Flashback: Princeton Hacks into Yale's Admissions Web Site
With all this talk of ending early admissions at U. Delaware, Harvard, Princeton, and now U. Virginia because of some kind of ethical concerns, let's go back four years and revisit what Princeton admissions officials did, including a dean, and see what happened.
In brief, Princeton admissions officials, including then Princeton's Dean of Admissions LeMenager, used the data (name, birthday & Social Security number) of applicants to Princeton to access their information on Yale's website. Dean LeMenager flat-out lied and told the press he was checking the security of Yale's new system.
What happened to Princeton's admissions staff? Stephen LeMenager was moved to a different job, the investigation's results were never made entirely public, and Princeton blamed Yale for reporting the potential federal felony and breach of student data to Federal authorities.
LeMenager is now director of planning and administration for campus life at Princeton. Slate had an interesting take on the result of the investigation:
Tuesday, Princeton President Shirley Tilghman released the findings of an independent investigator hired by the university. Yale President Richard Levin applauded the investigation's thoroughness. After interviews with 19 individuals at Princeton, four at Yale, and one admissions officer from another Ivy who was present at the deans meeting, the investigator found that LeMenager's accesses were, well … just an innocent way to check out security.
Yale declined to press charges, and admitted some kind of security failure. Many, many universities use SS and DoB to identify students in web registration systems.