Opinion: UNC should stand by employees in a consistent manner

When several UNC academic personnel were fired in the aftermath of the release of the Wainstein report, it seemed easy to believe that the rolling of heads would soon begin to slow.

But after a summer of bad news for UNC on the scandal front — news that was largely directed at the women’s basketball program — a pattern might be forming regarding how punishment is given out for misdeeds.

In this pattern, new misdeeds come to light and UNC acknowledges general wrongdoing, but specific punishments seem to hit figures in areas that will provoke the least controversy for UNC. This pattern is a disturbing one and reinforces the idea that actions taken by UNC and the NCAA are designed to uphold the status quo of college athletics.

UNC is not responsible for what the NCAA chooses to focus on, but it can counteract the NCAA’s focus to be fairer to its employees.

Even before UNC announced it was self-reporting a new violation concerning improper academic help to members of the women’s basketball team, the NCAA’s notice of allegations targeted the team for special attention.

Several players, including leading scorers Allisha Gray and Stephanie Mavunga, left the program after the end of last season.

And UNC did not reach a contract extension agreement with women’s basketball head coach Sylvia Hatchell, even while head men’s basketball coach Roy Williams’ contract was extended.

In 2011, both coaches’ contracts were extended at the same time.

It seems odd that, after the Wainstein report, women’s basketball should be singled out for special focus when the report clearly stated fraudulent classes at the heart of this scandal were created for and most frequently used by athletes in the revenue sports of football and men’s basketball.

This seems especially troubling when the NCAA’s notice of allegations seemed to extensively use the Wainstein report as its primary source of evidence. Did NCAA investigators neglect to read Wainstein’s executive summary?

The focus on women’s basketball echoes the placement of axe falls after the Wainstein report’s release. Heads rolled but choices were puzzling.

If Professor Tim McMillan and Bobbi Owen, both academics, were guilty for not asking enough questions, why wasn’t Roy Williams, the person in charge of ensuring institutional control for the men’s basketball team while almost a decade of fraudulent classes were taking place?

This isn’t to say that punishing Roy Williams would start a makeover of the troubling ethics in all of college sports, or that his firing would have accomplished a positive good.

And it doesn’t mean McMillan and Owen were free of responsibility in deeply troubling wrongdoing.

What it does mean is suspicions as to the priorities of leadership in these issues seem reasonable.

Were leaders interested in giving out the most constructive, ethical and proportionate levels of punishment possible, or were they interested in minimizing damage to the reputation of UNC’s major revenue sports of men’s basketball and football?

UNC’s leaders are certainly interested in making sure fraudulent classes never again take place at this university.

The focus on women’s basketball, an easier, less popular target than men’s basketball, is troubling. The team that seems no more complicit in wrongdoing than others mentioned in the Wainstein report.

Neglecting to follow up on eyebrow-raising information present in the Wainstein report and primarily punishing academics for a scandal that was constructed for the benefit of persons in the athletics department don’t seem to reflect courageous and moral leadership.

It’s up to UNC to prove these suspicions wrong by treating Hatchell with consistency. Hatchell is a hall-of-fame coach, same as Williams. If she says she needs a contract extension to do her job properly, that request does not seem unreasonable.