TO THE EDITOR:
I am one of the retired faculty members who signed the recent statement deploring the present faculty’s silence about the questions raised by our continuing scandals, and I must say that I was disappointed by Chancellor Carol Folt’s response.
The chancellor apparently has her talking points and is sticking to them. The News & Observer quotes her as saying that our statement “appears to ignore the efforts of many deeply committed faculty, and the real progress in terms of reforms and additional oversight that Carolina has made in just the last few years.” It is true that many of us have been told (in my case, several times) that some faculty members are helping to put safeguards in place to prevent future embarrassments, and that’s a good and needed thing. Our statement did ignore those efforts, though, because it was talking about something else. It would be nice if someone responded to what we actually said.
Obviously, retired faculty members are not privy to anything that is being done out of public view, but at least from the outside it appears that many questions have been begged. No one seems to be seriously asking how we got in this mess in the first place. Our statement asked, “How did a single faculty member in a single department so grossly violate fundamental professional standards for so long? In what context did this violation occur, and how widely in other departments might similar breaking or bending the rules have happened? To what degree and how detrimentally have athletes in revenue sports been exploited, and in what ways have they been neglected or betrayed as students?” And, as professor Madeline Levine wrote in January to the chancellor and provost, “There are many other questions. You know what they are.”
Although the administration and Board of Trustees would apparently prefer that these questions not be asked and the Faculty Council doesn’t seem to be interested in asking them, we appealed to those who actually teach undergraduates, especially the Arts and Sciences faculty, to seek answers and publicize them. Many friends of the University (and not just retired faculty) would just like to know what has been going on. Besides, truth will out eventually. Wouldn’t it be smart to get it out ourselves?
John Shelton Reed
Professor Emeritus
Sociology
