Admission office staffers disciplined
Dean Hargadon to retire in June
By Argelio Dumenigo
Princeton’s admission office will have a whole new look at
the top come next summer.
After an internal investigation of 14 unauthorized entries into
a Yale website by Princeton admission personnel in April, President
Tilghman announced that Stephen LeMenager, the associate dean and
director of admission, has been removed from his position and Dean
of Admission Fred Hargadon will be retiring once he completes his
term in June 2003.
Tilghman said Hargadon would have been retiring in June regardless
of the revelation that members of his staff had improperly used
applicants’ personal information to enter the Yale website
without authorization. But considering the circumstances she believed
it was important to move up the time of the announcement.
LeMenager, who was put on paid administrative leave after his actions
were revealed, arrived at Princeton in 1983 and will now be working
in the university’s office of communications until he and the
university find an administrative position "commensurate with
his considerable talents and experience," explained Tilghman.
During a press conference on August 13 to announce the findings
of the internal investigation, Tilghman said it is extremely difficult
"when those who make serious mistakes are deeply respected
friends and colleagues with exemplary records of service over many
years, as certainly is true in this case. This has made this investigation
an especially painful process for all of us."
But she later added, "At the same time, it is clear that it
was (LeMenager’s) action that started a chain of events that
led to more junior members of the admission staff accessing the
site."
Neither LeMenager nor Hargadon attended the press conference. A
call to LeMenager’s attorney, Brian Neary, for comment was
not returned. According to Tilghman’s statement, he agreed
to his removal from the admission staff.
The Investigation
The university’s investigation came after Tilghman learned
from Yale President Richard Levin on July 24 that computers at Princeton
had been used to enter Yale’s online admission notification
site on 18 different occasions in April and that 14 of those entries
had come from Princeton’s admission office. Tilghman also learned
that Yale began its own investigation after LeMenager discussed
entering the website with another Ivy League admission official
at a meeting on May 15.
Yale passed its information on to the FBI, which continues to investigate.
The Yale Daily News broke the story on July 25, leading to
national and international media coverage.
Three of the entries eventually were found to be Princeton students
checking on siblings who had applied to Yale, and one came from
an applicant who was visiting Princeton and checked on his admission
status at Yale from a computer in a library cluster.
Princeton’s investigation, which was headed by William Maderer,
a Newark attorney, also discovered that on April 3, after letters
announcing Princeton’s admission decisions had been delivered
to the post office the previous evening, LeMenager decided to look
at the Yale site since Princeton was considering a similar system.
According to Tilghman, LeMenager entered the Yale site with an applicant’s
personal information "fully expecting that he would then be
asked for a password or an ID number." He was surprised that
there was no added security beyond name, birth date, and social
security number and told Hargadon and other members of the admission
staff about his discovery. In the course of the next hour, he demonstrated
what he had discovered to other staff members on three additional
occasions, using the names and confidential information of two more
Princeton applicants.
Eventually several members of the Princeton staff entered the Yale
site on April 3, and there were other unauthorized entries on April
5 and a final visit on April 15. A total of eight applicants had
their personal information accessed.
Tilghman explained that the investigation, which involved interviews
with 24 people – 19 at Princeton, four from Yale, and an admission
official with another Ivy school, uncovered "no evidence that
there was any intention on Mr. LeMenager’s part to do anything
other than test, and then demonstrate, the site’s security
or that he used confidential information for any other purpose."
The university’s investigator also decided that the motive
in the later visits by other staff members was "simple curiousity
-– wanting to know whether Yale had admitted a particular applicant,
who in some cases had been admitted to Princeton and in other cases
had not been admitted. There is no evidence that this information
was ever used in any way beyond satisfying that curiosity,"
Tilghman said.
The members of the 30-person admission office who either "participated
in entering the Yale website or who were aware that the website
was being entered and failed to recognize the impropriety of doing
so" are also being disciplined, Tilghman said. Citing university
policy, she said she could not say how many other staffers were
involved or exactly what the disciplinary action would entail.
"I think that the actions that were taken by our admission
staff were breaches of ethical behavior and breaches of confidentiality,"
said Tilghman. The admission staff will also be going though a training
program on their responsibilities when it comes to privacy and confidentiality
and that measures will be established to ensure compliance.
Restoring confidence
University officials will also be reviewing Princeton’s policies
on issues of privacy and its practices regarding the security of
data. The university had already approved in the spring a request
from its Office of Information Technology to add a new position
of Information Technology Security Officer, and applications for
that position are currently being reviewed.
Princeton’s president said she hopes that the incident will
not shake the confidence of future applicants. "I think that
we have responded very effectively in beginning the process of restoring
the confidence that we have always enjoyed," she said.
In a written statement, Hargadon said he is "ultimately responsible
for the manner in which we conduct the university’s admission
process and the manner in which all members of the admission office
staff conduct themselves in the course of that process."
"I also accept responsibility for not having called attention
to the impropriety of such behavior immediately upon learning of
the initial unauthorized accessing of the Yale site by a senior
staff member," Hargadon added. "I pledge to do my best
in the days and months ahead to restore the complete integrity for
which the Princeton undergraduate admission office has traditionally
been known."
With LeMenager gone, Hargadon will now also oversee the day-to-day
operations of the admission office, Tilghman said. A search for
Hargadon’s replacement will begin in the fall.
Yale’s President Levin said that Tilghman handled a very difficult
situation in an exemplary manner and immediately recognized the
seriousness of the problem.
"I am impressed by the thoroughness of Princeton's internal
investigation and confident that all concerned now recognize the
importance of protecting the privacy of college applicants,"
Levin said in a statement.
