The U of I has released many of the emails that jump started the admissions controversy and has put them online. Click here to read all 123 pages of emails.

I have only glanced at the first couple of pages so far, but it looks like some mighty interesting reading.

To refresh your memory, the controversy involves board members, lawmakers and other prominent people pressuring the university to admit sub-par applicants. The university set up a separate category for those students — the so-called clout list. The Chicago Tribune, which broke the story, claimed that students in this group had a higher admit rate to the university than the general applicant pool, even though the clout group on average had lower test scores and grades.

Now, Gov. Pat Quinn has appointed a panel to look into the university’s admissions process.

I have pasted the university’s press release from this afternoon below:

The University of Illinois is committed to fully cooperating with the Admissions Review Commission, an independent, fact-finding panel appointed by Governor Pat Quinn to investigate claims of special treatment for some applicants to the University.

Consistent with that commitment, the University today provided the Commission with additional documentation consisting of University emails. The full documents, with names redacted for student privacy, are available at http://www.uillinois.edu/our/news/2009/June25.docs.pdf.

The University’s cooperation with the Commission is being managed by the University Counsel’s office. The additional documents came to the University’s attention in the course of efforts to provide information requested by the Commission. The documents were identified on June 23, 2009.  The University informed the Commission of the additional documents on June 24 and is providing them to the Commission today.

The University has implemented a strict protocol for indentifying and preserving all documents relevant to the Commission.

The Grade is the St. Louis region’s premier blog on education and child welfare. To read other recent posts, go to www.stltoday.com/thegrade.