All, I can say is wow, this is what happens

when at academics take a terrible backseat to academics. Be sure to read the whole thing. This is so wrong, and antithetical to what universities should be doing. Athletics should be a means to an education, not the other way around.

UNC report finds 18 years of academic fraud to keep athletes playing

For 18 years, thousands of students at the prestigious University of North Carolina took fake "paper classes," and advisers funneled athletes into the program to keep them eligible, according to a scathing independent report released Wednesday.

"These counselors saw the paper classes and the artificially high grades they yielded as key to helping some student-athletes remain eligible," Kenneth Wainstein wrote in his report. He conducted an eight-month investigation into the scandal, which has plagued the university for nearly five years.

Four employees have been fired and five more disciplined because of their roles. One other former employee had honorary status removed, Chancellor Carol Folt said Wednesday.

Wainstein is the former federal prosecutor hired by UNC to independently investigate the academic fraud brought to light by CNN, the Raleigh News & Observer and other media outlets.

In all, the report estimates, at least 3,100 students took the paper classes, but adds the number "very likely falls far short of the true number."

I've reached an age

where youth is fleeting and I mourn when it is interrupted by some senseless crime. Two young Georgia women, both college students a few hundred miles apart, were killed at a time when most students are thinking of spring break. For the University of Auburn in Georgia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, thoughts are with vivacious young women whose lives were cut short.

Two students' killings hit Georgia hard: Grief mingles with fear at Auburn, UNC

No one knows what Lauren Burk and Eve Carson might have achieved in their futures. Let's hope they find the people responsible for taking those futures away.

Another case in the South today was that of Jajuan Holmes, an 18-year-old high school student in Alabama who had recently been charged with robbing a Dairy Queen and who was suspended from school on Wednesday for undisclosed reasons. On Thursday he made his way into the gym during a test and committed suicide by shooting himself in front 150 students. No one else was hurt, thankfully. In Holmes' case he was on a much different track than the young women were, and his death was by his own hand. But it's still sad.

It really makes me glad in a way that I don't have children. There's nowhere safe, really, and while I make it through much of my life not overly worrying for myself (beyond what is normal), I think I'd obsessively worry about a child--and it doesn't matter how grown they are, I'd still worry.

For the families of Lauren Burk, Eve Carson, and Jajuan Holmes, my deepest sympathies. To lose the light of you life at such a young age is horrible. You are in my prayers.