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What Should Happen to the College Students Whose Parents Bribed Their Way In?

Ikari said:
There are issues with the system, clearly shown from this case itself. But to excuse the actions of the parents and kids because everyone does it is a reckless excuse. Affluenza to a new level.

Parents get prosecuted and do some jail time, every educator involved is also prosecuted and fired, kids are kicked out for academic dishonesty.
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Don't you think the schools themselves bear some responsibility here?

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JasperL said:
Again, not sure why you're trying so hard to justify this behavior. I really don't get why so many conservatives (certainly not all!) are defending the parents here. It's the opposite of personal responsibility, and really represents nothing more than bowing down to plutocracy, a system where the richest keep the spoils and any scheme to sustain that advantage must be, therefore, OK because it's what's necessary to sustain the plutocracy. I wasn't aware that was a conservative principle, but it appears it must be.

You are right of course that the LEGAL ways the system is tilted in favor of the wealthy for these slots are many, but that already fundamentally 'unfair' system wasn't enough for these parents. They couldn't even rely on those MANY legal advantages for their dullard kids, and so went to the extraordinary means of guaranteeing a slot for their kids through bribery, fraud, etc.

It's the equivalent of a race, say the 100 meter, where the kids of the wealthy already start on the 30, while the poor start at 0. But these kids were so incompetent that even given THAT advantage wasn't enough, so the parents arranged to trip the poor kids coming out of the gate to guarantee a win for their talentless children. And you're defending both advantages here. The one we accept as 'normal' and the extraordinary one of tripping other applicants out of the gate. It's fascinating in a way. I just don't get it.
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You don't get it because it's not a conservative principle. It's not a partisan issue at all. It's about fraud. It's wrong and ideally everyone involved should be prosecuted including the young adults that received the benefits of it.

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longview said:
I am not justifying the behavior, the parents and students who were aware of the fraud should be punished.
Where I am drawing the distinction, is that we have to be careful about the punishing the students who played no part in the fraud.
This type of thing threatens to expose the contorted admission criteria, perhaps the schools should conduct admissions in a way that everyone can see who is admitted and
on what basis.
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Yup these schools need to be held just as accountable as everyone else involved. They are no more innocent than the student body and transparency by them needs to happen so to what extent they are culpable can be determined.

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Sponsor 10 high ranking applicants who are too poor to attend elite colleges.
 
trouble13 said:
Don't you think the schools themselves bear some responsibility here?

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I don't know the specifics but from what I have heard the schools did nothing wrong.
 
noonereal said:
I don't know the specifics but from what I have heard the schools did nothing wrong.
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I think that remains to be seen. They are being sued by parents and students. What they knew and did not know will be known soon enough

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Require the parents to fully earn a degree from that school, at full tuition, or face jail time.
 
Felis Leo said:
Recently the largest admissions scandal in modern history broke, in which 50 people have been indicted in Federal Court for bribery and fraud in order to have their children admitted into some of the most elite universities in the country (and the world, for that matter). To me this is beyond outrageous, and it seems to destroy the value of these degrees. It destroys the value of the degrees for the kids who basically spent most of their childhoods and adolescence preparing and working their fingers to the bone to study, test, do countless extracurricular activities in order get into these universities. It also destroys the value of the degrees for folks from wealthy families where we do not know whether they got these degrees due to their merit, or because mommy and daddy paid through the nose to have little Bobby or Clarissa admitted into Yale.

So here is the question to the folks here: What, if anything should be done against the students admitted under the auspices of bribery and fraud to protect the integrity of the university system? Should anything be done to protect the integrity of the university system beyond that which is already being done to the parents, counselors and third-party procurers? I have given some suggestions. Please feel free to write your suggestions.

EDIT: Stupid character limitation and time limit rules.

Here were the options I was going to post:

1. Expel them. They got in under false pretenses and should not profit by their parents cheating the system and being placed ahead of people who worked and studied hard to be admitted into university.
2. Expel them. Allowing them to remain undermines the public perception of the value of higher education degrees through merit.
3. Nothing. Blame the parents not their children. How could these poor children have known that they were not bright enough to make it into Harvard and Yale?
4. Nothing. Leave them in. This just helps to prove top-notch universities are just an overpriced social-networking scam and not places of higher learning for our best and brightest.
5. Nothing. Why bother? The system is utterly corrupt. If the rich cannot bribe their children’s way in in this manner, they’ll just figure something else out.
6. Do individual evaluations to see if they are actually worthy of remaining at the university (but make sure they are not the same proctors that they bribed before of course).
7. I cannot decide.
8. Other.
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On one hand, I'd like to say expelled. But if they didn't know that their parents did this for them, and they actually are succeeding in the university? Leave them alone.

