Clean Sweep at U of Illinois?

It all started with the mascot, of course, who was booted out of Urbane-Champagne two years ago less for being racially offensive than for having been the cause of NCAA sanctions against hosting postseason sports events at the great big school on the edge of the prairie. There is no evidence so far that the mascot was in any way involved in the admissions scandal that has now engulfed the entire upper level of the UIUC administration as well as the university's board of trustees, but we're taking a wait-and-see position on whether poor old mothballed Chief Illiniwek will eventually be sucked into the maelstrom of this Category I storm. This is Illinois, after all -- Land of Blago and Burris and Ryan and Rosti.

We pause at this point to express our sympathies to our loyal band of Illinois lurkers, all of whom are fine, upstanding individuals whom, we wish to emphasize, have nothing whatsoever to do with admissions. We don't make the news, kids. We just snark it. Don't take it personal.

Anyway, with word yesterday that UIUC Chancellor (and former QTU dean) Richard Herman is stepping down (but staying on campus as a well-compensated "special assistant" to the interim president -- sweet!), the purge of administrators associated with what the Chicago Tribune describes as "a shadow admissions system that allowed subpar but well-connected students to get into the state's premier public school" appears to be complete. Illinois' President, B. Joseph White, resigned last month, and six members of the board of trustees have been replaced in the wake of the scandal. Former UIUC Provost Linda Katehi left Shampoo-Banana this past spring to become chancellor at UC Davis, but a faint whiff of the scandal accompanied her to the Left Coast, prompting UC system funeral director Mark Yudof to issue a statement expressing full confidence in the new hire in June. Hmmm. As we have said before, with friends like Yudof, higher ed needs no enemies.

Herman seems to have been the architect of the admissions system, known internally as Category I. According to the Trib, the end run began when Herman was provost and continued through his tenure as chancellor, with him personally overruling admissions staff in order "to admit students connected to university trustees, lawmakers, and other powerful people." Tricky Dick had his hands in every layer of the admissions cake, as more than 800 undergraduates received special consideration under the program but dozens of grad school applicants and a number of law school aspirants also benefited more from their connections than from their test scores. Herman even conspired with then-Gov. Blago and then-trustee Lawrence Eppley to guarantee jobs for 5 subpar graduates of the law school (who had been admitted over the dean's objections) in an effort to protect the school's ranking.

And there it is, comrades: That stench you smell is the odor arising from the ugly stew/poo of public institutions desperate to ingratiate themselves to the parsimonious keepers of the purse strings while battling to stay competitive in the morally bankrupt yet all-important game of rankings, ranking, rankings. With or without a series of incriminating e-mails, we are all more or less stuck in this same hard, stinky place. Today, as the denizens of Urbana-Champaign raise their noses in the air hoping to catch the sweet smell of a refreshing new breeze blowing across the prairie, the rest of us in public higher ed should have the guts to take a good, long sniff of our own campuses and see what's brewing in the pressure cooker. It's easy to stand in solidarity with our besieged colleagues on the West Coast and declare that, "We are all Californians." It's more difficult but just as necessary to take a look in the mirror and acknowledge that in many painful respects we are all Illini as well.

Pick up your brooms and start sweeping, kids. Even a dog can't stand the smell in this place. Peace out.