CAMPUS CORRESPONDENT : Should Harvard Accept a Student Who Killed?

Gina Grant, a 19-year-old straight-A student, killed her mother, so Harvard decided not to admit her into next year’s freshman class.

Viewed from afar, that may seem like a logical decision. But here at Harvard, some students sense, correctly, that their university has wronged a young woman who would have been a worthy addition to the campus. Last Wednesday, the president of the student government led a rally of undergraduates in front of the admissions office to protest the decision.

Grant’s case, as sensational as it is, also raises important questions about both the handling of juvenile-justice records and the level of disclosure required on applications to highly selective universities.

Grant, who later this spring will graduate from a high school that is a three-minute walk from Harvard Yard, spent most of her early life in Lexington, S.C. During her adolescent years, her father died of cancer and her mother became alcoholic and abusive toward her daughter. On the night of Sept. 13, 1990, something in Grant snapped.

According to news reports, the teen-ager struck her mother, whose blood alcohol level was measured at a near-fatal .30, a dozen times with a candleholder after, her lawyer claims, she had been physically abused by her. Realizing her mother was dead, Grant, apparently with a boyfriend’s help, stabbed her in the neck with a knife and placed it in her mother’s hand to make the killing look like a suicide. She expressed no remorse.

Waiving a trial, Grant pled no contest to voluntary manslaughter and served six months at a juvenile detention center. The presiding judge in the case then allowed her to relocate to Massachusetts, where her aunt and uncle lived. He reasoned that a change of scenery would allow Grant to begin a new life in virtual anonymity. He sealed all case records.

Grant took her second chance and became a straight-A student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School. She also captained the tennis team and tutored underprivileged children.

In December, Harvard accepted her into its Class of 1999. Early admits are candidates so clearly deserving of admission that Harvard does not bother to wait to compare them to its regular applicant pool. Grant was, in Harvard’s eyes, the best of the best.

Two weeks ago, the university changed its mind after it received assorted press clippings on Grant’s past from anonymous sources. Without even giving her an opportunity to explain herself, Harvard rescinded her admission.

University officials have generally refused to comment for the record. But an official Harvard statement offers two justifications. One, the nature of Grant’s crime calls into question her “maturity” and “moral character.” Two, Grant, in effect, lied by failing to disclose the killing on her application. (Late last week, another justification emerged. In an interview with the school’s paper, two faculty members, who wanted to remained anonymous, charged that Grant had told her alumni interviewer that her mother had died in a car crash. Grant’s lawyer called the charge “patently false” and accused Harvard of changing its story, from one of omission to one of commission.)

Neither justification withstands scrutiny. The question on Harvard’s application seeking information about a student’s past misconduct seems to refer only to school-sanctioned discipline that occurred during the past three years. Grant, who said she did not disclose her past on the advice of attorney, committed her crime 4 1/2 years ago. She has never, according to news reports, had any disciplinary problems at school. There is no section on Harvard’s admission forms specifically dealing with criminal records.

Some Harvard officials indicated their disappointment upon learning the truth about Grant’s past, since the fact that both her parents were dead had made her application all the more impressive. In the age of affirmative action, admissions officers at elite universities often construct these sorts of “stories” as a way of making the case for an applicant. This is a problematic practice. The whole truth of an applicant’s record is rarely as rosy, or as bleak, as the applicant or admissions officer would have you believe. The controversy over the Grant case stems, in part, from the university’s reliance, in general, on pop psychology to justify otherwise questionable admissions. When Harvard learned the truth about Grant’s history, her winning story, in the eyes of the university, was ruined.

This view betrays an elitist, holier-than-thou attitude that even a place like Harvard should be above. The university is punishing a 19-year-old woman for a terrible mistake she made as a 14-year-old girl.

This radical position fails to recognize the need we all have for second chances. It holds that a tragic mistake made five years ago is more important than all the good works done since.

The whole point of the juvenile-justice system is that children are not adults; when kids make mistakes--even awful ones--we need to rehabilitate them. When judges seal juvenile records, all institutions, private and public, should respect that seal. (If the killing had occurred in Massachusetts and Harvard had asked the state about Grant’s past, the university would have been told that she had no criminal record).

Those who oppose Grant’s admission point out that Harvard, as a private university, can admit whomever it chooses. The admissions director at MIT noted as much last week when he said he probably wouldn’t admit Grant, either. But that is not the point. The rights of private universities are not under attack in this debate. Grant’s future--and each child’s right to privacy and a second chance--is.*