TO THE EDITOR:
As a UNC alumnus proud of his Carolina connections, I am appalled by the abuse of oversight and integrity involved in the recruitment of unqualified “student athletes,” and equally appalled by the failure of university administrators to confront the matter seriously.
That failure seems to mock the memory of the late Bill Friday, who stood so long for genuine amateurism in college sports and, more, for a drastic reform of higher education’s growing enslavement to profiteering TV networks and professional teams.
An age ago — in the 1950s — we at the Daily Tar Heel embraced the ideal that Bill Friday exemplified; and the cause is even more urgent now that incontinent television profits have been stirred into the witch’s brew.
Whatever may be the accuracy of Ms. Willingham’s allegations regarding player literacy (and their credibility is enhanced by the refusal of the UNC athletic establishment to examine or weigh her evidence), they are merely another symptom of the abuse of the educational values a great university should represent and defend.
For one thing, the University is disarmed by these scandals of commodification in the face of those — including our ignorant governor — who aspire to turn UNC into a trade school, and who seem not to grasp the difference between learning and training — both valuable, but very different.
Higher education cannot serve two masters. It cannot be half Oxford and half Hollywood — half devoted to the values and studies essential to learning and half squalid commercial spectacle.
Those charged with the University’s stewardship should remember and honor the example of Bill Friday. I am well aware that UNC, for the first time in its long history, has recently hired a high-powered public relations agent. But public relations, however slick or cleverly devised, is no answer now.
Edwin M. Yoder Jr.
Class of ’56
Chapel Hill
