Actual NYT article

[GalensGhost 0]

blame it on the AU prof...not some 3 of 4th degree of seperation who may have attended a football game at Bama.

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I have no respect for Grunclach or whatever his name is. I blame him for putting his personal agenda ahead of everything else. As previously mentioned, were I his boss he would be fired tomorrow morning for insubordination. There are proper channels to handle things and he failed to follow them.

But you can't be serious about 3rd or 4th degree of separation. St. John (book about Bama)...NYTimes his employer..Cecil Hurt their employee. Clear pattern. Their participation is pretty well documented.

Again, BG, if I were doing an article about price gouging at the Hilton, I'd at least have the wherewithall to check prices at the Sheraton on the same block. Otherwise I come off as having a clear agenda against Hiltons -- and I might get sued.

[AUwingsfan 1]

I don't know, but I sure hope that nothing serious comes from this.....

Why did the New York Times even write something about this?? I mean we were already shut out of the BCS Championship game.......and for some reason I doubt that Leinhart and Bush or even Adrian Peterson had never taken easy A courses...............

I just find the timing of all of this strange, especially a few weeks before the season starts......and for what it's worth the classes I've had with athletes were not easy A's.........

[TexasTiger 12,876]

Professor Petee’s mentor, a former sociology department director, Greg Kowalski, said he considered Professor Petee like “a brother.” Still, he said, he could not find any comparable situation at Auburn in which one teacher taught so many directed-reading courses.

No respectable academician does this. It cannot be done well.

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I'll actually agree with you on that note. He did over extend himself and when he was told to stop, he stopped. He did this for other students not just student athletes.

Again

Clara voice

Where's the crime?

/Clara Voice

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His motivations may not have been impure. He may have just been a push over and was identified as such by the advisor from Athletics that pointed players his way.

Yes, this would have been much, much worse had the students taking advantage of this practice only been athletes. But athletes were grossly disporportionate in number. 25% of Auburn students are hardly scholarship athletes.

[UA-CT 1]

Again, BG, if I were doing an article about price gouging at the Hilton, I'd at least have the wherewithall to check prices at the Sheraton on the same block. Otherwise I come off as having a clear agenda against Hiltons -- and I might get sued.

247574[/snapback]

But what if Hilton came knocking on your door telling you they were price gouging. Wouldn't that be a pretty reliable source? Can you really blame the Sheraton that Hilton was price gouging?

[GalensGhost 0]

Who said the writer had no agenda?  Who said it was particularly balanced?  Who said, similarly bad, if not identical crap goes on in many other places?  I don't dispute any of that.  But that doesn't mean I'm unconcerned about or dismiss the underlying actions in question.

If our standards are merely, "don't violate law,"  then we are pretty pathetic.

If you see  as merely a source of sports entertainment, then these facts may not bother you much.  If you are concerned with how the University is perceived, and, in fact, performs, as an academic institution, and as an alum I very much am, then this will bother you.

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I do not disagree with you on this. Auburn is more to me than a football factory. If AU never played another game, I would still love it, still wear the colors and still be filled with joy should my children decide to attend school there.

I take great pride in Auburn's academic standing in spite of the fact that I was too stupid to go to school there myself. With the exception of me, my entire family has AU skins on the wall and AU's tremendous academic standing gives those even greater value. I want nothing to ever diminish that.

Auburn DOES have a football program, however. A fine program with a principled and disciplined coaching staff. The football program brings millions and millions of dollars to the school, dollars without which many of the outstanding academic accomplishments we celebrate would not be possible. The Auburn coaching staff is well compensated. Their mission as leaders is to produce young men who will honor and respect what it means to be an Auburn man. Their mission is to instill discipline, honor, courage, pride, integrity and honesty in raw-edged teenagers who arrive on the Auburn campus with self-important dreams. Their mission is to guide these young men in career paths, to help them become better citizens and more productive in their post-football life.

The stark reality of the situation, however, is that none of these missions will be possible unless the coaching staff wins. No matter how many fine young men this coaching staff turns out -- and have you looked around lately? there are some outstanding MEN, not football players who have emerged from this program -- unless the coaching staff wins, its record of producing academicians and men of principle may be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Does this make me proud? Of course not. But the world is not the perfectly principled, life-in-a-vacuum landscape people like this Grundlach envision it to be.

Thus comes the balance. Athletes have incredible demands placed on them, both in physical exertion and in time. Only those with their heads in the sand can fail to see that student-athletes are different, both in expectation and in status. How many chemistry students do you know who can walk across the campus and see 100 people wearing replica aprons with their atomic number on it? That does not mean athletes should get a free ride. They should be expected to follow the rules and take advantage of the same opportunities that are available to all students. But I see nothing wrong with an athlete taking a directed reading class so as to avoid a sack-breaker with an anti-athletic bias.

