Over the transom

This morning, I read the story about the changed Bar exam scores with some interest, because the tale was immediately familiar.

Earlier in the week, I had received this e-mail:

Brad-
    I'm not sure if you are the appropriate one to handle this, but I figured you would be able to pass it to the right person/people. As you may or may not know, the South Carolina Bar recently issued its list of the most recent admittees into the South Carolina Bar. This list was published October 26 and can be accessed online at www.sccourts.org. The bar passage rate was 77.5%
    Either yesterday or today, the SC Supreme Court issued a statement in which they threw out the results of a section of the bar exam, which allowed 20 more individuals to pass the bar exam. At least one of those who now passed is the daughter of a House Judiciary Chairman Jim Harrison. I have information ... that 12 of judicial law clerks failed the bar exam and are among these 20. I also have information that Rep. Harrison is among those who contacted the bar examiners to complain about his child not passing. It is also my understanding that some of those 20 also may be children of members of our Judiciary.
    As you can see, this is quite the discomforting situation. ... I find this entire situation outrageous and would like to see these people called out on it. The swearing-in ceremony is next Tuesday, Nov. 13th. There is typically a program which includes the names of those being sworn in. A comparison of that program with the list now available on the website would give you the names of those admitted after the fact. At that point, it simply becomes a question of finding out who is working for whom. Obviously it will be fairly easy to tell whose children, if any, are among those added to the list.
    I'd be willing to talk to you about this more if you have questions. I do not, however, want to be named at any time if you or someone else decides to investigate further.

And so it is that I leave the name off, and excise a couple of short phrases that might point to this tipster's identity. (I'll say only that it was not a regular source of mine; this was a classic "over the transom" tip.)

I forwarded the e-mail to some folks down in our newsroom. Whether they had received other tips, I have no idea. I seldom receive so much as an acknowledgment that my e-mails are received when I send tips to the newsroom, which is fine; I understand. No one on either side wants to seem, even to himself, to engage in collusion. Such is the nature of the separation between news and editorial.

In any case, it seems the tipster was onto something, and had his/her facts straight. As to what to think of it -- once again, we're in that gray area of appearances that I'm never sure what to think about. It might have been innocent; it might have been awful. One thing I do know about such stories of apparent favoritism: I'm glad to see them reported, so that you can decide for yourself if you think wrong was done.