The Fix Was In

Or so it seems:

Grades publicly released for George W. Bush at Yale (1964-1968) apparently differ from grade records for Bush stored in his residential hall on campus. The published grades are better than the grades stored in earlier records.

Gee, I’m stunned. Stunned, I tell you!

So, apparently, for many years, “important records including student grade and discipline records” were stored at the residential colleges, but in the 1960’s, it was decided that the records should be stored “in a more official place, so academic records came to be stored in the registrar’s office.” But the old records were left in the basements of the residential colleges.

According to an informed source, the “official school records at the registrar’s office were much kinder” than these other records. The key observations come from recent Yale alumni. One Yale student, offspring of an award winning educator, who graduated in 2002 with a strong undergraduate record, found out while at Yale that Bush had lived in the same residence and was not charmed by this discovery. A number of students were aware that the residences traditionally kept old grade records. This student was among those who went down to the basement, checked the older records physically and looked at them. Students discussed among themselves the disparities between some grades published for Bush and those stored in the residence hall basement. According to anecdote, some of the housed grade records had also been physically altered, with grades whited out or obscured and other grades substituted.

Another huge surprise—the White House hasn’t responded to questions about the disparity between the published records and the records found in the basement. And neither has Yale.

Now, mind you, if Bush really wasn’t maintaining a passing average at Yale, he should have been flunked out—which promptly would have resulted in the loss of his student deferment. Of course, we already know that Bush the Fortunate Son had lots of help keeping his precious ass out of Vietnam.

The best part of this story may be that it looks like Bush never even attended history class, though his official records say he graduated from Yale with a BA in history: “Bush has said he did attend, but the grade records indicate otherwise. ‘We don’t think he was ever there’.” I love it.