Crowley, Leah Reese-Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Shuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hilary Van Ornum. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at campusfilespod at gmail.com.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
But Max was less interested in why Xanax was so popular with Gen Z. He wanted to know where all the Xanax on college campuses was coming from, because it definitely didn't look legit.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Max began his research with a simple Google search. He'd mainly seen Xanax in the context of fraternity parties before, so he typed in Xanax fraternity. The top result was an article from the Charleston Post and Courier titled Cocaine, Pills, and Textbooks. It detailed a recent drug bust at the College of Charleston, where police had uncovered a multi-million dollar drug operation. The mugshots?
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Eight guys, all between 19 and 25 years old. Most were current or former fraternity members.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
While the guys arrested may have looked like amateurs, their operation was anything but. In fact, the police report sounded like a Breaking Bad episode, complete with hundreds of thousands of dollars in hidden cash and tens of thousands of black market Xanax pills.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Pretty soon, Max was on a flight to South Carolina, bound for the College of Charleston.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
When Max first got to the College of Charleston campus, fraternity guys weren't exactly lining up to talk to him about the drug operation.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
When Max finally did get the students to open up, the stories he heard were far more shocking than he'd expected. He'd originally planned to just write an article about the rise of Xanax in Greek life. But as he dug deeper into the drug operation, the story took on a life of its own, eventually becoming the basis for his book, Among the Bros, A Fraternity Crime Story.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Until recently, getting Xanax required either a doctor's prescription or a drug dealer with access to the Pfizer supply chain. But that's no longer the case.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Think of the dark web as an underground version of Amazon, where people buy and sell illegal goods online. What really sets it apart is the encrypted browser.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Using the dark web, guys at Charleston ordered alprazolin powder, which is the active ingredient in Xanax, from labs in southern China. This powder then arrived by mail, hidden inside printer cartridges.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
The next step in the operation was to transform the powder into pills. This took place in beach houses off the coast of Charleston.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
The pill press had also been ordered from China through the dark web, and the pills it produced varied in strength. Some contained barely any alprazolam powder, while others had two to three times the recommended dose.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
The pills were carefully packaged inside emptied Skittle bags. Then, they were ready for sale.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
And the beauty of being in a fraternity was that they had a large client base right at their fingertips.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
But they didn't just sell to fraternities on Charleston's campus. They sold to fraternities all across the Southeast, at Ole Miss, South Carolina, Duke, UNC, University of Georgia, and beyond.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
They were able to move and sell such huge quantities of Xanax at once because the drug doesn't carry a trafficking charge in South Carolina.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Xanax is also much easier to smuggle than a drug like marijuana since it's lightweight and doesn't have a smell.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Above the Law and Under the Influence perfectly describes how the fraternity guys at the College of Charleston operated. Let me take you on a brief detour to show just how invincible they felt. This detour brings us to Mountain Weekend 2012. Mountain Weekend was an off-campus, weekend-long party hosted by one of the various fraternities involved in the drug operation, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, or SAE.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
While the fire grew, a park ranger arrived at the scene. But the guys in SAE didn't panic. Instead, they doused a football in chemicals, lit it on fire, and tossed it in the park ranger's direction.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Max dedicates an entire chapter of his book to the story of Mountain Weekend. For one, it's a lens into why fraternity guys felt like they were above the law and why they believed they could pull off a drug operation without facing consequences. But Max thinks it's also a window into why many of them started dealing in the first place.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, the story of a multi-million dollar drug ring run by fraternity brothers at the College of Charleston.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Because of a culture that not only permits, but rewards being above the law.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Max thinks breaking the law became something of a status symbol. It signaled that you had the money, connections, and power to get away with criminal activity.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Once you understand that about Greek life, Max says, it's easier to see why these guys would start dealing drugs. There was no quicker way to gain clout or boost status than dealing. And the profits didn't hurt either.
Campus Files
The Party Never Ends
Some of the guys were ultimately making so much money that they had to launder their profits through the fraternity's books, disguising drug money as fraternity donations or party expenses.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, the suicide of a Harvard student triggers a secretive administrative tribunal so scandalous that Harvard spent decades trying to keep it hidden. Harvard University is a household name. Founded well before the Declaration of Independence, it holds a central place in American history and culture.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
One student, though, never learned of his expulsion. On June 11th, 1920, Eugene Cummings, a Harvard Dental School student and a subject of the court's inquiry, committed suicide by poison. Two Harvard Men Die Suddenly, read the headline of the Boston American on June 19th, 1920. Eugene Cummings' suicide was the second at Harvard in just one month.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
The investigation that Harvard had pursued so aggressively and secretly was starting to receive attention. The article read in part,
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Harvard denied Eugene's story. In a private letter to the parents of one of the expelled students, the dean wrote, every effort has been made to prevent any knowledge of this affair from becoming public. While the university worked hard to suppress any publicity, it also expanded the scope of its punishment. Harvard sought to have Cyril's ex-lover and his coworker fired from their jobs as waiters.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
And in addition to expelling students from campus, the court directed the alumni office to place a note in each student's file, requiring that Harvard provide a negative response to any question about the reputation or academics of punished students. As a result of this directive, at least three students were denied admission to other universities.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Even after the court disbanded, the dean continued his campaign of punishment by personally outing each student to his family. In letters to parents, he described these students as guilty of behavior, quote, "...so unspeakably gross that the intimates of those who commit these acts become tainted."
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
The devastating consequences of the court's investigation changed the lives of those it punished. The students carried the weight of that secret for the rest of their lives. And it wasn't until shortly after the last of the so-called guilty died that the story finally resurfaced.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
The story could just have easily remained hidden. Everyone who had lived through it was gone. The only newspaper that had reported on Eugene's suicide had long since shut down. And Harvard administrators certainly weren't eager to publicize the story.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Limited and redacted access to the findings was finally granted after months of back and forth. Those findings were published in a two-part article titled, The Secret Court of 1920, and the revelation sent shockwaves across campus. The story made headlines in the Washington Post and in the New York Times.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Over the centuries, it's been celebrated for its triumphs and hailed as the birthplace of some of the world's most influential leaders. But like any institution of its stature, Harvard has chapters in its history it would prefer to keep hidden.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
And soon after, the Harvard Crimson ran an editorial calling on the university to issue posthumous degrees to the students it had punished. Harvard's president at the time, Larry Summers, responded to the controversy by saying, whatever attitudes may have been prevalent then, persecuting individuals on the basis of sexual orientation is abhorrent and an affront to the values of our university.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
We are a better and more just community today because those attitudes have changed as much as they have. As of yet, Harvard has declined to issue posthumous degrees. Most recently, in 2020, on the 100th anniversary of the Secret Court, a student-led group called the Secret Court 100 organized a series of events.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
During one of those events, Tim led a panel where he discussed the concept of the Harvard Man, the sharp, well-dressed, hyper-masculine ideal that defined the era. I asked him to elaborate on that idea.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Tim talks about the deeply entrenched contradictions within Harvard's culture, the tension between the idealized vision of the Harvard man and the reality that has always simmered just beneath the surface. Here's how he sees it.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
