Deborah Crowder
Department Administrator
Department of African and Afro-American Studies (former)
Former Student Services Manager Debby Crowder served as de facto manager of the AFAM Department from 1979 until her retirement in 2009. After Julius Nyang’oro became Chair in 1992, Crowder began offering independent study courses that required only a single paper to be submitted by the student, with no course attendance or professor contact. Beginning in the late 1990s, Crowder also offered courses that were listed as lecture classes, but administered in the same manner. Crowder ran every aspect of these courses, from creating the course and enrolling the students to assigning paper topics and doing the grading; she often listed Nyang’oro as the instructor of record and had broad authority to sign grade sheets on his behalf. Because Crowder graded these courses very generously, she was able to help students and student-athletes boost their GPAs while also satisfying curriculum requirements.
Crowder offered these courses for a variety of reasons, including a desire to help struggling students out of sympathy. Crowder was also a passionate sports fan, and she developed ties to ASPSA through her extremely close friendship with former counselor and tutor McSwain. As a result, Crowder would frequently enroll student-athletes in paper classes and independent studies at the request of ASPSA counselors. Crowder began to scale back the paper classes in 2005 or 2006,
after receiving word from Nyang’oro that Dean Owen was monitoring the AFAM Department’s independent study enrollments. Crowder’s retirement in September 2009 put an end to the majority of the AFAM Department’s paper class offerings, with only a small handful of such courses offered directly by Nyang’oro over the next two years
S. Travis Gore IV
Administrative Support Associate
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Gore has served as an administrative support associate in AFAM since 2001. Gore graduated from Chapel Hill in 2000 and started working in the Athletics Department after McSwain, a family friend, referred him to a job as class attendance monitor. A year later, the AFAM Department hired Gore to work under Crowder. While Crowder worked in the Department, Gore assisted her by performing administrative tasks such as answering the phone, running office errands, and occasionally doing travel reimbursements. After Crowder left, Gore took on many more responsibilities, including interacting with and assisting Nyang’oro, and eventually assisting with scheduling. Gore stated that Crowder never consulted with him before she left about how to handle independent studies or other classes; rather, Nyang’oro would hand Gore a schedule and Gore would enter it into the computer systems.
Gore acknowledged that his understanding of a paper class was a course that did not meet and required the student to write a paper. Gore recalled that for the paper classes after Crowder left, Nyang’oro would give him a list of topics that the class could write on, and Gore would provide the topics to the students. Gore stated that he never graded papers and he did not sign grade change forms or other paperwork unless a professor authorized him to do so on his or her behalf.
Perry A. Hall
Associate Professor
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Hall joined the AFAM faculty in 1992. He stated that he was unaware of the paper classes and other irregularities until the media began reporting on them. Hall said he was shocked to learn that Nyang’oro had been involved in the matter. While he said that Nyang’oro was not notably a sports fan, Hall stated that one could tell that Crowder was an ardent Tar Heels fan by looking at her office. Hall described Crowder as one who enjoyed being a “savior” and said that she always had struggling students coming and visiting her in her office. Hall explained that he assumed students visited Crowder because she was adept at directing students towards resources on campus.
Reginald F. Hildebrand
Associate Professor
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Hildebrand is a professor in the AFAM Department. Hildebrand worked in the AFAM from 1981-1984, left Chapel Hill to teach at Williams College, and returned to Chapel Hill in 1994. He had no knowledge of any of the paper classes or other academic irregularities within the department. Hildebrand recalled that Nyang’oro delegated many of his responsibilities and was inordinately dependent upon Crowder, in part because of her institutional knowledge. Hildebrand described Crowder as someone who identified with students who came from diverse or
underprivileged backgrounds. He said that Crowder believed these students were treated unfairly by the system. According to Hildebrand, it was characteristic of Crowder to help both athletes and non-athletes with both their personal and academic issues.
Kenneth R. Janken
Professor
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Janken has been on the faculty of the AFAM Department since 1991. Janken recalled that when Nyang’oro was chair, AFAM Department decisions were made without faculty input or collective deliberation, and he assumed that Nyang’oro made all the decisions for the Department. Janken was unaware of the paper classes and did not know that Crowder had a role in grading papers.
Timothy J. McMillan
Senior Lecturer and (former) Associate Chair Department of African and Afro-American Studies
McMillan is a senior lecturer in the AFAM Department and, with the exception of a seven- year period when he worked in California, has worked in the Department since the 1984.214
McMillan has known Crowder since he was a graduate student, and described a good relationship with Crowder. Nyang’oro and McMillan, on the other hand, never had close relationship, and McMillan credits Crowder with getting him hired back into the Department after he left California. McMillan acknowledged that he remained one of Crowder’s favorite people in the Department throughout his career. McMillan stated that Crowder was very close with students and had a set of students that were her “special projects” – students that had physical or mental health issues, students with challenging family backgrounds, and other students that struggled on campus.
