Portis cheating update

This is a follow-up post to an original story found here.

Heather Dinich picks up the latest news in the Josh Portis cheating saga in today’s Sun. It appears now that Brandon Bullock, the student who claimed Portis cheated by copying his quiz “word for word”, is sticking to his guns. Bullock waived his privacy rights so that Dinich could confirm with an official in the University of Maryland’s Office of Student Conduct that Bullock was involved in a cheating case. Today’s article also points out that Bullock says he was already accepted to transfer to East Carolina before the alleged cheating incident took place. This lends further credence to the most cynical view of what might have happened. Dinich’s article also says that Bullock says that he and Portis were just acquaintances and that Bullock had no involvement in the football program.

Bullock must still face the honor court at the University of Maryland to receive an updated transcript (Dinich’s article today makes it sound like he will be able to personally appear before the court while a report in another media source earlier in the week made it sound like he couldn’t actually appear at his hearing.)

To review the events as reported yesterday on this site, Portis and Bullock both took an American Studies pop quiz in the spring semester in which Portis was sitting behind and to the left of Bullock. Bullock says he didn’t get a grade but instead received a note to see the teacher (a grad student) about it. The teacher showed him two papers side by side, one of which was his, that were almost identical including “word for word” responses to at least one question. Bullock also says that Portis approached him after this and asked if he would tell the teacher that they had studied together as a way to explain away the similarities. Bullock didn’t go for this and later gets hit with a charge of facilitating cheating, which would likely follow him wherever he goes were he found guilty.

Fast forwarding to the past week, Portis’ suspension for cheating was announced just before the opening game of the season after a fall practice schedule in which it was speculated that he would split time with Jordan Steffy at Quarterback. Portis admitted to violating the academic integrity code but told the media he didn’t plagiarize or have a low GPA. A story comes out Tuesday that quotes Bullock as saying that Portis cheated off of his quiz in the class. The next day, another story comes out on the same subject which also quotes Bullock, now at ECU, as saying that he was “very stressed” about the situation and that he received a call from someone in the Student Affairs office at Maryland telling him he should consider getting a lawyer before he makes anymore statements about what happened. Bullock says he’s considering retracting his statements to the media in that story as well. Then today, Heather Dinich has confirmed the part of Bullock’s side of the story confirming that he is involved in a cheating investigation at the University. Portis hasn’t commented on anything since this weekend and neither has his mother. They both made comments over the weekend about the situation before Bullock’s allegations were reported.

A person more cynical than me could conclude that Bullock has been under pressure from the University of Maryland since the day Josh Portis allegedly approached him and asked him to say they studied together. Bullock was already transferring to ECU, and an appearance before the honor court would be the only leverage anyone might have over him.  A person less cynical than me could easily conclude that Bullock was definitely being pressured, with the honor court appearance hanging over him, by the person from Student Affairs (which is responsible for the Office of Student Conduct) who he said called and told him he should consider getting a lawyer before he talked to the media anymore.

The situation just seems very strange to me and it will probably not be fully resolved since the University will cling to the privacy laws as a reason not to comment on the Portis side of the story unless he waives his privacy rights. The only thing we might hear in the future, assuming Bullock continues to waive his privacy rights, is the outcome of Bullock’s appearance before the honor court.

Mister Irrelevant and Fanblogs have both covered this issue in the past day as well. Again, my original post on this subject is here.