There's one more detail I want to share from what Amit uncovered in the secret court files. Earlier, you heard about an anonymous letter the court received, naming students tied to the parties in Perkins Hall. But there's another anonymous letter I haven't mentioned yet. Tucked inside it is a warning.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
at least 50 guilty students, most of whom completely escaped the court's scrutiny, would, quote, no doubt continue in this misconduct and spread the practice until it may get beyond you, unquote. The letter is full of homophobic language, but it also provides evidence that despite the court's efforts to suppress it, queer life at Harvard continued. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
This episode was written and reported by Ian Mont. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliot Adler, and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprungkaiser and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed, and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss-Berman, J.D.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Crowley, Leah Reese-Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Shuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hilary Van Ornum. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at campusfilespod at gmail.com. College holds a mythic place in American culture.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Tim went to Harvard for undergrad in the early 1990s. He was back there as a professor in 2002 when one of those closely guarded secrets finally came to light, much to the administration's dismay, a student reporter who spent months fighting for access to an archive labeled Secret Court. That secret was uncovered by Amit.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
It's often considered the best four years of your life and hailed as a beacon of integrity and excellence. But beyond the polished campus tours, there are stories you won't find in the admissions pamphlets.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
It's no wonder that college campuses capture the nation's attention, especially in moments of upheaval. I'm Margo Gray. Each week on the Campus Files podcast, we bring you a new story.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
On Campus Files, we cover everything from rigged admissions to the drama of Greek life.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Listen to and follow Campus Files, an Odyssey original podcast. Available now on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
When Harvard finally relented, Amit discovered records of a deeply invasive tribunal led by some of the university's most prominent administrators. This tribunal, known as the Secret Court, was convened after the suicide of Cyril Wilcox, whose tragic story we heard at the start of the episode.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Harry was a waiter at a Boston cafe, known to be a popular gathering spot for the city's gay community. Harry was eight years older than Cyril, but they hit it off right away. According to friends, the two were almost inseparable for months. But eventually, things fell apart. Cyril ended the relationship and Harry did not take it well.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
He was allegedly so distraught over the breakup that he threatened to out Cyril to Harvard administrators. On the night of May 13th, Cyril confided in his older brother about his relationship with Harry. By the next day, Cyril was dead, leaving his brother heartbroken. The story could very well have ended here, but a letter from a friend arrived for Cyril after he died.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
The content of that letter was not only deeply personal, but also highly incriminating.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
One of the letters came from a classmate named Ernest, the son of a prominent state politician.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
This episode contains reference to suicide. Please take care while listening. In May 1920, a small town paper in Massachusetts ran a story about the death of a Harvard student named Cyril. Cyril's death was attributed to accidental suffocation. But in truth, Cyril had committed suicide.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
The letter from Ernest spanned nine pages and revealed that Cyril had been part of a vibrant, though secretive, gay community at Harvard. Cyril's brother was shocked. He had long believed that Cyril had been coerced into the relationship. But this letter, and another that arrived soon after, painted a very different picture, that Cyril had been a willing, even eager participant.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
In the 1920s, sexuality was just beginning to be studied by social scientists. But for most people, sexual activity was still seen through a religious lens, with same-sex relationships considered sinful. Cyril's brother shared that view.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Just over a week after Cyril's death, his older brother showed up at the doorstep of Cyril's ex, Harry Dreyfuss. The details of their conversation remain unclear, but by the end of it, Cyril's brother had a list of allegedly gay Harvard students in hand, and Harry was bloodied and beaten in his own home.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Later that day, armed with letters and names, Cyril's brother went to meet with the dean of Harvard College. What he shared in that meeting led directly to the creation of the Secret Court, a tribunal made up of five influential Harvard administrators.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
In the following weeks, the court would orchestrate a secretive, invasive, and shockingly effective inquisition into the sexual lives of Harvard students. Those students who were unlucky enough to be caught up in it found their lives forever changed.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Two weeks after Cyril's death, Ernest, the author of the nine-page letter that had been intercepted and was now in the hands of the court, received a note from the dean of Harvard College.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Ernest was the son of a prominent Massachusetts politician. Any trouble at Harvard would lead to embarrassment for his family. So the risk of this summons was enormous.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
His death, and the moments leading up to it, kick-started a series of events at Harvard that would lead to the creation of a secret court, the expulsion of multiple students, and ultimately, another tragic death. For nearly a century, these events remained hidden until a reporter for the Harvard Crimson stumbled upon an archive mysteriously labeled Secret Court.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
From the court's perspective, leveling an accusation like this against any student carried risk, but the stakes were much higher when the student in question was the son of a respected politician. In other words, the burden of proof was high. The trouble was, Ernest seemed to be at the heart of it all.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
The court knew from the letters that his dorm room was the central meeting point for this entire social circle. So, with commencement just weeks away, the court decided to pursue an intense investigation to secure the evidence they needed.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
The court gave the proctor three days to monitor Ernest's room, instructing him to report back with the names of everyone who visited.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
On deadline, a list of names was delivered, and it mostly matched the names from the two letters that Cyril's brother had submitted to the court. That same day, an anonymous letter arrived addressed to the court. The writer claimed to be a student with knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Cyril's suicide.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Within 24 hours, Kenneth Day, who was mentioned in Ernest's letter, the Proctor's surveillance report, and the anonymous letter, became the first student summoned for interrogation. No transcripts from these interrogations remain, but notes and findings make it clear that the conversation was far from friendly.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Kenneth, the first student summoned for interrogation, was Cyril's freshman year roommate and also spent time in Ernest's dorm room. Though only sparse notes remain from the interrogation, it seems Kenneth quickly realized just how much the court already knew.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Adding to the pressure to cooperate was the fact that both of his parents were deceased, meaning he depended on relatives for financial support to attend Harvard. In the end, Kenneth confirmed the guilt of each student under investigation, including Ernest, and his testimony prompted the court to intensify its investigation.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
It's unclear exactly how many people were summoned in total, but the court was bold enough to call in two individuals completely unaffiliated with Harvard, Cyril's former lover, Harry, and one of Harry's coworkers. With both men, the court was able to extract additional information. Ultimately, the court felt confident enough to summon Ernest.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
To the outside world, Ernest appeared to be a respectable figure. He'd served in Harvard's unit of the Student Army Training Corps during World War I and had planned to attend Harvard Medical School after graduation. He also had a public heterosexual relationship with a woman in a nearby town.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
But by the time the court launched its investigation, his grades had slipped and he was placed on academic probation. A letter from his father helped keep his medical school hopes alive, but his future at Harvard was still on shaky ground. It's unclear whether Ernest had heard from friends about what was coming when he was called in by the court.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Upon arriving, he initially denied any involvement, but seemed to change his tune when he realized how much the court already knew. In an apparent attempt to save himself, he threw Cyril under the bus, claiming that Cyril had led both him and Kenneth, the first student questioned, astray. By the time the court finished its interrogations, it had gathered enough evidence to take action.
