USC Picks Ragsdale to Head Investigation

The USC faculty athletic representative whose report about a controversial class caused the school to drop an investigation last fall will head the school’s newly reopened inquiry into the class, The Times has learned.

Noel Ragsdale, who reports to USC President Steven Sample, will team with the Pacific 10 Conference regarding allegations of academic improprieties involving an education class last spring in which 30 of the 40 students were athletes. Nearly all of the students, including 14 members of the 1996 Rose Bowl team and eight baseball players, received a grade of A.

A committee formed to review the class last summer closed the investigation after Ragsdale reported to an athletic oversight group that the instructor of the class had retired. However, Professor Vernon Broussard is still teaching the same class at USC. Currently one-third of the class are athletes.

Meanwhile, Katina Austin, a former student in that class who was not an athlete, told The Times that she saw athletes signing their names to other students’ work early in the semester. She said Broussard announced that it was “an athletes’ class,” and that attendance was not required.

Broussard told The Times on Monday that he wasn’t aware that any athletes were enrolled in his class.

Austin, who graduated last year, said she was interviewed by a USC official last summer about the class, but was never asked about the athletes in the class or Janice Henry, the athletic department advisor under scrutiny for allegedly stacking the class with football and baseball players.

“When the first semester started, a golfer used to show up but he stopped coming after a few weeks,” Austin said. “Then, about mid-semester, a song girl started showing up. The class average was two, me and Laura [Lee, another non-athlete] and never bigger than three, except for the first and last class.

“I was under the impression she [Janice Henry] was the T.A. [teaching assistant]. Mr. Broussard said that when he wasn’t available to answer questions or not in his office, that we should go see her.”

Henry has refused comment to The Times. Broussard, who says his grading methods of the class have not been questioned, says attendance to his class is not mandatory and every student can earn an A.

After new allegations involving the class appeared in The Times on Wednesday, USC officials said a select committee would be formed to review the situation. But on Friday, Richard Ide, USC vice provost of undergraduate studies, said the school had decided to move forward without a committee, though it is unclear if a committee could still be formed at some point. “There is no reason to delay,” he said.

But Ide--who was on the first investigating committee with Ragsdale--said earlier this week that neither he nor Ragsdale should be involved in the new investigation.

“I know I won’t be on it [the committee], or Noel Ragsdale, since we would want to avoid an appearance of conflict since we had dealt with the issue before,” Ide said on Thursday.

The investigation centers on new allegations by two USC student-athletes that Henry enrolled them in Broussard’s class and told them that they didn’t have to attend the class or do any work in it. Henry advises football and baseball players.