Should Peete have taken on the load that he did? Perhaps not. But that is not for the New York Times to decide. That decision rests with his superiors, so long as he violated no rules. If Grundpaw was upset, he should have followed the chain to the top. Instead HE skirted the rules. HE broke protocol. HE did something that was in violation of the school's code of ethics.

The Auburn coaching staff is doing a fantastic job of turning out men with a purpose who represent Auburn well. When there are problems, they are handled swiftly and with the best interest of the student-athlete foremost in mind. Auburn players are graduating. They are completing the requirements for graduation in the same manner as any other student on the campus.

If the worst charge that can be leveled against someone in the athletic department is that they steered athletes to classes and courses known to be easier, then I will rest easily. If that were a crime, every advisor I ever had when I was in college would now be in jail.

[GalensGhost 0]

Again, BG, if I were doing an article about price gouging at the Hilton, I'd at least have the wherewithall to check prices at the Sheraton on the same block. Otherwise I come off as having a clear agenda against Hiltons -- and I might get sued.

247574[/snapback]

But what if Hilton came knocking on your door telling you they were price gouging. Wouldn't that be a pretty reliable source? Can you really blame the Sheraton that Hilton was price gouging?

247583[/snapback]

I'm guessing you never took a course in journalism.

If a Hilton employee came to me and said the hotel was price gouging, I would not run with his unsubstantiated story. I would first check the veracity of it and then make an honest effort to determine the overall merit of his claims. After I checked with other hotels and discovered that they were charging roughly the same price, I would beat the crap out of the Hilton guy for wasting my time.

[AUloggerhead 2,231]

I don't like that Grundlach ran to the NYT with his findings but neither do I like the prospect of seeing AU grossly inflating the athletes' collective GPA with this practice. The implication is that AU's trumpeting of recent student-athlete academic performance as a whole is now suspect. I don't know if that's true or not. I know the swim team is looking good: link. To what extent other sports' athletes may or may not be above board, ... if they are not then I would expect them to be corrected. I know the administration is investigating the charges.

Crip courses have been around since forever it seems. I don't think that's the point. Langenfeld's picking up (& passing!) a course in mid-term so that he retains his eligibity to play in the bowl game is a stretch, to put it mildly. (He did play great in that game, I have to admit.)

[Tiger Kent 29]

Do not give out emails and encourage people to add to the problem. -- The Mgmt.

[DKW 86 7,424]

I'm curious as to what Gundlach's motive is....Is it money...fame...I have a hard time believeing that he would go to all this trouble just to do the right thing, considering the consequences he might face.

247535[/snapback]

He has his gunsights on Bobby Lowder....

That was what SACS was about etc.

BTW, Thamel got all that wrong, we placed ourselves on SACS Probation.

[GalensGhost 0]

I'm going to say this and then I have nothing else to say on this subject.

To remain eligible at USC his senior season, Matt Leinart took one class. Ballroom dancing.

This was a cause for many good humored and lengthy segments on ESPN and national media outlets as was his spotty attendance record in the class. He was universally lauded for being so intelligent and finding a way around the system.

The NYT wastes four pages of web-copy because a handful of Auburn players took a course with allegedly less-than-strenuous academic requirements. Guess they should have taken break dancing instead.

[UA-CT 1]

As easy as it is to play the blaming game against your biggest rivals (UA,UGA.UF) isn't anyone at all just a little suspicous of Vanderbilt. I mean read the article, the quotes given by Gordon Gee. They have more to lose than any of the other instutions I see being blamed by fans. They are supose to be the "academic institution" of the SEC and they thumb their nose at us in the classroom the same way we make fun of their athletics. I image they find it a little embarrassing that AU's APR was higher than theirs. I'm not saying they did, but it would make more sense to me.

[Grider 1]

I found an email address for James Gundlach.  Let him know what you think!  I gave him a piece of my mind.

You can go to this link and see his picture:

Here is another email address for him:

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Yeah that does a lot of good.

This guy does not care what you send him, nor what your or anybody else's opinion of his handling of this situation is. Crapflooding his email, voice mail and physical mailbox is stupid.

Just because you can does not mean you should.

[AUdaREALsecTigers 2]

Okay... so if the problem has been resolved, then where is the "news"? And how did this turn into an athletic program story? Did the article not say they couldn't tell that this situation affected the program's academic numbers that much?