Campus Files
Harvard's Secret Court
Harvard punished 10 students, seven of whom were expelled and ordered to leave Cambridge immediately. Ernest was ordered to withdraw from Harvard and leave campus. Along with this directive, the Dean of Harvard sent him a note with a threat.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Im Frühjahr 2021 hat Evan mit einem Top-Ranking-USC-Affizienten über Video getroffen.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, we dig into how USC outsourced its prestigious social work program to a for-profit company and kept it hidden from students. This is Evan. He attended Martin Luther King Junior High School just west of downtown Nashville.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Evan hat gelernt, dass das Programm, das er beteiligt hatte, nicht tatsächlich von USC gestaltet wurde. Stattdessen wurde es von einer Vor-Profit-Firma genannt, die 2U.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
2U is what's known as an Online Program Manager, or OPM. It's a for-profit company that partners with universities to manage their online programs. In exchange, 2U takes a share of the tuition revenue. But the students don't realize they're dealing with 2U. They think they're simply enrolled in USC's online school. In reality, USC contributed nothing to the program except its name.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
The online MSW program had entirely different professors, a different curriculum, and even different admission standards.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Evan was shaken, to say the least. Everything he'd been told about the program was a lie.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
But Evans' relief didn't last very long. Because after the meeting, the USC official went silent. He followed up by email. Still, no response.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Evan glaubt, dass der US-C-Affizier ihm wirklich helfen wollte. Aber er glaubt, dass sie später bemerkt hat, dass das Problem viel größer war, als sie es lösen konnte.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Ein paar Monate später hat der USC-Affizient verabschiedet, leaving Evan without an advocate. With nowhere else to turn, he channeled his frustration into his schoolwork.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Im Mai 2021 hat Evan das Programm verabschiedet. USC hat einen in-Person-Graduationstermin auf der Kampus. Und Evans Eltern flogen in, um ihn zu feiern. Aber, wie wir am Anfang des Episodes gehört haben, stormte Evan aus der Zeremonie, ohne sein Diplom zu sammeln.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Das Programm hatte Evan mit über 100.000 Dollar in Debt verlassen und nicht näher, als er sich für eine Karriere als Therapeut vorbereitet hätte.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
As it turned out, the groundswell of support from people in debt revealed an even deeper controversy. A month later, a Wall Street Journal investigation uncovered the truth. It confirmed what the USC official had told Devin. USC's program was in fact being run by a for-profit company, 2U. But the article also revealed something Evan didn't know.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
The program was specifically targeting low-income individuals, not for their talent or potential, but because they qualified for federal aid money.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
This is Eileen Connor, Director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, or PPSL. Her organization has helped eliminate over $22 billion in student debt and continues to fight to end predatory student lending.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Und das ist genau so, wie es für Evan geschehen ist. Seine Lohnzahlen gingen direkt in den USC und 2U-Pockets. Aber er selbst wurde mit all den Risiken verletzt, die dafür verantwortlich waren, sie zurückzuzahlen. Historisch waren die schlechten Täter, die die predatorischen Lohnzahlen machten, Vor-Profit-Schulen.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Plätze wie die Korinthian-Kollegen, ITT und die Kunstinstitute, die während der 1990er-Jahre geflüchtet haben. In recent years, these institutions have faced growing scrutiny for their exploitative practices, for issuing loans to students they knew would struggle to repay them.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Eileen erklärt, dass predatory lending nicht verschwunden ist. Es ist nur entwickelt. Nun steigen Vor-Profit-Konzerne wie 2U ein. Sie helfen Schulen mit der steigenden Anforderung auf Online-Education. Eine Anforderung, die seit der Covid-Pandemie aufgewachsen ist.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
The pitch sounds great in theory. These online schools allow universities to reach more students and boost their revenue. The problem though is that students generally have no idea about the behind the scenes arrangement. They think they're paying to attend USC or another university, not 2U.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
For example, Evan had no idea that the USC admissions counselor who guided him through his application process was actually a 2U recruiter.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Der 2U-Rekruter war nicht für Evans beste Interesse. Seine Arbeit war es, ihn zu enrolieren. Auf jeden Fall. Auch wenn das ihn über Finanzhilfe verletzt hat. Und das kommt zum Herzen des Problems. 2U's Mission liegt grundlegend bei den Ausgaben von den USCs. Als Vor-Profit-Familie ist 2U's Priorität, die Ausgaben zu maximieren.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Aber für Evan war die größte Herausforderung nicht das Verlangen von Ressourcen. Es war das Navigieren der Schule als offensichtlich gayer Student.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Der USC, auf der anderen Seite, sollte nicht von Ausgaben geführt werden. Es soll darauf konzentriert sein, eine weltweite Bildung für seine Schülerinnen und Schüler zu bieten.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
As for exactly how many of these companies exist and how much revenue they generate, Eileen says we don't know, since there's very little transparency in the industry.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Aber wir wissen, dass diese Firmen hunderte Universitäten und Universitäten in den Vereinigten Staaten versäumt haben, Schulen wie Vanderbilt, Georgetown und Fordham zu signen. Die breite Anwendung dieser Programme ist Teil dessen, was Eileen und ihr Team bei PPSL inspiriert hat, eine Klassik-Aktion gegen die USZ-Fraktion durchzuführen.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Sie hoffen, eine klare Botschaft an die Universitäten zu senden. Wenn dein Geschäftsmodell auf die Verzweiflung von Studenten abhängt, ist es Zeit, es wiederherzustellen.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Die Klassik-Aktion-Lawsuit ist aktuell durch das legale System weitergegangen. Evan ist einer der Hunderten von Menschen, die besagt haben, dass sie über die Qualität des Programms verurteilt wurden.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Today, while Evan awaits the outcome of the class action lawsuit, he's working as a therapist, a career path that wasn't easy to achieve.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Glücklicherweise muss niemand bei USC das, was Evan gemacht hat, durchgehen. Denn am Ende des Jahres 2023 beendete die Universität ihre 15-jährige Partnerschaft mit 2U. Aber das Erkennungspotenzial beobachtete Fragen über das breitere OPM-Modell und machte keinen Hinweis auf das langfristige Gesetz.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Und am selben Tag enthüllte 2U Pläne, 50 neue Online-Programme mit sechs anderen Institutionen zu eröffnen. Special thanks to Aaron Ament for sharing his insights and expertise. Campus Files is an Odyssey Original Podcast. This episode was written and reported by Margot Gray. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliot Adler and me, Margot Gray.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Our executive producers and story editors are Maddy Sprungkaiser and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to original theme music by James Waterman and Davy Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at campusfilespod at gmail.com.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
As high school drew to a close, Evan was eager to leave Tennessee for college. But figuring out how to pay for it was a whole other challenge.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Es war nicht einfach, aber Evan hat es geschafft, finanzielle Unterstützung zu erhalten. Er ist zwischen einigen Universitäten geflogen, bevor er am Ende an der UC Santa Barbara landete. Im Jahr 2019 hat er von der UCSB begonnen mit einem Degree in Philosophie und religiösen Studien.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Es ist Juni 2022. Die Universität Südkalifornien feiert den Abschlussabschluss für ihr Sozialarbeitsprogramm. Ein Student namens Evan ist einer der tausenden Graduierenden an der Zeremonie.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
So Evan set his sights on becoming a therapist. But he knew it wouldn't happen overnight. First, he had to get his Master's in Social Work, or MSW, a degree required for most counseling jobs.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
USC's MSW-Programm is one of the oldest in the country, dating back to 1920. From the start, it was a trailblazer. Long before it became common practice, USC sent students beyond the classroom to work directly with immigrant communities in Los Angeles. Dann, im Jahr 2010, brach es wieder neue Gründe. Diesmal mit der Eröffnung einer vollständigen Online-Version ihres In-Person-Programms.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
USC's MSW-Programm seemed like the perfect option. It promised the flexibility of studying online while offering the same opportunities as the in-person program. According to USC's website, it featured the exact same faculty, curriculum and access to career services.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Der Unterrichtsvorsitzende erklärte, dass sie für USC arbeitete und dort war, um Evan durch den Applikationsprozess zu bewegen.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Sie hat die Zeit genommen, um ihn zu kennen. Seine Leben, seine Geschichte und was seine Interesse im sozialen Arbeit inspiriert hat.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Evan was cautiously optimistic, since his acceptance was far from guaranteed. After all, he was applying to the number one MSW program in the country, per USC's website.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Evan konnte seine Enttäuschung kaum beobachten. Er wurde in den Online-MSW-Programm von USC akzeptiert. Von all den Programmen, die er eingeladen hat, war dieser der größte. Aber es gab einen Wunsch. Es war auch der teuerste. Der Zwei-Jahre-Degree kostete über 110.000 Dollar, weit über Evans Budget. Er rief diese Sorgen an seinen Unterrichtsvorsitzenden.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Sie sagte, du musst es einfach akzeptieren. Der Ausbildungsvorsitzende hat Evan bemerkt, dass er einen Lohn nehmen könnte und sich nicht daran beruhigen würde, ihn zurückzuzahlen. Das Finanzhilfe-Office würde es mit ihrem eigenen Budget besorgen. Aber Evan war noch wütend.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Letztendlich, fehlend, dass er die Möglichkeit verlieren würde, hat Evan die Entscheidung gemacht, sich zu enrollieren.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Evan begann, die Beratung des Finanzdienstes zu erheben. Aber seine Anrufe und E-Mails wurden nicht beantwortet.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Evan had expected USC's professors to be top notch. But instead, he found himself in a class where the professor was teaching blatantly inaccurate information.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Evan begann, seine Professorin zu recherchieren. Und sein Stomach sinkte wieder.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Für irgendeinen Außerirdischen sah es sich wie eine Routine an der Graduierungszeremonie aussehen. Aber für diejenigen, die durch das Sozialwissenschaftsprogramm waren, war die Hypokrise glärend.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
In one class, the professor didn't even bother to pretend that he was putting in any effort.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
But it wasn't just the professors that seemed off. His classmates also weren't what he expected from the top MSW program in the country.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Um die Dinge schlimmer zu machen, war es nicht nur der akademische Schwachsinn, der schlug ab. Keine der Ressourcen, die USC versprochen hatte, waren für ihn verfügbar.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Students had also been promised clinical internships in the field. While Evan managed to secure a decent one, that wasn't the case for the majority of his peers.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
But Evan did. So he started advocating for himself and his classmates. First, by raising his concerns directly with the professors.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
So Evan tried a new approach. He began reaching out to members of the administration.
