By Noah Grand
Daily Bruin Reporter
UC President Richard Atkinson is under pressure to remove Alex
Saragoza from his position as vice president of educational
outreach, amid reports that he gave course credit to two UC
Berkeley football players who did not attend his class.
The reports, issued more than a month ago, are the results of an
independent investigation which indicated that athletes Ronnie
Davenport and Mike Ainsworth were both given course credit for
Saragoza’s ethnic studies class in Spring 1999.
The students needed the credit in order to be eligible to play
football for Cal in the fall. According to a statement, they are no
longer attending the university.
“I offer no excuses for my lapses in judgment and
carelessness, except to say that I allowed my heart to prevail in
the accommodations which I made to the two students in
question,” Saragoza said in a statement.
He could not be reached for comment.
Neither UC Berkeley nor the UC Office of the President would
comment, citing that the issue was a private personnel matter.
No one from the school’s coaching staff was involved in
the academic fraud, according to the report, and head football
coach Tom Holmoe had warned university officials that he thought
the credits might not have been properly earned.
This was the second investigation of the two students. After an
initial investigation by UC Berkeley turned up no results, Pac-10
officials said they still had cause for concern based on
information gathered during the summer, leading to the second
investigation.
Saragoza is accused of retroactively adding the students to his
class after it ended.
“If the allegations are correct, then you’ve got an
extreme situation where a leading administrator has basically
trashed some of the most fundamental standards that the university
is based on,” said UCLA physics and astronomy professor
Matthew Malkan.
Malkan is on the Board of Directors of the California
Association of Scholars, which sent a letter to Atkinson urging him
to remove anyone committing academic fraud from UC office, just
like a student committing fraud would be dismissed from the
university.
In his statement, Saragoza said he “violated faculty norms
of grading” but did not state what accommodations he made,
adding that he does not advocate special advantages being provided
for specific students.
Atkinson said in a statement that the campus is handling the
matter but that he will review it. According to Malkan, Atkinson
has not responded to the CAS letter.