Legal News

Mikva on U of I Scandal: ?Illinois Has Carried it to an Extreme.?

By Ashby Jones

Looks like the University of Illinois admissions scandal could have some significant fallout.

Former federal judge Abner Mikva, the chairman of a state panel investigating the university’s practices, said Thursday he will ask his fellow commissioners to recommend that the school’s entire board of trustees resign because of the scandal.

Already, trustee Lawrence Eppley resigned this week and called on his fellow board members to do the same. Click here for the story, from the Chicago Tribune.

We’ve written about the situation before, click here, here and here. The basic allegation: that the school gave preferential admissions treatment to hundreds of applicants — aspiring undergraduates, graduate students and law students — who had help from insiders, including former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

According to the Trib, Mikva said that after reviewing more than 5,000 pages of documents and hearing from nearly three dozen witnesses, it’s clear the university had a flawed admissions process. He also said the evidence suggests that no other public university has an an institutionalized “clout system” like Illinois’s. Said Mikva: “Unfortunately, as in other cases, Illinois has carried it to an extreme.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 31, 2009 (boomark / email).