Campus Files
Trojan Course
Nach Monaten, in denen er die Kette übernommen wurde, hat Evan ein Meeting mit einem hochrangigen Universitätsanwalt gegründet, der sowohl die in-Person- als auch die Online-Social-Work-Programme übernommen hat. Er hat vorsichtig geplant, was er sagen würde, aber nichts konnte ihn vorbereiten, was sie erläutern würde.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Back on campus, news of George's death had quickly spread through the fraternity house.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Later that morning, the Pledges all received a text telling them SAE had retained a lawyer and that none of them should speak to the police without a lawyer. So the SAE brothers and Pledges were prepared. They told investigators that George had been out partying that night before being kidnapped.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
They implied he'd already consumed a lot of alcohol and that anything that happened after the kidnapping was insignificant in comparison. But the girl George saw later that night told police he was not intoxicated at the time. The DA filed criminal charges against four students. But much to Marie's dismay, all four were later acquitted.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
That's Marie. She moved to Brooklyn from Haiti, where she and George's father built a life together. But when George was just two years old, his father fell seriously ill and passed away within the year.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
After the criminal case fell apart, Marie was presented with another option. A family friend who had been supporting her offered to help find a lawyer. That's when she was introduced to Doug. By then, he'd already spent over a decade advocating for families in hazing cases across the country.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Doug wasted no time. On Marie's behalf, he filed a lawsuit against SAE. His first objective was to uncover the truth of what happened that night.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Doug was able to use the civil case to get access to evidence.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
The expert testimony contradicted what the pledges told police. If George were just casually drinking, like the fraternity claimed, the effects of the alcohol would build over time, enough for him to pass out before drinking nearly that much. The only way his BAC could have been so elevated was through force.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Uncovering the events of that night was just the first step. The ultimate goal was to push for policy changes at SAE. But working with fraternities proved challenging, since they operate under a unique and often opaque structure.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
It's important to note that at the national level, SAE is led by adults, typically middle-aged or older. And at the convention following George's death, SAE's national leadership introduced a constitutional amendment banning alcohol in all chapter houses.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
This gets at one of the reasons fraternities remain so dangerous. Most are run from the bottom up, meaning undergraduates have to approve any major changes. But these same undergraduates, often through no fault of their own, are the least equipped to recognize or understand the risks. And Doug doesn't exactly have high hopes for change in the future.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Marie never let being a single mother get in the way of giving George everything. She juggled two jobs, including working as a public health advisor. And her sacrifices allowed her to send George to Berkeley Carroll, a private school in Brooklyn.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
In the end, Doug and Marie reached a confidential settlement with SAE, which included a number of policy changes aimed at preventing another tragedy like George's. While SAE couldn't implement the proposal to go alcohol-free, in 2014, after another hazing-related death, they abolished the pledging process altogether.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
At Cornell, the university president announced a series of fraternity-wide policy changes, including the introduction of live-in advisors. The university also forced SAE to vacate its house.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Cornell also worked with Marie to create a memorial for George, which still stands in a prominent location on campus.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
In the years following George's death, incidents of hazing at SAE appeared to decrease. But in 2019, a freshman member of SAE at UC Irvine died from alcohol poisoning, revealing that progress has been limited. And in 2022, SAE was reinstated at Cornell and allowed back in its original fraternity house.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
In the years since, Marie has spoken to various fraternities about George. It's her hope that what happened to him never happens again and that hazing will one day go away. As she says, brothers and sisters should help each other, not hurt each other.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Every year from 1959 to 2022, at least one student has died due to hazing, died by the hand of their brother, died while trying to join a club, leaving parents and family with a pain that endures.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
But through Doug, Marie has found some solace in a community of parents who share her experience.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Marie and other families who have lost children to hazing recently achieved a major legislative victory. In December 2024, President Biden signed the first ever federal anti-hazing law. As part of this legislation, colleges and universities will now be required to document and publicly report hazing incidents as part of their annual campus crime statistics.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
The amendment also mandates that institutions develop and enforce comprehensive hazing prevention programs. Marie, who met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to advocate for the law, shared her thoughts with us in a message. We are happy after so many years of going to D.C. and talking to senators and Congress, but the work has just started.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
The holidays are always hard, no matter how long it has been. The pain of the empty nest is always hard. As for Doug, he's continued to work with parents and families across the country. And before our call wrapped up, he wanted to underscore that the loss parents like Marie face is more than can ever be communicated in a news story or a podcast.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Special thanks to Marie Andre for speaking with us about her son, George. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast. This episode was written and reported by Ian Mont. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliot Adler, and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprungkaiser and Lloyd Lockhart. College holds a mythic place in American culture.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
It's often considered the best four years of your life and hailed as a beacon of integrity and excellence. But beyond the polished campus tours, there are stories you won't find in the admissions pamphlets.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
It's no wonder that college campuses capture the nation's attention, especially in moments of upheaval. I'm Margo Gray. Each week on the Campus Files podcast, we bring you a new story.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
On Campus Files, we cover everything from rigged admissions to the drama of Greek life.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Listen to and follow Campus Files, an Odyssey original podcast, available now on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Campus Files is edited, mixed, and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss-Berman, J.D. Crowley, Leah Reese-Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Shuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hilary Van Ornum.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at campusfilespod at gmail.com.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Cornell not only accepted George, but also offered him a generous scholarship. It was an easy decision for him to make, and Marie was overjoyed. As she always had, she focused on preparing him for life on his own.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
In his freshman year, George decided to pledge a fraternity and received a bid from Sigma Alpha Epsilon, or SAE for short.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
This episode contains descriptions of violence and kidnapping. Please take care while listening. George Tedun was a sophomore at Cornell University in February, 2011. He was busy studying to become a doctor, but he still made time every week to call his mother, Marie, and every Friday, his godfather.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
As far as Marie knew, George joined SAE the way students join any organization, by simply signing up. She didn't know that fraternities were different and that George was enduring a grueling and often dangerous pledging process.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
On paper, pledging is meant to be a six to 10 week process in which the pledge, the hopeful future brother, learns about the fraternity's history and values while the fraternity gets to know the pledge. If it's a good fit, the pledge is accepted. But in reality, the process is much more brutal, exhausting, and at times, even deadly.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
That's Doug Fehrberg. He's an attorney who specializes in fraternity misconduct.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
We don't know the specifics of the hazing George endured during his pledge process, but he made it through. And on the other side, he found friendship, study partners, and networking opportunities. He even secured a room in Hillcrest, the fraternity's impressive Tudor-style house. Pledging was behind him, and there was no more proving himself. At least, that's what he thought.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
When we think of hazing, we typically imagine the fraternity brothers targeting the younger pledges. But according to Doug, sometimes it works the other way around. The pledges are often expected to haze the brothers too. They have to prove that they can dish it out as much as they can take it.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
And apparently, the pledge class during George's sophomore year didn't quite live up to those expectations.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
So a group of pledges banded together and hatched a plan, one that would put George directly in the crosshairs.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
On a Thursday night in February, George was out with his friends. He had a slice of pizza and some soda at a local restaurant. From there, George went to his girlfriend's apartment where he stayed until a little after two in the morning. As part of pledging, George's fraternity assigned pledges to act as on-call drivers, basically a free private Uber for members of SAE.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
A witness that night later said that George tried to run, but couldn't because his hands and feet were zip-tied.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
One of the pledges would later claim that George could have been let go at any point if he just asked. But even if that were true, Doug says it oversimplifies the complicated situation George was facing.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
Another SAE brother had also been kidnapped, bound, and blindfolded alongside George. He would later recount some of what they were forced to consume, hot sauce, strawberry syrup, pixie sticks, chocolate powder, and large amounts of alcohol.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
The other SAE brother was forced to consume so many shots of vodka that he vomited in a trash bin after just 20 minutes.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, the hazing of George DeDune and a mother's fight for change.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
By the time the kidnappers finally arrived at the fraternity house, it was well past 3 a.m. George was unconscious and unresponsive, so they had to carry him inside. They tried to leave him in his room, but George's roommate, fearful of being targeted himself, had locked the door. Instead of searching for a key or waking someone,
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
The kidnappers carried George to the frat house library, where they left him alone on the couch, his hands and feet still bound.