Smear campaign by someone with an axe. This story wreaks!

[AU2much2handle 0]

This is not uncommon at any school no matter the size. At Athens State University here in Athens, they have these same classes. There are also professors-advisors who will enroll you in what they call an independent study and can just give you a grade. Helps students graduate on time and helps the school by placing graduates in the job market with high GPA's. Is it right, or ethical probally not, but when it benefits both parties, it is probally not going to change anytime soon.

[Grider 1]

As easy as it is to play the blaming game against your biggest rivals (UA,UGA.UF) isn't anyone at all just a little suspicous of Vanderbilt.  I mean read the article, the quotes given by Gordon Gee.  They have more to lose than any of the other instutions I see being blamed by fans.  They are supose to be the "academic institution" of the SEC and they thumb their nose at us in the classroom the same way we make fun of their athletics.  I image they find it a little embarrassing that AU's APR was higher than theirs.  I'm not saying they did, but it would make more sense to me.

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Auburn has no one to blame for this beyond the NYT and Dr. Gundlach. You would know nothing about what is an internal investigation if Dr. Gundlach had not run to the NYT with the story. And you would know nothing about this story if the NYT was in the business of reporting news and not creating news from nearly nothing.

[TexasTiger 12,876]

Who said the writer had no agenda?  Who said it was particularly balanced?  Who said, similarly bad, if not identical crap goes on in many other places?  I don't dispute any of that.  But that doesn't mean I'm unconcerned about or dismiss the underlying actions in question.

If our standards are merely, "don't violate law,"  then we are pretty pathetic.

If you see  as merely a source of sports entertainment, then these facts may not bother you much.  If you are concerned with how the University is perceived, and, in fact, performs, as an academic institution, and as an alum I very much am, then this will bother you.

247572[/snapback]

I do not disagree with you on this. Auburn is more to me than a football factory. If AU never played another game, I would still love it, still wear the colors and still be filled with joy should my children decide to attend school there.

I take great pride in Auburn's academic standing in spite of the fact that I was too stupid to go to school there myself. With the exception of me, my entire family has AU skins on the wall and AU's tremendous academic standing gives those even greater value. I want nothing to ever diminish that.

Auburn DOES have a football program, however. A fine program with a principled and disciplined coaching staff. The football program brings millions and millions of dollars to the school, dollars without which many of the outstanding academic accomplishments we celebrate would not be possible. The Auburn coaching staff is well compensated. Their mission as leaders is to produce young men who will honor and respect what it means to be an Auburn man. Their mission is to instill discipline, honor, courage, pride, integrity and honesty in raw-edged teenagers who arrive on the Auburn campus with self-important dreams. Their mission is to guide these young men in career paths, to help them become better citizens and more productive in their post-football life.

The stark reality of the situation, however, is that none of these missions will be possible unless the coaching staff wins. No matter how many fine young men this coaching staff turns out -- and have you looked around lately? there are some outstanding MEN, not football players who have emerged from this program -- unless the coaching staff wins, its record of producing academicians and men of principle may be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Does this make me proud? Of course not. But the world is not the perfectly principled, life-in-a-vacuum landscape people like this Grundlach envision it to be.

Thus comes the balance. Athletes have incredible demands placed on them, both in physical exertion and in time. Only those with their heads in the sand can fail to see that student-athletes are different, both in expectation and in status. How many chemistry students do you know who can walk across the campus and see 100 people wearing replica aprons with their atomic number on it? That does not mean athletes should get a free ride. They should be expected to follow the rules and take advantage of the same opportunities that are available to all students. But I see nothing wrong with an athlete taking a directed reading class so as to avoid a sack-breaker with an anti-athletic bias.

Should Peete have taken on the load that he did? Perhaps not. But that is not for the New York Times to decide. That decision rests with his superiors, so long as he violated no rules. If Grundpaw was upset, he should have followed the chain to the top. Instead HE skirted the rules. HE broke protocol. HE did something that was in violation of the school's code of ethics.

The Auburn coaching staff is doing a fantastic job of turning out men with a purpose who represent Auburn well. When there are problems, they are handled swiftly and with the best interest of the student-athlete foremost in mind. Auburn players are graduating. They are completing the requirements for graduation in the same manner as any other student on the campus.

If the worst charge that can be leveled against someone in the athletic department is that they steered athletes to classes and courses known to be easier, then I will rest easily. If that were a crime, every advisor I ever had when I was in college would now be in jail.

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First of all, if the story is accurate and if there is truly nothing wrong with the practice, why should we care in the NYT or anyone else prints it? Why should you wish to fire someone who brings to the attention of the press a practice that you believe is defensible and appropriate? Do you care if what you do is printed in the NYT? If you do, is that you fault or their's?

