Back to the North Carolina Tar Heels Newsfeed

UNC quickly made Deborah Crowder’s interview public. Does it help, or hurt, the university’s case with the NCAA?

For nearly five years, UNC-Chapel Hill has refused to make public what former academic chairman Julius Nyang’oro told university and NCAA investigators about bogus classes in his department that had no instruction and offered a high grade upon completion of a paper.

Not so with the NCAA’s recent interview with Deborah Crowder, who was Nyang’oro’s assistant. Two weeks after Crowder was interviewed for a full day, the university in late May made Crowder’s 117-page transcript public as part of its response to the enforcement agency’s allegations of multiple major violations.

Crowder had created and graded many of the classes, despite not being a faculty member and having no expertise in African and Afro-American studies.