WHEN “ETHICISTS” GO BAD: The Ethicist Who Crossed the Line.

She was everywhere, and seemingly everyone’s friend, a compassionate do-gooder who worked long hours with underprepared students while balancing several jobs, including directing a center on ethics.

On Wednesday the world learned something else about Jeanette M. Boxill: Her own ethics were malleable.

Most of the blame fell on Julius E. Nyang’oro, a former department chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his longtime assistant, Deborah Crowder, after they were identified as the chief architects of a widespread academic scandal there.

But the person everyone’s talking about is Ms. Boxill, a senior philosophy lecturer and former academic counselor for athletes. According to an independent report released on Wednesday, she played a key role in steering athletes into fake classes to help them maintain their eligibility with the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

While many people were implicated in the breakdown, which involved more than 3,000 students over 18 years, Ms. Boxill was unique because of her background: Although she did not have tenure, she was a faculty leader, administrator, and athletics insider, lending her a credibility that few people on the campus enjoyed. That status made her precipitous fall all the more puzzling. . . .

Her reputation as an honest broker—she directed the university’s Parr Center for Ethics—made her an unlikely villain.

Well, villains often cluster in occupations and positions that make their villainy seem “unlikely.”