A sign in Africa, which corruption continues to ravage. We ignore its warning at our peril.
Last week, three more disheartening cheating scandals were in the spotlight, in completely separate areas of our society: legal education, the military, and college sports. The signs that the cancer of corruption is spreading through America’s culture with increasing speed are frightening, but being frightened isn’t constructive. Working to eradicate the cancer is. Last week’s revelations:
- The American Bar Association publicly admonished Villanova Law School for a pattern of misrepresenting—inflating—GPAs and LSATs of its applicants and admitted students in order to receive a higher ranking, which in turn would attract more and better applicants. The scandal broke in June, and the ABA was lenient, stating that the school had reported its own misconduct (the responsible parties had been discovered and dismissed). Is Villanova alone, or is it just the first law school in this increasingly competitive environment to get caught? If a law school cheats, what kind of lawyers will it produce?
- The Navy discovered an exam-cheating ring aboard one of its submarines. It fired the commanding officer and discharged 10 per cent of the crew. But when Navy officials described the case aboard the USS Memphis as an isolated incident, former officers told the Associated Press that in fact it is common practice for sailors to receive answer keys or other impermissible assistance before and during training exams. The culture aboard the USS Memphis tolerated and even encouraged cheating. Sailors were emailed the answers before qualification exams, were not monitored as they took the tests, and openly asked officers for answer keys. They were also encouraged to look up the answers to questions during exam breaks. Watch closely to see if the Memphis incident is excused as an aberration, or if it prompts a full-fledged assessment of the Navy culture.
- Yahoo Sports revealed that a University of Miami football “booster” named Nevin Shapiro provided millions of dollars worth of illegal benefits to at least 72 athletes at the University of Miami between 2002 and 2010. He admitted that he did so with the knowledge of at least seven different basketball and football coaches. Shapiro told Yahoo that he paid for players to enjoy prostitutes and take expensive vacations, and that he paid on-field bounties for injuring other players. He also funded at least one abortion. There was more. Yahoo says it has corroborated Shapiro’s story with documents and interviews.
The best way to cure the cancer of corruption wherever it is detected is two-fold: show no mercy in applying sanctions, and overhaul the culture. Sportswriter Buzz Bissinger, in an angry and ethically focused piece in the Daily Beast, argues that the University of Miami’s football program should be killed…for good. Some highlights:
- “Maybe, just maybe, there finally will be some recognition that the major college sports of basketball and football are rotten, and that the only way to root out the rot is with the tandem action of draconian punishment and cutting the snake off at the head. No more slaps on the wrist by the NCAA with the taking away of scholarships or depriving teams of Bowl game or playoff appearances. Now is the perfect time to send a loud and clear message to other schools about what the consequences will be if you flagrantly break the rules.”
- “The Miami football program must be given the death penalty by the NCAA. Not for one year. Or two. But forever. Gone. Kaput. Who will really suffer? … The players? If they have talent, they will all land somewhere else. In the real world, three strikes and you’re out. In the athletic world, three strikes and you’re just beginning. Who benefits? A university that perhaps may realize its primary mission is, can you believe it, academic and not athletic.”
- “Miami president Donna Shalala must immediately resign, either voluntarily or under pressure. Her prepared statement in the aftermath of the Miami tsunami—“I am upset, disheartened and saddened by the recent allegations leveled against some current and past student-athletes and members of our Athletic Department”—is a shameless renouncing of her job description. She is responsible for what takes place at the school, is she not? That includes the athletic department, does it not?… She is hardly some sports naif. She knows what goes on and what doesn’t, what should happen and should not.”
- “Booster programs supporting football and basketball at all colleges and universities should be banned. The money these boosters give out only leads to ethical and, in some cases, criminal compromises. Nevin Shapiro…had ridiculous access to the Miami football and basketball teams…he gained carte blanche to Miami players. It’s only a guess, but I imagine the $150,000 contribution he made for a student-athlete lounge at the school did not hurt any”
(You can read all of Bissinger’s piece here.)
When the late, lamented accounting firm Arthur Anderson was found to have destroyed evidence of its role in the Enron scandal, the Justice Department decided to kill it with an indictment—companies won’t hire accounting firms that are known to break the law, or even accused of it. There had been other instances where the firm had engaged in questionable practices, and the conclusion was inescapable that the culture at Arthur Anderson was an unethical one. The destruction of the venerable old firm was sad, but its effects on the accounting industry were powerful, beneficial, and long overdue. The Miami football program has long been a breeding ground for unethical practices. Bissinger’s argument that it should be become the Arthur Anderson of big time college football programs is a good one.
Ethics Alarms 
“We did not send our best and brightest to fight and die in Vietnam.” Donna Shalala.
I’m a Vietnam veteran with far more ethics than she, and probably a higher IQ to boot. She’s a disgrace.
