When Applicant Is Ex-Con, What’s a College to Do?

To ask or not to ask.

The issue of the moment with college admissions officers is whether to require college applicants to list their criminal history, and what to do if applicants have a criminal history.

The debate pits the rights of ex-offenders against schools that are increasingly under parental pressure to ensure campus safety. The question reared its head once more at the annual meeting of the American Assn. of College Registrars and Admissions Officers this week in Indianapolis, where the story of would-be freshman Gina Grant came up often. It’s also a hot topic among college leaders logged on to the Internet.

Grant, a straight-A student from South Carolina, was accepted and then rejected from Harvard earlier this month after the school learned she killed her mother in 1990. She answered no to a question on the school application asking if she had been disciplined in the past--a question that seemingly refers to academic discipline. Columbia University, which also accepted her without knowledge of her past, is taking another look at her application. Grant, who said she killed her mother in self-defense, pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter and served six months in juvenile detention.

Harvard officials have little to say about the controversy, except that they reserve the right to reject applicants based on questionable behavior or misrepresentations made on an application.

“It’s a very large topic of conversation at this meeting,” says Stanley E. Henderson, president of the national admissions officers group. These are the arguments on both sides, as Henderson sees it:

“Ex-convicts have paid their debt, and asking for their record would be an infringement of their individual rights. Are you going to stamp a C on them for convict if they are admitted? . . . On the other hand, if you don’t do something about it, you have the possibility of liability should this individual commit a crime on campus.”

Some school officials believe they can find out about a student’s criminal history without having to ask for it on an application. “Generally, if a student has committed a criminal offense, we almost always know it without having to ask,” says USC dean of admissions Joseph Allen.

“Many will write about it in their essays,” he says. “And we know if they have been in a California Youth Authority camp (where the state sends juvenile offenders), because we keep a list of CYA participants.”

“We try to foster a good relationship between the local parole officer and the local admissions director,” says David Truax, vice chancellor at the 64-campus State University of New York system. “The admissions office knows ahead of time when an ex-offender is applying for admission, and knows some detail about that person’s background.”

Currently, most schools in California (including the UC and California State University systems) as well as those across the country don’t ask applicants if they have a criminal history. A few, including the Louisiana State University system and the University of Colorado, Boulder, do ask.

“We are considering it,” says USC’s Allen. “As the dean of admissions, I feel an obligation that the students we admit here are not going to be a danger to themselves or the community.”

Yet, if a question on criminal background is asked, what does it say to top prospects (who are fewer and therefore more in demand) and their parents?

“It’s always a concern in the admissions community, which is so focused on public relations and image, when you have an item on the application form that parents and prospective students can see and say, ‘Oh my God, they’re admitting criminals to this college,’ ” Truax says.

An even tougher issue for administrators is what to do if they find out an applicant has a record. At the private Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont, the answer is almost certainly that students will be rejected. Ironically, the school doesn’t ask about criminal background. “Most likely, if we know there’s a record, no way,” says assistant dean Julie Martinez.

Others, such as Loyola Marymount University and Caltech, take any news of criminal background on a case-by-case basis. “We treat every case individually,” says LMU spokesman Norm Schneider. “And as a Catholic University, that’s how we’re really supposed to look at people.”

A major issue for public schools is whether they have the right to reject applicants--tax-paying residents of the state--based on a crime for which they have done time.

The issue, whether for public or private schools, is not new. The same debate raged in 1986 after 20-year-old Joseph Henry, who had a history of disciplinary problems, killed a fellow student, 19-year-old Jeanne Ann Clery, at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Clery’s parents went on a national crusade that led to several states enacting laws requiring schools to open their campus crime statistics to the public.

But for every story of a student gone bad, there seem to be several ex-cons who go back to school and make it. They’re usually older, they usually disclose their past and often do well in school, administrators say. They’re people like Paul J. Foucher (who was turned down by Claremont-McKenna because of his record), a 47-year-old who is wrapping up his last few quarters at UC Berkeley.

Foucher, who transferred to Berkeley from Los Angeles City College, was wooed by Princeton and accepted at UCLA. His many crimes (nearly 100 arrests, he says) revolved around taking and selling drugs--cocaine, heroine, marijuana, “a little bit of everything,” he says.

He studies the psychology of crime, and has come to some conclusions about admitting ex-cons to college. “A university does change a person. I think everyone should have a right to go to college.”