Donations and Admissions --Is There a Tie at UCLA?

Time and again, as they took the hot seat during two recent legislative hearings on admissions favoritism, UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young and his top aides stressed that they never crossed an important ethical line: Admitting students in exchange for donations.

“We cannot identify a single instance of a quid pro quo, where a financial contribution or other favorable action on behalf of UCLA was contingent upon a student’s admission,” Young declared in a letter before the hearings. “I would deplore any such attempt to improperly influence the university.”

But confidential documents show the relationship between money and admissions at UCLA has played out in more complex and subtle ways than a quid pro quo. And some legal experts say the school’s defense of VIP admissions does not address the larger question of whether the process has been influenced by mounting pressures to woo and keep financial supporters.

To show gratitude toward big donors or to avoid jeopardizing future donations, UCLA officials routinely have given special handling to applications, and fund-raisers sometimes recommended that the university grant admission to students with ties to donors.

And several student applicants were admitted after UCLA fund-raising officials specifically referred to the six-figure contributions made by their parents or relatives, according to documents reviewed by The Times.

In 1992, a student whose admission was considered doubtful was eventually let in after a fund-raiser argued for “intervention” because her father was a prominent donor who helped solicit others for gifts, records show.

Such cases strike at the heart of issues raised by Times reports of favoritism in the admissions process at UCLA: Has an elite public institution been compromised by allowing some admissions to be influenced by contributions?

During recent hearings by the state Senate Select Committee on Higher Education, Young and other school officials repeatedly have denied that admissions involved any quid pro quo, a Latin phrase that means getting something for something.

But Robert C. Fellmeth, director of the San Diego-based Center for Public Interest Law, said Young “is mounting a narrow and largely irrelevant defense.”

“Whenever you’re accused of something, it’s always better to pick out the one thing you’re not doing and declare your innocence,” said Fellmeth, whose nonprofit center trains University of San Diego law students about open government issues. “If I’m accused of shooting John with a high-powered rifle and I actually shot him with a handgun, I’d say, ‘I never shot a high-powered rifle in my life!’ ”

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The legislative hearings and an in-house inquiry ordered by UC President Richard Atkinson were prompted by Times reports in March that UC regents, politicians and donors had privately used their influence to get relatives, friends and others into UCLA, sometimes ahead of more qualified applicants.

University officials say only a “handful” of students were granted admission each year at the request of “important friends of UCLA,” and fewer than a dozen in all were not eligible for UC.

On Friday, officials acknowledged that some of these admissions were made at the request of donors and potential donors.

“Some of these friends have contributed generously to UCLA, expanding educational opportunities for all students or improving research or patient care,” a spokeswoman said. “Some have the potential to contribute generously to UCLA in the future and help us serve our students and the Los Angeles community better.”

But the university never would trade donations for admissions, said Alan F. Charles, the retired vice chancellor who ran UCLA’s fund-raising operation until 1993. Charles recalled he once threw a potential donor out of his office for offering $25,000 to get a child accepted as an undergraduate.

The former official said he nonetheless considered it proper to make recommendations to the admissions office for friends and relatives of major benefactors with track records of proven support.

“It was gratitude as opposed to a blandishment,” Charles said. “It was a way of saying thank you to people for their help.

“I drew a line. It’s a moral, philosophical line about which reasonable men may quarrel, [but] that was the line that I drew.”

During the past 16 years, requests from donors often have overlapped the university’s efforts to cultivate their support. While seeking large gifts, full-time fund-raisers took requests for admissions favors from donors and prospective donors, documents show.

“Student assistance request forms” were used to record whether the matter involved a major donor, a trustee of the private UCLA Foundation or a member of the Chancellor’s Associates, a core benefactor group. The requests from donors were prioritized and then forwarded as a list to the admissions office.

Before forwarding a request by now-deceased Elvira Reed for her grandson’s 1991 undergraduate application, records show, a fund-raiser noted on a form that her “late husband established the Reed Neurological Research Center in the late 1960s with a gift of property worth two million dollars. . . . She has indicated in the past her intention of including the Department of Neurology in her will at the $250,000 level.”

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Her grandson was admitted as a transfer student with a 2.7 grade-point average and has been graduated with a bachelor’s degree, records show. Officials said they did not receive a bequest when she died in 1992.

UCLA spokeswoman Jan Klunder said it was impossible for the university to reconstruct the reason for this admission and several other cases, but she said all the students met minimum eligibility requirements for the nine-campus UC system.

In many cases examined by The Times, the outcomes did not change despite requests from donors, especially when graduate school admissions were involved.

In a number of cases, including admissions to UCLA’s laboratory elementary school, money appeared to carry enough weight to influence the outcome.

At the University Elementary School, officials say they save a number of slots for children with “parents of extreme wealth or political clout” as a fund-raising tool.

