The Carolina Way - Part 1
episode
Campus Files: Scandals, Secrets & Crimes at American Universities
30 min
1 speaker
2 chapters
transcribed
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What is the shadow curriculum at UNC?
Every week on The Moth Podcast, we share stories that are funny, strange, heartbreaking, and above all, true. I myself have been married for 56 years. Unfortunately to four different women. You can work out a whole lot of s*** in the hours of Target. Follow and listen to The Moth on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2005, the University of North Carolina men's basketball team won the national championship. Rashad McCants was a standout player on the championship team, a star forward and the second leading scorer. McCants! Remarkably, McCants didn't just thrive on the court that season. He got straight A's and made the Dean's List. But there was a secret to McCants' academic success. He didn't do much academic work that semester. In fact, he says he didn't complete a single assignment. Here's how he later explained it in an interview with ESPN. I didn't write any papers. It was very simple. When it was time to turn in our papers, we would get a call from our tutors. We would all pack up in one big car or two or three cars, carpool over to the tutor's house and basically get our papers and go about our business.
McCamp says that not only did he not write a single paper that semester, but the lecture courses he was enrolled in never actually met. No assignments, no professor, no class. It's absurd, but it actually makes sense because it kept me eligible to play. You're not there to get an education. You're there to make revenue for the college. I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, UNC's decades-long scheme to keep Rashad McCants and hundreds of other athletes eligible to play.
Carolina is a place where students go because of the academics, but also because of the athletic entertainment. This is Mary Willingham. When she joined the University of North Carolina faculty in 2003, the school spirit was immediately apparent. You can travel all over the world and you will see people with Carolina shirts and Carolina hats. And you're like, how on earth is this fan all the way over here in Okinawa, Japan, for example, or somewhere. But that's just the nature of it. And it's that big brand, that Carolina brand. You're probably familiar with the Carolina brand, at least visually. It's pretty distinct. The overlapping NC, the signature baby blue outlined in navy, and the outline of a foot with a dark spot on the heel, a nod to the university's mascot, the Tar Heel. There's no doubt this brand largely owes its widespread recognition to UNC's athletic programs, especially basketball and football.
May for the win! When I got to Carolina, the very first week, there was a football game when we moved into our house. And I saw all these people driving in their cars with the flags flying. And I'm from the south side of Chicago where people do that for funerals. And I looked at my husband and I was like, wow, that is a huge funeral. Holy cow. And he's like, no, Mary, that's a football game today. Mary's new job was in the academic support program for student-athletes. The bulk of her role was helping student-athletes succeed in their classes. This proved to be a lot harder than she'd anticipated. I knew that athletes weren't going to be necessarily at the same level as many other students, but with tutoring and with some support, I figured it wouldn't be that difficult. But I was super naive.
Mary discovered that many athletes, particularly men's basketball and football players, had significant gaps in their reading and writing skills. And I'm working with athletes who, they're just so far behind. And a lot of these guys come from lower socioeconomic groups, or it's because they've come from a bad public school, or it's because they've been playing their sport, multiple sports, and they've just been passed through the system. Mary looked into getting these players enrolled in remedial classes focused on essential skills like reading and math. But she learned UNC didn't offer any. UNC said, well, you know, we don't admit anyone like that. They would have to admit and be transparent about the fact that they were taking students who were lower than, you know, more than two standard deviations below, you know, the average admissions rate.
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Chapters
2 chaptersSpeakers
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