CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Former University of North Carolina football
player Michael McAdoo has filed a lawsuit against the school, saying it
failed to provide him and other athletes a quality education by guiding
them toward sham classes.
Online court records say a lawsuit seeking class action status was filed this week in U.S. District Court in Charlotte.
McAdoo's lawsuit says that he was guaranteed a good education while being recruited by football coaches, but was ultimately
guided to consider three
options, one of which was African-American Studies - the curriculum that
formed the basis for the long-running academic scandal.
''We're
not out to vilify UNC. We're trying to restore the student-athlete
principle that UNC's really been for so long in the forefront of,'' said
Jeremi Duru, a Washington, D.C., attorney representing McAdoo who also
teaches law at American University.
Rick White, UNC Associate Vice
Chancellor for Communications and Public Affairs, said the school became
aware of the lawsuit on Friday and will reserve comment until it has
reviewed the claims.
McAdoo,
who played football at UNC from 2008 through 2010, was ruled permanently
ineligible in 2010 for academic violations connected to a tutor
providing improper assistance on a research paper for a class in the
formerly named African and Afro-American Studies department.
The
lawsuit comes weeks after a report detailing the academic and athletic
scandal at UNC revealed that more than 3,100 athletes and everyday
students took no-show classes in the formerly named African and
Afro-American Studies department for nearly two decades ending in 2011
The report by former U.S.
Justice Department official Kenneth Wainstein said those classes
resulted in artificially high grades while faculty and university
administrators either missed red flags or looked the other way. The
report also said almost half the students enrolled in the bogus classes
were athletes, more than 10 times their proportion in the overall
student population. Athletics staffers steered players to the classes
when they struggled to meet the grades required to continue competing.
In
the lawsuit, McAdoo said UNC coaches and other representatives
''enticed these football student-athletes to sign the agreements with
promises of a legitimate UNC education . . . ''
''Instead, UNC systematically
funneled its football student-athletes into a 'shadow curriculum' of
bogus courses which never met and which were designed for the sole
purpose of providing enrollees high grades,'' the lawsuit said. It also
said the curriculum featured hundreds of courses which never met and
never involved a professor and that hundreds of football
student-athletes were steered to the courses.
Also,
the lawsuit says UNC has reaped ''substantial profits'' from football
players, but has not provided them with an education in return, thus
breaching its contract with McAdoo and other student-athletes in
violation of North Carolina law. The lawsuit also accuses the school of
fraud by promising ''a legitimate education'' if McAdoo and others
enrolled at UNC as football student-athletes.
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Sports Writer Aaron Beard contributed to this report from Raleigh.
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