Shoes keep dropping in the controversy surrounding politicized admissions at the University of Illinois.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that University of Illinois President B. Joseph White expressed satisfaction that a special commission had been appointed to investigate its admissions process and promised full disclosure.

Since then the UI has withheld the grades and test scores of students receiving preferential treatment, claiming disingenuously that disclosing numbers and grades was tantamount to providing the names of student applicants. It was not a profile in either logic or transparency.

But that disappointing display was small potatoes compared to Thursday's histrionics. First, there was an "emergency" four-hour board meeting in Chicago that was followed by a document dump of 123 pages of e-mail messages that had not previously been disclosed in response to news media Freedom of Information inquiries.

UI officials said the new documents had only recently been discovered and that their disclosure was proof of their commitment to an open inquiry. Well, maybe.

If so, it is an interesting coincidence that the latest batch of e-mails involving top UI officials, admissions people, trustees and power brokers make for some of the most interesting reading so far. Further, much of the material relates to admission to the UI's prestigious law school, where better qualified candidates were in danger of being pushed aside in favor of applicants targeted for derision by law school officials.

There was even one tawdry exchange involving UI trustee Larry Eppley's promise of getting five jobs, presumably in government, for UI law graduates in exchange for admitting one undeserving candidate.

That prompted an acerbic response from former law dean Heidi Hurd, "Jobs in government are fine, since kids who don't pass the bar (exam) and can't think are close enough for government work."

Former federal appeals court judge Abner Mikva, chairman of the investigating commission, expressed dismay at the turn of events.

"It's just gets thicker and thicker, and it's not good," he said.

What's easy to forget in the midst of the Keystone Cops disclosure effort and buffoonish public relations is that the UI was the target of inappropriate pressure from a variety of political power brokers, including former Govs. Rod Blagojevich and James Thompson, political thugs like Antoine "Tony" Rezko, Lon Monk and John Harris. Back-stabbing pressure was even applied from within by UI trustees who were seeking favorable admissions decisions rather than following their fiduciary responsibility to the UI. They're all saying, of course, that they were merely passing names along or expressing a slight interest in an applicant's treatment.

But it seems pretty clear that in many instances if their favored candidates weren't admitted, there would be hell to pay. At least, that's what UI officials feared, if their e-mails are any indication.

This sorry chapter in UI history is a particularly dangerous one because it strikes home with so many people interested in the education of their children. Most know, and reluctantly accept, the reality that the UI is an elite institution with hyper-competitive admissions. What they have much more difficulty accepting is that political power brokers operate on a separate track, with a secret appeals process not disclosed to everyone else, and that they get in at higher rates and with lower grades than everyone else.

For the UI to be seen as obstructing an effort to get to the bottom of this situation rather than cooperating in an effort to end it is intolerable.

It's easy to understand why top UI officials, like President B. Joseph White and Chancellor Richard Herman, don't want to be seen carrying water for some of our state's sleaziest politicians, unindicted co-conspirators and future prison inmates. It has to be hugely embarrassing because it turns everything the UI is supposed to represent upside down.

But the only way to lance this boil is to put it all out and so sicken the public and embarrass all concerned, including the politicians, that real safeguards are established to insulate the admissions process from outside pressure.