Live report from the Mikva Commission hearing

The chair of a state commission looking into admissions practices at the University of Illinois said there should be no outside influence.

There's "really no reason" for trustees, the chancellor or president of the university, or legislators to be involved in the admissions process, said Abner Mikva, the former federal judge who is chairing the Admissions Review Commission.

The commission was appointed by Gov. Patrick Quinn to investigate reports of such influence over UI admissions.

Michele Thompson, secretary to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, earlier testified before the commission.

Thompson said trustees have made inquiries about admissions for years. Most, she said, were seeking status updates regarding application materials. She said she didn't hear much about pressure to admit students.

"I heard more often about denials and disappointments," she said.

If trustees used undue pressure to influence admissions, "that would be unethical," Thompson said. She said she hasn't had as much interaction with trustee inquiries in recent years; she was told to forward them to the campus level about five years ago.

Asked how she would change the system, Thompson said, "Leadership should come from the top."

She said admissions committees, such as the medical school uses, are "extremely important" for professional schools. She added that it is much harder to pressure a group.

UI College of Law Dean Bruce Smith earlier testified that  inquiries about admission should be answered only if a student makes the inquiry.

He said he would rather resign from the deanship than "do something I thought unethical" or "admit a student I thought was underqualified."

Smith's predecessor, Heidi Hurd, testified earlier that the law school never took students not qualified to study law or enter the profession, and that the college didn't receive jobs in exchange for admissions.

She said that when she became dean, Category I decisions were made without  law school participation; she was given a list of whom to admit or deny by a three-person committee.

She said decisions were made by Chancellor Richard Herman and two other administrators.

And she said no law student accepted under the "special admit" program ever received scholarship dollars from the university.

She said that during her five years as dean, three  "special admits" received state General Assembly scholarships, which are tuition waivers and a "loss" for the school.

She said pressure behind special law-school admissions requests came from trustees, legislators and Blagojevich, but often she didn't know where it came from.

"I took (UI) trustees to be many of the pressure points in these (special admit) decisions," she said.

The issue of  special admits or the Category I list was "a commonly shared complaint" among deans at the UI, Hurd said. She said she tried to "push back" against some admissions requests, but didn't try to get the practice changed because she didn't have the authority.

"They didn't force decisions on me that I thought, when implemented, were unethical," she said. "If I had thought that, I would have done something."

She said she was "incensed" when she got e-mail from Herman that stated Trustee Larry Eppley was working on jobs, following the law college's complaint about a special-admission request.

The UI law college did not follow up on "preposterous" emails that possibly suggested jobs for law grads in exchange for granting admission to some students with lower qualifications. She "never believed" any trading of government jobs for special admissions was serious. She thought it was "a charade."

Hurd said the special-admits didn't displace other students. They were "add-ons" at the end of the year, she said.

Dealing with special admissions was "a very unpleasant" part of the job, but that's not why she stepped down from the deanship, she said.

Meanwhile, the previous and current chairs of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees are expected to testify before a state commission looking into admissions practices at the University of Illinois.

Trustees Larry Eppley and Niranjan Shah are expected to be called to future hearings of the Mikva Commission.

And Trustee Frances Carroll spoke at the hearing today at the Thompson Center. She said that  when she was first approached by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, she didn't want to be on the board; she changed her mind after learning more about UI.

She said the first time she heard of Category I -- the term used for "special" admissions at the UI -- was in the Chicago Tribune, which broke the story this summer. She said she asked about the admission status of five or six students in the last few years.

Carroll said it is "not appropriate" for trustees to make admissions decisions but it's OK to ask about the status of students.

She said UI admissions policy needs to be revisited and that trustees need more education about admissions.

"Political influence should not intervene (in admissions)," she said. Asked whether someone should be held accountable when politics does intervene, she said everybody is accountable.

Commissioner Maribeth Vander Weele, noting that Carroll "said it out loud, this (political influence) is part of political reality," asked how to change the culture.

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