Penn Grad Student Enjoys Particle Physics, Game Theory, Touching Boys

by Chris Beam | January 26, 2007 at 12:13 pm

Grad students are, pretty much by default, creepy. Not undergrads, not yet professors, they're caught in the murky gray zone that's home to both legitimate career academics and social misfits with no job prospects.

Oh, and child molesters. A couple weeks ago, Penn discovered that Kurt Mitman, a first-year economics grad student, lived off-campus. In fact, he'd been commuting to school all year. From prison. Mitman was convicted in March 2005 for molesting a 14-year-old boy, and was attending classes as part of a daytime academic release program. Penn had no reason to suspect (unless, of course, they'd bothered Googling him): Mitman graduated from UVA with a dual degree in 2004, before going on to study econo-physics at Oxford as a Marshall scholar. It wasn't until Mitman's mother discovered on a sex offender database that her son was enrolled -- six months after he'd started taking classes -- that corrections officials told the university about Mitman's history.

Other than Mitman's little slip-up at genius camp -- the boy was a camper, he was a counselor -- his record is totally clean. That said, there was some ominous foreshadowing in an old UVA puff piece titled, "Curiosity drives Mitman's pursuits."

No word yet on whether he'll get to continue his studies at Penn. But if he does, you won't want him as a TA: Bucks County prison is a schlep, even for office hours.

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