Opinion: Supplemental documents in Wainstein report deserve further scrutiny

T horough analysis of the supplemental documents released with the Wainstein report shows departments other than the Department of African and Afro-American Studies deserve additional scrutiny.

The official title of Kenneth Wainstein’s report — “Investigation of Irregular Classes in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina” — hints that the report was intentionally limited in scope.

As The Daily Tar Heel reported earlier this month, Jan Boxill offered more than 160 enrollments in independent studies within the philosophy department over the course of eight years — an impossible accomplishment by her own colleagues’ assessment.

In another chain of emails included in the supplemental documents, Beth Bridger and Jaimie Lee, two academic counselors for the football team, communicated about a student who was worried about his academic performance.

“I don’t know what the hell is up with him,” Bridger said in one of the emails. “I told him if he wants a paper to email (UNC professor Deborah) Stroman for an (exercise and sport science) one.”

For months, Wainstein and his team of highly qualified investigators had the access to further investigate what this email meant.

Left to their own devices, readers can only guess what this email hints at.

Deborah Stroman is a professor in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science. As a result of an interview with Stroman, the report stated she “enjoys doing independent studies with students, but the students she works with realize that they have to meet with her and do work.”

The string of emails between the football academic counselors suggests otherwise. Instead of students working closely with Stroman to gain a better understanding of exercise and sport science, the academic counselors suggest students could go to Stroman for a “paper class” — the classes at the center of the academic scandal that required no attendance, had little faculty oversight and had only a single assignment.

Clearly, other departments deserve further scrutiny. The footnote Wainstein included that said he and his team “also sought to identify the grading patterns in a series of other non-AFAM classes that were widely known to be less rigorous” was hardly reassuring.

In the report, Wainstein said his team ultimately concluded that though “such courses may have been less rigorous, it is worth noting that, unlike the paper classes, these classes all exhibited the elements of regular college instruction, including class attendance and faculty involvement.”

The emails included in the report seem to directly contradict that conclusion.

For weeks, student groups like the Black Student Movement and The Real Silent Sam Coalition have admonished the Wainstein report for scapegoating African-American studies as the sole culprit of the scandal.

If the emails included as part of the supplemental documents to the official report are to be believed, then the Black Student Movement and The Real Silent Sam Coalition are completely right.

We should therefore cast suspicion upon any narrative suggesting academic irregularities were confined to the AFAM department.