I went to UNC wrote:
I went to UNC during the time that these AFAM paper classes were going on and I'm sick of hearing about how this devalues people's degrees.
I think people need to get off their high horse and accept that liberal arts education in general is a joke. The option to skate through 4 years of school and get a worthless degree is available to any student, not just student athletes. In fact, I bet most student athletes at UNC did more work than I did because they have to sit down with their tutors and go through everything.
Any class that I took that didn't take attendance I turned into a "no show" class. If I did go to class I likely slept through at least part of it. I consistently forfeited my 10% or whatever portion of the grade was class participation because I didn't want to discuss things with a bunch of self important liberal jerk offs.
I took 2 AFAM courses and they were indeed very easy, but I actually took a few from other departments (sociology, anthropology, history, etc.) that were easier. To get an A or B in any of these classes you basically just have to write some variation of how rich/white people suck and have screwed up the world.
In English/literature classes I read cliff notes instead of the books. In one class I went the whole semester without the textbook and had to go flip through it for a couple hours in the book store before the final. Once I missed a mid-term exam because I skipped class so much I didn't even know when it was. I was allowed to make it up for no penalty and got an A in the course. I could go on and on but the bottom line is that I was a huge slacker and still graduated with a double major and a GPA over 3.0
I'm not surprised one bit that the AFAM department had joke classes. If you read the report you will see that Crowder set up these classes because she sympathized with students who struggled in school like she did. How did somebody like her get the position she did? I don't know. Regardless, the athlete's academic advisors did what any normal person would do when they encounter a situation like this; they exploited it. I doubt the coaches were ever told explicitly what was going on so that they could maintain deniability.
This scandal is just a bunch of ivory tower academics faking outrage at the fact that their esteemed liberal arts curriculum is actually a bunch of BS. I don't give 2 cents about the university or the value of my degree but I sure did enjoy my 4 years there and I will continue to cheer for the sports teams because that is what I have done my whole life.
You know you post is making it even worse. If what you say is true, then I think even less highly of a UNC diploma than I thought before.