Princeton Ends Internal Investigation

Princeton University has removed a top admissions officer from his position and is planning to discipline several others for repeatedly accessing Yale’s admissions website without authorization, President Shirley M. Tighlman said Tuesday.

The move came as Tighlman announced the findings of an internal investigation begun last month after the Yale Daily News reported that Princeton officials had used information from confidential applications to access Yale’s admissions website. The site allowed undergraduate applicants to check whether they had been accepted to the school.

Associate Dean of Admissions Stephan LeMenager has been removed from his post, but will continue to work at Princeton in the university’s communications office until another position within the university is found for him, Tighlman said in a statement.

In a simultaneous statement, Dean of Admissions Fred Hargadon said that he was “ultimately responsible for...the inappropriate actions” of his staff, and announced that he will retire at the end of the 2002-2003 academic year.

The independent investigation, conducted by former federal prosecutor William Maderer, detailed 18 hits to the Yale site logged off computers on the Princeton campus.

Maderer concluded that several admissions officers including LeMenager made 14 unauthorized entrances to the site, but that curiosity and a desire to test Yale’s security were their motives.

According to the report, LeMenager entered Yale’s admission website using a Princeton applicant’s name, birth date and social security number on April 3, the day after Princeton had sent out the last of its admissions decisions. He expected to be asked for a password or ID number, but found that there was no security beyond what information he had already provided.

Shortly thereafter, LeMenager demonstrated his discovery to other staff members, including Hargadon, on three additional occasions, using information from two additional applicants.

Tilghman said that Princeton’s investigation found that the officers involved were checking the site’s security, and had no intention of using the admissions information to change their own decisions.

“While we do not in any way condone these actions, there is 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,” Ms. Tilghman said.

According to the report, LeMenager was curious about Yale’s website, as it had been a topic of much debate among Princeton admissions staff, who were contemplating a possible switch to a similar electronic notification system.

The fourteen unauthorized entrances occured over the next two weeks, by junior members of the staff motivated only by “simple curiosity,” according to the report.

LeMenager has agreed to leave the admissions office, after nearly 20 years there, because “his actions started a chain of events that led to more junior members accessing the site,” according to the report.

Disciplinary action will also be taken against all members of the admissions staff who entered the Yale website, or who were aware that it was being entered and “failed to recognize the impopriety of doing so.”

Tilghman said that “[o]ne of the lessons of this experience is that even individuals with a high degree of sensitivity to ethical principles in traditional settings can fail to be equally sensitive when technology is involved (as when someone who would never open a sealed envelope...enters a secured Web site).”

To address this problem, she said that a training program about the privacy and confidentiality of applicants will be instituted for the admissions staff.

The report found that the four instances of Yale’s website having been accessed from Princeton campus locations outside the admissions office were initiated either by Yale applicants themselves, or by siblings of Yale applicants who were doing so at the request of their siblings.

In a statement released Tuesday, Yale President Richard C. Levin wrote in response to Tilghman’s report that he was “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.”

A Yale spokesperson would not comment on whether Yale should take any part of the blame for the incident, due to its poor website security.

—Staff writer Eugenia B. Schraa can be reached at schraa@fas.harvard.edu.