Mob muscles its way into University of Illinois-Chicago?

Possibly. A rare higher education post that is not about free-speech rights being trampled. From this morning's Chicago Sun-Times:

University of Illinois at Chicago administrators are taking a fresh look at a longtime snowplowing contract their institution has held with a construction firm that authorities say is controlled by two "made" members of the Chicago mob.

The company, D&P Construction, has been paid nearly $500,000 by the public university during the past two years. D&P was widely publicized as linked to organized crime in 2001, when the Illinois Gaming Board took issue with it hauling trash from the site of what was supposed to become a Rosemont casino.

A recent report by a board hearing officer cited an internal FBI memo from 2003 that stated that D&P "obtained contracts through illegal payoffs or intimidation," though UIC officials said they've never witnessed such acts since the firm began plowing snow at their Near West Side campus in the late 1990s.