Campus Files
The Hazing of George Desdunes
On the morning of February 25, 2011, the cleaner called 911 around 7 a.m. When police and firefighters arrived, there wasn't a single fraternity brother in sight. Meanwhile, Marie went to work as usual that afternoon. But when she arrived, it quickly became clear that something was terribly wrong.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Before diving into this episode, make sure to listen to UNC Parts 1 and 2. This one picks up right where we left off. The email took me by surprise. It landed in my inbox just as we were wrapping up the UNC story. The sender was Holden Thorpe, the former chancellor of UNC. He was the guy in charge when the university faced one of the worst athletic scandals in the history of college sports.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Breaking the news would not have been easy, particularly for Holden Thorpe, a lifelong Carolina fan who had not yet come to terms with the death of the Carolina Way himself.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Instead, Thorpe spent the next year dodging questions from reporters and clinging desperately to the Carolina way. But even he knew he couldn't hold on forever. On September 17, 2012, Holdenthorpe announced he was resigning as chancellor of UNC. The final blow wasn't tied to athletics, but instead to a separate scandal, one involving university fundraisers using school funds for personal trips.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
As the Chronicle of Higher Education put it, it was death by a thousand cuts for Holdenthorpe.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Thorpe's resignation was met with sadness on campus. The university's board of trustees urged him to reconsider, writing, But Thorpe had reached his limit. So I believe when you broke the news to the faculty chair that you were resigning, you said it was because, quote, they wore me down. Who exactly wore you down?
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
When Thorpe talks about sports trustees, he's referring to UNC board members with close ties to the athletic program. This group was a major headache for Thorpe throughout the scandal.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Thorpe was stuck in the middle. Sports fans, on the one hand, blasted him for working with the NCAA, while journalists accused him of covering up the truth. But the main force shaping his decisions wasn't either group. It was the crisis management team around him. They influenced his every move.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
When Thorpe couldn't sleep as a kid, his dad would try to lull him to rest by singing Hark the Sound, UNC's alma mater.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
The crisis management team held so much power, partly because Thorpe had no experience handling scandals. He's an academic, like most university leaders.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
In other words, there's often a disconnect between the skill sets of college presidents and the actual demands of the role. Thorpe experienced this firsthand during the athletic scandal. Despite having no background in college sports, he was tasked with leading the institution through the crisis.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Thorpe writes about this disconnect in a recent article for the Chronicle of Higher Education, titled, Where Does the College Presidency Go From Here? The Job is Increasingly Untenable. Change is Needed.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Even with his concerns about university leadership, Thorpe took on another administrative role. In July 2013, he became provost at Washington University in St. Louis. From this new position, far from Chapel Hill, he watched as the ticking time bomb at UNC finally went off. In 2014, former FBI General Counsel Kenneth Weinstein completed his investigation into UNC's academic misconduct.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
and released an explosive tell-all report.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
And was there anything in the report that Wayne Seen discovered that was at all shocking or surprising to you?
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
I would argue that the Wayne Sane report really put the nail in the coffin of the Carolina way, so to speak. How do you think Tar Heel fans reacted to this? You know, the realization that at the end of the day, they were maybe no better than the other schools, which had been cutting corners.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
When I asked him if prioritizing winning means UNC is still cutting corners to keep players eligible, Thorpe shared a telling anecdote.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
So when it came time for college, it was only fitting that he applied to just one university, UNC.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
And would you say you place more blame on the system itself rather than on an individual like Debbie Crowder?
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Thorpe noted that today, some of that money and power is shifting back to the athletes, thanks to a recent NCAA policy change. As of 2021, the introduction of name, image, and likeness rules, also known as NIL, has allowed college athletes to profit from their personal brands.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
This makes Thorpe one of the very few current or former university leaders who have publicly supported NIL.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Whatever Thorpe's thoughts on NIL or NCAA rules, he no longer has to concern himself with them. Today, he's come full circle back to where it all began, immersed once again in the world of science. He serves as the editor-in-chief of Science Magazine. Okay, so I must admit, I have been waiting to ask, after everything that you dealt with, do you still tune in for Carolina games?
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
UNC's dedication to athletics is as strong as ever. Just take a look at their recent decision to sign Bill Belichick as their new head football coach.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Belichick is a coaching legend with the second most career wins in NFL history.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Over the next five years, UNC will guarantee Belichick $50 million, with more than $3 million annually in potential bonuses. Following Belichick's hire, UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts said, Carolina is committed to excellence and to creating an opportunity to succeed in everything we do, from the classroom to the field of competition. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
This episode was written and reported by Margo Gray. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliot Adler, and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprungkaiser and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed, and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss-Berman, J.D.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
When Thorpe wasn't busy cheering on the Tar Heels, he was likely either playing jazz or working in the chemistry lab.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Crowley, Leah Reese-Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Shuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hilary Van Ornum. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at campusfilespod at gmail.com.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
And so began Thorpe's lifetime in academia. He earned a doctorate in chemistry from Caltech and completed his postdoctoral work at Yale. His first teaching position was at NC State University, but it didn't take long before he was back at his alma mater. In 1993, Thorpe returned to UNC, where he quickly rose from visiting assistant professor to tenured professor.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
In addition to being promoted within the chemistry department, you're very quickly topped for all sorts of administrative roles outside the chemistry lab. Director of the planetarium, chemistry department chair, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Why do you think you were seen as a good fit for these roles?
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
In 2007, when the role of chancellor opened up, the UNC Board of Trustees quickly singled out Thorpe as a top candidate. The chancellor is the highest-ranking official at the university, essentially combining the roles of CEO, community leader, and athletic director all in one. At the time of your interview, you were serving as dean, which is a role that's really focused on overseeing academics.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
But university chancellor, on the other hand, oversees all aspects of the institution, including athletics. I'm curious how much athletics came up during your interviews.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
And at the time, what did you know about the inner workings of the athletic department?
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
To refresh your memory, the scandal involved hundreds of fake classes created to keep athletes eligible. I'd reached out to Thorpe for an interview, expecting to hear nothing back. But then, there it was in my inbox. Does this come with free Xanax? He joked. Then he said, JK, when would you like to do this?
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
UNC hadn't dealt with the sports scandal in decades. Its record with the NCAA was spotless. So when it came time to select a new chancellor, no one saw the need to prioritize experience in athletics. Besides, whatever Holden Thorpe lacked in that area, he more than made up for elsewhere.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
He was a Fayetteville native, UNC graduate, lifelong Carolina sports fan, beloved professor, and renowned academic.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
This was news to me, just how much political connections influence the selection of university leaders. It's especially true at public universities like UNC that rely on taxpayer dollars.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
At just 43, Thorpe was one of the youngest chancellors ever in UNC history.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
And not just any athletics crisis, but one of the biggest scandals to ever rock college sports.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, we explore what it was like to navigate one of the most tumultuous periods in UNC's history. What did Holden Thorpe really know? What would he do differently if given the chance? And can any university president manage the monstrosity that college athletics have become?
