Legal News

The ?Clout List? Goes to Court: Chicago Trib Sues U. of Illinois

By Chris Herring

We’ve got a Smackdown Royale in the Land of Lincoln, with the state’s flagship newspaper waging battle against the state’s flagship public university.

The Chicago Tribune is suing the University of Illinois in the hope of uncovering information showing the school gave preferential admissions treatment to hundreds of college applicants who had help from insiders. Click here for the news story from the Trib.

The paper wants access to about 800 students’ high school GPAs and standardized test scores — but not their names — to see whether the hopefuls got a leg up when they were under consideration to get into the Champaign-Urbana-based school. The university is holding onto the records, saying that it is legally bound by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, which mandates the protection of students’ academic records. A university spokesman said he believes the school has a strong case in court against the Tribune. For another recent post on FERPA, which some universities are allegedly using as a shield to hide information that could hurt school’s reputations, click here.

The quick backstory: The Tribune recently ran an investigative series, “Clout Goes to College,” which highlighted a questionable practice in the University of Illinois’s office of admissions. The investigation found that more than 100 lobbyists, politicians, public officials and even university officials pressured admissions officers to check in on the status of the students they were phoning on behalf of. In many cases, the students were neighbors, family friends or relatives of the insiders.

Illinois officials have acknowledged that there were some flaws in its admissions practices and suspended the “Clout List.”

The Clout List, which dates back to 2005, is comprised of nearly 800 applicants, some of whom are described by admissions officers as having “terrible” or “weak” academic credentials. Despite those critiques, the Tribune found that nearly 80 percent of the applicants on the list were eventually admitted — sometimes over admissions officers’ objections. The 80 percent number is higher than the general applicant pool, where about 69 percent of applicants were admitted.

The series ignited a firestorm within the state, as admission into the school has become increasingly more competitive over the past decade. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, who wasn’t connected to the Clout List, recently appointed a committee to look into the university’s admissions practices. The university has agreed to comply with the investigation.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 16, 2009 (boomark / email).