Powell says he took a paper class, and that "everybody knew" the nature of them. He also told the WJMH hosts that players were instructed to fail learning disability assessment tests so as to ensure players would be provided assistance during tests and for note-taking.
http://deadspin.com/former-unc-player-details-academic-fraud-says-everybo-1657041495
Here's the relevant part with respect to Learning Disability:
"They basically like take you to like some place in Durham or something and they like you take this test and don’t get nothing wrong, we be like a experiment or something, don’t put these blocks together. I mean it was something simple 1 2 3, you could get it right, but they want you to get it wrong so they could had on paper to get you a note taker or something like that."
This is one of many rocks that the various investigations seem to have ignored. Given the high number of special exemptions that were used by UNC just to get these athletes admitted to the school, I think it is a valid question as to how many were certified Learning Disabled and which individuals were pushing that. (and how valid was the certification in the first place.)
As far as I'm concerned an investigator should have talked to every athlete who was designated LD, interview the staff who was in charge of that, and asses what connections were present between the staff and the evaluators etc.
Another item which I had remembered and was wondering about, and thanks to Bobby challenging me over something I said, I ran across a reference to it.
This pertains to the fact that in the early 1990s the News & Observer used to publish the High school GPA, average incoming SAT scores of athletes at all ACC schools, along with their graduation rates.
It was every interesting at the time because the general trend was that students who entered with higher test scores, generally had a higher rate of graduating. This was generally true except for one school, North Carolina.
Below is an excerpt of what I found (which is an average for basketball players from 1990 through 1994):
School HS GPA SAT
NC State 3.03 943
Duke 2.89 883
Ga Tech 2.59 855
FSU 2.59 852
Maryland 2.67 833
Clemson 2.68 823
Virginia 2.50 835
East Carolina 2.71 813
Wake Forest 2.61 805
UNC-CH 2.52 788
UNC's football and basketball players generally had the absolute lowest entering SAT scores but miraculously had the highest graduation rate. Completely opposite of the general trend!
It smelled rotten at the time, but UNC fans were quick to assure the skeptics that this was just because of UNC's superior support program and commitment to academics (cough). Now we know better, but it just points to yet another of many loose ends around this corrupt program, and reinforces that these shenanigans have been going on for decades.
It would be nice for someone to go back and find the original News & Observer articles on this issue.
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