UNC won’t be punished by the NCAA for allegedly running scam classes for athletes, but luckily those classes still gave us the infamous Rosa Parks essay.
One unidentified student-athlete decided to write an essay on the struggle of Rosa Parks. The story of Parks refusing to move to the back of an Alabama bus could easily be told over the course of a whole novel.
However, this athlete was so talented that he managed to tell her whole story in only 146 words.
The essay reads:
On the evening of December Rosa Parks decided that she was going to sit in the white people section on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. During this time blacks had to give up there seats to whites when more whites got on the bus. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Her and the bus driver began to talk and the conversation went like this. “Let me have those front seats” said the driver. She didn’t get up and told the driver that she was tired of giving her seat to white people. “I’m going to have you arrested,” said the driver. “You may do that,” Rosa Parks responded. Two white policemen came in and Rosa Parks asked them “why do you all push us around?” The police officer replied and said “I don’t know, but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.
Ladies and gentlemen, a University of North Carolina A- paper, unedited and in its entirety. pic.twitter.com/b2jusRmSvk
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) October 13, 2017
The first time I saw this essay, I literally cried I was laughing so hard. Did I mention this essay got an A-? Absolutely incredible. I would have loved to be in the room during the NCAA investigation when the professor was asked to explain why he thought this paper was worthy of an A-.
Essays like these from athletes aren’t as uncommon as you might think. They obviously don’t get great grades, but poorly written essays still exist on a semi-regular basis from athletes in college sports.
Here’s where UNC and all the other schools that have athletes writing these essays go wrong: they didn’t hire somebody to cheat and just write the essay for the athletes. Do I encourage cheating? Of course I don’t openly encourage it, but I also love winning. As one coach once told, “Sometimes you just gotta f*cking look the other direction.”