College Officials Were Charged in the Admissions-Bribery Scheme. Now Their Campuses Are Cutting Ties.

Photo illustration by Ron Coddington/Photo by Jessica Rinaldi, The Boston Globe, Getty Images

Updated (3/12/2019, 6:55 p.m.) with comment from a crisis-communications consultant and other revisions.

Colleges moved quickly on Tuesday to distance themselves from coaches and other employees charged in the wake of an investigation into an admissions-bribery scheme that federal prosecutors announced that morning.

Eleven employees at eight elite universities, including athletics coaches and one administrator, were among the dozens of people indicted for their alleged roles in the scheme, according to documents unsealed on Tuesday.

The alleged scheme had several facets. In one, parents paid a nonprofit group, the Key Worldwide Foundation, to bribe administrators of college-entrance examinations to let a third party take tests in their children’s place, according to a supporting affidavit. The foundation also bribed college coaches and administrators to designate the applying students as athletes, giving them an advantage, even if they were not.

Admission Through the ‘Side Door’

Dozens of people, including famous actors, college coaches, and a university administrator, have been charged by federal prosecutors for their alleged roles in an admissions-bribery scheme involving Yale, Stanford, and other elite institutions.

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“We believe everyone charged here today had a role in fostering a culture of corruption and greed that created an uneven playing field for students trying to get into these schools the right way,” John Bonavolonta, the FBI special agent in charge of the investigation, said at a news conference.

A cooperating witness, identified in the affidavit as William Rick Singer, the Key Foundation’s founder, described the scheme as a “side door” to guarantee admission to the children of wealthy families in California. Applicants could go in through the “front door,” applying through the normal process, or the “back door,” through large donations to the university. The “side doors” involved the entrance exams and the athletic designations, the affidavit said, with the alleged bribes ranging in size from $200,000 to $6.5 million.

Singer was indicted on charges of racketeering conspiracy, money-laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of justice.

The investigation began in May. The initial lead arose when the target of a separate investigation gave prosecutors “a tip that the bribery and cheating might be occurring,” The New York Times reported. Federal prosecutors said the investigation was continuing.

The 32 parents who participated in the scheme sought admission for their children at Stanford University, Yale University, and the University of Texas at Austin, among others, according to the affidavit. They were charged with various counts of mail fraud. Among those charged were the actors Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. (See the full list of those charged.)

“The parents are clearly the main movers,” Andrew Lelling, of the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Massachusetts, said at the news conference. While no students had been charged, Lelling said that prosecutors were still weighing charges against them. Most apparently were not aware of the bribes; in some cases, parents took steps to hide the scheme from their children.

Fallout for Universities

Athletics coaches at Georgetown, Stanford, Wake Forest, and Yale Universities and the University of Southern California were among those indicted by the the Department of Justice.

College leaders did not appear to be involved in the scheme, said Lelling, with the exception of an athletics director at Southern California. According to the affidavit, among those indicted were Donna Heinel, senior associate athletic director there; Jovan Vavic, a water-polo coach; and two former women’s soccer coaches.

Reports indicate that Heinel allegedly facilitated the admission of at least 24 students as athletics recruits in exchange for payment of more than $1.3 million to university accounts that she controlled. Heinel and Vavic have been fired.

“USC is in the process of identifying any funds received by the university in connection with this alleged scheme,” the university said in a written statement.

Wanda M. Austin, the university’s interim president, addressed the scheme in a letter to the campus. She said USC had been “purposefully deceived” by employees in its athletics department.

“At this time, we have no reason to believe that admissions employees or senior administrators were aware of the scheme or took part in any wrongdoing,” she wrote, “and we believe the government concurs in that assessment.”

Wake Forest announced that its head volleyball coach, William Ferguson, who is alleged to have received more than $100,000 to designate one applicant as a recruit, had been placed on administrative leave.

Jorge Salcedo, head coach of the men’s soccer team at the University of California at Los Angeles, who allegedly received $200,000, was also put on leave, the university said in a written statement.

Stanford announced that John Vandemoer, the sailing team’s head coach, who is charged with accepting contributions to the sailing program in exchange for recommending two prospective students, had been fired. He was expected to plead guilty on Tuesday, officials said.

Gordon Ernst, a former tennis coach at Georgetown, was also indicted. He has not coached there since December 2017, when an internal investigation found that he had violated university rules concerning admissions, administrators said in a written statement. Ernst was placed on leave after the admissions office “identified irregularities in his recruitment practices.”

Administrators at the University of Texas at Austin said they were notified on Tuesday morning about the involvement of the men’s tennis coach, Michael Center, in the scheme. Center, who is said to have received a $100,000 bribe, will be placed on administrative leave until further notice, a campus spokesman told The Chronicle.

“Integrity in admissions is vital to the academic and ethical standards of our university,” the spokesman said.

A ‘Balancing Act’

The cascading crisis-management response from officials at some of the nation’s most highly regarded universities tended to call attention to their institutions’ high ethical standards.

Simon R. Barker, a crisis-communications consultant, said the first steps for universities that have been called out by the Justice Department is to project a seriousness of purpose about getting to the bottom of what happened.

“They need to investigate, they need to demonstrate that they have HR policies that don’t allow for this, and they need to understand the scope of it,” said Barker, managing partner of the Blue Moon Consulting Group, whose clients are primarily colleges and universities.

Colleges will be best off in the long run, Barker said, if they look deeply at any cultural or systemic problems that enabled or gave rise to bad actors. To reassure a skeptical public, colleges should interrogate those problems without appearing naïve or disingenuous about all of the factors that come into play in admissions decisions.

“The balancing act is not to inadvertently overpromise or make sweeping statements that somehow suggest that, as an institution, you can’t even fathom that money and influence has a role in enrollment,” Barker said. “Because you will be called out for that.”

Jack Stripling and Andy Thomason contributed to this report.

Follow Terry Nguyen on Twitter at @terrygtnguyen, or email her at terry.nguyen@chronicle.com.