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| Friday, October 29 Updated: November 3, 1:55 PM ET Lawyer: Faculty have different standards By Tom Farrey ESPN.com |
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The University of Tennessee attorney who conducted the school's review into allegations of academic fraud said Friday that in determining that no NCAA rules were violated, he concluded that athletics department officials merely have a "difference in opinion" from English Department personnel as to what constitutes improper tutoring.
Those differences are at the crux of the two-page report by university lawyer Ronald C. Leadbetter that was sent to Tennessee men's athletics director Doug Dickey, and concluded a six-week review into the Volunteers' academic-services unit. "While concerns have been voiced by a number of current and former UT English Department officials and faculty regarding the extent to which tutors, mentors and other UT Athletics Department staff have been permitted to provide academic services to student-athletes, the contested services have not been provided in violation of NCAA bylaws," Leadbetter wrote in his Oct. 28 report. The report was forwarded to the NCAA, which has the option of investigating the school on its own to determine if rules were broken. The organization does not comment on current investigations or whether it plans to look into a program. Other findings in the report:
"The university would have been better served had that been done," Leadbetter wrote. "Indeed, a timely report and a better documented investigation would have avoided the difficulty of investigating and documenting events long after their occurrence."
"This activity resulted from the tutor's good-faith belief that the practice" of taking dictation from athletes with certain special needs was acceptable, Leadbetter wrote. "The tutor was not seeking to provide an unauthorized special benefit nor was the student-athlete seeking to obtain one." Several of the incidents cited by English Department officials involved what they believed to be improper help given to athletes with learning disabilities. Linda Bensel-Meyer, director of freshman composition, threatened to bring up the athletics department on practices of institutional plagiarism in 1995 after discovering that one current player had turned in a paper in which a tutor had provided what she considered excessive help for even a learning-disabled student. NCAA rules do not allow athletes to receive "extra benefits" beyond those available to regular students, although the rules are vague in the area of academic services. There are no specific rules stating how much help an athlete can receive from tutors, although the NCAA does expect athletics departments to abide by school regulations. Having a tutor type a paper for an athlete, for instance, is not prohibited by NCAA rules as long as the player pays for the service. However, on the Tennessee campus, two of the largest tutoring programs available to regular students -- the Writing Center and the Educational Assistance Program -- do not permit tutors to type papers for students because of the potential for tutors doing too much of the work. "Your ideas become their ideas," said Ron McFadden, director of the EAP program. "You say, 'Let me fix that up for you.' If you type it, you're going to edit it." To avoid that problem, athletics departments at the University of Texas and elsewhere in the NCAA rule out typing by tutors. "We don't even give the tutors access to computers when they're working with players," said Diana Kenepp, director of academic services in the Penn State athletics department. At Tennessee, the tutor handbook allows tutors not only to type papers with athletes, but work with them during the construction of the paper. "I'm not surprised they didn't find anything, because (athletics department officials) don't think what they're doing is wrong," McFadden said of the university report. Wright, who was interviewed by Leadbetter, said she was pleased to see the university had found no NCAA infractions. Despite the concerns she raised in memos last year about improper tutoring and instances of plagiarism, her stated interest all along has been with ensuring the athletes' education, rather than punishing a program she remains fond of. "The fact that I caught these things (before plagiarized papers were turned in) and did something about it means they did not violate NCAA rules," Wright said.
Leadbetter did not address whether the school violated any NCAA rules by waiting until after the Sept. 18 Florida game to take action against players named in Wright's memos, which Leadbetter had received on Sept. 14. Those players were suspended for the Sept. 25 Memphis game but later reinstated when the school said there was no wrongdoing.
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