The NCAA report found absolutely no evidence that any other coach or member of the athletic program, in any way, knew this was happening. This was absolutely no reflection on the football program. – WSU spokeswoman Allison Hess
OGDEN — The Weber State football team has been placed on probation, while the NCAA stripped the team of nine scholarships in correlation to an academic dishonesty case reported in 2013, the NCAA announced Wednesday.
The sanctions revolve around a case involving a university math instructor who admitted to logging into accounts of five WSU football players and completing class assignments for the players during the spring 2013 semester. The instructor, identified as former part-time adjunct employee Christine Marx by the university's marketing and communication department, added that none of the athletes actually asked her to complete their assignments, the NCAA concluded in a final report released on Wednesday.
In an interview with Deseret News Sports, Allison Hess, WSU spokeswoman, said the case was brought to light when a separate adjunct instructor noticed that one student had completed six quizzes and a final exam in less than an hour. Hess said the second instructor reported the abnormal test time within hours after Marx allegedly completed the student assignments.
"A Weber State faculty adjunct professor was looking at her student’s records and recognized an anomaly," Hess said. "A student who had not had satisfactory work in the course all of a sudden at the end of the course passed a number of tests and quizzes all on the same day with high scores. That prompted her to turn that information over to the head of developmental math, the course lead."
After an internal review, the university self-reported the case to the NCAA three weeks after learning of the academic fraud.
All five of the students were charged with academic dishonesty by the university. All five were given failing grades in the course. Hess said all five were also suspended during the 2013 football season. Hess added that one was “very recently” reinstated to the program, but has not played and another was going through the reinstatement process. The three others left the program.
WSU was punished on Wednesday with a three-year probation that will be imposed until Nov. 18, 2017. In addition, the football team was stripped of nine total scholarships over the next three years, and the university was fined $5,000 and 2 percent of the football team's operating budget, which Hess estimated as an extra $20,000.
"We reported this within three weeks of the very first indication that there might be a problem and the NCAA commended us for that," Hess said. "One way we were commended was, we lost nine scholarships — but they could have taken those all away in one year. Instead they prorated that out to happen over the course of three years. So the impact is far less severe than it could have been. They said specifically in the report that this was due to our pro-active approach."
NCAA officials also concluded that the WSU football team failed to monitor closely enough. The sanctions do not affect any future WSU recruiting outside of the loss of scholarships. The football team is also not restricted from postseason eligibility.
Hess added that no member of the athletic program knew this was going on until the investigation took place.
"The NCAA report found absolutely no evidence that any other coach or member of the athletic program, in any way, knew this was happening," she said. "This was absolutely no reflection on the football program."
WSU's case is just another in a long list of recent academic dishonesty cases around the NCAA. Florida State, Notre Dame, North Carolina and Syracuse are among several schools that have been investigated because of similar cases in recent history. The outcome of the North Carolina, Syracuse and Notre Dame cases are still pending.
Marx resigned in April 2013, in the midst of the investigation. Jacob Chadwick, who is a current student at Weber State, had Marx as a math professor. He said he has a hard time believing his former teacher would commit academic fraud.
“I kind of don’t buy it,” Chadwick said. “She would always try to get us to do our best so we could to go on and further our education. I have a hard time believing she would just do that. She’d definitely push you and make you learn how to do things.
“She was probably one of the only math professors in under-division math who would actually sit down and teach us how to do things, not just use the computer as other under-division math might,” Chadwick added. “That was awesome. She was nice.”
Marx also received glowing reviews from other former students on such sites as ratemyprofessors.com.
As for the football program, the Wildcats are currently 2-9 this season under first-year coach Jay Hill. As for the future of the program, Hess said she believes the team will be able to move on from the incident.
"I think the Weber State football team and athletes are known as determined. They are dedicated. They are committed," Hess said. "Weber State has not had a winning season, yet those players work hard and they’re out there every week doing their very best. I think they will take this in stride and that they will continue to overcome obstacles and go out there with their heads held high and play their hardest."