Open Letter From AAUP President Cary Nelson
This summer we have seen a widening controversy over politically influenced admissions for both graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In August a special commission appointed by the governor recommended that all members of the Board of Trustees resign, both because several were directly involved in pressing for individual students to be admitted and because all failed their oversight responsibilities. Several trustees have now done so. An elaborate system was put in place to assure admission for politically connected applicants, some of whom fell below the university’s standards. The commission offered the following evaluation of the Urbana campus’ chancellor: [he] “personally and extensively participated in admissions applications in a manner inconsistent with University-sanctioned principles of ethical conduct and fair dealing.” The three-campus president received the same evaluation, minus the words “and extensively.”
It is not the business of the national AAUP to advise local faculty how they should respond to the commission’s evaluations of senior administrative conduct. It is our business to point out that careful adherence to AAUP policy would almost certainly have prevented this “`well-oiled’ Machine that was perhaps unparalleled among universities in its level of formality and structure” (Commission report, p. 1) from ever being put in place. In 2002 the AAUP’s National Council adopted the following addition to our Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities: “With regard to student admissions, the faculty should have a meaningful role in establishing institutional policies, including the setting of standards for admission, and should be afforded opportunity for oversight of the entire admissions process.”
The first time the chancellor was approached to circumvent the normal admissions process he could have asked the responsible college deans or other admissions officials to appoint faculty members to their admissions committees. That would likely have made it impossible to admit less qualified students in secret and through political influence.
(posted 8/11/09)