The neat 15-page handwritten essay is titled “Confession.” It contains a cover letter from the student author to an English teacher at Steinmetz High School that begins:
“The following story is true. The names have been somewhat changed to protect the innoc-heck, the names have been changed to protect me. I stress the need for total privacy. Somehow, I have a gut instinct I’m able to confide in you.”
The matter of confidence, it turns out, is a detailed narrative describing how a member of the Steinmetz academic decathlon team got a copy of all seven written tests and enabled the team to cheat in and win the 1995 state competition.
In the story, a teacher called “Dr. Plicky,” helps the students study the ill-gotten exams in preparation for the big event.
The essay obtained by the Tribune has been labeled fiction by Steinmetz Principal Constantine Kiamos, several decathlon team members and the student author himself.
Yet the essay’s timing and detail have caught the attention of officials. The accounts of both adults and students have changed so frequently that it is nearly impossible to say who is telling the truth and who is lying-and whether the essay itself is total fiction, the truth or a little of both.
Nevertheless, some characters in the story closely resemble players in the Steinmetz drama.
In the story, for example, the name of the student who says “I have connections where the tests’ll be given” is almost exactly the same as that of one of the students who competed for Steinmetz in the decathlon this year.
On Thursday, decathlon officials revealed that they are looking into the association between that Steinmetz student and another Steinmetz student, whose father works at DeVry Institute of Technology, where the tests for the March 11 competition were stored and copied.
Decathlon officials said they have obtained a sworn statement from the man, but they would reveal nothing more about what one official called an internal investigation. The man declined to comment Thursday, but decathlon officials said he has signed a statement saying he did nothing to compromise the test.
Still, two weeks before the national championships are scheduled to be held in Chicago, the essay is just one more twist in a growing controversy that, far from being quelled by the resignation of Steinmetz academic coach Gerard Plecki and the disqualification of the team, continues to buzz around Chicago and the decathlon world.
Indeed, Kurt Luedkey, who has served as coach for the Slinger High School decathlon team in Slinger, Wis., for nine years, said Thursday that he and other decathlon coaches from the Midwest are considering holding a news conference calling for a “thorough investigation” into how someone could have obtained the tests in Illinois.
Also, Illinois decathlon officials have stepped up security for the event.
The student essay was turned over to the Board of Education by Kiamos, who said he called the 16-year-old junior into his office and questioned him at length. The student said he had made up the essay, Kiamos said. The principal said he then questioned several other members of the team about the essay. In an interview this week, Kiamos called the essay a “tall tale.”
The student himself, when shown a copy of the essay and recantation this week, at first denied all knowledge of it, theorizing that someone forged his signature. But later he said he did write it, as well as the recantation.
The recantation says he had “idle time” and “orchestrated a fictitious” story to lighten the mood among students depressed by rumors of cheating.
Yet the essay appears to have been written directly after the competition, before the controversy erupted. For example, the essay accurately refers to the number of medals won by the team during the Saturday, March 11, competition. And it was given to Kiamos on Monday, March 13, Kiamos said-two days before the decathlon association’s investigation of the results became public.
After decathlon officials became aware of statistical “anomalies” in the Steinmetz scores-six of the 12 highest math scores in the country-they asked the team to take a “validation” test. When the team refused, officials stripped Steinmetz of its title and awarded it to second-place finisher Whitney Young High School, which had won the competition nine years in a row.
Plecki later acknowledged that he had helped students cheat on the 1994 test and resigned. Repeated efforts to reach Plecki for comment Thursday were unsuccessful, but earlier he denied any cheating on the 1995 tests.
A school board investigation found no evidence of cheating on this year’s test, but Steinmetz has not pursued any action to reclaim its title or to compete in the national contest. The week after the decathlon, five of the nine team members took another math test and scored poorly.
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That test was given by the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Contest director Carol Kajor said that Steinmetz’s composite score was 98 points out of a possible 1,130.
The student’s essay is a dramatically written account that includes elements of exaggeration and digression, including romantic rhapsodies about a fellow student.
But at its heart is a passage in which the writer says he was approached by a student who had not made the team and for whom the writer had been asked to substitute:
“Suddenly, he grasped my left shoulder and whispered into my ear.
“I’ve got the tests, y’know,” he whispered.
“What? The Decathalon test?” I said.
“Yup.”
“How did you get them? No-you’re lying. Be serious-I have a weak heart.”
“I’ve got them at home.”
“How?”
“I have connections where the tests’ll be given.”
The writer says he turned the tests over to the coach and team and was congratulated for his “wonderous deed.” But later, the essay said, “Dr. Plicky” suggested that he had to leave the team. The essay did not explain why.
The author, in fact, left the team after participating in the first round of the decathlon in January.
Asked about the essay, another decathlon team member became tearful. He maintains that Steinmetz did not cheat in this year’s competition, but also explained: “We never wanted this story to get out because we knew what it could do to us.”
Another denied knowing anything about an essay and said he was never questioned by the principal.
“I interviewed every member of the team because I wanted to get to the bottom of this,” Kiamos said Thursday. “Initially, I was concerned about whether there was any truth to it.”
On Thursday, Kiamos said the essay “goes far afield.” “That’s really the only way you can describe it,” he said. “I interviewed the student and he admitted it was purely fictional, so I considered the matter dropped.”
Kiamos said the cover letter and essay, both of which are undated, were given to him by the English teacher on Monday, March 13, the same day that the teacher got them.
The next day, March 14, he said, he called the author into his office. He said the student informed him that he wrote the story only because he wanted to get back at Plecki for not allowing him to compete in the last two rounds of the decathlon competition.
It was in that meeting, Kiamos said, that he got a written statement from the student that said in part: “This story in no way resembles real life and is, again, purely fictional.”
The next day, March 15, Kiamos met with state decathlon officials and learned that his school’s team was being asked to retake the math and economics portion of the decathlon.
Kiamos said he took copies of the essay and cover letter to the meeting and “shared” it with decathlon officials. He said he allowed the officials to read the essay but did not leave it with them or make copies for them.
But Arthur Stunard, president of DeVry Institute of Technology and a member of the decathlon association’s executive board, said he has never read the document, but he and other decathlon officials were satisfied that the principal had investigated it.
“(Kiamos) assured us at that point that there was no validity to it. He mentioned a student. He said he’d done a full investigation. He discounted it as a possibility,” he said.
Reached Wednesday at his home, the student author initially said he knew nothing about it. He surmised that someone else had written it and apparently forged his signature on the recantation statement. During a follow-up visit, he said: “I want to come clean. I did write the story, but it was purely fictional.”
In describing the meeting with Kiamos, the student said, “He was very intimidating. He said to me, `Look, we’re going to play a little game. I’m going to do all the asking and you’re going to do all the answering, OK?’ “
The student first said that Kiamos wrote the recantation and asked him to copy and sign it. The student later said he wrote and signed the letter. Also he said that after he submitted the essay to his English teacher, the teacher told him that she would not be able to keep it secret because “it rings too true.” She said she’d have to turn it over to the principal.
“I told her, “Look. Do whatever you have to do, but if this ever comes back to me I’m going to have to lie. I’m going to deny it,’ ” the student said.