An internal audit at the University of Southern California has uncovered widespread grade fraud in a summer course that 20 athletes took at a nearby community college, according to today’s Los Angeles Times.

Last June, the newspaper reported, Southern Cal athletes in more than a half-dozen sports — football, men’s basketball, baseball, and track, as well as women’s hoops, volleyball, and water polo — took a Spanish class at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. They all came looking for Señora Rose Mary Ross, 73, an instructor with a reputation for generous grading. Ms. Ross has denied that she’s a lax grader — well, sort of.

“I’ve never given an easy grade in my life,” she told the Times. “You come to my class and work, and I see you want to learn, I’ll give you an A. I see some lazy ass, coming late all the time, acting like he doesn’t care, I won’t give him an A. I’ll give him a B.”

A Times review of her 25-student Spanish 3 class last summer shows that Ms. Ross gave B’s to five students. All others got A’s. That grade distribution finally set off alarm bells, the newspaper said, and investigations ensued at both colleges.

Southern Cal officials notified students late last year that transfers of the Trade Tech Spanish credits had been rescinded and disallowed. For Trade Tech, embarrassment lingers among staff members worried that the incident will harm its reputation.

“We need to do better,” Marcy Drummond, Trade Tech’s vice president for academic affairs, told the paper.