The Martin Report hasn’t answered the big questions

The Martin Report was written in an attempt to bring closure through fact finding to the recent allegations of academic fraud at UNC. Indignation, confusion and dispute have followed its release.

Former North Carolina Gov. Jim Martin released his findings on Dec. 20 to the Board of Trustees, along with an addendum to the report which was presented to the UNC-system Board of Governors on Jan. 25.

The report’s findings on the role of the faculty athletics committee have been subject to great scrutiny. The Martin Report names two instances of junctures at which something could have been done to stop academic fraud. The initial instance, according to the report, occurred during an April 2002 meeting of the committee.

Prior to that meeting, the Academic Support Program for Student Athletes raised a concern with athletic department administrators about the prevalence of student athletes taking independent study courses.

According to the minutes from the April 2002 meeting of the committee, those athletic administrators then mentioned the issue at the meeting.

Despite these minutes, those who were at the meeting have differing interpretations of what was discussed and how.

The minutes unequivocally indicate that independent study classes were discussed. The committee didn’t see a need to pursue investigation of independent courses beyond monitoring enrollment, according to the minutes.

What isn’t clear is whether or not this decision constitutes the sort of “looking the other way” that Martin accused academic officials of in a letter to The (Raleigh) News & Observer.

Martin is the public face of the report and the investigation. He adamantly called this an academic scandal and said the committee missed an opportunity to nip it early on.

Recently though, Baker Tilly Virchow Krouse, the consulting firm that assisted Martin in conducting the investigation, clarified in its presentation of the addendum that the report was in no way meant to indict the faculty athletics committee nor to blame it for this scandal.

This ambiguity and subsequent clarification are indicative of the larger issue with the Martin Report.

The report names only two individuals who engaged in unethical conduct — Julius Nyang’oro, the former department chairman of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, and administrator Deborah Crowder. But, for obvious reasons, those two people wouldn’t answer any questions raised by the Martin Report.

The report has left important stones unturned and questions unanswered, due to its inherently limited scope. Neither Martin nor Baker Tilly have police power.

But in embracing the report as the definitive account of the scandal, University administration has shown that it was more concerned about bringing closure to this scandal than it was about getting to the true bottom of this issue.

Furthermore, the Martin Report hasn’t brought closure, and more work still needs to be done to really finish this investigation.

The University should not continue to make half-hearted attempts at sweeping away scandals, but rather should embrace the necessity of finding sometimes dirty, unwanted truths that lead to real solutions.

Today, the University is again faced with harmful allegations — the sexual assault complaint that several students and a former administrator have filed with the Department of Education.

The University cannot afford to do anything less than seek the complete truth.