First, Julius Peppers confirmed it was his transcript UNC released. Now the former Tar Heel star has donated $250,000 toward the Light of the Hill scholarship fund.
In a statement issued Saturday by Peppers, he thanked University academic and athletic staff for their help and guidance while he charted a course for his life and expressed gratitude for the role the campus played in his growth and development.
“After considering the ways that I might be able to help young college students, I decided to continue my support of the Light on the Hill scholarship,” Peppers said. “I would like to endorse this particular fund and encourage other former UNC students who have found success to reach back and assist the efforts of current and future Tar Heels.”
This is Peppers’ second donation to the fund. In 2009 Peppers’ gave a $100,000 gift to the scholarship program which is geared towards assisting African-American students. Clearly Peppers harbors nothing in the way of ill-will over the transcript leak and views it as an accident.
Speaking of the transcript leak, BobLee Says offered a couple of interesting points here. BobLee is a bit of an insider at UNC but also draws all sorts of reactions from UNC fans and alumni in general. Some hate him, others like him fine. NCSU fans tend be frequent readers mainly because he does some pandering in their general direction. At any rate, he raises two salient points about Peppers. First of all, it was pretty clear based on Peppers’ grades UNC wasn’t providing illicit help. The grades were simply too low in most of his courses to think there was an issue with Peppers getting help. Of course the disparity between Peppers’ AFAM classes and everything else gives rise to the theory the AFAM classes were for the purpose of keeping players like Peppers afloat. Obviously that is where the scrutiny lies.
Secondary to that is the fact no one should be treating any of what we learned from the transcript as breaking news. In fact, BobLee notes that everyone knew Peppers was not the strongest student so the transcript really only confirms what was generally known for ten years. The transcript provide additional context to the scandal from a timeline perspective. We now know some of the issues seen today were happening a decade back which I am sure former Governor Jim Martin will be delving into soon.
