UNC, NCAA Hit With Class Action Over Bogus ‘Paper’ Classes

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The NCAA and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been hit with a class action lawsuit, alleging that the two entities fail to ensure that UNC athletes are provided with a solid education while attending the university, instead of the “bogus classes” that athletes are offered at UNC, which “disproportionately” affects African-American athletes.

Plaintiffs Rashanda McCants, a former member of the UNC women’s basketball team, and Devon Ramsay, former UNC football player, both allege that while they attended UNC and played their respective sports, they took “bogus” or “sham classes,” and were not held to the same academic standards as other UNC students because of their status as athletes.

This, they say in their class action lawsuit, is a violation of rules set forth by the NCAA, which “has made a firm promise and commitment to college athletes — that it will protect the education and educational opportunities of men and women participating in college athletics.”

McCants and Ramsay contend that the NCAA, through various ways, continually reiterates “its role as ensuring that college athletes are integrated into the student body and as ensuring that athletic participation does not compromise academic achievement.”

UNC, which is a NCAA Division I school, also “complements the NCAA’s commitment through the school’s scholarship agreements with student-athletes, which promise academically sound instruction in exchange for enrolling at and playing college sports for UNC,” the explain in their class action lawsuit.

However, McCants and Ramsay allege that from 1989 to 2011, “UNC steered hundreds of college athletes into sham ‘paper classes’ that they were not required to attend, that required little to no work, that were not taught by a faculty member, and that involved no interaction with a faculty member.”

“As one recent investigation by a former federal prosecutor (commissioned by UNC itself concluded), UNC furnished ‘academically unsound classes that provided deficient educational instruction to thousands’ over the course of two decades,” the UNC class action lawsuit states.

The NCAA should not be surprised by these allegations, the two former UNC athletes explain in their class action lawsuit, saying that “the NCAA knew of a dozens of instances of academic fraud at its member schools’ athletic programs over the last century, and it nevertheless refused to implement adequate monitoring systems to detect and prevent these occurrences at its member institutions.”

In addition, the former UNC athletes claim that this problem “disproportionally” affected “African-American college athletes in revenue-producing sports.”

McCants and Ramsay allege that the NCAA, its member schools and conferences are engaged “in exploitation, subverting the educational mission in the service of the big business of college athletics — and then washing their hands of college athletics once they have served their purpose.”

The two former UNC athletes claim that while they attended UNC, they both were enrolled in sham classes and were not told that their work in the classes were neither supervised nor graded by a faculty member. McCants claims this was the case with at least two classes she took — one in 2006 and one in 2008. And Ramsay said he took at least one class in 2007 that was an alleged bogus class.

They are proposing a nationwide class of anyone who attended UNC “on an athletic scholarship and enrolled in any of the following UNC courses between 1989 and 2011” and were enrolled in one of the hundreds of classes listed in the UNC class action lawsuit.

The class action lawsuit alleges negligence and breach of fiduciary duty against the NCAA, and breach of implied contract and breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing against UNC.

In addition to damages, McCants and Ramsay are also asking that the court demand “the formation of an independent commission to review, audit, assess, and report on academic integrity in NCAA-member athletic programs and certify member-school curricula as providing comparable educations and educational opportunities to athletes and non-athletes alike.”

The plaintiffs are represented by Michael D. Hausfeld, Sathya Gosselin, Swathi Bojedla and Jeannine M. Kenney of Hausfeld LLP and by attorneys Robert F. Orr and Charles J. Ogletree Jr.

Attorney information for UNC and the NCAA is not yet available.

The UNC, NCAA Academic Fraud Class Action Lawsuit is Rashanda McCants and Devon Ramsay vs. the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Case No. 15 CVS 1782, in the Superior Court of the State of North Carolina, County of Durham.