Admissions? Society doesn’t pass the stink test

Life is not fair.

I don’t know how often I heard that expression growing up, but like many poor, low- and middleincome kids, I heard it a lot.

What else can parents say when their kids begin to question why what they want always lies on an horizon that seems so far away. It is part of the indoctrination into a capitalistic society where we learn very young that everything we want depends on the money we have and is pretty much always the deciding factor in what is fair and what is not.

And for kids of lesser means, that lesson in unfairness starts early in life from very basic things, such as not being able to run with the other kids to the ice cream truck.

So parents of lesser means do the next best thing: They tell their children that in order to “make it” to that horizon without money, it will take tenacity, initiative and determination. They will drive home that a good education is the key ingredient in going from being a have not to a have — and where the unfairness in life evens out.

The problem has always been getting to that horizon.

By now, the scandal surrounding the buying of an education is stinking up the educational system and leaving a slime on the windows of some of the country’s most elite colleges and universities.

The federal government has indicted 50 people — college coaches, business people and actresses along with others — and charged them in a sweeping college admissions bribery case. Charges have been brought against coaches at elite schools including Yale University, Wake Forest University, Georgetown and the University of Southern California.

Authorities say coaches at the schools allegedly accepted up to $25 million in bribes in exchange for admitting children of the rich to the elite schools through the backdoor as athletes, regardless of their athletic ability.

That is unsettling to parents who have pushed their kids to get good grades in order to get into a good school only to learn even with tenacity, initiative and determination, the call of the green falls on ears they can’t control.

That the rich wield their money to set their own rules is no secret.

But I think for most people, this time, it is personal.

Some of the people named in the scandal are characters in our everyday lives. These are people whose clothing we wear and come into our living rooms on television screens and their children by virtually of being born in the money already had the prosperity that is so elusive to many.

So, this really hits close to home for many people and some parents wasted no time filing lawsuits and, no doubt, more are coming.

And if the courts find them guilty, I hope the judge shrinks the square footage in their lives down to a 6-by-8 cell where they can sit and stink in guilt for making a mockery of the education system and hampering the future of the deserving.

This is normally the type of column where I roar and rant with fury at the unfairness of the society we live in, but I could not find enough fire.

I couldn’t find the adequate words to express my own personal disgust so I did the only thing I could do that will make a difference: I took the four Mossimo T-shirts I own from my closet and dumped them into the garbage where they and their namesake belong. Mossimo is the designer who, along with his wife, actress Lori Loughlin, allegedly paid $500,000 to get his two daughters into a school.

There is no way I could ever wear his T-shirts again and no way I could ever buy that label again. To do so would knowingly represent my own complicity in helping this man and his family allegedly rob more opportunities from others while I help stuff their pockets.

And I think I know why this column was a bit hard for me to write.

I think we are partly to blame, too.

We are the ones who put the rich and famous on a pedestal and do not demand en masse they are held accountable for their actions. We are the ones who forgive them when they use their fame, celebrity and money to avoid the consequences that befall most people for their actions.

We follow them on social media, sharing their Instagram postings and Twitter and Facebook posts as if what they are doing or saying is coming from heaven itself. We eat it up as it whets our own appetite to wallow in scandal and controversy.

So why are we pretending to be shocked and outraged that these same people used their money to bypass the normal application process to get their children into elite schools? To them, this was merely another ornament on their artificial life.

I can assure you, it will not change no matter the headlines. It has been proven time and again, the rich get what they want in a capitalist society.

So to me, this is just another example of life is not fair — and there is not much we can do about it unless we, as a society, change.

Admissions? Society doesn’t pass the stink test.

Chris Pizzello / Invision / Associated Press Actress Lori Loughlin, center, with daughters Olivia Jade Giannulli, left, and Isabella Rose Giannulli in Beverly Hills, Calif. Loughlin and her husband were among those charged in a college admission scandal.