LSU officials meet with NCAA over academic fraud allegations

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA - LSU officials met with NCAA officials in Indianapolis on Monday about alleged academic fraud involving athletes, but refused to talk about it publicly. <br> <br> NCAA spokeswoman Jane Jankowski also declined comment. <br> <br> LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert, Athletic Director Skip Bertman, Associate Athletic Director for NCAA compliance Bo Bahnsen and LSU attorney Mike Pharis attended the meeting. They said they would discuss it later at a news conference. <br> <br> The NCAA has not been on the LSU campus and is not yet investigating LSU, Emmert said before the meeting. He said LSU wanted the meeting to solicit NCAA advice before finishing an internal investigation. <br> <br> LSU&#39;s investigation has focused on the Academic Center for Athletes and the kinesiology department. Kinesiology is a popular major among football players. <br> <br> The investigation began in January shortly after Roger Grooters, who was named executive director of the academic center last summer, noticed irregularities at the center and alerted LSU officials. <br> <br> The investigation did not go public until March when word leaked to the media that an unidentified kinesiology instructor had complained to LSU&#39;s human resources department that she was pressured to give football players favorable treatment. <br> <br> That kinesiology instructor, Tiffany Mayne, went public Friday when she filed a lawsuit against LSU, alleging she was pressured by kinesiology department superiors to ``get on the team&#39;&#39; and allow activities by football players that Mayne thought were improper. <br> <br> Mayne said in the lawsuit that athletes in one of her classes in the spring 2001 semester were accompanied by students not in the class who told her they were note takers for the athletes. Mayne reported this to kinesiology department head Amelia Lee, who said the note takers were arranged through the academic center. <br> <br> Kinesiology graduate student Caroline Owen filed a lawsuit on March 21 in which she said papers she graded appeared to be copied. She brought this to Lee&#39;s attention but said Lee told her to keep it quiet because it involved football players. <br> <br> Other allegations of possible NCAA violations LSU&#39;s investigation has examined include tutors and academic center employees providing too much help to athletes, athletes taking unsupervised tests at the academic center and athletes asking academic center employees to type papers for free.