But honestly, all of them should be put on academic probation. If they aren't getting B or A's, they should be expelled.
 
Why should the kids get off the hook? They should be prosecuted. Not prosecuting them just confirms they are above everyone and that their parents will take care of everything for them. The kids committed the same crime as the parents and the parents motives were better than their adult kids. Prosecute the adult kids.
 
FieldTheorist said:
On one hand, I'd like to say expelled. But if they didn't know that their parents did this for them, and they actually are succeeding in the university? Leave them alone.

But honestly, all of them should be put on academic probation. If they aren't getting B or A's, they should be expelled.
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Why do you think they shouldn't be prosecuted? They KNEW someone else took the SAT. They KNEW they were not on the athletic team. Why should their parents go to prison and the adult kids get off free? Because they're rich kids so are immune from prosecution? They aren't children. They're adults.
 
Felis Leo said:
Recently the largest admissions scandal in modern history broke, in which 50 people have been indicted in Federal Court for bribery and fraud in order to have their children admitted into some of the most elite universities in the country (and the world, for that matter). To me this is beyond outrageous, and it seems to destroy the value of these degrees.
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There are lots of reason not to value degrees as highly as so many people do. You are right, fraud does devalue the degrees as well. Take B Obama for an example. He claims to have graduated with top honors from Harvard and yet cannot prove he attended class there, cannot show evidence of a transcript, and has little or no support from credible teachers or students who say he was a close classmate or student there.
 
Fledermaus said:
1. Make them retake every entrance exam. Today. No prep time. Pass or fail.
2. Any sports relate entry. Out unless they are active competing in that sport.
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I enrolled in UT Austin's school of engineering in 1971. I had no money and had no friends or relatives to provide me money to get in. However, even though I made straight A's in high school chemistry, I failed the advanced placement exam for chemistry at UT so I did not get to opt out of freshman chemistry there and had to take the freshman chemistry course as a result.
 
joko104 said:
Why do you think they shouldn't be prosecuted? They KNEW someone else took the SAT. They KNEW they were not on the athletic team. Why should their parents go to prison and the adult kids get off free? Because they're rich kids so are immune from prosecution? They aren't children. They're adults.
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For those cases, yeah, they should be expelled. I'm talking about cases where the parents bribed the admissions department or similar, and that got the students in but they did everything else normally. But if you lied about something you did or forged part of your application, oh **** yes, those students need to be expelled.
 
joko104 said:
Why do you think they shouldn't be prosecuted? They KNEW someone else took the SAT. They KNEW they were not on the athletic team. Why should their parents go to prison and the adult kids get off free? Because they're rich kids so are immune from prosecution? They aren't children. They're adults.
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Because the parents actually made the payment, which broke the law, Sherlock.
 
What Should Happen to the College Students Whose Parents Bribed Their Way In?
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Were I on the board or the Dean of Students at the affected schools, I'd:
  • Expel current students.
  • Review the transcripts and other contributions graduates made during their tenure at the school and:
    • De-certify low performers'/low-to-non contributors' degrees
    • Do nothing about high performers
Having said that, do I care what the administrations at the affected schools do? No, not really.
 
Xelor said:
Were I on the board or the Dean of Students at the affected schools, I'd:
  • Expel current students.
  • Review the transcripts and other contributions graduates made during their tenure at the school and:
    • De-certify low performers'/low-to-non contributors' degrees
    • Do nothing about high performers
Having said that, do I care what the administrations at the affected schools do? No, not really.
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WTF? Do nothing about high performers???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

You are on a roll tonight.
 
Xelor said:
Were I on the board or the Dean of Students at the affected schools, I'd:
  • Expel current students.
  • Review the transcripts and other contributions graduates made during their tenure at the school and:
    • De-certify low performers'/low-to-non contributors' degrees
    • Do nothing about high performers
Having said that, do I care what the administrations at the affected schools do? No, not really.

noonereal said:
WTF? Do nothing about high performers???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

You are on a roll tonight.
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Red:
Why do anything about them?
  1. They've graduated, so for the school, it's "water under the bridge."
  2. They've graduated, so for their employers (current or future), their value has already been established, and if it hasn't, their employers can take action as they see fit.
  3. Their high performance demonstrates they had the "whatever" needed to compete favorably with their peers.
  4. Their high performance has no diminishing impact on the school's academic reputation, thus the worth of the degrees the school confers.
  5. The school isn't likely to obtain any credible information indicating the graduates' complicity (vs. that of their parents') in any such long past fraudulent admission scheme.
  6. What has the school to gain by inviting even more controversy by taking retroactively retributive action? Nothing.
It may make you or some other individuals feel good somehow for the school to go "bonkers" over fraudulently admitted yet high performing graduates' degrees, but I assure you, for the schools, there's little to nothing good in doing so and thereby appeasing people, many of whom may well wouldn't have been admitted there under any legit circumstances.
 
