Kansas University Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little and her husband, Shade Little, attend a KU basketball game on Jan. 2, 2011, at Allen Fieldhouse. The couple worked at the University of North Carolina before coming to KU in 2009.

Kansas University Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little has said that she was unaware that one of the worst academic fraud cases in U.S. history was occurring while she held top positions at the University of North Carolina.

At the time, her husband, Shade Keys Little, held positions as assistant and interim associate dean in the department charged with tutoring and advising students at UNC and worked closely with people in the thick of the scandal, according to UNC documents and Mary Willingham, a former UNC employee and whistleblower.

“He knew, I knew, we all knew,” said Willingham, who, with Shade Little, was a staff member in the athletics tutoring program. “We talked about it openly in staff meetings, that these guys were taking these paper classes. I mean it wasn’t that it was really a secret.”

“Paper classes” refers to classes that did not meet academic standards and often required little or no work on the part of students, no class attendance or meetings with faculty.

Through a KU spokeswoman, Gray-Little and Shade Little declined to comment for this story. Neither was named in an extensive investigation by Kenneth Wainstein, a former FBI general counsel, who found that more than 3,000 students, many of them athletes, were involved in the classes over 18 years.

For a previous Journal-World story, Gray-Little said: “I’ve read of the painful revelations about the academic experiences of some student-athletes at Carolina over the past several years. If I’d known of the problems in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies that have since come to light I would have taken action to address them.”

The NCAA has charged UNC with five violations connected to the academic fraud, including a lack of institutional control and poor oversight of an academic department popular with athletes.

The school released a 59-page notice of allegations on Thursday that it received from the NCAA.

The charges include providing improper benefits in the form of counselors making “special arrangements” with staffers in the AFAM department.

The complex scheme of fake classes at UNC began to surface in 2009, the year Gray-Little accepted the KU chancellor position.

UNC was once considered a school where athletics and academics could blend successfully. But when one of the architects of the fake classes retired in 2009, cracks appeared, and in 2011 Willingham told the local newspaper that the prestigious institution had been funneling athletes into the paper classes and that advisers had done assignments for them.

Shade Little was an assistant dean and interim associate dean of the program that oversaw the student-athletes’ tutoring program when the irregular AFAM classes were being held, UNC documents show. He also advised student-athletes, Willingham said.

Shade Little was one of 14 staff members listed in the August 2007 Tutor Handbook for the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes, or ASPSA.

Of those 14 staff members, 10 were mentioned in the Wainstein report. Two of those 10 were fired, two were demoted, and one — faculty council chairwoman Jan Boxill — quit after being told she was about to be fired.

Wayne Walden, former academic adviser for basketball coach Roy Williams both at KU and UNC, also was a colleague of Shade Little’s. Walden quit his UNC job in 2009, but has been named in the Wainstein report as a person who steered athletes into irregular classes.

Williams has denied knowing about the classes, and he is not implicated in the NCAA report.

The Wainstein report placed a large share of the blame on two people: Julius Nyang’oro, chairman of AFAM, and Deborah Crowder, Nyang’oro’s departmental manager. Nyang’oro retired in 2011 and Crowder retired in 2009. Neither would comment for this story.

The Wainstein report said advisers steered students, many of them athletes, to the classes in AFAM. Students were required to turn in a paper at the end of the semester and their only interaction in the AFAM department was with Crowder, a secretary who had a bachelor’s degree in English, the report said.

Sometimes those papers were only a paragraph and some were plagiarized, the report said.

Crowder was responsible for grading them, the report said. Carolina football and basketball players had some of the highest grade point averages in the country, the report said.

No UNC staff member with the title of dean or higher has lost a job or been formally disciplined as a result of the investigations. Boxill had the highest ranking title as faculty council chairwoman. She was a philosophy professor and counselor to the women’s basketball team.

Wainstein did not interview Shade Little or Gray-Little nor did he request the contents of their emails. People immediately above and below Shade Little and many of his colleagues in academic services and the Academic Support Program for Student Athletes were interviewed.

Wainstein, whose team was paid $3.1 million by UNC for the report, would not respond to requests for an interview, refused to respond to written questions and refused to provide records that might have had some bearing on why he did not interview Little or Gray-Little.

Willingham said Wainstein’s report focuses mostly on Crowder and Nyang’oro and some advisers and not on what UNC’s top administrators knew.

“Wainstein did not request emails from a lot of people who should have known,” Willingham said.

“What about Bernadette? Hers aren’t in there. What about Roy Williams? Why aren’t his in there? What about Wayne Walden? There were like two. Why aren’t mine? Where are my emails?” Willingham asked. “Why didn’t they go after the higher-ups’ emails?”

