Harvard athletes tied to cheating scandal

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - Harvard basketball co-captain Kyle Casey plans to withdraw from school amid a cheating scandal that also may involve other athletes, according to several reports.

Sports Illustrated and the Harvard Crimson reported Tuesday that Casey, a senior, would take a leave of absence from school in an attempt to preserve a year of eligibility once the issue is resolved.

Co-captain Brandyn Curry also has been implicated in the scandal and is weighing his options, his father told the magazine. The Boston Herald reported Curry also is expected to withdraw from classes.

The school is looking into whether at least 125 undergraduates, in what has been reported to be an Introduction to Congress class of about 280 students, cheated by working together on a take-home final exam in the spring.

School officials have declined to release the students’ names.

“These allegations, if proven, represent totally unacceptable behavior that betrays the trust upon which intellectual inquiry at Harvard depends,’’ President Drew Faust said when the cheating scandal was uncovered in August.

AP