You raise a compelling point. I was at UNC in the early 90s when these departments were formed, and taking an intro class to one became a diversity education requirement to graduate. At the time, there was a lot of resistance to this (as you can imagine) and there has been derision of the very existence of these…

I’ve been thinking about this since the scandal (or “scandal”, I guess?) first broke but wasn’t sure how to put my thoughts in to a coherent argument. Well said.

The scandal largely concerns the university’s Department of African and Afro-American Studies, which is accused of offering sham independent-study “paper classes.”

And as long as everyone involved has this attitude, the broken system will repeat and manifest itself in perpetuity.

I’m sort of curious why the institutionally racist angle of this has gone largely uncriticized.

Agreed. Acting stupidly inside a stupid system doesn’t make one a genius, and acting immorally inside an immoral system doesn’t make one noble.

I agree with everything you’ve written. Scamming the scam doesn’t make UNC Robin Hood, it just makes them differently awful.

I mean, I feel you to a large degree and am with the broad message. But I can’t quite get on board with fraud motivated by selfish desires to win being a noble endeavor worthy of praise.

Fuck the NCAA. Sure. Definitely even!

Syracuse got slammed for an overzealous tutor in a case where the school took the player out before the NCAA tournament when it was discovered. UNC literally has fake classes. So help me if they get a slap on the wrist

The NCAA will hammer the women’s basketball program to set an example, but the men’s program will get very little punishment.

The big piece you seem to be leaving out is UNC’s constant talk of the so called Carolina Way. When you live in NC listening to every blowhard Carolina fan speak about how they only do things the right way and thumb their noses at the rest of the in state colleges. The rest of us want to see them blown from their…