Ashundreds of prospectives descend on Dartmouth this week, we should recall our own senior years in high school. The college application process is the source of some stress, if not total insanity, for hard-working high school students who work to bring up their grades, pad their applications with long lists of activities and shmooze for gracefully embellished teacher's recommendations.
With the exception of the most highly qualified, these applicants wish that they had tooled a little harder in freshman grammar or had managed to avoid the truant officer on "Senior Skip Day" so that their application could have been a little more glowing. Others just lie.
Lon Grammer and Gina Grant are two of the latter group who were caught in their deception. Grammer transferred to Yale University after two lackluster years in a community college. He performed well at Yale, earning a B average and becoming quite popular among students. He planned to graduate this June with a coveted Yale degree.
Grammer probably will not graduate this June, despite his 3.0 GPA. After two years, Yale discovered that he lied on his transfer application, forging signatures, creating fictitious professors and inflating his 2.0 GPA to a more impressive 3.9. He is also charged with larceny for collecting over $60,000 in student aid.
Yet there is still hope. Grammer has hired a team of lawyers who hope to have him reinstated. They argue that since he has proven himself as a Yale student, the details of his admission are irrelevant.
That someone who could only pull a C average at a community college could manage a B at Yale is indeed cause for rethinking the rigor of academic life at Yale and other colleges in the Connecticut River Valley that are experiencing grade inflation. However, this argument misses the point.
A Yale degree represents something more than the acquisition of knowledge. Like any college degree, it also signifies personal strength and the recognition of certain moral guidelines. Doubtless, many students graduate each year without these basic qualifications, but for Yale to award a degree to a student that has been caught in outright lies of such a serious nature would turn their commencement ceremony into a farce.
Gina Grant was accepted to Harvard University this year with a strong academic record. Harvard later discovered that her criminal record was equally impressive -- a few years ago, a court convicted her of murdering her mother. Harvard subsequently rescinded her admission on the grounds that she falsified her application; Grant has hired a lawyer, and much of the Harvard student body has risen to support her.
The application question is hazy and probably only applies to academic suspensions, not criminal ones. In today's legalistic society, it would be too much to expect someone to volunteer such an important item merely on the grounds of honesty and candor.
However, when her interviewer asked about her mother, Grant replied that she had died in an accident. Yes, a freak accident involving her daughter's repeatedly beating her over the head with a candlestick.
Harvard emphasizes its being forced to reject many well-qualified applicants. They reject some applicants because of a few tenths of a grade-point or a couple of SAT questions. Try to explain the outrage surrounding Grant's rejection to one of those well-qualified rejects who took his or her chances with real histories instead of creating new ones.
As a McGovernick liberal, I am gratified that Grant has been rehabilitated and is capable of such academic achievements. I wish that every offender had such opportunity. But belief in personal redemption does not require disregarding the offense.
Grant's criminal record may have been sealed, but that does not mean that her mother died in an accident. She was bludgeoned to death with a candlestick, and no amount of remorse (which her daughter has never expressed) or forgiveness will change the truth. Perhaps we should not judge Grant based on the murder because of her youth or extenuating factors such as her mother's alcoholism, but we have an obligation to judge her deception.
Grammer and Grant each broke enough rules that Yale and Harvard have sufficient legal justification to reject them. In many other cases, though, the offenders are clever enough to hide behind legal defenses and get away. Society should not accept them as if they did nothing wrong; they deserve the same reprobation of others who get caught.
Hopefully, the courts will uphold the two rejections. But these decisions should do nothing to change our opinion of the two. "Reversed on Appeal" may be a good campaign slogan for Oliver North, but it is not a reason for absolution by society.
