Class on athletes’ rights canceled by UNC

If you’ve heard of professor Jay Smith, it’s probably because of his book UNC: Cheated. You might think he is totally against athletics, but that isn’t true.

I decided to take his class History 383, The Rights of Big-Time College Athletes, because it sounded interesting and I needed another History for my minor. It’s probably the best class I’ve taken.

history.unc.edu

I wish I could recommend it to my friends and all of you, but it doesn’t look like Jay will get to teach it again. The university has already told him he can’t teach it next year, and it is questionable to return in 2018 or later.

“For reasons that are still mysterious, it has been decided that I will not be allowed to teach this course next year,” Smith said in an interview with The Tab.

He says that he started the class “for UNC to set an example of how to improve college athletics.” Some major themes of the class include NCAA reforms, health care for athletes and academic rights.

“I wanted the university to use this opportunity to admit that we fell short, but to also have a leading voice in how we can work to fix it so it doesn’t happen again.” This class was a small part of that. It doesn’t blast UNC for our scandal, but it does put it into perspective with other universities. We aren’t the first, we won’t be the last – and that’s the real problem.

When he originally proposed the class for this past summer session, he said that he encountered no problems getting it approved “until our department starting publicizing the course. After that, my chair began to receive questions from skeptics, both faculty and administrators, about the course and whether I was qualified to teach it.”

The chair of the history department was informed after allowing the course to be scheduled for the summer session that he would “have to inform South building in advance” if the course was to be offered in a regular semester.

To teach a class, professors submit course requests for next year this fall And they are typically all placed on next year’s schedule unless there have been issues with getting students to sign up. Most of the time, they never hear back about the classes, whether positively or negatively, until they are on the schedule.

Jay heard back in about a week that his class would not be offered. When he was informed by an associate chair of the department, he requested a face-to-face meeting to discuss why History 383 would not be offered. “The Associate Chair said ‘Jay, you know they don’t like you in South building,'” Smith said.

He pushed back to tried to get the course offered next fall, but even after a meeting with the dean, he was still told the course would not be offered.

I asked him if that was similar to other professors being told their class wasn’t going to be offered, especially how quickly he heard back about the negative response. Smith thanked me for the question and said he “cannot emphasize enough how unusual that is. No, the dean usually pays no attention to what courses a department is scheduling for the upcoming academic year.”

“The fact that he did pay attention shows that they have constructed an extraordinary procedure for me so that they know what I’m planning to do in the classroom. I think it is a very dangerous precedent to be setting at UNC.”

I asked whether the objections were against him teaching the course or the course itself. “It is not entirely clear. That’s a great question, and I don’t know because they have not said.”

I cannot answer that question either, but I can say it’s a shame this class won’t be offered next fall. It fits in beautifully with the athletic and academic culture here at UNC, and I hope it is able to return for future undergraduates.

Statements have been slightly modified for clarity