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Transcript from "Kemp Affair"

 

 

…and then in 1986, we had the Jan Kemp affair…

Right.

Will you talk a little bit about that and tell us…

Well, it was a nationwide exposure to problems that were not just on this campus, but were on every campus, where students who were male athletes were given special exceptions on admission and efforts were made, in the case of the University of Georgia we had what we called Developmental Studies, and the director of that would work for two years with students who came in as athletes and other students as well, but primarily the athletes were the problem, where even after two years they were not able to do college level work. And so it was her Jan Kemp’s thinking that it was not fair to the institution or the student to bring someone in who could not make the grade, and she kept saying that, and I think rightly so, and we probably didn't listen as well as we should have. Anyway, the event that brought it all to head was that the head of developmental studies who was Leroy Irwin, wanted to dismiss her over the Christmas holiday and Dr. Trotter (Virginia Trotter, vice president for academic affairs) was already gone and I was here, and he came to me, and I said, "Not on my watch". I said, “I don't think that ought to be done, until we have some discussion on it", but anyway, he did it, and she sued the University, and, as I said, it gave national exposure to a problem that was not just ours, and, believe me, in our cleaning up our shop, other institutions did the same. In President Davison's defense, he had already set up a national organization called "Collegiate something" that had to do with trying to raise the standards for athletes, and he was heading that up with an effort to get colleges…the problem was that if other schools played athletes who were not as qualified, then if you were going to win, you had to play them too, so everybody was doing it. We were not the only ones. And so he was trying to correct the thing nationally to his credit. But this all broke before he got it done, and so it ended up, of course, in the president being removed from his position, the Vice-president and the Director of Developmental studies and it was a sad and tragic time in the life of the university, but it came…we came out all the stronger as a result of it. (President Davison actually voluntarily resigned) Cleaned our shop up, and then other institutions over the country did the same. I think, in my opinion, the NCAA, which controls college athletics, should have stepped up before it ever came to a head, because I can't believe they didn't know what was going on, pretty much over the country with any institution that was major in football. Not the University of Chicago, not Harvard, and those schools, but schools where athletics were big, it was going on.