Actresses, prominent business owners charged in nationwide college admissions cheating scandal

Excon said:

And again you show you know not of what you speak even though I continually have pointed that out.
The underlying activity was legal. What do you not understand about that? Do you really not understand the difference between legal and illegal? Do you not understand what the legal activity the press was speaking about? That is not about illegal drug distribution.
That underlying legal activity (which was them looking out for their kids) is exactly why I hope the President pardons them for the mail fraud they were charged with.

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:2rofll:

iLOL! I have honestly no idea what your point is which is why I didn't reply to you! If the parents did nothing illegal, they have no need for pardons! And if the ends justify the means, then drug dealers need only show the money went to a good cause (such as them "looking out for their kids") and they too deserve pardons! :lamo

Everyone Involved... knows "Right From Wrong" !!!!! ..... if they claim they don't know.... they will soon learn !!!!.... and they will learn that they "should have known", even if they claim they didn't know.

For some..... it takes hitting them deeply in the pocket, and others it takes the stripping away of what their life acts gained and likely acts gain's by malice.... for others it takes 'breaking down that vain egotistical self elation of expecting privilege and subverting process by trying to buy privilege... some expect privilege based on skin, title, popularity and fictions of fame for such types... it likely takes flat out jail time!!!!

JasperL said:

iLOL! I have honestly no idea what your point is which is why I didn't reply to you! If the parents did nothing illegal, they have no need for pardons! :lamo

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:2rofll:

Thus showing you have not paid attention or understood to begin with and should not have replied when you did.

That is all on you.

What is really hilarious is that you keep failing to distinguish between two separate things being spoken about.
1. The mail fraud they are charged with.
and
2. The underlying acts which were legal.

Going after someone because you do not like their underlying legal acts and charging them with mail fraud is a miscarriage of justice and deserving of a pardon.

Excon said:

:2rofll:

Thus showing you have not paid attention or understood to begin with and should not have replied when you did.

That is all on you.

What is really hilarious is that you keep failing to distinguish between two separate things being spoken about.
1. The mail fraud they are charged with.
and
2. The underlying acts which were legal.

Going after someone because you do not like their underlying legal acts and charging them with mail fraud is a miscarriage of justice and deserving of a pardon.

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I don't really care about your opinion on what is or is not a "miscarriage of justice" or what is deserving of a pardon. You maintain the acts were "legal" and yet they've been indicted on and no doubt many will plead guilty to what you're calling "legal" acts, that include outright bribery of public employees, and for violating the mail and related wire fraud statute that's been on the books for around 150 years.

If you think Trump should hand out pardons to parents who lied, cheated, and bribed their kids into schools, that's of course your opinion, however stupid in my own view.

ClaraD said:

bribery is a crime....why this is a big deal is because other students that have less money, but are better academically are being denied entrance.

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Red:
It is, but, as I've elsewhere noted, not one of the defendants faces bribery charges. There's a very straightforward reason why nobody has been so charged: in US federal jurisprudence, criminally culpable bribery applies only to conduct involving public officials. Insofar as, under federal law, "public officials" "means Member of Congress, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner, either before or after such official has qualified, or an officer or employee or person acting for or on behalf of the United States, or any department, agency or branch of Government thereof, including the District of Columbia," nobody could be charged with bribery.

Federal code has something of a private-sector-applicable rough analogue to bribery, honest services fraud, which is a form of mail fraud; however, 18 U.S. Code § 1346 is far from "tried and true," in part because the infraction itself remains statutorially undefined. From 1988 to three 2010 SCOTUS decisions, honest services law allowed prosecutorial discretion to cast a wide wake, criminalizing the breach of corporate fiduciary duties and allowing fraud prosecutions without the onerous requirements of regular fraud prosecutions. Several 2010 SCOTUS decisions -- Skilling v. United States, Black v. United States, and Weyhrauch v. United States -- pared to civil penalties the scope of remedies for much of what, from 1988 to 2010, passed as "honest services" breaches.

I suspect folks who wrote bribery and honest services fraud laws disapproved of bribing public officials, but they had little issue with comparable conduct in the private sector. Favors, "old boy" networking, palm greasing, etec. and the private sector go hand-in-hand, but for however Machiavellian such behavior be, I think it's pragmatically impossible to extirpate or attenuate it via criminal or civil proscriptions and penalties.

I'm perhaps too cynical about why the federal bribery statute is so narrowly defined and the honest services statute so vague. Perhaps legislators fittingly determined the scope of extant mail fraud law -- "any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises" -- adequately addresses the matter. Certainly, the mail fraud statute has provided federal jurisdiction for a wide range of crimes including consumer frauds, stock frauds, land frauds, bank frauds, insurance frauds, and commodity frauds, but [also] . . . such areas as blackmail, counterfeiting, election fraud, and non-statutory bribery offenses.

