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Consider Tuesday’s installment in the month-long series, typically positioned on page one. The pushy headline, “How U. of I. scheme began,” promises an origins story that reveals how and why the corruption took root. But the story falls short. It’s simply an account of the unverified testimony of Abel Montoya, a former admissions director, to the commission investigating the university’s admissions practices. Motoya’s story implicates former governor Jim Thompson and the former director of undergraduate admissions, Martha Moore, but both these officials tell the paper they don’t know what Montoya’s talking about.
Well, yes. But we aren’t naive and the Tribune isn’t either. On June 25 it carried a short article on tuition increases at the Urbana-Champaign campus. There was this passage:
The language: “specter of public corruption…increasingly infuriating scandal…betrayal of the public trust…identify the schemers…lost whatever last shred of credibility…cynical game…officials who swam in this sewer…”
