Several national business schools, such as Harvard Business School, have decided to reject applicants who followed an illicit computer hacker's instructions and attempted to view their admissions decisions early, according to officials at those schools.
An unidentified hacker who used the screen name "brookbond" posted on Business Week's online forum instructions on how to hack into Web sites with admissions status on March 2, according to CNN.com.
Most people who followed the instructions during the nine hours the sites were vulnerable saw only a blank screen because the decisions had not yet been posted, CNN said.
All the targeted schools use ApplyYourself, an online application and notification program run by a Fairfax, Va., company.
"MIT Sloan [School of Management] regards the hacking into the application system administered by ApplyYourself Inc. to be a very serious offense," said Richard Schmalensee, dean of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's business school, one of the schools affected, in a statement on the school's Web site.
Sloan decided on to deny admission to the 32 applicants who attempted to view their decisions early, Schmalensee said. The day before, Harvard rejected the 119 applicants who hacked into its system, according to CNN.com. Carnegie Mellon and Duke universities also denied applicants, officials at those schools said.
According to the Associated Press, Harvard Business School Dean Kim B. Clark called the hacking "unethical at best - a serious breach of trust that cannot be countered by rationalization."
AU could revoke admission in similar circumstances because of integrity standards of student conduct and academics, said Sharon Alstone, director of undergraduate admissions. However, the situation has never come up, she added.
Stanford and Dartmouth universities, two other schools affected by the breach, decided to pursue a different policy.
"We are demonstrating fairness by pursuing an individualized process for each applicant," said Robert Joss, the dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, in a statement.
Joss and Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business dean, Paul Danos, both said that they did not condone the behavior of those applicants who attempted to view their decisions using the hacker's instructions. However, the schools would give them the opportunity to explain their behavior.
"While the Tuck School determined that the actions reflected negatively on each applicant involved, we concluded that the actions did not reach the level that would necessarily bar a person from being a valued member of the Tuck community," Danos said.
One of the 119 applicants rejected by Harvard is protesting the decision.
"If you want to place blame for why 119 people looked at this page, you have to place it on the curiosity of the students," said Verlin Henderson, a Harvard applicant from North Carolina. "When it's your own application, you're excited. You're not thinking about ethics."
Henderson started a line of T-shirts that have slogans such as "Curiosity is not a Crime!" "Ethical, Schmethical" and "Hacker? I barely know her!" Underneath the slogan, each T-shirt reads: "Free the HBS 119," referring to the 119 rejected Harvard applicants, according to newsobserver.com.
"The folks who are in this situation are kind of powerless against the whole thing, and we're going to have to live with whatever decision Harvard makes," Henderson told The Harvard News and Observer.
