UNC Athletics Department Staff Members Used This Insane Slide To Defend Fake Classes For Athletes

A new report detailing the extent of the fake classes scandal at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill includes an insane slide from a presentation made to the school's football coaches defending and encouraging the so-called "paper classes" - where all students had to do to pass was write one paper.

In 2009, Deborah Crowder, the administrator of UNC's African and Afro-American Studies department - which hosted the "paper classes" - was retiring.

The football team academic counseling staff had long relied on these classes to support struggling athletes who would not have been eligible to play without their lax attendance and grading policies.

According to Wednesday's report, the football counseling staff was "painfully aware that Crowder's retirement would require the whole football program to adjust to a new reality of having to meet academic requirements with real academic work."

Following Crowder's retirement, the report states, the staff held a meeting with the team's coaches where they "explained (1) that the AFAM paper classes had played a large role in keeping under-prepared and/or unmotivated football players eligible to play and (2) that these classes no longer existed."

Here's the slide they used to make their point, highlighting that athletes don't even need to pay attention in these classes in order to pass:

According to the report, there was a significant and tangible benefit to these fake classes - "The average AFAM paper class GPAs for these players was 3.61 - far higher than their average GPA of 1.917 for their other classes."

The football counseling staff later asked the AFAM department head to reinstate the fake "paper classes" in order to keep their athletes eligible.