[divides_by_zero]

The thing is - if she had applied directly for the job of dean of admissions, yes, this would be horrible. It's still bad - no denying.

But, to fully understand the situation, 30 years ago she got a job as basically a clerk in the office. She was a paper pusher. The error is less horrendous in this situation. The whole reason this never came out for so long was because the way she earned her highest position was by moving up within the system, and as such her resume never came up. It was never a major issue. Sure, if she HADN'T had a degree things would have been different, but the fact is the way she got her job, it didn't matter what her degrees were in, merely that she had them. Her resume was only really a major factor for getting that initial secretarial job. Everything else was all here - and you have to admit that's quite a climb.

Given that scenario it is even MORE difficult to rectify the situation. It's not as if she set out to defraud MIT and become dean of admissions. She needed work. As it was, she was well suited in the department and proved herself and climbed up. And when you get a promotion based on your hard work, are you really going to stop and say - oh btw, you know that original resume I gave you? That wasn't entirely true...

The moral is, of course, DON'T LIE. But, it's not quite the huge scandal it's being made out to be. Nothing happened intentionally, with malicious intent. The situation is more equivalent to something like some 21 year old kid having a wild time in Vegas with pictures of him snorting coke off a hooker's boob who then becomes president with a strict anti-drug, anti-gambling stance when he's 50 and the pictures get out. It's not a perfect analogy but I'm tired so forgive me. Horrendous yes, hypocritically - not entirely - people do change, but the past can be hard to erase.