Rejecting HBS Applicants Does Not Raise Ethical Standards

To the editors:

Re: “HBS Rejects Snooping Hopefuls” (News, Mar. 8):

I wonder how many of the 119 applicants recently rejected by Harvard Business School (HBS) for hacking into the admissions website were actually to be admitted. If the number is significant (and I suspect it is, by HBS’s reluctance to disclose it), then it’s time for HBS to admit the obvious—that its process admits people that HBS Dean Kim B. Clark ’74 calls “unethical at best.”

The blanket rejection of the 119 applicants is HBS’s latest tokenistic attempt to “take a hard line” against a broader culture of ethical elasticity that HBS has played no small part in building. Despite its grandiose mission to “educate leaders that make a difference in the world,” it still churns out generation after generation of autonomic money-making machines. The lesson Clark teaches us this month is just to avoid getting caught.

PATRICK S. CHUNG ’96, HBS ’04

March 13, 2005