UNC stops research of academic whistleblower Mary Willingham

Kill the Messenger seems to be a common reaction in North Carolina.
And the fact that she got death threats for telling the truth about shameful conditions does not reflect favorably on UNC, or on the effect of sports on character.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/eye-on-college-football/24411805/unc-stops-research-of-academic-whistleblower-mary-willingham


By Chip Patterson
January 17, 2014

The University of North Carolina has suspended the research of Mary Willingham, the reading specialist who turned over information on student-athletes and academic progress for a CNN report last week.

Willingham's research indicated that many football and basketball players at North Carolina are reading well below grade level -- Willingham claims 60 percent of the 183 student-athletes she worked with from 2004-12 were reading at fourth-to-eighth-grade levels -- and the reading specialist believes that the issues are not limited to UNC, but systemic across all of Division I athletics.

North Carolina and head basketball coach Roy Williams have disputed Willingham's claims, and on Thursday night the school shut down her research until the university's Institutional Review Board approves the work.

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After her work in the CNN report led to death threats and headlines across the nation, Mary Willingham filed a brief in support of the athletes suing the NCAA (Ed O'Bannon case) in Oakland, Calif.. Willingham, who worked in the UNC Center for Student Success and Academic Counseling, believes that many revenue sport athletes are not getting an eduction, and therefore not receiving the "real cost of attendance."

"(I was) waiting for the university to do the right thing, and they still haven't done the right thing," Willingham told WRAL News on Wednesday.

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http://www.wncn.com/story/24396814/unc-counselor-receiving-death-threats-following-report-on-athlete-literacy

Posted: Jan 08, 2014 1:54 PM EST Updated: Feb 19, 2014 1:54 PM EST

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -
A University of North Carolina academic counselor told WNCN she has received death threats and hate mail since CNN aired a report Tuesday in which she revealed several student athletes at the university read at an elementary level.

Mary Willingham said there are athletes at UNC who are reading at a third- and fourth-grade level. She said there is no way for them to succeed in a college classroom and that the only place they can succeed is on the football field.

On Wednesday, a day after the report aired, Willingham, who works in UNC's Center for Student Success and Academic Counseling, told WNCN that she's received several death threats and hate mail.

"I've definitely had positive feedback," Willingham said. "However we have a lot of people who feel it necessary to send hate mail and some death threats.

"I think it's because the entertainment of college sports and athletics is so important to us. But I think it's completely inappropriate for people to act this way."

Willingham said the threats won't stop her from continuing her research and speaking out on the literacy of student athletes.

"I can still see the faces of these young men," Willingham said in telephone interview with WNCN's Steve Sbraccia. "I can't stop, and [I] plan on becoming part of the national conversation.

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Looking at 183 football and basketball players between 2004 and 2012, Willingham found that 8 percent were reading below a fourth-grade level and 60 percent were between a fourth- and eighth-grade reading level.

"They're leaving here, our profit-sport athletes, without an education. They're significantly behind the level of reading and writing that's required," Willingham told CNN.


Willingham said she began looking into the reading levels because she was concerned that athletes were not receiving the education they were promised by attending a top-tier institution like UNC.

"I am speaking out because the young men I worked with here deserved better than what we offered them," Willingham told WNCN. "The scholarship agreement is often fraudulent. We promise an education in exchange for talent, and that's not what we are providing to many of these young people at our school and at schools across the country."

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Willingham said she believes the athletes are being "exploited" by the universities because "commercialism has taken over our college sports system."

"These young men -- and I'm taking about basketball and football, which I call the two profit sports -- do not get any of the benefit of what so many people are making so much money from," Willingham said, "coaches, assistant coaches and on up the line to athletic administrators and on up to the NCAA."

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In reviewing data from 21 Division I universities -- including top-25 ranked football schools like Texas A&M, Georgia, Oklahoma State, Ohio State and Clemson -- CNN found that most schools had between 7 and 18 percent of football and basketball players scoring so low on the reading or writing portion of their exams that experts said they would only be reading at an elementary level.

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