Illinois politics is most famous for its extremely successful “get out the vote” drives that rally even the deceased to the polls. But the second most famous facet of Illinois politics is patronage. I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine. The same system is now creeping into admissions at the University of Illinois School of Law. At U of I, the equation for getting an unqualified student into school was pretty simple: one so-so student + one well-connected friend or family member + five jobs for graduating law students = an acceptance letter.
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 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.
Lest you think this was just about helping the rich get richer, U of I Dean Heidi Hurd tried to ensure that the jobs were high-paying prestigious law firm jobs that went to the bottom of the class. Dean Hurd wanted to find employers who were “indifferent to whether the five have passed their law school classes or the Bar.”
The jobs-for-admissions story is only one part of a larger special admissions program where well-connected applicants were placed in a special admissions track and competed side-by-side on equal or better footing for the final spots or full-ride scholarships with stronger applicants. All the while, the law school administration attempted to undermine the program by arguing against the “special interest” students and compiling data to show they couldn’t hack it at U of I.
If Dean Hurd initially put up a strong opposition to the program and attempted to undermine it as best she could within the university’s political system, she is to be commended for that. Open opposition to the program would almost certainly cost her job. But to allow the spots to be bought in this manner is not “civil disobedience,” nor does it help the school.
If seats at the law school could be bought with job for students ranked near the bottom of the class, U of I faces two PR nightmares. First, employers will suspect that any or all U of I student was not qualified to be admitted to the school, and just bought a seat, casting into doubt the entire student body. Second, if U of I is ensuring that the lower ranked members of its class get high profile jobs, simple statistics says that the chances that an Illinois graduate is implicated in a large professional responsibility or malpractice case goes up.
If Dean Hurd thought she was helping the school the best way she could without going toe-to-toe on the special admit program, she was wrong. And now instead of being the sympathetic figure who was just trying to defend the school, she looks like she bought into the patronage program hook, line, and sinker, and will probably go down with it. At least there are still quite a few open dean positions available for Ms. Hurd.
