| | By Tom Farrey
ESPN.com
The provost's office will take over from athletics the authority for the Tennessee academic support unit program, the source of concerns about inappropriate assistance being given to football players, school president J. Wade Gilley announced on Wednesday.
The move was called a first step in restructuring a program that suffered allegations of academic fraud in an effort to keep football players eligible. The allegations first came to light in September in an ESPN.com report.
Gilley's announcement comes on the heels of a May report from the Tennessee Faculty Senate Athletic Committee, which recommended 21 changes including greater oversight of the athletic tutoring by the faculty.
"We have taken the recommendations from the faculty senate very seriously,"
Gilley said. "Provost (Clifton) Woods and I are pleased with the faculty senate's work and by the positive response from the athletic directors, who were very supportive of this move."
However, a leading critic of the athletic department's academic practices was not impressed. The move is no more than a "cosmetic change" designed to give the NCAA the impression that the school is dealing with its problems, said Linda Bensel-Meyers, a Tennessee English professor.
An NCAA investigator arranged to meet with Bensel-Meyers about possible rules violations in the program in May. But the meeting was cancelled after a player, Spencer Riley, sued Bensel-Meyers to prevent the release of her records to the NCAA.
Gilley reportedly said earlier this month that he does not know when, or if, the NCAA plans to return to campus.
"This is not a solution to the pervasive system problems," Bensel-Meyers said of Gilley's move.
A three-member governing committee of faculty, chaired by Vice Provost Anne Mayhew, Tennessee's new NCAA faculty athletic representative, will develop operating policies for academic support programs and report to the provost by Sept. 1. Gilley and Woods, who is the highest-ranking academic officer on campus, will review them before they go into effect.
Bensel-Meyers said her concern is that under the new plan the athletic department will still run the academic support services, despite the added check and balance provided by the provost's committee.
"We don't need an oversight committee," she said. "We need an academic entity to manage the day-to-day operations. To be fair to the athletes, they need access to the same academic faculty and officials that advise and tutor the general student population. We are not giving them equal access to an education."
Joining Mayhew on the provost's committee will be Malcolm McInnis, Tennessee's director of NCAA compliance and an athletic department employee. The third member reportedly will be Mary Papke, the Faculty Senate president this past year and a professor in the English department.
In its review of the program, the faculty athletic committee had recommended a larger oversight group that included Carmen Tegano and Kerry Howland, who will continue to run the tutoring and advising operations in the men's and women's athletic departments, respectively. But Gilley opted against that.
"(Tegano's) an employee of the athletic department," Gilley told the Knoxville News-Sentinel. "We just decided to just have one representative from the athletic department, and we tried to stick with the faculty types."
Bensel-Meyers said she was disappointed that Gilley moved ahead with his plan without the support of the full Tennessee faculty senate. In May, when its athletic committee turned in its recommendations for the tutoring operation, the faculty senate voted unanimously for the committee to go back and investigate allegations made by Bensel-Meyers in her report on suspect academic practices.
The faculty committee is now looking into some of the issues in Bensel-Meyers' report, including grade changes made for football players. Its review is expected to be finished in September.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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