Auburn should be able to withstand such scrutiny. It should strive to have its academic practices so above board that no journalist would find anything remotely sensational about printing it. The article could have easily at least mentioned a few other schools practices that are less than impressive, but if the story is true, why all the bitchin' about the Times? If the practice is not a problem, then why is it such a breach of protocol to mention it to the press?

I would love Auburn if we never won another game. I would love Auburn football if we decided to be Division III and not give scholarships and only fielded a team that met the same admissions criteria as any other student. I might even prefer that to the direction things are quickly going. I could more easily afford to take my kids to the games, get good seats, and rest assured that the student-athletes they were watching and cheering on were first and foremost students. We could have minor leagues to prepare folks for the NFL since that was never the original intention of Cliff Hare when he fielded the first team in 1892. It is very unfortunate the college sports has become increasingly compromised, that money has become paramount and standards have sunk so low.

Frankly, the fact that a young man can walk across campus and see a hundred people wearing his number is probably a pretty sad statement about what our values have become and how much we look to others to entertain us and give us some sense of identity-- even if it isn't ours. And, yes, I know mine is a minority view on this forum.

[UA-CT 1]

247574[/snapback]

But what if Hilton came knocking on your door telling you they were price gouging. Wouldn't that be a pretty reliable source? Can you really blame the Sheraton that Hilton was price gouging?

247583[/snapback]

I'm guessing you never took a course in journalism.

If a Hilton employee came to me and said the hotel was price gouging, I would not run with his unsubstantiated story. I would first check the veracity of it and then make an honest effort to determine the overall merit of his claims. After I checked with other hotels and discovered that they were charging roughly the same price, I would beat the crap out of the Hilton guy for wasting my time.

247588[/snapback]

No, I majored in Sociology

[Tiger Kent 29]

If he wants to act like a 2 year old then he should expect some kind of retribution from the Auburn Family. I had no problem with him confronting Professor Petee but it should have ended there. He should not have gone to the NY Times, it should have never left the AU family.

[UA-CT 1]

If he wants to act like a 2 year old then he should expect some kind of retribution from the Auburn Family.  I had no problem with him confronting Professor Petee but it should have ended there.  He should not have gone to the NY Times,  it should have never left the AU family.

247604[/snapback]

Again, I don't understand his motivation...If I were AU I would fire him the next day. If you have a problem with something or someone you should atleast be man enough to tell them first before making it public. Is he not a professional?

[swensks 0]

i know both individuals fairly well seeing as i'm a graduate student studying archaeology (i have to go through the sociology program).  I pm'd dkw last week with this exact story and he wrote it off.  Bottom line is that if petee was doing his job correctly in administering directed reading classes there would be no way in hell he could have done it with that many kids.  In a real directed reading class you actually should have to work for those three credit hours and study something not normally offered.  Basically we should not stand up for this crap and eat our crow.  Id love to have a great student athelete program but i want it done the right way.

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Couldn't have said it better myself. I"m glad that AUWallace has some academic honor left.

I have no respect for Grunclach or whatever his name is.  I blame him for putting his personal agenda ahead of everything else.  As previously mentioned, were I his boss he would be fired tomorrow morning for insubordination.  There are proper channels to handle things and he failed to follow them.

But you can't be serious about 3rd or 4th degree of separation.  St. John (book about Bama)...NYTimes his employer..Cecil Hurt their employee.  Clear pattern.  Their participation is pretty well documented. 

Again, BG, if I were doing an article about price gouging at the Hilton, I'd at least have the wherewithall to check prices at the Sheraton on the same block. Otherwise I come off as having a clear agenda against Hiltons -- and I might get sued.

247574[/snapback]

Well 60 posts into this, I'm still wondering how we all know about everyone else's "agenda." To the best of my knowledge, no one has spoken to this Grunlach guy, nobody works for the NYT, and no one is "in with the in crowd" in T-Town. Did it ever occur to you that this may have been some journalists pet project that he was waiting to release on a slow news day?!

And your Hilton anology is a bust. This article isn't about how every school has problems such as the one described at Auburn. It's about the problem at Auburn. Why would you need to shop around at other universities in order to get more information on the problems at Auburn? That's ridiculous. The problem lies within the university, so whatever problems other schools are having is complete unrelated. It's just another attempt at relativism.

