Felicity Huffman’s kids. Lori Loughlin’s kids. The children of the hedge fund managers, the white-shoe law firm attorneys. These kids already have plenty of advantages.
From pre-school on through high school, they go to great private schools or great public schools. They have tutors, if they need them. They go to SAT prep classes. They have books in the house. They travel. They go to museums. They get tickets to Hamilton. They have private lessons for whatever they want to take up (or that their parents want them to take up): tennis, violin, etc. Thanks to their parents, they have built-in networks, so by the time they’re juniors or senior in high school, there’s someone who’s willing to take them under their wing and set them up with a specious internship.
But all those advantages might not have been enough to get them into Harvard, or Stanford, or Georgetown, or USC.
Parents working the system to get their kids admitted to elite schools is nothing new. The alumni interviewer is an old friend, who puts in a word for your kid. You buddy up with the prep school guidance counselor who works hand in glove with admissions officers to come up with the slate of students that will be recommended as the best fit for Ivy College. You make a mega donation – like Jared Kushner’s father did to get him admitted to Harvard.
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.
Thirty-three parents were charged in the case and prosecutors said there could be additional indictments to come. Also implicated were top college coaches, who were accused of accepting millions of dollars to help admit students to Wake Forest, Yale, Stanford, the University of Southern California and other schools, regardless of their academic or sports ability, officials said. (Source: NY Times)
There were a number of different elements to the scheme.
In some cases, parents hired stand-ins to take the SATs and ACTs for their kids, using an away-from-home test center where their kids wouldn’t be recognized. Or they had their kids take the tests at special centers, where someone in on the inside job corrected the forms before they were submitted.
A number of coaches – included the now-former Stanford sailing coach – have been implicated. But the big “winner” – until he got caught – was Singer:
Parents paid Mr. Singer about $25 million from 2011 until February 2019 to bribe coaches and university administrators to designate their children as recruited athletes, which effectively ensured their admission, according to the indictment.
Singer, who had a business doing college consulting – what a honeypot that was – worked on a sliding scale. One couple paid Singer $1.2M to get their little darling into Yale.
There’s also in IRS overlay to the fraud, as Singer often got paid by having parents donate to a non-profit he had set up. Parents got the deduction, Singer got the cash.
No student has been charged, and there’s only one mention of a student actually being even marginally implicated in the scheme. But I really wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of anyone whose parents have been charged. It’s not clear what the schools are going to do with the students who were cheated in. Even if they’re not asked to leave, how completely humiliating. And if they weren’t in implicit cahoots with their parents – and there’s knowing and then there’s knowing – I can’t imagine how furious these kids will be at their folks. Or they’ll just dismiss it as “everybody’s doing it. This is how the game is played.” Shrug.
Thirty-three parents have been named in the indictment, but Singer has been recording saying that 800 students have gotten into prime schools through what he calls the “side door.”
William Macy was not indicted in the scheme, but his wife, Felicity Huffman, the mother of his daughters – was. So I’m guessing Macy, an actor whose work I admire, was somehow in the know.
One of Macy’s great characters is Frank Gallagher, the paterfamilias on “Shameless”, a show about a totally dysfunctional working class (on their best days) South Side Chicago family.
Frank Gallagher is an alcoholic. He’s a drug addict. He’s a liar. A thief. A mooch. A lout. A lay-about. A thoroughly nasty a-hole who’s let his six kids pretty much drag themselves up, largely thanks to the goodness and selflessness of his oldest child, Fiona (who is also the queen of personal dysfunction, only with a heart of gold). He’s also a complete schemer, always looking for the easy way out, some angle he can play so that he doesn’t have to work or otherwise take care of his family. (The mother, Monica, also an addict, is dead.)
I’m thinking of the fictional Gallagher kids. Fiona. Lip (for Philip). Ian. Debbie. Carl. Liam.
They’re all fierce and funny, weird and wonderful. And each has a little well of goodness that’s completely absent in their father.
I’m a supporter of Affirmative Action. After all, there’s always been some sort of Affirmative Action for the powerful and the rich – legacy admissions, all those coaches and after-school programs, buying that building. But I believe there should be class element to it, not just a racial one. I’d like to see economically disadvantaged kids get a leg up, too.
All those Gallagher kids out there. All those African American, Hispanic, and Native American kids who start off way behind the starting line. Underprivileged. Unprivileged.
I know that, and understand why, parents will do what they can to make sure that their children succeed. But enough it enough.
Fuck these cheaters, these scam artists. Nothing more to say…
No comments:
Post a Comment