Son's past was hidden from UNCW
Curtis Dixon enrolled at UNC-Wilmington last year after
his father, a former high-ranking state university administrator, submitted an application that hid his adopted son's troubled history, campus officials said Thursday.
Dixon, 21, who was awaiting trial in the May slaying of fellow UNCW student Jessica Faulkner, died last week after he leaped off a stairwell in prison.
His university and court records were released Thursday. They show that James E. Dixon III, a former executive assistant to the chancellor and secretary to the board of trustees at UNC-Charlotte, went to great lengths to get his son into UNCW.
The elder Dixon,
a lawyer educated at Notre Dame, resigned from UNCC in July after 14 years. He could not
be reached for comment Thursday.
The University
of North Carolina system's legal counsel, Leslie Winner, said the falsified documents had been given to district attorneys in New Hanover and Mecklenburg counties for further investigation.
The elder Dixon first contacted UNCW in April 2003 and asked whether his son still could be considered for admission. Told to fax a high school transcript, he sent records
stating that his son had been home-schooled throughout high school, said UNCW Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo.
The records listed Curtis Dixon's grades for home-school classes such as pre-calculus, Spanish, European history, art appreciation and economics. In his senior year, the application said, he was a straight-A student.
Curtis Dixon had a combined SAT score of
1070. That year, the range for freshmen SAT scores at UNCW was 1040 to 1180;
the average freshman score was 1104.
"Based on the inf
ormation in the application," DePaolo said, "Curtis Dixon met our admission criteria."
[co
lor=red]But the application was false on at least four counts, the university learned after Dixon was arrested and confessed to killing Faulkner.[/color]
It did not mention previous public high school and college attendance or a criminal record. But Curtis Dixon had all three. It also didn't mention military service, but investigators say Dixon told them he was briefly in the Navy.
He had intermittently attended Zebulon B. Vance High School in Charlotte, where records show
numerous Cs, Ds and an F in 11th-grade math.
He also had been enrolled at UNCC on three occasions and at the N.C. School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, but he withdrew from both after confrontations with classmates.
At the School of the Arts, he was enrolled for a few months as a freshman in 2001. In November that year, a h
allmate called police and said Dixon was banging on the door of a female student and had a knife. The matter was dropped because the female student did not ma
ke a complaint and police found no knife.
"He was upset and having some difficulties, but there was nothing of any significance," said Anne White, the School of the Arts' vice chancellor for student life.
Dixon left campus the following day and never returned. "There was nothing to pursue," White said.
Dixon also had a confrontation with a student at UNCC, where he originally took a class as a high school student, said UNCC Chancellor James Woodward.
Woodward described
James Dixon as a
respected community leader who was guarded about his private life but occasionally mentioned that his son had trouble. He said the father had been distraught since the Wilmington slaying and had been unable to work.
"It is heartbreaking," Woodward said. "James Dixon is a good
man who loved his child and tried to help him."
When the facts began to emerge, Woodward said he had been concerned that James Dixon used his position to bypass the admissions process at Wilmington. He said h
e asked Dixon about it.
"He indicated he had done nothing inappropriate and it was typical of what a father would do for a child," Woodward said.
But, as the records made clear, Woodward added, "He went too far on some things."
In 1999, James Dixon submitted an application to the N.C. Division of Non-Public Education to operate a home school in Charlotte, which he called
"Dixon Academic Gifted Academy." The application said two students would be in the school.
Transcripts from the home school, signed by James Dixon, showed that Curtis Dixon earned Cs and Ds in his freshman year but improved to
mostly As in his junior year and
straight As as a senior.
UNCW officials waived a university essay requiremen
t for Dixon's admission, according to a note written on his application, though it is unclear why.
Discrepancies
Besides hiding his previous school attendance, Curtis Dixon also concealed a conviction for misdemeanor larceny.
It was revealed Thursday that D
ixon told investigators that he served briefly in the Navy but left during boot camp after being classified as homicidal and suicidal. There was no mention of military service on his application.
"Given these numerous discrepancies," DePaolo said, "I doubt Curtis Dixon would have been admitted to UNCW."
Dixon joined the university in fall 2003, earning a 2.4 grade-point average in his first semester. He did not take classes with Faulkner in the fall, but he enrolled in four of Faulkner's five classes in the spring.
The slaying -- and another killing at UNCW in June -- have prompted the campus and the UNC system to make changes to improve safety. Now, UNC campuses will verify applicants
9; information, checking for previous school attendance and disciplinary problems. On rare occasions, the campuses will do criminal background checks if applications raise red flags.
But no safeguard is perfect, DePaolo said. "Not even the best background checks can entirely and utterly eliminate the risk
of a potentially dangerous student being enrolled."
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His university and court records were released Thursday. They show that James E. Dixon III, a former executive assistant to the chancellor and secretary to the board of trustees at UNC-Charlotte, went to great lengths to get his son into UNCW.
Having any nigger in any position at any university guarantees TNB.
T.N.B.
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