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NEWS
| April 23
Student Affairs
10 admit roles in breach
Disciplinary action for those
involved may include suspension or expulsion, says Dean of Students
Austin Lane.
By Brad
Rollins
Contributor to The Shorthorn
Administrators say they continue to investigate
12 students suspected of involvement in falsifying transcripts and
forgery in what officials described last week as a “security
breach” in the university’s assessment services office.
All but two of the accused have been interviewed and have admitted
having a role in the misdeeds, said Austin Lane, the recently appointed
dean of students. Officials previously said a student employee in
the testing office was fired over the incidents.
Disciplinary action that could include suspension or expulsion will
be taken against the others when the investigation is complete,
Lane said.
“It takes time because we are basically talking about these
people’s lives,” Dr. Lane said. “After we have gone
through the full slate [of suspects], we’ll sit down and reflect
on what they told me and make decisions then.”
The university is probing the possibility that others may have been
involved, but his investigation has not produced any evidence of
a larger scandal, Lane said.
“At this point, all of the allegations focus on those 12 students,”
he said.
Officials have said they will not discuss details of the security
breach and have declined to confirm an anonymous source’s account
alleging that students were receiving credit for College-Level Examination
Program tests they did not take.
“We’re not going to be giving a blow-by-blow account of
what happened, and we’re not going to be giving a blow-by-blow
account of what steps we have taken to prevent it again,” said
Dana Dunn, vice president for academic affairs. “We don’t
want to give people any ideas.”
Assessment Services Director, Cheryl Cardell, was out of town on
business, her office said. She did not return a call left at the
Chicago hotel where she was staying.
An audit of the office cleared other employees of wrongdoing or
negligence and no further disciplinary action would be taken against
staff, Dr. Dunn said. She defended the security process in place
at the time of the incidents but said safeguards have been strengthened
to reduce the likelihood of a recurrence.
“It’s judgment based on a review of the situation that
there were no lapses of judgment on the part of any other employees,”
she said. “Someone decided to finesse the system, they were
able to do so and they were caught.” She said criminal charges
are not being pursued.
Dunn said “rigorous record-keeping” allowed officials
to quickly determine who was involved.
“The data-intensive procedures in the office allowed us to
quickly identify the problem and deal with it accordingly,”
she said.
The university deals with as many as 300 incidents of academic dishonesty
a year, Lane said, mostly cheating or plagiarism. But violations
of this magnitude are rare, he said.
“There is nothing in our records of anything on this scale,”
he said.
“Because this involves forgery and falsification, it’s
on a different level.”
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