Dirty tricks by Ivy League don attract long arm of law

The men in suits on Princeton University campus yesterday looked more like government agents than dons, and that is what they were.

The Feds had arrived to investigate allegations of chicanery in the admissions department involving an academic who had hacked into the computers at Yale, Princeton's arch-rival.

These élite institutions like to compete for academic kudos and for sports trophies. And they increasingly have to vie with one another for the cream of America's young. Now it seems that one side may have been playing dirty.

Princeton, in New Jersey, has already acknowledged a degree of guilt. It has suspended a member of its admissions department because he delved into a website set up by Yale to inform candidates for places whether they have been accepted.

The man in trouble is Stephen LeMenager, an associate dean. He apparently achieved 18 unauthorised log-ins to the Yale site this year by using the personal details of prospective students who had applied to both universities.

Mr LeMenager's motives are unclear. He insists he was exploring the Yale site purely to discover what sort of security it had. By all accounts, there was not very much.

Yale, however, was not pleased and notified the FBI on Thursday. "We're assessing the information to see if there is a federal violation," an FBI spokeswoman said.

Yale officials said Princeton had accessed the files of some students before they themselves had seen them, suggesting an invasion of privacy.

The revelations have sent shudders through the Ivy League community. "This report reflects the heightened craziness about admissions decisions," James Freedman, a former president of Dartmouth College, said. "It is competitiveness taken to dastardly lengths." Both universities accept only about 10 per cent of those who apply.

Princeton is, meanwhile, adopting an uncharacteristically sheepish tone. The incidents, said Marilyn Marks, a spokeswoman for the university, represented a "serious lapse of judgement by at least one member of our admissions staff".