In any case, I'm dumbfounded by the incongruity between the scope of the criminal bribery statute and the scope of behavioral bribery. I'm sure that until I quest further than I have for a reconciling answer to that quandary, I will remain so. Until then and regarding the state government officials involved in "Varsity Blues" (e.g., UCLA and UT Austin personnel) however, I shall have to imagine state law is more coherent and more disapproving of the sort of corruption of which we've seen recently exposed.

JasperL said:

Of course, because Trump might share the idea that his kids are dullards who cannot get by on merit and so it's necessary to bribe, cheat, lie to help them be successful. What are laws when your kid wants to get in a certain school - **** the law. What matters is who has the money to buy an admission! It's a nation of men, not of laws. Merit is for suckers, losers!

Excon said:

iLOL No.
And I fully support academic merit being the only measure used. But we do not have that and many are not able to benefit because of that.

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Red:
I'll take your word, but I suspect many people are not of the mind that academic merit be the "only measure used" to determine who receives admission to selective (highly selective) universities/colleges.

For my own part, I could, in principle, forbear academic merit being the sole measure used in state owned and operated institutions. Although that sounds fair, equitable, etc., as a practical matter, however, it isn't, and it isn't for high school students of multiple stripes.

• Seven-point grading scale --> Even though one can convert between 10-point and 7-point grading scales, that conversion doesn't account for variability in the rigor of the courses themselves; moreover, there's just no way, short of one-on-one direct comparison across a broad spectrum of subjects, which among any given pair of seemingly comparable students is the more academically accomplished.
• Schism between qualitative and quantitative accomplishment --> Like other alums of my alma mater, I occasionally interview applicants. All of them have very fine objective high school credentials, but chatting with them -- about a range of topics, including themselves and their aspirations, their reflections on and assessment of their development to date, current events, various abstract and applied academic concepts regarding science, math, writings and events , etc. -- reveals a host of differences. Yes, kids with materially higher GPAs are, in general, more intellectually accomplished and adroit than kids with lower ones, but not always. Too, kids with "close" GPAs have exhibited notable differences in the aforementioned dimensions, thus in attitude and personality.
• Educational scope --> Schools offer multiple modes of education, scholastic and extracurricular. Students' develop acumen via participation in myriad extracurricular activities -- sports teams, social clubs, service organizations, entertainment groups, etc., and much of that learning depends not on academic ability. Schools thus craft student bodies to abet providing, as befits the administration's vision for the school, fertile settings for extra-academic and scholastic inspiration, exploration and learning.
  
  The best schools aim to establish fulsome, fecund experiential variety because, particularly insofar as top schools know well that they're grooming the future's government, industry, and cultural leaders, they'd be derelict to forswear heeding the maxim "don't defer until tomorrow that which one can do today." As the country and world's future helmsmen, those students are better served being as collegians exposed to and prepared, in a somewhat bridled setting, to collaborate with diverse constituencies and comrades, for upon exiting those hallowed halls, it won't get easier to do so.
  
  Quite simply, schools cannot provide the breadth of experience if they structure their student bodies solely by admitting students based solely on measures of academic merit.
• School identity --> Imagine Liberty University having to admit 2,000 atheists because the 2,000 most academically accomplished applicants simply are. (I don't know the actual size of each grade cohort, but the point of my citing a number is to imply "a material quantity.") Imagine MIT having a material share of its classes comprised of students who ascribe to Flat-Earthism because (however improbably) the most academically meritorious students just do. Neither school could be the school it is and that its trustees intend it to be.

Those are just a few examples of how the "academic merit only" notion, once applied, is absurd. Sure, it sounds noble enough, but that's it; it just sounds good.

Xelor said:

Red:
I'll take your word, but I suspect many people are not of the mind that academic merit be the "only measure used" to determine who receives admission to selective (highly selective) universities/colleges.

For my own part, I could, in principle, forbear academic merit being the sole measure used in state owned and operated institutions. Although that sounds fair, equitable, etc., as a practical matter, however, it isn't, and it isn't for high school students of multiple stripes.

• Seven-point grading scale --> Even though one can convert between 10-point and 7-point grading scales, that conversion doesn't account for variability in the rigor of the courses themselves; moreover, there's just no way, short of one-on-one direct comparison across a broad spectrum of subjects, which among any given pair of seemingly comparable students is the more academically accomplished.
• Schism between qualitative and quantitative accomplishment --> Like other alums of my alma mater, I occasionally interview applicants. All of them have very fine objective high school credentials, but chatting with them -- about a range of topics, including themselves and their aspirations, their reflections on and assessment of their development to date, current events, various abstract and applied academic concepts regarding science, math, writings and events , etc. -- reveals a host of differences. Yes, kids with materially higher GPAs are, in general, more intellectually accomplished and adroit than kids with lower ones, but not always. Too, kids with "close" GPAs have exhibited notable differences in the aforementioned dimensions, thus in attitude and personality.
• Educational scope --> Schools offer multiple modes of education, scholastic and extracurricular. Students' develop acumen via participation in myriad extracurricular activities -- sports teams, social clubs, service organizations, entertainment groups, etc., and much of that learning depends not on academic ability. Schools thus craft student bodies to abet providing, as befits the administration's vision for the school, fertile settings for extra-academic and scholastic inspiration, exploration and learning.
  
