POLITICS

Picture this: University of Illinois head football coach Lou Tepper announces the Illini have signed one of the nation's top prep running backs, a kid who could be another Red Grange. He's coming to Champaign on a full ride, of course, after turning down offers from the nation's top football factories. So who is this kid? Tepper won't say — don't want to infringe on his privacy, don't you know.

Or rumor has it that a senior at the local high school is a National Merit Scholar — but school officials won't comment, citing privacy concerns.

Or a major business in town has chosen a winner from among hundreds of entrants for the college scholarship offered as top prize in its annual essay contest — but the company president won't tell who the winning candidate is, lest his or her privacy be violated.

Unlikely scenarios? You bet. Just thumb through your local newspaper, especially at high school graduation time, and you'll see blurbs about all kinds of kids winning all kinds of scholarships offered by all kinds of benefactors.

What you won't see — at least not with any regularity — are the names of local students who've been awarded General Assembly scholarships. In fact, the only way you ever see those names is by accident, usually because university minions weren't cagey enough to keep the information away from nosy reporters.

Is it just that legislators are shy, and don't want to take public credit for their good works in doling out tuition waivers to the University of Illinois and other state schools, so that deserving students can receive a college education? Perhaps. On the other hand, embarrassed might be the more appropriate adjective, if one looks at the glimpses into the scholarship program's workings that emerged in recent news stories.

In February, The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette disclosed that one out of every five legislative scholarships awarded at Eastern Illinois and at Western Illinois universities over a six-year period went either to relatives of political supporters or to students who lived outside the legislators' districts, an apparent violation of state law.

Then in April, The Associated Press reported that some tuition waivers at Southern Illinois University were given to relatives of political supporters or of other lawmakers.

Long-time observers of Illinois' political culture might be tempted to yawn, of course. This is news? That legislators use their perks to help their relatives and reward their political cronies? Come on, this isn't Minnesota.

Indeed, little in past Illinois history would lead one to be surprised at the revelations. In fact, one could argue, the most interesting aspect of the disclosures has been the reaction from the leaders of the involved schools.

In both reports, the institutions were responding to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by reporters.

At Eastern and at Western, officials initially agreed that the identities of legislative scholarship winners were a matter of public record — not an unreasonable conclusion, given the roughly $4 million annual cost of the program to the publicly funded schools.

At Southern, officials attempted to black out the names of recipients before giving the documents to AP, but some names were legible through the strikeovers. Maybe the legislative freebies have cut so heavily into tuition revenues that SIU couldn't afford heavy-duty markers. In any event, some SIU names got out, too.

The resulting publicity angered many legislators. Some resented the implication that their scholarships were political payoffs, while others were incensed that the truth about their awards had come out. The resulting legislative firestorm engendered the sorry spectacle of the presidents of EIU and of WIU apologizing for releasing the names of students who received publicly funded awards from elected officials exercising a perquisite of their office.

SIU President Ted Sanders went his colleagues one better in his obeisance

46 ¦ June 1996 Illinois Issues

The flap prompted calls for repeal of the perk, including a suggestion from Gov. Jim Edgar that lawmakers 'would be wise' to end the program.

to the appropriation gods. After pronouncing himself "damned mad" that names were still legible to AP reporters, the erstwhile state schools superintendent hired a former federal prosecutor, at a reported $200 an hour, to investigate whether the coverup slipup was a deliberate act of sabotage, or merely equipment failure. If some unfortunate clerk gets canned as a result, Sanders should win the sycophant of the year award hands-down.

The state's other public universities, including the University of Illinois, all stonewalled on media FOI requests for the names of legislative scholarship recipients, using as their fig leaf a federal privacy law designed to safeguard such personal information about students as applications, grades and transcripts.

The flap also prompted renewed calls for repeal of the 90-year-old perk, including a suggestion from Gov. Jim Edgar that lawmakers "would be wise" to end a program that's given them so much bad press over the years. But old habits die hard, especially ones that Senate President James "Pate" Philip, a Wood Dale Republican, likes. As House-passed legislation to repeal the awards languishes in a Senate committee, would-be reformers would be well-advised to seek half a loaf.

If the legislature's sole concern is affording opportunities for deserving young people to go to college, selection of winners could be turned over to the Illinois Student Assistance Commission or to the universities themselves.

At the very least, recipients should be identified. Let the folks back home decide whether a lawmaker's nephew or a major contributor's daughter is the most deserving of the thousands of college kids in the district. In Illinois, local voters might agree — and that's democracy in action.

Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

Illinois Issues June 1996 ¦ 47