The admissions scandal at the University of Illinois has spread to the law school.
"What does it cost to get an unqualified student into the University of Illinois law school?" the Tribune reports in its ongoing investigation into the role of clout at the state's flagship university. "Five jobs for graduating law students, suggest internal e-mails released Thursday.
"The documents show for the first time efforts to seek favors - in this case, jobs - for admissions, the most troubling evidence yet of how Illinois' entrenched system of patronage crept into the state's most prestigious public university.
"They also detail the law school's system for handling 'Special Admits,' students backed by the politically connected, expanding the scope of a scandal prompted by a Chicago Tribune investigation."
And University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman and trustee Lawrence Eppley are once again named as perpetrators.
"In one e-mail exchange, University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman forced the law school to admit an unqualified applicant backed by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich while seeking a promise from the governor's go-between that five law school graduates would get jobs," the Tribune reports. "The applicant, a relative of deep-pocketed Blagojevich campaign donor Kerry Peck, appears to have been pushed by Trustee Lawrence Eppley, who often carried the governor's admissions requests."
Herman refused to speak to the Tribune about the latest revelations.
University trustees met in an emergency closed-door session on Thursday before releasing the documents due to the Tribune through a Freedom of Information Act request. The university could not immediately explain why the documents weren't among those released last month, as they should have been.
"The Tribune had asked for all such e-mails in April," John Kass writes in a must-read column today. "But these somehow were forgotten, until U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald issued subpoenas. Then, magically, that which was lost was found. A miracle!
"Did the U. of I. search by the light of Batman's beacon, Diogenes' lantern or some other powerful lamp of truth?"
Local
WCIA 3 News reports that one string of e-mails dating back to 2006 "show the former dean Heidi Hurd advocating for a student who fell below the qualifications."
An assistant dean wrote in another e-mail that "This is now the third candidate that we have been forced to admit."
Trustee David Dorris told the station that it "Looked like a deal to trade jobs for an admission of a student that the admissions people at the law school said was clearly not qualified to be a student there and that's very troubling to me. I can't imagine that there's a defense to that."
There's never a defense. It's just the Chicago Way.
Steve Rhodes is the proprietor of The Beachwood Reporter, a Chicago-centric news and culture review.