Responding last year to a lawsuit filed over UES admissions practices, the university said it made four such admissions in 1992; 10 in 1993; 14 in 1994 and 10 in 1995. Of the 10 last year, six children were admitted because “their families were potential financial donors to the school and four because, due to their relationship to a major financial donor to the campus, it was believed that building a connection to UES might result in future donations,” the university said in a legal brief. The school admits 60 to 80 students each year.

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When that language was read at the Senate hearing April 22, state Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco) expressed surprise.

“Now that sounds in the language of quid pro quo,” he said. “This is an amazing acknowledgment. . . . How can you justify retaining such a system with this public elementary school?”

But UCLA officials contend that there is no tit-for-tat admission at UES, a publicly subsidized school run by UCLA’s Graduate School of Education. They said fund-raising seats were awarded only “with the hope” that grateful parents and grandparents will make gifts.

Confidential documents provide a window into the special handling of donor-sensitive admissions to UCLA’s undergraduate and graduate programs as well.

University fund-raisers spelled out the linkage between money and admissions when two big financial supporters contacted UCLA in 1981 on behalf of a law school applicant whose grades were below the academic cutoff.

In one memo, a university fund-raiser noted that Los Angeles attorney James Kindel called to say he knew the student’s “parents--they own a large oil refinery--and Jim says they would become donors if she goes to UCLA.” Records also indicate that attorney Larry Irell called to say he had a promise from the parents to become donors if their child were admitted.

Fund-raising records state that the applicant had a 3.4 GPA and a law school entrance exam score of 683. The threshold for the majority of admissions that year was a 3.8 GPA and 700 exam score, records show.

Fund-raisers suggested that Kindel call the admissions officer, but the documents do not indicate whether he followed through.

But they do show the student was admitted and the parents joined the Chancellor’s Associates, an elite fund-raising group.

Neither attorney who contacted UCLA could recall the case. UCLA officials said they were “confident the inquiries . . . played no role in her admission.”

In 1992, fund-raisers again mingled money and admissions in a case involving the relative of an overseas businessman, records show. When they took an admission request for the student, they noted that his uncle was president of the Anderson Graduate School of Management alumni in Taiwan and was “playing the primary role” there as part of the school’s $5-million capital campaign.

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Records show the student was denied admission for the fall 1992 quarter with a 3.46 GPA and a 1250 score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Those grades were competitive for the following quarter and he was admitted, records show.

In a second case in 1992, a fund-raiser wrote a detailed memo asking for Charles’ “intervention” on behalf of an undergraduate applicant whose father, Dean Willard, was a major donor to the College of Letters and Sciences and had chaired the college’s advisory board.

“His example of leadership, in terms of giving, providing wise counsel, and assisting with cultivation and solicitation activities has been exemplary,” the fund-raiser wrote. Charles wrote on the memo: “I will want to do this.”

Willard’s daughter--listed on internal fund-raising documents as an applicant who would be “probably denied”--was admitted to the winter 1993 quarter with a 3.0 grade-point and a 1040 SAT, records show. Those scores were lower than those of about 4,000 other applicants who were turned away that year.

Reached at his home, Willard said he had not asked for special consideration for his daughter, whom he described as a good student, a talented musician and opera singer. He suggested that the fund-raiser may have taken an interest in her admission because she had served as a volunteer at fund-raising events. Willard’s daughter could not be reached.

Asked about these two cases, Charles said, “There were hundreds of such requests [over the years]. I can’t remember those particular ones.”

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In another case, a UCLA fund-raiser warned about the plight of the daughter of Robert Mah, a UCLA public health professor.

Mah’s daughter “is being denied admission to UCLA for fall 1993,” the fund-raiser wrote. “The denial may have the potential of alienating the Mahs, major donors to UCLA. . . .”

The official urged that Mah’s daughter be admitted the following quarter and cited three reasons: she was a “good student” with a 3.58 GPA and a 1300 SAT score; Mah was a faculty member; and the Mahs had given $467,000.

Records show her academic record made her competitive for the winter 1994 class, and she was admitted.

When told about the memo, Mah, now retired, said he was unaware of any behind the scenes discussion.

He said his impression was that she was admitted for the winter quarter without help, adding that university officials did not comply with his requests to admit her to the more desirable fall class.

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UCLA law professor Daniel Lowenstein, a former chairman of the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission and an expert in elections law, said that Chancellor Young was “factually correct” to say there has been no quid pro quo, even in examples found by The Times.

“Assuming that those things did occur, and putting them in the worst possible light, I still think he [Young] is justified in saying there is no contingency. . . .

“That leaves it open for people to say, ‘OK, there was no quid pro quo, no contingency, but I still think what you did was wrong,’ ” Lowenstein said.

Fellmeth, however, believes even a subtle link between money and admissions amounts to a quid pro quo. He compared it to classic price-fixing among trade associations, where there is no explicit agreement but the behavior becomes the understanding.

“You don’t have to have a specific contract to have an understanding in today’s world,” Fellmeth said. “You simply set up a pattern and it becomes a more.”