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
At the start of Holdenthorpe's chancellorship, UNC was riding high. In 2009, during his first full academic year as chancellor, the men's basketball team clinched the national championship.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Then President Barack Obama honored the championship team at the White House.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Whether Obama meant to or not, his remarks touched on the Carolina way, the philosophy popularized under legendary coach Dean Smith. It's the belief that UNC excels not only on the court, but off of it as well. And it's a belief that endured at UNC long after Smith's tenure.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
So at this point in your chancellorship, would you have described yourself as a believer in the Carolina way philosophy?
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
The first crack in the Carolina way came in May 2010, when a football player tweeted about getting bottle service at a Miami nightclub. For the first time since 1961, NCAA investigators were heading to Chapel Hill. Initially, Thorpe thought the scandal might be manageable. It looked like a handful of players had accepted outside payments, but things quickly escalated.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Thorpe soon learned that a tutor had been writing papers for football players, meaning this was now a case of academic fraud and a direct threat to the Carolina way.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
On August 26th, 2010, Thorpe held a last minute press conference to break the news to the university. Wearing a Carolina blue tie, he told the crowd, to everyone who loves this university, I'm sorry about what I have to tell you.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
In an effort to show that the university was taking the scandal seriously, Thorpe suspended 12 football players from the opening game against LSU. While the team battled it out on the field, Thorpe spent that game lying on the floor of his box.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
But the drama was only beginning to unfold. This was the moment when Dan Kane, the News & Observer reporter we heard from last episode, uncovered trouble in the AFAM department. He published a story revealing that a football player had taken a senior-level AFAM course before his freshman year and earned a good grade in the class. Thorpe had a bad feeling.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
Before we dive into Holden Thorpe's tenure as UNC chancellor, I wanna give you a little background because Thorpe isn't just the former head of UNC, he's a lifelong fan and his connection to the university runs deep.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
I want to pause here for a moment. Thorpe is acknowledging that in August 2011, long before the university publicly admitted to the paper class scheme and years before the investigations were concluded, he had a clear understanding of the scheme that had been taking place. He understood that the AFAM department was offering fake courses that never actually met and required no work.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
He understood that the primary purpose of the scheme was to keep athletes eligible, primarily basketball and football players, and he knew it had been going on for decades. Instead of coming clean about what he already knew, Thorpe chose to buy the university some time. He launched an internal investigation, a move he now describes as putting the problem on a credit card.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
I also think this first investigation was never going to be the final word because it only looked at the classes from 2007 to 2011. Why stop at 2007 when there were signs that the problem went back much further?
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
In other words, they only looked back as far as they had to. Dan Cain hadn't requested records from earlier decades, so they saw no reason to dig deeper. The problem with that strategy was that Dan Cain eventually figured out that the scandal went back much further. And his discovery unleashed another wave of bad headlines, tougher questions, and yet another investigation.
Campus Files
Carolina Way - Part 3 | Carolina's Favorite Son
This became a familiar pattern. Every time UNC tried to tell only part of the story or hide behind an investigation, the truth had a way of catching up with them and making things even worse. So sitting here today, if you could go back to that moment, what would you have done differently?
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
That's Campus Files producer Elliot Adler. He's standing outside the home of Joe Gao, the former chancellor of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Last week, you heard Joe's story, the popular, long-serving chancellor of a major UW campus who was fired for posting pornographic content of him and his wife online. We sent Elliot to dig deeper into the story. He'll take it from here.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast. This episode was written and reported by Elliot Adler. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliot Adler, and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprungkaiser and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed, and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss-Berman, J.D.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Crowley, Leah Reese-Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Shuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hilary Van Ornum. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at campusfilespod at gmail.com. College holds a mythic place in American culture.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
It's often considered the best four years of your life and hailed as a beacon of integrity and excellence. But beyond the polished campus tours, there are stories you won't find in the admissions pamphlets.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
It's no wonder that college campuses capture the nation's attention, especially in moments of upheaval. I'm Margo Gray. Each week on the Campus Files podcast, we bring you a new story.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
On Campus Files, we cover everything from rigged admissions to the drama of Greek life.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
Listen to and follow Campus Files, an Odyssey original podcast. Available now on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.
Campus Files
Hot for Chancellor - Part 2
A heads up, this story contains references to sex and pornography and might not be appropriate for every listener. Previously on Campus Files. She's Carmen. And he's Joe.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Despite her explosive allegations, not a single UNC administrator reached out to learn more about Mary's experience or the cheating she'd witnessed. In fact, no one wanted to talk to her at all.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
This is UNC professor Jay Smith. He later teamed up with Mary to write Cheated, The UNC Scandal, The Education of Athletes, and The Future of Big-Time College Sports.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Things only became more isolating for Mary in December 2012, when the findings from the Jim Martin investigation were released. While Martin confirmed that the paper classes dated back decades, not just a few years, he insisted that they hadn't been designed to help athletes, directly undermining everything Mary had said on the record.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
In remarks before the UNC Board of Trustees, Martin said it was nothing more than speculation to suggest that the courses were intended to keep athletes eligible.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Martin speculated that maybe Julius and Debbie had just created these easy courses to attract more students to their department and get more funding. Jay found it laughable. But just like that, this narrative became the party line for UNC administrators.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Remarkably, the strategy worked for another year. National media coverage was kept relatively at bay. But that changed dramatically on New Year's Day 2014, when the front page of the New York Times reported that Julius Nyongara was being indicted for accepting $12,000 for a class he never taught. In response, UNC struck a deal with the district attorney.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Almost immediately, academic advisors sounded the alarm in a meeting with football coaches. They presented a PowerPoint that made one thing clear. These fake courses had been a lifeline for many football players' eligibility. One PowerPoint slide bluntly stated, "...we put them in classes that met degree requirements in which they didn't go to class." these no longer exist.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
They could avoid a criminal prosecution if Debbie and Julius agreed to cooperate with a thorough investigation. This time, the investigation would be led by a no-nonsense former general counsel at the FBI, Kenneth Weinstein.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Over the next eight months, Weinstein and his team sifted through millions of emails, analyzed thousands of student transcripts, interviewed more than 100 people, and took the testimonies of both Julius and Debbie. On October 22, 2014, Weinstein announced his findings. And they were nothing short of explosive.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
The report found that over the 18 years between 1993 and 2011, Debbie and Julius had offered 188 fake lecture courses, along with hundreds of bogus independent studies. More than 3,100 students, nearly half of them athletes, took at least one semester of deficient instruction. Here's Jay Smith again.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Unlike all previous investigations, this one made it clear that these courses were designed above all to keep student athletes eligible. It also made clear the sheer number of people who were complicit, academic counselors, coaches, and even academic deans.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
For years, the NCAA had stayed on the sidelines. But now, sitting out was no longer an option. From the very beginning of the UNC scandal, fans feared one thing above all, NCAA involvement. The NCAA governs college sports and has the power to punish schools that break the rules. Punishments that range from player suspensions to the removal of championship banners.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
By the summer of 2015, those punishments were becoming a very real possibility. The NCAA formally accused UNC of violating its rules. It argued that UNC had provided impermissible benefits to student athletes in the form of paper classes. For two decades, these classes had awarded athletes high grades, with little to no work required. The facts certainly didn't look good for UNC.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
But even so, this was never going to be an easy case for the NCAA to prosecute.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
UNC's legal team focused on two main arguments. First, they argued that the paper classes were technically open to all students, not just athletes. In other words, athletes weren't receiving special treatment because anyone could enroll. Their second argument was that the NCAA had no grounds to judge these courses as special benefits or question their rigor to begin with.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
