ABOUT FAITH & FREEDOM

Thursday, March 14, 2019

Wealthy Parents Rigging College for their Kids

Print Friendly Version of this pagePrint Get a PDF version of this webpagePDF

Hollywood celebrities are being arrested, college officials and coaches are being charged, and the nation is learning about one of the biggest college bribery schemes in the history of our country.

Be informed.

As many as 50 wealthy and celebrity parents have been or will be charged in the nation's worst college bribery scheme in history.

Already arrested.


Fox News is reporting,
"A day after being fingered in a bombshell college admissions investigation, actress Lori Loughlin has been taken into custody in connection with an alleged scheme in which wealthy parents paid bribes to get their children admitted into top colleges."

The FBI told Fox yesterday that Loughlin was taken into custody that morning in Los Angles. She was to be booked and was expected to appear before a federal magistrate at the US District Court in downtown LA.

Authorities had gone to her home on Tuesday, only to discover she was out of the country---in Vancouver, BC filming a TV show.

Loughlin became famous as the wholesome Aunt Becky in the 1980s and 1990s sitcom "Full House." Recently she has become the queen of the Hallmark channel with her Christmas movies and the series "When Calls the Heart."

Loughlin's fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, was arrested on the same charges and posted a $1 million bail on Tuesday.

She and her husband allegedly paid $500,000 to place their daughters in a preferred college.

Actress Felicity Huffman, an Academy Award nominee, was also arrested at her home Tuesday for her alleged involvement in the bribery scheme. She too posted bail of $250,000 and surrendered her passport.

More than 4 dozen people have been charged in the nationwide scam, which is alleged to have placed students in top-tier schools like Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, the University of Southern California (USC), UCLA and the University of Texas. The scam has been going on for over a year.

The scam also involved bribing coaches and college administrators---with about $25 million in payments---and paying off college entrance exam administrators to allow students to cheat on their tests.

Coaches at Georgetown, USC, UCLA, and several other schools face racketeering charges.

Those participating in the scheme include CEOs of public and private companies, successful investors and the co-chairman of a global law firm.

The scheme.


The FBI says the parents paid a college counseling and test prep business in Newport Beach, CA. called "The Key" which bribed coaches and administrators and organized a scheme to help students cheat on college entrance exams, including ACT and SAT.

The founder of "The Key," William Rick Singer, who is cooperating with the FBI in order to help himself, says he sold his clients a "slide door" to college admissions, which involved paying off coaches and administrators.

Between 2011 and 2018, they paid college officials about $215 million to designate their kids as "recruited athletes"---regardless of their athletic abilities---or put them on other favored admission lists.

Example: Loughlin and Giannulli are accused of agreeing to pay $500,000 in bribes to have their two daughters designated as recruits for the University of Southern California (USC) crew team despite the fact that neither child participated in the sport. Their daughter, famous YouTube star Olivia Jade, attends USC. It is not clear if daughter, Isabella, attends the university.

"The Key" would also create fake athletic "profiles" for the students, including bunk credentials---like fake honors they received and elite teams they played on.

The FBI says sometimes parents would help by supplying "staged Facebook type pictures of their children engaged in the athletic activity."

In fact, the FBI says when one "applicant" was admitted to Yale, "The Key" immediately mailed a check for $400,000 to the coach. This was money supplied by the family.

"The Key" had also established relationships with the test administrators at two testing centers who took bribes---typically about $10,000 per test---to facilitate the cheating scheme.

Following the payment, they would then arrange for another person to take the tests in place of the students, or serve as a test proctor or correct their exams after they took the test.

The test administrators then sent the doctored exams back to ACT, and the College Board, which runs the SAT, typically via either UPS or FedEx, according to the FBI.

The NCAA issued a statement yesterday saying the allegations are "troubling and should be a concern for all higher education."

That would be the understatement of the century.

This is the biggest, worst, most pervasive scam in the history of education in America.

How did we fall so far?


Mary Clare Amselem wrote an article for the "Daily Signal," an arm of the Heritage Foundation, in which she said it's disappointing, but we shouldn't be surprised.

She wrote:
"It is disappointing that these parents would resort to such measures to ensure that their children get into elite colleges. But Americans should not be surprised that the system is broken. It has always been, and working-class Americans are paying for it."

Example: Student loans.

She notes that for the most part, students who earn bachelor's degrees have higher life-time earnings than students with only a high school degree.

She says regarding far Left lawmakers---we all know who they are, Bernie, AOC, Warren, Harris, etc--- "are always advocating for student loan forgiveness and free college to remove financial responsibility from the elite one-third of Americans who obtain the highly sought-after bachelor's degree."

It's becoming increasingly apparent that simply attaining a degree carries more weight than the actual attainment of knowledge or marketable skills.

The "Allegory of the Cave"


Book VII of Plato's "Republic"--- the "Allegory of the Cave" describes a population chained in a cave who are always looking at the shadows on the wall and mistakenly believing that those shadows are a reality.

Shadows of unreality are reflected today in the policies and practices of many---most, schools. Older, more experienced teachers are ushered out, as young progressive uninformed in life or reality, activist teachers are ushered in.

Vague talk like, "these allegations are troubling and should be of concern" does not even approach the threshold of solving the problem or the gravity of it. Because the schools can't solve the problem. They are the problem.

Some of these celebrities, parents, coaches, and administrators will most likely go to prison and/or be fined, etc., as they should be, and the schools will say we cooperated fully with the authorities---and continue on.

But they too bear much guilt and responsibility in this scam. They have set the stage for it.

Educational institutions in America have abdicated educating and embraced social engineering and cultural experimentation.

The LGBTQ legions (HRC and others) are lecturing your children and providing teaching materials on subjects from gender confusion, to human sexuality to normalizing perversion and dismantling the traditional model of "family."

Planned Parenthood affirms the teaching of HRC, promotes promiscuity and advocates abortion.

No wonder parents believe they have to cheat to get their kid into certain schools. They're right. They do. Because their kids are not learning anything beyond so-called "tolerance," "inclusion," so-called "equality," and relativistic, evolving "truth."

A school system designed by Noah Webster and a Republic created by Webster and the other Founding Fathers of this nation was based on the values and principles of Judeo-Christian teaching.

Both thrived.

Now parents, coaches, and administrators are acting out the relativistic beliefs taught by the very system that teaches them.

Our collapsing culture and education system is focused on the shadows on the wall and we're believing them to be real.

Be Informed. Be Vigilant. Be Discerning. Be Prayerful.