According to UNC records, Shade Little was hired as the assistant dean of academic services at UNC in 2003. At the time Gray-Little was executive associate provost. She was promoted a year later to dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the General College. In that position, the AFAM department, as well as academic services, where her husband worked, reported up through her.

The Wainstein report said that even though there was “fairly widespread knowledge” about the paper classes on the Chapel Hill campus, the classes continued uninterrupted.

There were two occasions, the report found, where if the right questions had been asked and the right actions had been taken, the paper classes could have ended much sooner.

One of those occasions was when senior associate dean of undergraduate education Roberta “Bobbi” Owen raised questions about the independent studies classes, the report said.

Owen reported directly to Gray-Little. Shade Little’s boss, Fred M. Clark, associate dean, reported to Owen.

According to the report, Owen had lunch with the AFAM chairman Nyang’oro in 2005 and complained that the number of independent studies classes, or “paper classes,” he was conducting — more than 300 in some semesters –was extremely high, the report said.

Owen directed Nyang’oro to reduce the number he was handling. She also suggested that Crowder was involved and to “get (Crowder) under control.”

Nyang’oro told Wainstein that when he returned from lunch he told Crowder she needed to reduce the number of independent study classes. The number did decline, and in November 2006, Owen sent Nyang’oro an email titled “Ind Studies,” saying that: “it has gotten quieter from your side of campus,” and “conveying her thanks,” the report said.

Wainstein attempted to talk to Owen about the lunch, but she said she could not remember the lunch or any discussion about the paper classes, the report said.

But Crowder corroborated Nyang’oro’s story, recalling Nyang’oro coming back from lunch and recounting Owen’s directive, the report said.

Owen declined to comment for this story.

Robert Mercer, director of the tutoring program where Shade Little was a staff member, recalled hearing that Owen was trying to rein in the independent studies, he told Wainstein.

Wainstein wrote in his report that even though Owen’s directive resulted in fewer independent studies classes, “it failed to address the root problem,” which was the lack of quality of the courses the students were taking.

“By failing to follow up on her lunchtime admonition to Nyang’oro beyond sending her single email, Dean Owen missed the chance to put an end to these paper classes five years before their eventual discovery in 2011,” the report said.

Crowder retires

In 2006, Gray-Little was promoted to executive vice chancellor and provost.

In April 2008, the university announced that Shade Little would become interim associate dean of academic services when his boss, Fred Clark, stepped down.

Clark, who had been with the university since 1967, later told investigators he advised students to take AFAM courses because it was “known for being both very student-oriented and willing to help students,” the Wainstein report said.

Clark did have “some awareness of the nature of the paper classes,” the report said.

“He maintained he did not question the nature of the AFAM courses because professors do not question other professors,” the report said.

Soon after Shade Little became head of academic services, Crowder announced she planned to retire the next year, in September 2009.

“News of her impending retirement quickly spread throughout campus,” the Wainstein report said.

Willingham said the topic of Crowder’s pending retirement took up much of the time at staff meetings that were attended by Shade Little. Counselors, advisers and tutors were worrying about what would happen after Crowder left and how they would keep their athletes eligible, Willingham said.

Mainly people were trying to mitigate the damage, she said.

On June 19, 2009, an email from Cynthia Reynolds, who was the associate director of the Academic Support Program for Student Athletes, to a football operations coordinator, was revealing.? “Ms. Crowder is retiring at the end of July…if the guys papers are not in…I would expect D’s or C’s at best. Most need better than that…ALL WORK FROM THE AFMA DEPT. MUST BE DONE AND TURNED IN ON THE LAST DAY OF CLASS.”

By the time that email was written, KU had announced that Gray-Little and her husband were moving to Lawrence.

Shade Little’s last day at UNC was July 17, 2009, according to university records.

Willingham quit at UNC in 2014 because of what she described as a hostile work environment after she tipped off the media about the academic fraud. She sued UNC, and the university settled with her earlier this year for $335,000.

She and Jay Smith, a professor of history at UNC, published a book this year titled: “Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports.”

Willingham has speaking engagements around the country and is trying to bring as much awareness to the treatment of student-athletes as possible, she said.

She wonders why Wainstein did not interview more administrators such as Gray-Little.

The Wainstein report said during the 18 years that the paper classes existed, eight faculty members had held the position of dean of the college of arts and sciences. Wainstein interviewed the current dean, who was appointed in 2009, and a former dean, Holden Thorp, who held the position for one year in 2007 before he was made chancellor in 2008. Both denied knowing of the existence of paper classes.

But none who were interviewed by Wainstein had a spouse actually working in the Academic Support Program for Student Athletes, she said.