And these academic advisors were right to be worried. Because the very semester after Debbie retired, the football team earned its worst grade point average in more than a decade, a GPA of 2.1. I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, the decades-long scheme at UNC finally comes to light.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
The NCAA has repeatedly stated that it doesn't have a role in policing university academics. While it can punish players for cheating or plagiarizing, it can't determine whether a school's academics are up to par. That's up to the university itself.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
It took the NCAA more than two years to reach a decision, as they sparred behind closed doors with UNC's high-powered legal team. Finally, in October 2017, they announced their decision.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
The NCAA said it didn't have the authority to punish UNC under its rules. So in the end, Jay says, the only real consequence UNC faced was the negative media coverage.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
In the wake of the NCAA decision, the UNC chancellor stated, We believe this is the correct and fair outcome. I am grateful that this case has been decided and that the university can continue to focus on delivering the best possible education to our students.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
If the university wouldn't confront the scandal, then Smith would do it himself. Normally an expert in early modern France, he created a new course titled Big Time College Sports and the Rights of Athletes, 1956 to the Present.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Smith isn't alone in arguing that college athletes are often deprived of their rights, especially their right to an education. These student athletes commit themselves to their sport, often bringing in significant revenue for their schools, with the understanding that they'll receive a free education in return. But all too often, Smith says, the educational side of that bargain falls short.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
In the most extreme cases, players are enrolled in courses that don't even exist. When it comes to UNC, I asked Smith what measures have been put in place to prevent this kind of educational fraud from happening again.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Smith says many of the new guardrails simply add extra work for faculty members. For example, before each semester, professors now have to upload course syllabi to UNC overseers, who can verify if necessary that there's an actual syllabus for each course.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
While the system may be harder to abuse now, Smith doesn't think much has truly changed.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
UNC's athletics department is still raking in huge profits. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, it pulled in more than $139 million, nearly a 15% jump from the year before. But even that impressive figure is modest compared to the revenue at schools like the University of Texas and the University of Alabama.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
According to the most recent numbers, Division I college sports programs across the country brought in a jaw-dropping $17.1 billion. And as Smith pointed out, that total is only climbing. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast. This episode was written and reported by Margo Gray. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliot Adler, and me, Margo Gray.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprungkaiser and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed, and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss-Berman, J.D. Crowley, Leah Reese-Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hilary Shuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hilary Van Ornum.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
This is Andy. He's an editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education and author of Discredited, The UNC Scandal and College Athletics Amateur Ideal. But perhaps most importantly, he went to UNC when the scandal first broke.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at campusfilespod at gmail.com. College holds a mythic place in American culture. It's often considered the best four years of your life and hailed as a beacon of integrity and excellence. But beyond the polished campus tours, there are stories you won't find in the admissions pamphlets.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
It's no wonder that college campuses capture the nation's attention, especially in moments of upheaval. I'm Margo Gray. Each week on the Campus Files podcast, we bring you a new story.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
On Campus Files, we cover everything from rigged admissions to the drama of Greek life.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Listen to and follow Campus Files, an Odyssey original podcast. Available now on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Dean Smith was the legendary head coach of the UNC men's basketball team from 1961 to 1997. Over those 36 years, he transformed the team into a national powerhouse with a record-setting 879 victories. But if you ask anyone at UNC, they'll tell you Smith is remembered for a lot more than just his accomplishments on the court.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
In the 1980s, college sports were rocked by one scandal after another. Everything from academic cheating to pay-for-play schemes. But at UNC, coach Dean Smith was championing a different path. He called it the Carolina way, a commitment to doing things the right way. Andy says it's a philosophy that long outlived Smith's tenure as head coach.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
UNC actually seemed to practice what it preached. While athletic programs at other universities weathered scandals and sanctions, UNC stood apart, boasting a pristine reputation. From 1961 all the way to 2010, UNC managed to avoid a single NCAA violation.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
That changed in July 2010, the summer before Andy's sophomore year, when a UNC football player took to social media bragging about his experience at a Miami nightclub.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Once investigators stepped in, the floodgates opened. They uncovered that several football players had been accepting free plane tickets and hotel stays, a clear violation of NCAA rules prohibiting outside gifts. Then came another revelation. A tutor had written portions of players' papers. UNC administrators responded swiftly, hoping to snuff out the scandal before it grew.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
They suspended over a dozen players, some indefinitely. And the head coach memorably said, "'There is no single game more important than the character and integrity of this university.'" The strategy might have worked if the story had ended there. But one of the suspended football players decided to fight back and filed a lawsuit to get back on the team.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
The paper was for a course in the AFAM department, with department chair Julius Nyong'oro listed at the top.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
The NC State fan posted about the plagiarism on a sports message board, writing, I can't wait till the media gets this and breaks it down. And before long, a journalist at the News & Observer came across the post. That journalist was Dan Cain.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
On July 9th, 2011, Dan published an article asking that very question. Shortly after publishing the article, Dan got one step closer to the answer. He tracked down the transcript of a football player, which offered some key clues.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
In the summer before his freshman year, this player was enrolled in a senior level course and managed to get a B+.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
The professor of that 400-level course was none other than Julius Nyong'oro, the same professor who had neglected to report the clearly plagiarized paper.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
You'll remember Mary from the previous episode. She worked as a learning specialist in the academic support program for student athletes.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Dan filed a records request with UNC, asking for five years' worth of transcripts. It sent administrators into a panic. In order to stay ahead of his reporting, the university quickly announced an internal investigation into what they called academic irregularities. The following spring, they quietly released their findings in the middle of final exams.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
They confirmed that the AFAM department had in fact been offering paper classes for the past few years. But they didn't acknowledge the fact that 40% of the students enrolled in those fraudulent courses were from the football and men's basketball teams.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
As much as UNC wanted to move on, they couldn't. Because in the months that followed, Dan Cain kept breaking one blockbuster story after another, including the explosive revelation that Julius had been paid $12,000 to teach a summer course that never actually met. And then came a discovery that took the scandal to a whole new level.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
While browsing UNC's website, Dan stumbled upon a page where students could upload their transcripts to check outstanding grade requirements. On that page was a sample transcript.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
The transcript was from the 1990s, which complicated things. Up until now, the university had acted like the paper classes went back just a few years. But if this transcript were legitimate, it would mean the scandal stretched back decades.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
Ultimately, Dan managed to confirm that not only was this a real transcript, but it belonged to one of Carolina's most famous athletes, a football player named Julius Peppers.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
UNC had no choice but to launch a second investigation, this time led by someone outside the UNC bubble, former North Carolina governor, Jim Martin.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
By fall 2012, Dan Cain's reporting was causing massive waves. His story had already triggered one internal investigation with another now underway, led by Jim Martin. But despite the shock of his findings, Dan still had no one on the record to back up his allegations. That changed in October 2012, when Mary Willingham attended the memorial service for UNC's former president.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
In 2008, Debbie Crowder announced her retirement from UNC. She'd spent two decades as the office administrator in the African and Afro-American Studies Department, or AFAM. During this time, she'd used her position to offer fake courses that helped student-athletes stay academically eligible. So for the athletic department, her retirement wasn't exactly welcome news.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
He'd been a staunch advocate for integrity in college athletics.
