For weeks, the members of the Steinmetz Academic Decathlon team tried to forestall scandal by denying, over and over again, that they had not cheated when they won the state competition in March.
On Tuesday, in the office of a principal who had refused to believe that his students would cheat, the first crack in that facade finally appeared, revealed by tears running down a student’s face.
At that moment, investigators who had worked the case like gumshoe detectives late into the night Monday knew they were, at last, about to hear their first confession.
One by one, members of the academic team who had stuck to their story came into that office and began to admit to cheating as investigators applied the extraordinary leverage they got from a student’s essay that described in detail how the deception occurred.
By day’s end, “several” students had confessed, officials said. Others, however, continued to claim that they never cheated.
The confessions were the climax to a monthlong morality play that began as a Cinderella story of an underdog team pulling off a victory, then took darker turns.
Ultimately, it was the essay and its damaging details of a team so bent on winning that no one objected to cheating that gave investigators the road map to the scandal.
Despite the stunning confessions, the consequences of the cheating scandal were still unraveling Tuesday.
Investigators unsuccessfully tried to reach the team’s former coach, Gerard Plecki, who distributed the stolen tests to the team. Even in the face of disgrace, students remained devoutly loyal to Plecki, who resigned last month while maintaining that his team did not cheat this year.
D. Sharon Grant, Board of Education president, suggested that judgment should be passed on the adults involved, including dismissal for any teachers who lied. But she urged that judgment of the students be tempered.
“Adults have influenced the children to win at all costs,” Grant said. “I blame the adults; the children are victims. . . . This should be a learning experience for them, rather than something that haunts them for the rest of their lives.”
Nevertheless, some disciplinary action against the students is being considered, officials said.
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Officials said Tuesday that the test was stolen from DeVry Institute, where the exams were copied. The Steinmetz student who stole the seven tests was not on the team, but gave the exam to a team member, who in turn gave it to Plecki, the officials said.
It was Plecki and his hold over the students that remained at the center of the scandal.
“They all consider themselves equally as responsible as Plecki,” said Jerry Marconi, an attorney for the Chicago school board. “None of them had anything bad to say about Plecki. He has a hold over these kids I cannot describe. He treated them as if they were family-he had created a small family in this decathlon team, a family that was going to stick together and they did.”
At the home of the essay’s author, the boy’s father said his son was distressed by the turn of events.
“I guess he was feeling so much guilt that that was his way of dealing with it,” the boy’s father said. “He isn’t eating. His stomach is in knots. He’s not his happy self.”
On Monday night, officials confirmed that part of the essay was true-the boy had posed as a judge at the academic decathlon and helped a fellow student win a medal.
Armed with that, Marconi, a former Cook County state’s attorney who had earlier said he believed the students, set out to get to the bottom of the story.
At about 9:30 p.m. Monday, Marconi picked up Angela Lam, the former decathlon team member from the 1994 competition who last month publicly revealed that Plecki had helped team members cheat last year.
“I thought Angela might be able to appeal to some of the members of the team. She still has contact with some of them, and she has talked to some of them recently,” Marconi said.
At one point, Marconi and Lam stood on the sidewalk, talking to a student through a screen door for nearly an hour, sensing a breakthrough. But, at the last minute, the student’s mother demanded they leave.
At a second student’s house they got no response.
“After the first two houses, it was clear that we were being ducked,” Marconi said. “The telephone circle had started. Once the hot line started, we didn’t have a chance. They knew we were out looking; so they started dodging us.”
On Tuesday, however, the circle of silence that had formed around the academic decathlon team broke.
With the news of confirmation of the student-essayist’s story of calculated cheating in the decathlon all over the front pages and on the airwaves, Marconi started his visits to student homes once again. At 7:30 a.m., he met a receptive parent, who expressed concern about his child and a future that might be marred because of the Steinmetz scandal.
