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Academic

: The Faculty Lounge

Admissions At Illinois: Corrupt Pols Meet Snarky Law Dean

By Dan Filler

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News is exploding out of Champaign-Urbana in the last day or so as a series of admissions-related emails were just released by the University of Illinois. The state's rough and tumble political community appears to have targeted the U of I as a source of marketable influence.

As I noted early this month, the University of Illinois School of Law was pressured to admit political VIP's. Dean Heidi Hurd pushed back on the demands, though she did not - and realistically, could not - fully eliminate the role of political influence in the admissions process. The story reported earlier this month involved political pressure to admit a minimally qualified - but not otherwise admittable applicant.

State Sen. Chris Lauzen believed a student deserved admission to the University of Illinois law school in 2005, and he let the university's lobbyists know. The school's dean thought otherwise. "She won't hurt us terribly, but she certainly won't help us," then-Dean Heidi Hurd wrote to Chancellor Richard Herman. "She will almost certainly be denied admission if the process unfolds as we predict. But she can probably do the work. If you tell me we need to do this one, we will. We'll remember it though!" "Please admit," the chancellor replied. "I understand no harm."

Now it appears that the school was pressured by Gov. Blagojevich to admit unqualified applicants - in exchange for jobs provided by a political pal of the Governor.

University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman forced the law school to admit an unqualified applicant backed by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich while arranging for the governor's go-between to seek jobs for five law school graduates, according to new documents released Thursday by the university. The records suggest for the first time an explicit trading of favors, the most troubling evidence yet of how Illinois' entrenched system of patronage crept into the admissions process of the state's most prestigious public university. The relative of deep-pocketed Blagojevich campaign donor Kerry Peck appears to have been pushed by trustee Lawrence Eppley, who routinely carried admissions requests from the governor.

My favorite part of the story, however, was the deliciously snarky response of Dean Hurd.

When law school dean Heidi Hurd balked on accepting the applicant in April 2006, Herman replied that the request came "Straight from the G. My apologies. Larry has promised to work on jobs (5). What counts?" Hurd replied: "Only very high-paying jobs in law firms that are absolutely indifferent to whether the five have passed their law school classes or the Bar."

There isn't a law school in the nation that wouldn't like to snare those jobs!

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on June 26, 2009 (boomark / email).