Three words spoken May 19 by Wade Hargrove, chairman of the UNC-Chapel Hill board of trustees, about academic fraud in the department of African and Afro-American Studies have since reverberated in my mind like a mantra.

Hargrove said he read about the scandal with “disappointment and dismay.” That’s a Carolina gentleman’s way of putting it.

Other trustees no doubt used stronger language in private. The allegations of grade-changing and outright academic fraud came to light on their watch, too.

It was left to Chancellor Holden Thorp and his subalterns, as reported by the N&O’s Jane Stancill, to reveal the mindset of denial among Carolina’s top academic officers.

Let’s look at three examples.

Thorp: What went on for years in the Afro-American studies department was “completely at odds with what we stand for as an institution.”

Really? This was going on while Thorp was dean of arts and sciences and thus responsible for all academic departments at the university.

Clearly, the gut courses, grade-fudging and other merry-making in the department headed by Julius Nyang’oro was well known among Carolina’s football and basketball players. Nyang’oro taught 45 of 54 classes under investigation.

If higher-ups in the athletics empire and academic administration didn’t get wind of this, then Nyang’oro pulled off the greatest secret since D-Day.

Karen Gill, dean of arts and sciences: “There were checks and balances all over the system, but in this case they did not detect the problems. There we no student complaints about these courses (emphasis mine).”

Duh? Who was going to spoil the party? At least 39 percent of the students in the suspect classes were football and basketball players. They weren’t about to throw their athletic scholarships under the bus.

Bobbie Owen, senior associate dean for undergraduate education, offered a weak excuse: “Students drift to places where they know they will be accommodated.”

And still nobody at Owen’s level and above had a hint of the “accommodation” boiling beneath them?

William Andrews, another senior associate dean: “It’s sort of like putting together a 16,000-piece puzzle, but you don’t know what the picture is,” referring to South Building’s nine-month review of academic fraud in Afro-American studies.

Actually, the N&O drew the picture in investigative stories kicked off last summer when the paper obtained a partial transcript of courses taken by Marvin Austin, a flamboyant former football player.

Austin took a remedial writing course and four other Afro-American studies courses in his first semester. He later enrolled in an advanced course also taught by Nyang’oro and sailed through with a B-plus. Austin should have kept going. He was on track for a Ph.D.

As for Nyang’oro, What, me worry? He retires July 1 with his pension, if not his reputation, intact.

As all this unfolded, I thought of ailing former UNC system president Bill Friday.

Friday fought against ethical and academic corrosion in revenue sports for decades. He lost. The debacle at Carolina became inevitable when the athletics machine captured an entire academic department.

A former chief of the Educational Foundation, the fund-raising arm of the athletics department, once reportedly said, “They have their program, and we have ours.”

Sure do, and now you can’t deny it, South Building.