USC Gets Probation for Fraud

After a prolonged investigation, the NCAA has placed USC on two years’ probation and will take scholarships from two sports, including football, in response to a scandal that saw tutors writing papers for student-athletes in the late 1990s.

The penalty--which also affects the women’s swimming and diving team and carries no ban on postseason play--was lessened in part because USC brought the violations to light.

The NCAA Committee on Infractions reprimanded the university for academic fraud, providing false information and a lack of institutional monitoring. Committee members complained that, in some cases, tutors were young and had low grade-point averages.

“Some of the tutors, for example, were in the same classes [as the student-athletes],” said Jack Friedenthal, a George Washington law professor and committee chair.

USC President Steven Sample declined to comment, a spokesman said, and Athletic Director Mike Garrett was out of town. The university issued a written statement.

“We do not tolerate cheating at USC, and this case should signal our seriousness and our determination to root out those who do,” Mike Diamond, executive vice provost, said in the release.

The football team will lose two scholarships for the 2002-03 academic year and the women’s swimming and diving team will lose half a scholarship. With the entire athletic department under probation, administrators must submit annual compliance reports to the NCAA.

The ruling also makes USC subject to stiffer penalties for any repeat violations in the next five years.

Thursday’s announcement brought better news for the men’s basketball team, cleared of allegations that a former assistant committed recruiting violations. And only a minor violation was found regarding a former player who leased a car with the help of an athletics representative.

As for academic fraud, the misdeeds of the student-athletes were widely reported, and one of them--former receiver Mike Bastianelli--was named in the news. But the NCAA offered, for the first time, details about what occurred in the Student Athlete Academic Services office.

The problems began just months after it was learned football and baseball players were taking an education class that promised passing grades for little work. That incident brought no NCAA action.

It was the summer of 1996, the NCAA report says, when Bastianelli told an assistant coach he had barely begun a paper due the next day in his political science class. The assistant brought Bastianelli to the SAAS office.

Christopher Cairney, a former coordinator of tutor services, showed Bastianelli how to use the Internet for research. But when Bastianelli slowly began to type his paper, Cairney stepped in and typed for him. After composing a few sentences from Bastianelli’s notes, Cairney proceeded to finish the paper with limited input from the player.

The next documented incident took place in the fall of 1997 when an unidentified female diver asked a tutor to compose a rough draft for her writing class. The diver submitted the handwritten draft to her professor, then turned in a final draft in her own handwriting.

Finally, in the spring of 1998, an unidentified football player walked into SAAS and said he had a religion paper due in five days. Yet another tutor offered to help and, again, took over at the keyboard because the player typed slowly. After composing several lines from the player’s notes, the tutor finished the paper.

USC administrators got wind of impropriety in the fall of 1997 when two SAAS employees, including Cairney, charged that tutors routinely wrote papers for football players.

An in-house investigation found neither widespread wrongdoing nor complicity by coaches. “We have no evidence . . . that in any way they asked for improper measures to be taken,” Friedenthal said.

Nor could investigators determine the tutors’ reasons for providing improper help.

“They all essentially denied they had done anything wrong, so it was hard to get anything regarding their motivations,” Friedenthal said. “Frankly, it was the student-athletes who gave us the information. It was an honorable thing to do.”

The university eventually submitted a 61-page report to the Pacific 10 Conference, which issued a reprimand but no penalties in 1998.

The case went to the NCAA, at which point it slowed to a crawl as the association moved its offices to Indianapolis, then added the basketball allegations to the file.

In the meantime, Bastianelli and his teammate served two-game suspensions and were reinstated by the NCAA. The diver was expelled after the university found additional misbehavior.

Friedenthal praised USC for its response.

“That’s the way you hope it happens,” he said. “The school immediately jumped on it.”

He also differentiated this case from the scandal at Minnesota where a tutor systematically wrote papers for basketball players.

“This was spread out,” Friedenthal said of USC. “The elements of academic fraud in a sense were the same, but the extent and the nature were substantially different.”

However, the infractions committee criticized USC professors who were alerted to the fraud. Friedenthal said: “Though one professor changed the grade to an F, two of the professors refused to change the grades.”

The report found this “inexcusable.”

USC general counsel Todd Dickey said the university maintains a policy of academic freedom for professors, giving them a right to set grades in their courses.

In one case, Dickey said, the professor--herself a lawyer--worried about due process for the student-athlete because substantial time had passed between the violation and its discovery.

In the other case, he said, the professor said the fraudulent paper represented a minor portion of the classwork and would not have affected the overall grade.

Still, USC has enacted significant changes, starting with the tutors involved. Cairney was fired, as was another tutor. The third left voluntarily.

The SAAS office has restructured its training and tries to hire only graduate students with grade point averages of 3.0 or higher. SAAS reports to Garrett and the provost’s office, which operates an independent committee to oversee athletics.

USC hoped these measures would help it escape further penalty, but NCAA officials imposed probation, in part, because at least one of the tutors missed training sessions and none were regularly monitored.

The committee also “found it troubling that, over the course of approximately two years, three different tutors (including the tutor coordinator) engaged in academic fraud in clear violation of institutional guidelines.”

Friedenthal said: “This is not a fine line.”

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The Punishment

Penalties imposed on USC by the NCAA Committee on Infractions:

1. Public reprimand and censure.

2. Two years’ probation.

3. Football scholarships reduced by two for 2002-03 academic year.

4. Women’s swimming and diving scholarships reduced by half a scholarship.

5. NCAA forwards copy of report to appropriate regional accrediting agency.

6. Should former SAAS tutor coordinator seek an athletics-related job at another NCAA school in the next two years, he could be limited in his duties.

7. USC must implement an education program for athletic department personnel and others. The university must submit annual compliance reports to the NCAA.

8. At the conclusion of probation period, President Steven Sample must send a letter to the NCAA affirming that USC is conforming to NCAA regulations.