UPDATE: 2:00 p.m. -- Earlier Friday morning, the whistleblower who provided the paper to ESPN clarified on Twitter that it wasn't the paper that received an A-, the student nabbed the high mark as their final grade:
Clarification on RP paper that went viral.It was a final essay for an intro class.Final grade in class A-.Not a real education. #ncaareform
— Mary Willingham (@paperclassinc) March 28, 2014
How hard do college athletes have to work in class? At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the answer appears to be "not very."
This image from an ESPN report shows what's supposed to be a final paper written by a player in one of the school's athletics programs. It might get a C- in an elementary school (and that's being generous), but at UNC, it earned an A-:
To save your eyes, here's what the paper says:
Rosa Parks: My Story
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.
The paper controversy comes amid a growing scandal with claims of academic fraud, fake classes and no-show classes at the university designed to help push athletes through the school so they can keep playing while maintaining grades.