August 27, 2009
Governor Begins Effort Toward Cleansing Tainted U. of Illinois Board
By SUSAN SAULNY and EMMA GRAVES FITZSIMMONS, NY TIMES

CHICAGO — In an effort to control damage from the state’s worst scandal in public higher education, Gov. Patrick J. Quinn on Wednesday appointed to the University of Illinois board of trustees two new members who he said would help restore integrity to the admissions process.

But the governor did not fire the last two members of the previous board, who have refused to resign in the wake of an admissions scandal in which trustees and university officials gave preference to some applicants.

Mr. Quinn named Christopher G. Kennedy, the president of a real estate management company, and Lawrence Oliver, a lawyer and aircraft manufacturing executive, to the board. He plans to appoint five more trustees before its next meeting on Sept. 10.

“Our work is to clean up the university,” Mr. Quinn said. “Our main purpose should be repairing the damage.”

Some education advocates had expected the two remaining board members to be fired, but Mr. Quinn said Wednesday that he feared setting off an expensive legal battle by doing so. Instead, he said he hoped to move forward by appointing new trustees who would have a clear majority.

The announcement came three weeks after Mr. Quinn first called on the entire nine-member board to resign, based on findings in a report by an independent state commission charged with investigating irregularities at the university.

The commission found earlier this month that top officials at the university ran a shadowy two-tier admissions process that favored the children of the wealthy and the well-connected, and that influence was particularly concentrated among the trustees.

The report, scathing in its breadth and detail, said the state’s flagship public institution of higher learning was in a “full-fledged crisis purely of its own making,” due to “crass opportunism” that went back a decade or more.

Favored students, whose names were tracked on an internal list, were sometimes admitted even though they did not meet admission qualifications, and better-qualified candidates were rejected.

Mr. Quinn, a Democrat, set up the commission to investigate admissions after The Chicago Tribune reported that some university applicants were winning acceptance at the intervention of well-placed family members, politicians or friends, who wielded particular influence through the trustees.

As public outrage about the scandal escalated in July, some trustees, including the board chairman, Niranjan S. Shah, began to resign. By late this month, only two trustees were left, James D. Montgomery, a prominent Chicago lawyer, and Frances G. Carroll, a veteran educator.

Frances G. Carroll

Mr. Quinn had initially threatened to fire Mr. Montgomery and Ms. Carroll after the commission released its report. Both have denied wrongdoing, and were not available for comment on Wednesday.

Mr. Quinn said Wednesday that he believed he was doing what was best for the university.

“We’re marching on,” he said.The state comptroller, Daniel W. Hynes, who is challenging Mr. Quinn in the Democratic primary for governor next year, has criticized Mr. Quinn’s handling of the scandal, saying the governor did not act with “certainty and with dispatch” as he had said he would.

Mr. Kennedy, a son of Robert F. Kennedy, will serve as the new chairman of the board. He did not attend the announcement as planned because of the death of his uncle Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Mr. Quinn said.