Auburn’s star Cadillac Williams was among the players whose work has been questioned
On Thursday, the New York Times reported that 18 members of the 2004 Auburn football team, that ended the year ranked #2 nationally, had taken a combined 97 hours of independent study coursework from one professor–Thomas Petee of the Sociology Department. Petee’s resulting workload was the equivalent of 3 1/2 professors, a task anyone familiar with academic settings knows cannot be done. One athlete took 7 independent study courses from Dr. Petee. That’s nearly an entire year of work.
Dr. Petee said “It was a lot of work….”
What is especially disturbing about the Auburn case is how the administration failed to act until confronted by the New York Times. Sociology professor James Gundlach had tried to get university administrators to act, but nothing happened.
We hope our friends in Auburn’s PR program can help their administrators take a more proactive role. Robert– what do you think about this? I would appreciate any comments that you may have on this situation. 🙂
As of today, I couldn’t find any information on the Auburn website about the controversy.
Auburn needs to be as transparent and open to the public and the media as possible– because they have a lot of questions to answer. It would also be wise for Auburn to target their internal audiences as well (students, other faculty, staff, etc.) These individuals would make good “ambassadors” for Auburn to external audiences. If the staff and students are saying good things about the university and how they are handling this situation– it could help in the long term.
The more Auburn could do to present themselves as being proactive and cooperative with the authorities (ex. NCAA)– the better. 🙂
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