Their Just Deserts

The applicants to Harvard Business School (HBS)—recently rejected for exploiting a loophole in the admissions website that allowed them to access their admissions’ decisions early—sound an awful lot like that little kid who sneaks into the kitchen just before dinner and gets his hand caught in the cookie jar. And just like that wayward child, the people rejected for their actions are protesting with every excuse in the book. But where we might be willing to forgive the child in his youth and ignorance, these excuses should not suffice for the HBS applicants, and HBS should be applauded for taking a hard stance against unethical behavior.

Those supporting the blocked applicants argue that HBS’s decision is unfair because the applicants weren’t really “hacking.” And in the TV sense of the word they are right. These applicants were not feverishly writing complex programs deep into the night or breaking intricate codes to try to get an early glimpse of their decisions.

But the fact remains that what they were doing was exploiting a glitch in the website’s security to access privileged information they were not authorized to see. It’s irrelevant that the instructions to break into the system were easy to follow and required little effort. They knew the proper ways to find out about their admission’s decision and manipulating the website wasn’t one of them.

Some argue that HBS and its application system, ApplyYourself, are really to blame in this whole fiasco because they should have had a better security system in place. But does that really excuse the rejected applicants’ actions? Someone who robs from a museum equipped with the best and most innovative security systems and another person who steals from an empty car with the windows left open are both committing the same crime. A misdeed is a misdeed regardless of how easy it is to commit.

And those who argue that neither the motive nor the consequence of these applicants’ actions had any real detrimental effect are missing the point.

Anyone who has ever gone through an admissions process can empathize with the fear and anxiety of waiting for an admissions decision. And alleviating the angst of the wait is hardly a malicious motive. But the ends don’t justify the means. Sure, any of us would rather get our decisions earlier, but that does not justify breaking into the system.

There are serious consequences to what these applicants did. While their little “hack” did not jeopardize Harvard’s networks or destroy its computer systems, it did violate the trust between the applicants and HBS. For the admissions process to work, both HBS and the applicants need to trust one another. HBS can’t check every fact and the applicants can’t know HBS is always acting fairly, but the system works because both trust each other. The applicants violated that trust, and that’s a serious problem.

After all of the Enrons, Arthur Andersons, and Martha Stewarts, it is no surprise the American public has little faith in the business world. And a big part of the problem with all of these recent scandals is that business leaders try to bend the rules and find shades of gray where there should be only black and white. They try to excuse their actions by saying that in some “technical” sense they did nothing wrong when their actions were clearly unethical and devious.

HBS has a responsibility as a leading business school to train future business leaders who adhere to a higher standard. It is for that reason that HBS was one of the first business schools to introduce courses in business ethics. By taking a strong stance, HBS is further showing its commitment to make ethics an integral part of what it imparts to students. HBS’s actions send a strong message to future applicants and the rest of the community that we would all do well to hear: there is no substitute for doing the right thing.

I. Harry Ritter ’07, a Crimson editorial editor, is a government concentrator in Dunster House.