Fucking guillotines for everyone involved. As the parent of an actual student athlete who busts her ass every single day with the hope of being good enough to just maybe get to play in college…fuck these entitled assholes.
I’m not really trying to excuse it, and it says many, not all, it’s just those involved have reason to believe that some of the students might not have been a part of the scheme so let’s not just auto assign guilt on them. That’s all.
The parents, all of them, privileged as hell, taking away from those who weren’t…;. they had options, legal and easy ones for people with money and they still cheated… screw them.
True, but some definitely were. Like the kid’s parents that had him stage a bunch of water-polo action shots to submit.
The funny part about this whole thing is how easy this was to pull off, with kids getting in with athletic credentials not knowing they had done so.
Nobody at USC picked up on that discrepancy? Hmm… some heads will be a rollin’ Seems pretty crazy you can have a way for kids to get into the athletics program, and then not play or join the team for orientation, and nobody picks up on that?
Yeah this list, 50 I think they said, doesn’t look big enough to me. Building on what @SlainteMhath said, these high school athletes getting into college athletic programs… their sport would not be a minor piece of the conversation. Even for those who didn’t get in but the sport was a large part o the appeal, like the extracurricular piece, that would also not be minor.
This group managed to screw a lot of different kinds of people out of earned spots, and for what, as if they couldn’t find some school that would take even a below average student with no scholarship that they could just pay the tuition for them to go? This list needs more heads on it.
And some of those schools are public, why would you even cheat? If you’re throwing down half a million on cheating an exam you probably don’t need scholarship money.
Since in most of these cases coaches were in on it, and in many sports coaches over recruit because some kids just plain aren’t going to work out, having something like this happen may not be out of the ordinary. Remember, these are low profile sports that may only offer a very few scholarships, and those are probably shared. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if some sports like crew had walk on who were pretty decent.
I have no doubt that the coaches and administrators involved will be slam-dunked into long sentences and future poverty.
The rich folks, as always, will get slap on the wrist fines and crisis management firms will take care of the PR problem.
They must have seriously shafted this cooperating witness in one way or another. Can’t imagine it was a guilty conscience after 20+ years of doing this that suddenly made them come clean.
Some of these public schools are still top schools. They can be hard to get into but if someone has say a C average during a period of time when there are a lot of jobs, I don’t see why they couldn’t find some school when money is not even a consideration.
Since this happened for years, how the heck did these students do at these schools, like did they graduate or was it bribing throughout?
If one believes in the ability of good educational practices to improve any student, it’s feasible that the high barrier to entry is the hardest point in the process - I.e. good schools can improve weaker students. That would seem to be the contention of nearly anyone at least slightly left of center (including me).
A more cynical read would be that university isn’t that tough - just getting in is. This is probably also true.
I just hope Candace Cameron doesn’t get tapped to fill in for Lori Loughlin’s roles on all the new Hallmark movies my wife will watch. She’s terrible.
UCLA is a top-tier public ivy, and probably a Top 3 public school in the country. USC is an elite private school, and due to the fact that it’s probably the 2nd most prestigious school in the state (after Stanford), as well as the most prestigious school in the Southern California area, well, that’s bragging rights in an area that’s entirely built on image.
Let’s not forget that the population of Southern California is larger than most states. There’s a massive demand to get into these schools, but limited availability.
Sad that William H. “The Shoveler” Macy is mixed up in this. There’s a subplot in Shameless where he gets his (black) son into a local private school basically by shaming them for only having rich white kids. They take him so they can have a black kid in their brochure photos.
There’s another subplot where the older son takes the SAT for other kids. He gets caught.
The whole psycho/social thing about about elite colleges makes me crazy, and yet I am also completely infected by it.
For example, when Woolen_Horde says USC is probably the 2nd most prestigious school in the state (after Stanford) I almost chocked on my Diet Coke. Despite my efforts to look at the big picture and be civilized, I was almost completely overtaken by the outraged desire to shout “USC MY ASS!! What about Berkeley!!”.
It’s one of those things, in that the desire to get into elite schools leads to many many many ills and yet having gone to such a school, I will fight like the dickens to defend its honor, even though I know I really shouldn’t obsess on that sort of thing.
And yet… WTF man USC over UC Berkeley? What the hell are you smoking woolly guy?
I should have said private school.
Stanford
Berkley
UCLA
USC
I went to USC and I agree with you. Except the film school :P
The bigger point is that people do crazy stuff like cheat b/c the perceived social/status benefits of elite colleges are both real and zealously defended, including by people like me, who really should be above all that, but isn’t.
As another example, it’s Berkeley (note the middle “e”).
Yep. I have one who has a learning disability and it was nightmare to try to get him extra time on the SAT. I also have student athlete in of the sports they used to cheat with. It’s rage inducing stuff.
This is the fallout from this that I hope happens. Not just the current investigation, but an outing of past assholes that did the same thing.