Superfly said:
Oh, I agree. Don't go too easy on the parents, but not all the kids knew what was happening. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be to find out that your parents paid half a million to get you into school?
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Yes. But it is a fact of life that you can't be excused simply because you didn't know you weren't playing by the rules. The basketball player is still charged with a foul whether he knew the offense was an infraction or not. You will still get a ticket if you commit an infraction while driving whether or not you were aware that you did it.

The girls who had their photos taken in crew gear next to a racing shell certainly knew they had never been in one of those boats in their life, much less had been on a crew. The kids who didn't take their SATs because somebody was taking it for them certainly knew they didn't take their SATs. It is possible that the kids who later had their tests edited and scores altered by a dishonest proctor may or may not have known that would happen, but evenso, had their parents stolen a car for them to drive, and they were caught, the kids wouldn't get to keep the car just because it was embarrassing.

The kids who merited admission to those schools but who were denied admission by somebody who bought his/her way in, regardless of how that actually happened, are the real victims. In a way, so are the kids whose parents manipulated the system on their behalf--the parents should have been teaching their kids what honor and integrity are all about. But it is a good first lesson to start undoing irresponsible parenting to realize you can't cheat your way with impunity.
 
AlbqOwl said:
Yes. But it is a fact of life that you can't be excused simply because you didn't know you weren't playing by the rules. The basketball player is still charged with a foul whether he knew the offense was an infraction or not. You will still get a ticket if you commit an infraction while driving whether or not you were aware that you did it.

The girls who had their photos taken in crew gear next to a racing shell certainly knew they had never been in one of those boats in their life, much less had been on a crew. The kids who didn't take their SATs because somebody was taking it for them certainly knew they didn't take their SATs. It is possible that the kids who later had their tests edited and scores altered by a dishonest proctor may or may not have known that would happen, but evenso, had their parents stolen a car for them to drive, and they were caught, the kids wouldn't get to keep the car just because it was embarrassing.

The kids who merited admission to those schools but who were denied admission by somebody who bought his/her way in, regardless of how that actually happened, are the real victims. In a way, so are the kids whose parents manipulated the system on their behalf--the parents should have been teaching their kids what honor and integrity are all about. But it is a good first lesson to start undoing irresponsible parenting to realize you can't cheat your way with impunity.
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Red:
You may want to somehow qualify that assertion. Excusing certain forms of ignorance is the very point of imposing the mens rea burden.
 
Xelor said:
Red:
You may want to somehow qualify that assertion. Excusing certain forms of ignorance is the very point of imposing the mens rea burden.
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The concept you raise might possibly cause the guilty person to not be prosecuted. Comey used that excuse when he said he would not recommend indictment for Hillary Clinton's email fiasco. But the principle does not extend to allowing the clueless but guilty person from benefiting from the crime. If you unknowingly receive stolen property, you may not be prosecuted for stealing it, but you still have to give it back and there will be no reimbursement for you.

The higher principle is Ignorantia juris non excusat or ignorantia legis neminem excusat which is Latin for "ignorance of the law excuses not"or "ignorance of law excuses no one". It means that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law for no other reason than he/she was unware. If that was not the general rule of thumb, nobody could be prosecuted if he/she declared s/he had no idea it was against the law.
 
AlbqOwl said:
Yes. But it is a fact of life that you can't be excused simply because you didn't know you weren't playing by the rules. The basketball player is still charged with a foul whether he knew the offense was an infraction or not. You will still get a ticket if you commit an infraction while driving whether or not you were aware that you did it....
Xelor said:
Red:
You may want to somehow qualify that assertion. Excusing certain forms of ignorance is the very point of imposing the mens rea burden.


AlbqOwl said:
The concept you raise might possibly cause the guilty person to not be prosecuted. Comey used that excuse when he said he would not recommend indictment for Hillary Clinton's email fiasco. But the principle does not extend to allowing the clueless but guilty person from benefiting from the crime. If you unknowingly receive stolen property, you may not be prosecuted for stealing it, but you still have to give it back and there will be no reimbursement for you.

The higher principle is Ignorantia juris non excusat or ignorantia legis neminem excusat which is Latin for "ignorance of the law excuses not"or "ignorance of law excuses no one". It means that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law for no other reason than he/she was unware. If that was not the general rule of thumb, nobody could be prosecuted if he/she declared s/he had no idea it was against the law.
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Black bold --> Astounding....
 
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