S. Alphonse Mutima
Lecturer
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Mutima has been a lecturer in the AFAM Department, where he teaches Swahili, since 1996.215 Mutima struggled to work with student-athletes, whom he said frequently misbehaved in
class and showed little interest in Swahili. He complained to Crowder about the number of student- athletes in his classes and their poor behavior. Crowder did little to rectify the situation, he said. According to Mutima, student-athletes considered Crowder to be in charge of them and paid little attention to him. Crowder, he claimed, would get upset with him when he gave student-athletes the low grades that they deserved.
214 McMillan’s knowledge of the paper classes is discussed at Section V.B.3.a, supra. 215 Mutima’s knowledge of the paper classes is discussed at Section V.B.3.b, supra.
Julius Nyang’oro
Chair and Professor
Department of African and Afro-American Studies (former)
Nyang’oro was a Professor in the AFAM Department from 1989 to 2011 and also served as Chair of the department beginning in 1992. Unlike his predecessors, Nyang’oro took a hands-off approach to administering the Department and relied on Student Services Manager Debby Crowder to handle many tasks, allowing her to obtain an outsized role. Nyang’oro’s lack of close oversight of the Department was one of the main factors that allowed Crowder to offer irregular independent studies and paper classes throughout his tenure as Chair. Although Nyang’oro did not initially offer these classes himself, he was aware of them, and he acquiesced to them by failing to take action to stop them. Nyang’oro allowed Crowder to continue to offer these courses partly because his busy schedule frequently sent him out of the country, but also due to his own sympathy for student- athletes’ struggles.
In 2005 or 2006, Nyang’oro recalls going to lunch with Dean Owen, who complained to him about the extremely high number of independent studies he was handling and told him to rein Crowder in; Nyang’oro complied, and the number of independent study courses were reduced. After Crowder’s retirement in September 2009, ASPSA Academic Counselor Jaimie Lee began approaching Nyang’oro and lobbying him to offer certain paper classes. In response to these requests, between Fall 2009 and Summer 2011, Nyang’oro offered three bifurcated classes and two paper classes, including the Summer 2011 AFAM 280 course that resulted in his December 2013 indictment.
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja
Professor
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Nzongola-Ntalaja has been a professor in the AFAM Department since 2007. Nzongola stated that he knows Nyang’oro well and that Nyang’oro recruited Nzongola to teach at Chapel Hill. When Nzongola first arrived in the AFAM Department, however, he was surprised to learn that the department faculty only met once a year. Nzongola recalled that Nyang’oro traveled frequently and was heavily involved in consultancies. Crowder, from Nzongola’s perspective, was the one who ran the AFAM Department and made sure that things that were supposed to be done were done, including the scheduling of classes.
Robert Porter
Lecturer
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Robert Porter has been a lecturer in the AFAM Department since 1989. Porter stated that his sense of Nyang’oro was that Nyang’oro did not “run a tight ship.” Porter viewed Crowder as having some level of power and described her as one who cared greatly about all students, not just student-athletes.
Charlene Regester
Associate Professor
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Regester is a professor in the AFAM Department; she taught courses as a Teaching Assistant in the 1980s and formally joined the AFAM faculty around 1990. Regester stated that the former AFAM chairs, Colin Palmer and Trudier Harris, ran the Department in a tight manner; however, she described Nyang’oro’s leadership as absentee. Regester stated that Crowder was essentially in charge of the Department.
Walter C. Rucker
Associate Professor
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Rucker was a professor in the AFAM Department between 2011 and 2014. Rucker stated that Nyang’oro recruited him to come to Chapel Hill in part because of his administrative experience and his capacity to lead. Rucker described Nyang’oro as an affable person and a smooth talker who put everyone at ease, but noted that Nyang’oro was away from campus very often.
Eunice Sahle
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Sahle is a professor and Chair of the AFAM Department; she joined the Department in 2001.216 Like other faculty members, Sahle stated that there was very little faculty governance and
the Department as a whole was “fractured” under Nyang’oro’s leadership. Sahle stated that Crowder became the de facto chair of the Department during Nyang’oro’s frequent absences from campus and it was Crowder who did the scheduling, informed faculty of when grades were due, and generally made sure that the Department ran appropriately
Mamarame Seck
Assistant Professor
Department of African and Afro-American Studies
Seck has been a member of the AFAM faculty since 2008. Like other faculty members, Seck recalled that Nyang’oro held faculty meetings rarely – usually only once in the beginning of the school year, and then when it was necessary for a hiring issue.
Bereket Selassie
William E. Leuchtenburg Professor of African Studies, Department of African and Afro-American Studies Professor
School of Law
Selassie has been a professor in the AFAM Department since 1994. Selassie, who was very close with Nyang’oro, described Nyang’oro as a brilliant scholar, but stated that Nyang’oro “strayed from the norm” with his frequent travels to Africa. Selassie described Crowder as someone who was compassionate with students who were facing problems, and acknowledged that she, too, may have “strayed from the norm” in order to help students.