Campus Files
The Carolina Way - Part 2
In November 2012, Mary finally went on the record with Dan. For the first time, an insider revealed that the scandal went far beyond just two bad apples in the AFAM department. Academic advisors like Mary knew what was happening, and likely many more people on campus did too. The article was damning, to say the least, and Mary assumed it would spark significant conversations on campus.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the number of attempts to sanction university professors has risen dramatically in the past two decades. In 2000, there were four attempts made to sanction university professors. By 2022, that number had climbed to 145.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
It's important to note that Charney wasn't tenured. He has health issues that had made it impossible to meet the research and publication requirements. Still, for years, his contract renewals were routine, never in doubt. But in April 2018, just before his 20th anniversary at Duke, he was told his five-year contract would not be renewed.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney says it was the first time he'd heard any concerns about his performance. And when he asked why, the Samford School of Public Policy offered no clear reason and refused to release documents related to his dismissal.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
An astronaut? A soccer player? A rock star? Personally, I wanted to be a famous chef. Evan Charney? His childhood dream was a bit more unconventional. He wanted to be an ethologist. That's a zoologist who studies animal behavior in the wild. I had to look it up.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
When I questioned Charney on whether he'd crossed a line or on whether he had any right to accuse a Black student of making a microaggression, he doubled down.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney filed a complaint with Duke's Faculty Hearing Committee, a group consisting of professors from a range of departments, whose job was to hear faculty complaints on issues like tenure and contract renewal.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
The members of the group said in a written report that they were disappointed with the school's handling of Charney's reappointment, writing that he was, quote, a highly rated, decorated, and for many, many students, beloved informative professor. He was an asset to Duke. But the committee concluded that it had no jurisdiction over the decision.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
The most clarity Charney ever got from the Sanford School about the non-renewal of his contract was a statement saying that he had a tendency to provoke negative reactions and perhaps harm some of the students in his classroom. Charney was assigned to teach two more semesters of his ethics course in his final year at Duke.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney changed nothing about his course that final year, besides a handful of additional rants on the state of higher education. He taught his final class in May of 2019. I first met Evan Charney in the fall of 2019. At the time, I was a senior at Duke. Charney was no longer a Duke professor.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
We convened at a table on the basement floor of the cafeteria, intentionally tucked away from the rush-hour crowd. Ever since being let go, Charney was something of a pariah among Duke professors. Even as he spoke to me, his head was on a swivel, scanning the room to make sure an ex-colleague hadn't spotted him."
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Okay, so I think it would be great if you could just start by giving like a brief history of your professorship at Duke. I was interviewing Charney that afternoon as part of a final paper I was writing for my journalism seminar. The topic of the paper was civic discourse on campus.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
I thought Charney's perspective would be informative given everything I'd heard about his course, but also because I figured he could speak to the experience of being a conservative professor on Duke's campus. I assumed Charney was conservative because the only people who had come to his defense, apart from former students, were conservatives.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Senator Chuck Grassley wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal denouncing Charney's expulsion and accusing universities like Duke of being, quote, dominated by groups of angry students with closed minds and the administrators who kowtow to them, unquote. Fox News' Tucker Carlson extended an open invitation for Charney to come on his show. Charney declined.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Once Charney entered academia, he never looked back. He earned his undergraduate degree from Hunter College, then went on to get a doctorate and a master's degree from Harvard University, before joining Duke's faculty in 1999.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
In recent years, conservatives have railed against liberal-leaning universities for squashing freedom of speech and preventing students from challenging liberal ideology. In 2019, President Trump signed an executive order designed to protect free inquiry on college campuses.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
As for Evan Charney, he's now living in Durham, no more than a 15-minute drive from Duke's campus.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney says he was reluctant to talk to me because the whole episode still feels raw. It's not something that he's gotten over.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney fears that institutions of higher learning are failing students by not challenging them and therefore not equipping them with the tools to come up with their own opinions about what matters in the world.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Earlier, Charney mentioned that his teaching philosophy was rooted in the Socratic method. Socrates, the most famous philosopher of ancient Athens, believed that true learning was an active process, not the passive acceptance of information. Everything should be questioned, even the ideas that seemed beyond reproach. He encouraged his students to challenge societal norms.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
This did not go over well with Athenian authorities. In 399 BCE, Athens buzzed with anticipation as Socrates stood trial on charges of corrupting the youth and disrespecting the gods. During his trial, Socrates did what he did best. He defended his principles and engaged in rigorous questioning. He famously told the crowd, the unexamined life is not worth living.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
In the end, the jury found him guilty. Socrates was sentenced to death and given a lethal dose of hemlock. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast. This episode was written and reported by Margo Gray. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliot Adler, and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprungkaiser and Lloyd Lockridge.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Campus Files is edited, mixed, and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss-Berman, J.D. Crowley, Leah Reese-Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Shuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hilary Van Ornum. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at campusfilespod at gmail.com.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
The first course he taught, Policy Choices Value Conflict, was the undergraduate ethics course for all public policy majors. It was an introduction to moral philosophy and its application to some of the greatest contemporary moral dilemmas, issues ranging from abortion to seatbelt laws to physicians' assisted suicide to hate speech.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
The class was designed to give students the tools to make coherent and consistent arguments on multiple sides of any issue.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney believes that when most students entered his classroom, they had never really been challenged on their foundational moral beliefs. They were in what he liked to call a dogmatic slumber. The objective of his course was to wake them up.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney insists that he poked holes in students' arguments not for the sake of belittling them and their opinions, but for the sake of teaching them how to think critically, how to justify their beliefs, and how to identify the flaws and contradictions in their own arguments.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
The success of the course depended upon students not knowing where Charney stood on any given issue. Students inevitably spent the semester trying to pin down his politics, which is why he'd re-registered as an independent voter early on in his teaching career.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
On every college campus, there are professors whose reputation extends far beyond their department. At Duke, that professor was Evan Charney, a fixture in the public policy department for nearly two decades. He was something of an academic celebrity at a school that typically reserves worship for its basketball stars. Friends who took his class couldn't stop talking about it.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
One class, he would argue passionately and convincingly for the redistribution of wealth, only to argue exactly the opposite stance the following class.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney cites his willingness to challenge students as the reason that he was repeatedly recognized as one of the university's three most popular professors, that he received above-average student teaching evaluations, and that he was the recipient of multiple teaching awards.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
So you can imagine Charney's surprise when in April 2018, he got the news. His contract would not be renewed. In effect, he was fired. Charney wasn't sure why he was being let go, but he had a theory.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Evan Charney got to know Duke in a way few professors or administrators ever do. He had insight into the kinds of things that you can't find in university pamphlets, the kinds of student dynamics, politics, and gossip that are known only to students on campus.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
On more than one occasion, while discussing the issue of wealth stratification, Charney singled out a student wearing sorority or fraternity insignia and asked how many members of their chapter classified as below middle class.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
His class makes you think differently, they'd say. Naturally, I had to see what all the fuss was about. But, just as I was about to enroll, I heard the news. Evan Charney was being pushed out. I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, the story of Evan Charney and what it says about the future of academic freedom in higher education. When you were a kid, what did you imagine becoming?
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
By virtue of spending so much time with his students outside of class, Charney had his finger on the pulse of his classroom environment. And around 2009, about a decade into teaching the same course at Duke, Charney began to sense a shift in his classroom.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney remembers one of the first times a student told him they'd been harmed by his language. He was catching up with a student over coffee after class.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney was noticing a phenomenon that wouldn't be fully articulated or discussed for about another decade when Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff published their best-selling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
The authors argue that in the pursuit of creating safe academic environments, students are losing the ability to distinguish between personal attacks and the promotion of ideas that they find objectionable.
Campus Files
Dogmatic Slumber
Charney believes many professors adjusted their courses to comply with college administrators' new mandate to create campuses in which students would never feel uncomfortable or offended.
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College holds a mythic place in American culture. It's often considered the best four years of your life and hailed as a beacon of integrity and excellence. But beyond the polished campus tours, there are stories you won't find in the admissions pamphlets.
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Hit 'Em With The Helicopter
It's no wonder that college campuses capture the nation's attention, especially in moments of upheaval. I'm Margo Gray. Each week on the Campus Files podcast, we bring you a new story.
The Commercial Break
Hit 'Em With The Helicopter
On Campus Files, we cover everything from rigged admissions to the drama of Greek life.
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Hit 'Em With The Helicopter
Listen to and follow Campus Files, an Odyssey original podcast. Available now on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Yeah, do you have a dry? I'm doing dry January. I would love a dry Sauvignon Blanc.