Clemson works hard to avoid scandal

CLEMSON -- College cheating scandals are not limited to athletes. High-profile cases over the past 20 years have smudged the Duke MBA program, the U.S. Naval Academy and the Indiana University School of Dentistry.

But major college athletic departments seem ripe for trouble with small armies of tutors helping large groups of athletes.

The University of North Carolina on Aug. 26 opened an investigation into "improprieties" involving a former tutor allegedly writing papers for football players.

Florida State announced last February that it would vacate 12 football victories and wins in 10 men's and women's sports because of academic fraud involving 61 athletes.

LSU self imposed a loss of two football scholarships for 2005 and transferred a former athletic academic center director after a 1,300-page report found that athletes cheated on tests and plagiarized papers in 2002.

Attempting to avoid such a scandal, Clemson makes its athletic academic center tutors go through a six-hour training program.

The student helpers also get a lecture from Associate Athletic Director for Academic Services Becky Bowman and a message from school President James Barker, either in person or taped.

"The focus is the importance of maintaining academic integrity," Bowman said. "We have a fairly exhaustive tutor manual in which that is stressed again."

Full-time Vickery Hall staffers rotate in 30-minute shifts on walks around the building to monitor study halls and tutorial sessions.

Rule No. 1: No tutoring outside Vickery Hall, the athletic academic center.

Cheating is so much easier in a dorm room or fast-food place.

"Our coaches are aware of that, our student-athletes are aware of that and our tutors are aware of that," Bowman said.

"We will terminate a tutor who meets someone in the library or anywhere else. I'm starting my sixth year (at Vickery Hall), and to my knowledge we've had that happen only one time, and it was a situation where a tutor was working with a student-athlete out on a bench in front of the building one morning before it opened."