Former UNC football and basketball star Julius Peppers took 12 classes in the African and Afro-American Studies department between the summer of 1998 and the fall of 2001, a transcript posted on a UNC website shows. Access to the transcript has since been blocked.
The details of the transcript, particularly the fact that Peppers took three independent study courses in the now scandal-ridden department, raise troubling questions amidst the unraveling of one of the most damaging scandals in the University’s history.
One of those questions revolves around how long the impropriety has been occurring at the University.
Chancellor Holden Thorp said in an interview that the College of Arts and Sciences is interested in answering these questions, but it is too early to say if an investigation into that time will be conducted.
“We never said it just started in 2007,” he said, not identifying the student in question by name.
The transcript appears to match a test transcript that was the subject of an article in the (Raleigh) News & Observer, published Saturday. According to that article, UNC officials said the mock transcript, which is used to help students and advisers with an academic computer program, was made up. Access to the test transcript has also been blocked.
The University has issued a statement on the matter: “Student academic records should never be accessible to the public, and the University is investigating reports of what appears to be a former student transcript on the University’s website. The University has removed that link from the website. University officials are prohibited from discussing confidential student information under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.”
A University investigation into the African and Afro-American Studies department earlier this year detailed widespread academic fraud between 2007 and 2011, laying responsibility on former department chairman Julius Nyang’oro and former department administrator Deborah Crowder. Nyang’oro resigned last year. He had been the department’s chairman since 1992.
Peppers accumulated a 1.824 GPA, the transcript shows. Four of the African and Afro-American Studies classes he took occurred during summer school. Summer courses in that department have been cited as some of the most extreme examples of its impropriety.
