UCLA knew of a cash-for-admissions deal, years before

[AfricanMustang]

An assistant tennis coach, Grant Chen, told Cormier the track athlete was a family friend who attended his summer camps.

ΓÇ£[Chen] said he knew the parents wanted to help out the track program,ΓÇ¥ the report said.

Chen, hired as the men’s tennis coach at Southern Methodist University last year, didn’t respond to messages from The Times seeking comment.

According to the report, Chen worked to get the woman recruited and, at an unspecified point, obtained a ΓÇ£verbal pledgeΓÇ¥ from her parents for a donation.

Michael Maynard, then UCLA’s track and field director, entered the athlete into the school’s admissions system on March 21, 2013, as a walk-on with a ΓÇ£scholar-athlete level resumeΓÇ¥ who potentially could contribute to the program. The woman is identified in the report only by her initials.

The same day that Maynard entered her name into the admissions system, the report said, Taylor Swearingen, a member of the athletic department’s fundraising staff, emailed Chen sample donation pledges for the parents. One was for $80,000 and the other for $100,000.

ΓÇ£That suggested that [the woman] was being admitted because the parents had committed to making a donation,ΓÇ¥ the report said.

Less than two weeks later, on April 1, the school’s eight-person student-athlete admissions committee approved the woman for freshman admission. Three days later, Chen sent Swearingen an email with the header ΓÇ£Track Gift Agreements.ΓÇ¥

ΓÇ£We got a deal at $25 x four years for track,ΓÇ¥ Chen wrote.

https://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-uc ... story.html

[EastStang]

It would be kind of funny, if those bribery dollars were then ciphoned off to say the basketball program to bribe a recruit to come to UCLA. This could come full circle.