It isn't illegal for a professor to teach 100+ directed reading classes - Galen is right on this. However, as some have already pointed out, it is physically impossible for one person to put in the necessary time for each of those classes such that the students are getting the attention and instruction that they have paid for, that is required, and that they deserve. Some students will want all of that, some won't...that isn't the point. The point is that it's Auburn UNIVERSITY...not AUBURN football team. The main objective of Auburn UNIVERSITY is EDUCATION. If the kids who are having their EDUCATION paid for with their athletic SCHOLARship can't make grades the right way, then they do not deserve the privelidge that is attending college at a school such as Auburn.

Odds are that this will blow over and we won't hear about it 3 months from now. However, this should be a punch in the nose for the alumni, faculty, staff, and patrons of Auburn. This is the sort of thing that, if left unchecked, will ruin both the academics and athletics.

Here's the bottom line: Fix it. We're not above the law, moral law, or universal academic standards.

And for those of you that are still whining about now "it's not fair" and it's "a witch hunt"...you sound like the Bama fans over the past 5 years. Don't be a hypocrite.

[swensks 0]

First of all, if the story is accurate and if there is truly nothing wrong with the practice, why should we care in the NYT or anyone else prints it?  Why should you wish to fire someone who brings to the attention of the press a practice that you believe is defensible and appropriate?  Do you care if what you do is printed in the NYT?  If you do, is that you fault or their's?

Auburn should be able to withstand such scrutiny.  It should strive to have its academic practices so above board that no journalist would find anything remotely sensational about printing it.  The article could have easily at least mentioned a few other schools practices that are less than impressive, but if the story is true, why all the bitchin' about the Times?  If the practice is not a problem, then why is it such a breach of protocol to mention it to the press?

I would love Auburn if we never won another game.  I would love Auburn football if we decided to be Division III and not give scholarships and only fielded a team that met the same admissions criteria as any other student.  I might even prefer that to the direction things are quickly going.  I could more easily afford to take my kids to the games, get good seats, and rest assured that the student-athletes they were watching and cheering on were first and foremost students.  We could have minor leagues to prepare folks for the NFL since that was never the original intention of Cliff Hare when he fielded the first team in 1892.  It is very unfortunate the college sports has become increasingly compromised, that money has become paramount and standards have sunk so low. 

Frankly, the fact that a young man can walk across campus and see a hundred people wearing his number is probably a pretty sad statement about what our values have become and how much we look to others to entertain us and give us some sense of identity-- even if it isn't ours.  And, yes, I know mine is a minority view on this forum.

247602[/snapback]

Maybe a minority view, but a good one.

If he wants to act like a 2 year old then he should expect some kind of retribution from the Auburn Family.  I had no problem with him confronting Professor Petee but it should have ended there.  He should not have gone to the NY Times,  it should have never left the AU family.

247604[/snapback]

Again, I don't understand his motivation...If I were AU I would fire him the next day. If you have a problem with something or someone you should atleast be man enough to tell them first before making it public. Is he not a professional?

247606[/snapback]

If you immediately fire someone who you don't agree with, who is actually being the 2 year old? Wouldn't an Auburn man work out his differences instead of just dismissing the other guy? You, sir, have some thinking to do.

What he did was not right. He should not have dumped the info to the NYT. But the simple fact is that what he told the times seems to be true. That being said, we need to get over the fact that it was done and get to the meat of the problem - the fact that we have academic problems at Auburn.

[Tiger Kent 29]

I agree we should clean up any wrong doing but that whole article was nothing but a smear campaign. Why did he have to bring up all of Auburn's prior probation problems? Most of them happened almost 20 years ago. The timing of the article is another issue - a month before kickoff? Smear Campaign!

[swensks 0]

I agree we should clean up any wrong doing but that whole article was nothing but a smear campaign.  Why did he have to bring up all of Auburn's prior probation problems? Most of them happened almost 20 years ago. The timing of the article is another issue - a month before kickoff?  Smear Campaign!

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I think that the point of the article is that there are academic misdoings at Auburn University. These misdoings have involved - in some cases - scholarship athletes. Thus, it calls NCAA regulations into play and suggests that there MIGHT be cause for an investigation or maybe more. From that, they talk about Auburn's previous troubles with NCAA regulations.

I don't think it's that hard to follow.

[TitanTiger 20,482]

Listen to me and listen good. Do not post another person's email address, phone number, mailing address or any other contact info and encourage people here to berate them over this story. You aren't helping.

The next person that posts something of this nature gets a 2-week vacation.

[Grider 1]

Listen to me and listen good.  Do not post another person's email address, phone number, mailing address or any other contact info and encourage people here to berate them over this story.  You aren't helping.

The next person that posts something of this nature gets a 2-week vacation.

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Told you it was a bad idea....