[munk-a]

I don't think that's the case (due to how fame works) and I don't even think it's particularly productive to bring up that point.

Their actions should be rectified since they did wrong - not out of fear of a punishment. When we bring only a specific punishment in as a consequence then the question of how to respond can be shifted over to a "which is worse" proposition which means that the punishment needs to be properly proportioned.

At any rate - I doubt admissions would be appreciably impacted even if they handled this incident extremely poorly - some potential grad students might look elsewhere while most would likely be ignorant of the whole incident.

[bluGill]

There are enough of us here that have heard about this as to make a UMN degree worth less because we will trash a resume with that name on it.

[munk-a]

I certainly wouldn't do so - this looks like it was a research topic by one professor and one grad student... So nearly no one with a degree from UMN was involved with this. Even the specific grad student was college aged at the time and we all did stupid stuff when we were young. I think this only really rubs off on the professor since they clearly should've known better. Honestly I think the biggest blow to the university will be when it comes to hiring CS professors - those are the only folks likely to do the due diligence on this topic or be passively aware of it.