Scheme fuels ‘privilege’ debate
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The families ensnared in the college bribery scandal embody wealth and privilege in America: CEOS, Hollywood stars, Wall Street millionaires. A California vineyard owner. A prominent Manhattan lawyer.
If they’re villains, they’re villains made to order for a time preoccupied with deep divisions of class, privilege and race — a time when many regular Americans often feel they have no chance of getting ahead in a system that’s engineered in favor of the richest of the rich.
For those Americans, the corruption in the college admission system exposed by Tuesday’s indictments further shatters any notion that hard work, good grades and perseverance are the way to get into a prestigious school.
“For most people outside the elite, these institutions might as well be on the moon. This story just reinforces that, the way in which money buys opportunity in America,” said Richard V. Reeves, whose book “Dream Hoarders” argues that the American upper middle class hoards opportunities.
Prosecutors said dozens of parents paid bribes to admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer to alter their children’s test scores or get them into colleges like Yale, Georgetown, Stanford and USC as athletic recruits, fraudulently.
In court papers, Singer explained the realities of getting into top colleges in America in stark terms: There’s the front door, which involves getting in legitimately through academic achievements. There’s the back door, which involves donating huge sums of money to a university to influence admissions decisions.
His scheme — much easier and cheaper — was through the side door.
The description of a side door — a corrupt advantage on top of the advantages already afforded the rich — has set off outrage, especially for hard-working kids trying to get in on merit.
Lalo Alcaraz’s son is a Los Angeles high school senior who is waiting to hear back from over a dozen schools that he’s applied to, including some in the top tier.
“It really infuriates me right now. These people jumped ahead in line of my kid, I mean, literally my kid, this year,” said the author and cartoonist.
For Alcaraz, there’s also outrage at seeing wealthy, white families try to cheat the system, especially when many minorities have experienced being questioned over whether they got their spots because of their race.
“They had all the advantages, but they had to cheat,” he said.
Wealthy parents can pay for a stellar K-12 education, athletic coaches and test prep, as well as donations to the Ivy League schools — all legal ways to influence admissions decisions. They have personal or legacy connections at elite schools that they can use to gain admission.
In his 2006 book, “The Price of Admission,” journalist Daniel Golden detailed how the real estate developer father of Jared Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law — pledged $2.5 million to Harvard in 1998. Kushner was later admitted, even though his high school administrators told Golden they didn’t think he was qualified.
Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and policy at Ohio State University, said social movements led by the young are contesting the notion that we live in a meritocracy where Americans can improve their standing by working hard and playing by the rules.
“We’ve had over 50 years of accumulation among the elite and stagnation among everyone else, and the millennial generation is beginning to feel it the worst,” he said.
Reeves cited the work of researchers led by a team now based at Harvard that found that children whose parents are in the top 1 percent are 77 times more likely to attend top elite schools than those whose parents are in the bottom 20 percent.
Meanwhile, at a brief court appearance Wednesday in Los Angeles, actress Lori Loughlin, one of the 33 parents charged in the scandal, was released on $1 million bond with travel restrictions. Loughlin’s lawyer Perry Viscounty declined comment outside the courtroom, where a day earlier her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, was freed on similar terms.