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Getting a Handle on College Athletics
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10194 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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8 / 1986 |
3,493 Words |
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Rise Jill Miller
Rise Jill Miller, a former network radio correspondent, is a
freelance journalist living in Washington, D.C. |
When the teacher blew the whistle, the (Georgia) Bulldog roared.
That in a nutshell is the story of Jan Kemp, a University of Georgia English professor and coordinator of the university's remedial English program who spoke out against so-called preferential treatment of athletes. Kemp was demoted and later dismissed by the university in 1982, an action which rubbed her the wrong way. She sought legal redress and ultimately had the last laugh against university officials.
Kemp sued the two professors who fired her and charged in her lawsuit that the university allowed nine football players to pass a remedial English course that they had actually failed. The students went on to play in the 1982 Sugar Bowl, which Georgia nevertheless lost to the University of Pittsburgh. Thanks to her roller-coaster experience at the university and her dismissal, Kemp claimed that she suffered serious emotional distress and was hospitalized for depression. She twice attempted suicide.
Kemp says she was a basket case. As she described it: "I couldn't function anymore. I couldn't cook a meal; I couldn't do the laundry."
Keep in mind that Kemp was a rabid Georgia Bulldog fan. A basketball player in high school, Kemp received her undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees from Georgia. What, then, motivated her to bite the "dawg" that fed her? She did it, Kemp said, because she didn't want those athletes "knocking on my door five years from now offering to rake leaves when they could have had an
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