Tolerance of corruption in the supposedly most developed/civilized nations makes our fight against corruption in other parts of the world simply impossible.
“Tolerance of corruption in the supposedly most developed/civilized nations makes our fight against corruption in other parts of the world simply impossible.”
You’re right, as it makes us look like hypocritical bullies.
The burgeoning scandal at the University of Miami is pretty ugly, but the accuser doesn’t have the best reputation either.
I recall that at one time, I thought Duke lacrosse deserved the death penalty as well. As it turns out, the boorish frat boy jocks didn’t rape anyone. They simply hired a black stripper for sport.
Except that the report by Yahoo is extraordinarily well-researched beyond the main source,. and no one is seriously disputing it. By definition, a confession by the guy who breaks rules on this scale will have to come from a slime-bag. And it is only different is scale from common practice.
Well, this is not news. This is just someone mentioning the elephant in the room. Some things I have noticed in my years of academia about sports include:
From School 1.
• Riding a bus with the campus football players for 3 years and listening to them talk. Things like “The cops said if they caught me beating someone up outside the bar one more time, they would arrest me”.
• An athlete who “only could afford to go to college because of football because his family has no money” had some problems with the law. Six months into the school year, he was living in one of the most expensive condo complexes in town. His beeper went off to notify him that someone was tampering with his brand-new $35,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. He went out on the balcony with his brand-new $1000 Glock pistol. When he saw several people around his Jeep, he started shooting at them. They were the police (condo complexes like this have excellent response time). He said he was worried because he had just installed a $6000 stereo system in the Jeep. No charges were filed.
•My brother ended up in a small class (~20 students) with a Heisman trophy winner. He only found out when the “student” athlete shows up once near the end of the semester. That was the “student”‘s only appearance that semester.
From School 2.
• A football player from a poor family who needed the scholarship to go to college moved into my apartment complex one building away from me. After about a month, an electronics store van pulled up and delivered a full-wall sized TV. A brand-new Porsche 924 showed up later that day. Boosters are wonderful.
• The geography department issued a memo to the department that all faculty would provide the keys to their exams to the athletic tutors at least one week in advance of the exam. This explained why geography was one of the most popular majors among athletes at that University. Nationally, such majors are known as ‘safe harbor’ majors by the people who study such things.
From School 3.
•Athletes are paid to ‘watch oil wells’ to make sure they are working (they are on timers and automatically monitored.
•A local car dealership is caught paying football players as shadow employees.
•A former student reports that he is in the same class with a major college football player. He reports that the player listens to his iPod while an Asian girl (his tutor) takes notes. On test days, the tutor takes the exam, in class, in front of all the students and the professor.
This is going on at all schools. You can’t stop it with sanctions. Everyone knows about it, and everyone accepts it. The only way to stop it is to restructure it. The judge who accepted the ‘student-athlete’ excuse did everyone a great disservice. If they had ruled for the students as employees, we could go about this without such scandals. Athletes would be employees, could be paid, have insurance, disability, and could get a tuition waiver to take classes. They could take classes part-time and if they didn’t make it to the major leagues, they could stay on and complete their degrees in a couple years. No more dishonesty. The downside is, someone might actually start to look at how much taxpayer money goes to support these programs and start asking why we spend so much ‘education’ money on these teams. Don’t say ‘they make money!’, only about a dozen make more money than they cost and that isn’t every year. In the early 2000’s a team that recently was #1 ran out of money and the college cancelled the journal subscriptions at the library to keep it going.
I went to Miami in the early ’90s. I knew the jocks who weren’t first string (might have been wrong terminology, but ‘red-shirts’- like 3 people get injured and they’re on the bench or field). They lived in my dorm, and sometimes I got to play intramural football AGAINST them (great sports and nice guys all- we lost but it was fun). They actually DID have to work for it, and all of them not only went to class, but spent a lot of time at their on-campus jobs. Since they weren’t technically on the team, they couldn’t have the perks the ‘real’ players got. I never knew a one of the guys on the field, except when one of the red-shirts got to kick once or twice. These guys had to keep up their grades, work sometimes 2 jobs, weren’t in the ‘special’ cafeteria for meals, and in general were like normal students. I didn’t hear anything specific back then (1991 was a championship season), but rumors abounded about why these guys we knew worked so hard like regular student athletes and the others didn’t. I say get ‘em. GET the guys who violated all the rules and let guys like the ones I knew get a chance to play. They deserved it- since they were the only ones really DOING what a real student athlete does. I wonder- if they kill the football program at Miami for years or even forever, will the under-funded portions of Miami thrive? Would the $ flow to the other programs that haven’t been violating any rules and have been turning out successful, knowledgeable graduates on a shoestring? Lordy, I hope so!
Nope. It’ll all go to basketball.