The @StifflersMom Problem

UNC's crisis de jure is part of a larger problem. There does not appear to be a culture of accountability at the university. Some, by no means all (and probably not that many), of the people in power are corrupt. Not grossly corrupt, but corrupt enough to fake grades and allow a guy to fly his girlfriend around to her sons' basketball games on the state's dime. It's soft corruption that is being justified in kind of an ends/means way. Keeping Peppers on the field/court was more important than getting him a real education--and he got rich anyway, so no harm no foul. Kubek was raising big bucks for the school, so why not let him stay loose on the road. It's not that big a deal.

True, it's not that big a deal--if that is where it would stop. But corruption never stops. One corrupt cell kills the cell next to it, and so on until the body dies. The @StifflersMom Problem is not that there a few rule-benders at UNC, but that the leadership is tolerating it. That toleration is a signal to the majority of dedicated people at Carolina who are trying to play it straight that their efforts to do so are in vain. When cheating is tolerated, cheating wins and non-cheating looks pretty stupid. So, it's not so much the Peppers and the @StifflersMoms that are the problem but the leadership that tolerates it. That tolerance encourages vice and discourages virtue. 

UNC will survive this bump in the road, but only if this culture of toleration of soft corruption is ended. It will take leadership to do that. The current leadership has proven incapable or unwilling to do so.