When he arrived at Steinmetz principal Constantine Kiamos’ office at 9 a.m., he met for a half hour with Kiamos, who began summoning students to his office, along with their parents. One by one, the students met with Kiamos and Marconi, and, eventually, several broke down and confessed that they were involved in the cheating.
“Eventually I was in the room with the entire team,” Marconi said.
After meeting with the team members individually and together, Marconi decided to let them meet alone as a team.
But after they met alone for an hour, they emerged and, as a team, refused to talk to Marconi, he said.
“They said nothing,” he said. “They told me they had absolutely nothing to say to me. At that point, though, I had already gotten confessions from several of them individually, so a confession from the group was not necessary.”
Armed with the information he had already gleaned individually from several of the 11 team members, Marconi felt he had enough to report to the Chicago Board of Education that he had now confirmed what he once had publicly stated he did not believe.
In the essay, the student author detailed the deception. As late as Monday, the student maintained that the essay was fictional.
The student wrote that he was recruited to be a member of the decathlon team by “Dr. Plicky”-a thinly veiled reference to Plecki, the team’s coach. But “Plicky” told the student he would be competing under a different name, deceiving the test-givers.
As the students are preparing for the test, the author receives a copy of the exams from a friend, and he gives them over to “Plicky.”
At a practice session, the students openly talk about cheating, the essay says, before the author is dismissed from the team. At the coach’s urging, he goes to the decathlon anyway and poses as a judge.
Late Monday, Illinois Academic Decathlon investigators said the claim was true. Moreover, three Steinmetz faculty members, including Plecki, knew the boy was acting as a judge, investigators said.
“The essay was a very important factor in getting to the bottom of this,” said Marconi. “The whole thing started to unravel with the verification that the author had actually posed as a judge.”
Exactly one month ago, on March 11, Steinmetz took top honors at the Academic Decathlon contest, beating out perennial winner Whitney Young.
But the Steinmetz scores were unbelievably high. Officials called them a “statistical anomaly” and asked the Steinmetz team to take another test to validate their score. But the team refused.
On March 23, the decathlon association stripped Steinmetz of its title, awarding the state championship to Whitney Young.
Days later, after Lam’s disclosure of cheating in 1994, Plecki resigned.
Still, officials said there was no evidence Steinmetz had cheated in the 1995 contest.
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Then, last week, the essay came to light, appearing to tell in some detail how the team had cheated. Entitled “Confession,” the essay, written by a former member of the team within two days of the March 11 contest, said the team had received tests beforehand and studied them.
Steinmetz principal Kiamos said he knew of the essay, investigated it, and came to the conclusion that it was a work of fantasy. At Kiamos’ request, the author signed a statement saying as much.
Kiamos informed decathlon officials of the essay, but reportedly never turned over copies of it. The Tribune obtained and published a copy last week.
Marconi said there is no evidence that Kiamos did anything to cover up the cheating and assisted in the investigation, including sitting in as students were questioned Monday and Tuesday.
“As far as we can, he really did believe deep in his heart that his students were telling the truth,” Marconi said.
Marconi said the board would alert the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, but he said he doubted that any criminal charges could be brought against any of the students or teachers involved.
Later Tuesday, Kiamos said that a crisis intervention team had been sent into the school Tuesday.
“I’m terribly disappointed,” Kiamos said. “We put our faith behind our students. Now it’s proven that they cheated.”
Even after officials disclosed the cheating, at least one team member was sticking by his story.
“I didn’t cheat,” the 17-year-old said, standing in the doorway of his home. “I don’t think anybody did cheat.”
His mother chimed in. “He has very high morality, very high integrity,” she said. “He’s a very hard worker and very consistent.”
At the school, the news was difficult to take, and some continued to deny it.
Andrea Ionescu, a junior leaving volleyball practice Tuesday, said she still didn’t believe her classmates cheated. “We saw them in there studying,” Ionescu said. “We know what kind of students they are. The teachers love them.”