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It is expected in publishing news stories that you are occasionally going to get something wrong. In that case, a retraction is a necessary and responsible follow-up.
That is the case now with my coverage of the story on Georgetown University and a woman who allegedly worked in the admissions office and who self-disclosed on a blog that she had disposed of applications based on sex and race.
In hindsight it is apparent that I was too fast on the trigger in establishing a connection between the blogger who claimed to have sabotaged the applications and that of a former student at Georgetown. While there is circumstantial evidence that does connect the two, and many unanswered questions, there is nothing that makes that connection a verifiable certainty.
It was a mistake on my part for which I apologize to the woman in question, and to any readers who felt they were misled. The original article naming her has been updated with a link to this retraction and her name has been redacted from the article. I am also removing all comments to the article and closing them to make sure no references to her are made.
I also want to make it clear that this retraction does not mean that AVFM is abandoning its investigation into the validity of the claims made about trashing university applications based on sex and race. Additionally, we are not done with concerns about the university itself, whose unusual and somewhat cryptic manner of responding to this story leaves more questions than answers.
In fact, while this story had already been posted to several high traffic areas of the internet, we did not take an interest in it until it became apparent that Georgetown University was moving, without explanation, to remove all references to her from their websites. That sparked interest here because they did so without any attempt to refute the claims of the internet story.
More updates on this will be provided as they become available.
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