UT Corruption BOMBSHELL: Pay-to-Play Admissions

"He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck,
Will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy."
Proverbs 29:1

We already knew the institution was financially corrupt, and that the admissions process is corrupt, so it makes sense that there's financial corruption in the admissions process:

On Jan. 31, 2013, Leslie Cedar, CEO of the Texas Exes, wrote to Tom Gilligan, dean of the McCombs School of Business, suggesting Gilligan admit a student who had been rejected in exchange for a $25,000 donation, according to one of the emails.

Tom Gilligan, dean of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, was willing to admit a connected student in exchange for a $25,000 donation.

The applicant’s father, apparently, “hasn’t done much giving but was about to cut you a 25k check,” Cedar wrote. The original request came from RichardLeshin, former president of the Texas Exes, who is close to Powers and to South Texas power brokers Carlos Zaffirini and his wife, state Sen. Judith Zaffirini.

Earlier this year, Leshin, a Corpus Christi lawyer, wrote an op-ed in the San Antonio Express-News denouncing as “outlandish propaganda” reports that UT was admitting subpar students because of political influence.

Gilligan got back to Cedar and Leshin within a half hour, offering a deal in which the applicant “will be admitted into McCombs upon completing several of the prerequisites (e.g. Calculus, Statistics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics) with good grades (around a 3.5 GPA). Will that work?”

Gilligan declined to comment.

Leshin is a founding member of the Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, a group of Longhorn insiders established to maintain the status quo at UT. Members of the coalition and the alumni association have been quoted in dozens of news articles, creating the appearance of broad support for Powers.

Far from being independent voices, the email records obtained by Watchdog.org find the coalition and the alumni association often looped in on message coordination emails from Powers’ PR staff.

Founding members, in discussion among themselves, are quite open about the fact their group was formed for the express purpose of supporting Powers while blocking reform proposals from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and that their talk of “excellence” is euphemistic “messaging” in defense of the status quo, the records show.

Cedar insists the Texas Exes’ “purpose is truly to be an independent and formidable network of supporters to champion the university.”

Yet in February 2013, when Powers’ hold on his job began to look tenuous, the Office of the President began paying the Texas Exes $100,000 every six months to support email blasts and other communications. The “game plan” for that campaign was coordinated with Powers’ deputy.

That was on top of the $158,600 that Powers had already approved in annual support for traditional alumni association activities, such as networking events, awards and scholarships.

 Read the whole thing here.