Ivy League stupidity

Just in case you need proof that certain elitist East Coast colleges aren't all they're cracked up to be, read this Yale Daily News article about how a Princeton admissions officer got caught perusing applicant records stored on Yale's Web site.

First, let's give some bonus stupidity points to Yale for leaving the records around on a public Web site with a dumb authentication system that consisted of asking for a users name, address and social-security number.

But, as any smarty-pants Yale law professor would tell you, leaving your door unlocked or your windows wide open doesn't make burglary of your house any less of a crime.

So let's give an A+ in ethics to Stephen LeMenager, director of admissions at Princeton, who said he was merely concerned about the privacy of applicants. The paper quotes him:

"It was really an innocent way for us to check out the security. That was our main concern of having an online notification system, that it would be susceptible to people who had that information - parents, guidance counselors, and admissions officers at other schools."

The Boston Globe reports Princeton has now put LeMenager on paid administrative leave pending an internal investigation (as opposed to the external one launched by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office in New Haven, Conn.).

Contact Online Executive Editor Adam Gaffin

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