Shade of the Week: College Cheating Scandal
When the college cheating scandal broke I didn't think it was that bad. From first glance it seemed like rich parents paid for their children to get into elite colleges, which is a practice that's been happening for decades, however, when I actually read the story it was so much more deceptive, contrived and wrong. This scandal is bad and not a slap on the wrist bad, no no, it's cuff on the wrist bad, what these privileged parents did was so bad and not even my love of Desperate Housewives could make me overlook this mess.
If you've been living under a rock, around a week ago the news broke that Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin had been arrested among 50 other parents at gunpoint after an FBI investigation revealed they had illegally conspired to get their children into elite colleges across the country. Of course, there's always those millionaires who donate a building to a university and get their children in for free, however, these parents weren't donating buildings, they were rigging a system which is already skewed in their favour. How stupid must their children have to of been if they have to cheat when they are already unfairly advantaged? In lieu of donating a building, these parents used their money to get their children into college through other means.
Through a scammer named Rick Singer, parents could pay him to photoshop their children's face onto sporting pictures to make it appear they played that sport, which Loughlin paid $500K a pop on. How do these people have that much money that they can throw half a million dollars away on a fucking a scammer with the photoshop app? Couldn’t they have done it themselves? And how did the colleges, especially USC where her daughters got into, not realise that A) they were photoshopped or B) that they never actually played crew. And once they got into college how did they get away with not actually playing crew? These so many different layers of fucked up from this scandal and so many people are liable. Singer, the parents, the sporting coaches, the colleges and the fucking children.
Yes, some children were clueless and had no idea their parents were beefing up their test results but one sad mother fucker had to sit in a pool pretending to play water polo so the photoshop would be easier. Either he’s the dumbest kid on the face of the planet or he knew what his parents were up to. While some parents opted to get their children into college through being on the swim team, others had different routes. Felicity Huffman spent $15K on getting her child’s test results changed by a proctor by getting her daughter to take the test at a location Singer owned so one of his people could change the scores behind the scenes. And these are only two cases! There’s literally 50 more parents who were arrested for god knows what, well I guess the FBI knows what.
It’s so secretive and deceptive and these parents deserve to be punished. Should Felicity go to prison for 20 years for a $15K check? Probably not but there’s a lot of poor people around the country who have gone away for longer for a lot less. When you actually realise the level these parents went to just to get their children into the college and the sneaky texts about the situation there’s no way you can’t be outraged with them. And my main outrage is that no Housewives were on the list. Are you telling me we’ve had 100 and something Real Housewives (plus the friends) and not one of them was doing some shady shit to get their children into college while they modelled on the side?
Are we really supposed to believe there was only one ring of 50 parents across the country who were doing this to get their children into college? Fuck no. There’s probably rich elitist rings set up all over America with scams to get their children into college and let’s hope all those fuckers are caught. As someone who skipped college I don’t understand the length these people are going to just to brag about there’s kids alma mater at the country club, who gives a fuck? And more to the point, where do these people find out about these rings? Do they have a group chat? Is there a meeting place with a secret code? I need answers. The biggest slap in the face of all is that these scam started in 2012, so there’s children who have graduated with degrees that they weren’t even supposed to have.
Although Felicity and Lori were the only celebrities caught up in it all, the real star of the scandal is Olivia Jade. Bless her little bird brain. Olivia Jade would rather have her own YouTube channel with a few eye shadow palettes on the side than go to college, which isn’t a bad thing except that she cheated her way into going to college and took a place from someone else who was supposed to be on the crew team. The best part of all is that when the story broke Olivia Jade was on the chairman of USC’s yacht during spring break which sums up the absurdity and privilege of this scandal.
Going forward everyone is fucked. Lori’s been fired from every job she has, Olivia Jade was dropped by Sephora, Felicity will be struggling to work and even if they somehow avoid jail time (which we all know they will) they still have a $700 billion lawsuit on their hands from all the children who didn’t get into college between 2012 and 2018 as it could’ve been because they lost a space to one of their children. Either way they’re fucked and although money can’t buy you class, it can buy your children a college education.
