Blowing the Whistle on Georgia

By Ezra Bowen

In their scramble to recruit star athletes and keep them in school, many colleges condone low academic standards for jocks. Last week an Atlanta federal jury served notice that the practice can be mighty costly. The case involved the University of Georgia and Jan H. Kemp, an assistant professor in the school's remedial-studies program. More than four years ago Kemp, then 32, complained that nine football players, all with substandard grades, were allowed to pass, allegedly so that they could play in the 1982 Sugar Bowl. After speaking out against this and other examples of classroom cosseting of star jocks with fourth-string grades, she was demoted and then fired by the university in 1983. In deep despair, she twice attempted suicide.

Then Kemp sought a very different resolution for her anguish. Charging violation of her right of free speech, she sued the university, in the persons of Leroy Ervin Jr., her remedial-program supervisor, and Virginia Trotter, vice president for academic affairs, who had dismissed Kemp on grounds of insubordination and insufficient scholarly research. Ending a five-week trial, the six-member jury decided on a stunning judgment of $2.5 million to Kemp. Said Trotter, in the understatement of the season: "I was certainly surprised."

So was the rest of Georgia, a state with deep pride in the university and its football team. "I fainted," said Governor Joe Frank Harris, adding that the judgment "appears to be excessive." But the jury was having none of that. They had heard Kemp's former colleagues and students, many of them athletes, testify to her excellence as an instructor. The administrators had conceded that athletes were often carried, and their lawyer argued that if an illiterate jock learned to read at Georgia and thus became a mail clerk instead of a garbage man, the university was doing its job. A tape playback of Trotter addressing a faculty meeting included her comment that if teachers thought some of the athletes had a bona fide chance of graduating, "we're talking through our hats." Apparently so: the Macon Telegraph and News reported that in ten years only 17% of Georgia's black football players graduated.

The angered jurors decided to punish the school: "You know how your mama used to whip you down?" explained Jury Forewoman Melanie Mims. And Juror Darryell Howell added, of the university's treatment of Kemp, "We don't want this to ever happen again."

Neither, apparently, did the Georgia board of regents. Chancellor H. Dean Propst announced an investigation of the developmental program for "the credibility of certain academic practices." Moreover, the regents, who were meeting when the judgment came down, deferred reappointment of the heads of all state-supported schools, most notably Fred C. Davison, the university's president. Davison did little to help his cause by stating that Georgia could not afford to "disarm unilaterally" by flunking stars while rivals kept theirs eligible. That argument was shot down by Propst: "It is neither an effective excuse nor a sound justification to argue that certain things are done because everyone else does them."

In fact, everyone else may be having second thoughts. Richard Lapchick, director of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, called the award "a real indictment of the system, and not just Georgia. The court is setting an example for other schools and putting them on < notice that this abuse can't be tolerated."

For Kemp, who was hugged by well-wishing jurors after the judgment was announced, the award was "beyond my wildest dreams." But, she said, "primarily, I was interested in widespread therapeutic reforms." As she spoke, a student handed her a button that read, RESTORE ACADEMIC INTEGRITY AT UGA. Kemp pinned it on and wore it the rest of the day.

With reporting by CB Hackworth/Atlanta