Slashdot Mirror
Actresses, Business Leaders, and Other Wealthy Parents Charged in Massive College Admissions Scandal (npr.org)
Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people on Tuesday in a major college admission scandal that involved wealthy parents, including Hollywood celebrities and prominent business leaders, paying bribes to get their children into elite American universities. From a report: Federal officials have charged dozens of well-heeled parents, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, in what the Justice Department says was a multimillion-dollar scheme to cheat college admissions standards. The parents allegedly paid a consultant who then fabricated academic and athletic credentials and arranged bribes to help get their children into prestigious universities. "We're talking about deception and fraud -- fake test scores, fake credentials, fake photographs, bribed college officials," said Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts.
Lelling said 33 parents "paid enormous sums" to ensure their children got into schools such as Stanford and Yale, sending money to entities controlled by a man named William Rick Singer in return for falsifying records and obtaining false scores on important tests such as the SAT and ACT. Describing how Singer worked to present his clients' children as elite athletes, Lelling said, "In many instances, Singer helped parents take staged photographs of their children engaged in particular sports. Other times, Singer and his associates used stock photos that they pulled off the Internet -- sometimes Photoshopping the face of the child onto the picture of the athlete" and submitting it to desirable schools.
Lelling said 33 parents "paid enormous sums" to ensure their children got into schools such as Stanford and Yale, sending money to entities controlled by a man named William Rick Singer in return for falsifying records and obtaining false scores on important tests such as the SAT and ACT. Describing how Singer worked to present his clients' children as elite athletes, Lelling said, "In many instances, Singer helped parents take staged photographs of their children engaged in particular sports. Other times, Singer and his associates used stock photos that they pulled off the Internet -- sometimes Photoshopping the face of the child onto the picture of the athlete" and submitting it to desirable schools.
What ever happened to getting your kid into college the good old fashioned way? Donating enough money to get a building named after you and guaranteed admission to any descendants.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It isn't what you know or how hard you work.
It's who you know, how much payola you're willing to give them and how much leverage that buys you.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I am, however, disappointed. Angry, even. Irrationally so.
All my life I was taught to be good. To not steal, not cheat, to not lie. I live my life like that. I stay out of the way. I don't steal, I try not to cheat (my little cheats are leaving a tiny bit earlier, to get a jump on the other commuters, I have a heavy right foot so I tend to take off from lights like a scalded cat and go around corners like a cat on carpet, etc.) I have lied, and I feel bloody awful when I do. I have done bad things, and I feel truly awful.
These people don't, I guess? They just take what they want.
I always suspected that the cheaters are the ones that truly get ahead. The ones who make the big bank. (BIG bank, not get-by-and-put-some-away-for-a-rainy-day bank). They can't do it without cheating.
This just confirms it in a way that's visceral, palpable.
Think on that next time you see that what's driving that Ferrari 458 next to you is a bleached, tanned, perfect specimen and you, who has yearned for a prancing pony since childhood will likely never have one.. and if you do, it'll be a 50-year old 308. (Nothing wrong with that, but I hope you see my point. We have to earn it, they just walk in and buy one. The one who earned it will savor every tick of the valvetrain, every rrrp of the exhaust.. they who walked in and bought it will probably spill their latte all over the leather and worse, far worse.)
Once, I was leaving work, 2 jobs ago.. the wife of the CEO drove a RR Wraith, a car I'd love to just even look after, never you mind drive.. she cut to the right of all of us waiting on the left-turn light, dragged that beautiful yacht of a car all over wet concrete mud and slurry, then gunned it and went into traffic on a red light. And she gets away with it. Cunt. Her husband was no better, he drove a RR Phantom and was unable to park it without a 20-point turn.
Fuck the rich. I really do hope karma is a thing. Imagine being reincarnated from rich asshole to possum?
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I was about to pay several million dollars to pass my son off as the world's greatest collegiate hockey prospect (except he can't skate and is in his 40s) when I saw this Slashdot article. Now I've done something even better: I signed him up at the University Of American Samoa for a law degree! Go Land Crabs!
Thanks Slashdot!
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Well, when they ask you to make up a fake disability for your child to have so they need extra time on the test, you do know something about what is being done. When you also have to make up a fake family event so that they can take their entrance exams in some specific facility, instead of their one close to you or at the school you're applying to, then you do know something fraudulent is happening.
And when you pay $500k for the above services, you really know a lot more about the service. Actual test prep doesn't involve lying to the school, and it doesn't cost $500k.
Or, if you pay $2.5M for your student to get listed as being on an athletic scholarship, you probably already know what college sports are, if your child is really on the team, and if they've dedicated enough of their life for that to make sense. If it involves photoshopping a picture of their face onto the body of an athlete, you obviously already know the sport isn't a big enough part of their life to be earning a scholarship.
I'm having trouble finding any accusations here where they might have thought it was something else. Plus, I mean, they got them talking about it on tape before making arrests; if there were innocent rubes who didn't know, they probably didn't even get charged.
What's the news thing here? I thought it was well known that connected people got their children in to "elite" educational institutions by donating a new library or something.
It's news when somebody does something about it.
It's news because they weren't doing that; they were literally cheating: forging fake documents, fake test scores, fake athletic achievements.
I think this is pretty much it. What we are seeing here is the 1% trying to scam their way in because they can't drop $10M+ like the 0.01% can. Unfortunately for them, nobody is amused, not the Universities, not the Elites, and certainly not the middle-class (or lower) who were counting on these spots being up for fair competition. As others have pointed out, one dumb rich kid's endowment can fund the education of dozens of talented students, but these bribes help nobody but the people they went to.
Can you find any Republicans in the group arrested today? Nope. All card-carrying Leftists.
Since the summary didn't list any names except the photogenic actresses, I'm not sure how you know if they were Republicans or Democrats. The actual article names names (scroll down to the bottom for the list), and they're mostly athletic coaches and rich businessmen. I don't know their politics, but in my experience, athletic coaches and rich businessmen both tend toward the right.
The big lie they tell us is that getting in is a sign of merit, and using the connections facilitated by those universities to jump start your career also means you earned what you got. They market themselves as the apex of progressive enlightened intellectualism, but in reality, they act as the regulators of institutionalized classism and elitism. The issue in this case isn't that these people cheated. It is that they cheated the wrong way. There will be some faux outrage, then back to business as usual.
Oh, and this doozy of a quote from TFA:
"There will not be a separate admissions system for the wealthy," he added. "And there will not be a separate criminal justice system either."
Legacy admissions begs to differ. What a joke. How could anyone say that with a straight face?