  The best schools aim to provide fulsome, fecund experiential variety because, particularly insofar as top schools know well that they're grooming the future's government, industry, and cultural leaders, they'd be derelict to forswear heeding the maxim "don't defer until tomorrow that which one can do today." As the country and world's future helmsmen, those students are better served being as collegians exposed to and prepared, in a somewhat bridled setting, to collaborate with diverse constituencies and comrades, for upon exiting those hallowed halls, it won't get easier to do so.
  
  Quite simply, schools cannot provide the breadth of experience if they structure their student bodies solely by admitting students based solely on measures of academic merit.
• School identity --> Imagine Liberty University having to admit 2,000 atheists because the 2,000 most academically accomplished applicants simply are. (I don't know the actual size of each grade cohort, but the point of my citing a number is to imply "a material quantity.") Imagine MIT having a material share of its classes comprised of students who ascribe to Flat-Earthism because (however improbably) the most academically meritorious students just do. Neither school could be the school it is and that its trustees intend it to be.

Those are just a few examples of how the "academic merit only" notion, once applied, is absurd. Sure, it sounds noble enough, but that's it; it just sounds good.

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Possibly the best criteria would be a demonstrated capacity and an honest desire to learn in a particular setting and field.

Excon said:

...And again you show you know not of what you speak even though I continually have pointed that out.

The underlying activity was legal. What do you not understand about that? Do you really not understand the difference between legal and illegal? Do you not understand what the legal activity the press was speaking about? That is not about illegal drug distribution.

That underlying legal activity (which was them looking out for their kids) is exactly why I hope the President pardons them for the mail fraud they were charged with.

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Red:

prometeus said:

Possibly the best criteria would be a demonstrated capacity and an honest desire to learn in a particular setting and field.

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I'm not sure there's much point in citing "best criteria." What merits a top school's offer of admission, just like what merits a top firm's offer of employment, is a function of a plurality of traits. The two you've cited matter, but (1) a reasonable case can be made for all top school applicants' fecundity in both dimensions, (2) college applicants routinely revise their disciplinary focus upon obtaining further exposure to a given field's subject matter and/or the exigencies of the process of obtaining a given degree concentration.

For instance, I entered college thinking I was headed for a law degree. A history of law class I took, one delivered pedagogically as are law school classes, poignantly showed me that notwithstanding my interest in practicing law, I had no desire to do what one must, take law school classes and study the law as such courses are taught, to do so. Consequently, I wasn't going to be an attorney. My "honest desire" was undiminished, but I just wasn't, after that history class, going to again endure that approach to learning.

Analogous epiphanies likely have come to many a student. A young man I mentor finished high school wanting to be an electrical engineer who designed and developed sound equipment. He took calculus and discovered he really hated it (I can't relate to that, but I don't need to). Well, that put the kibosh on any form of engineering he might have practiced, short of janitorial engineering, which doesn't require a degree to practice.

pamak said:

Exactly!


Here we have a system where rich kids who DO have access to the best high schools and access to the best college preparation tutors (charging as much as $200 per hour) which have given them already a considerable advantage over other regular competitors, and they STILL need an ADDITIONAL advantage to enter a university. I cannot put this on the same level with the poor kid which uses sports to enter a university even though I have stated it clearly in this thread earlier that I am also against the US system of college sports which has nothing to do with academic at least merit!

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Red:
Well, the kids involved in "Varsity Blues" (VB) likely could get into a university, but probably not the (highly) selective ones they (their parents) sought to enter.

Frankly, I think the VB kids and their 'rents were more concerned with the cachet of the school than they were with whether the kids earned an education. In that regard, they treated selecting a college as one would choose a consumer good or service: whether one has the money is the sole determinant of whether one can buy it or not.


Pink:
That is a completely different matter, even without the corruption attendant to notions of iniquitously exploited financial privilege.


Blue:
I agree that it's not "on the same level," but....

JasperL said:

Fantastic! That will be great news to them and their lawyers. They can just refer to this thread and your excellent legal analysis (nothing) and the judge will throw out the charges and no need for Trump to pardon anyone for crimes they didn't commit and weren't (cannot be!) convicted of committing.

Excon said:

And again you show you have no clue as to what you speak.
Why do you bother if you are not going to follow what was actually said?

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Red:
Oh, I think Jasper has a clue, quite a few, so many, indeed, that the myopic "spin" you've been throwing falls flat.

JasperL said:

No, it's not a merit based system. But that person was hoping for pardons for the parents who bribed and cheated their kids into schools, while simultaneously claiming to support a merit based system. Those positions are 180 from each other.

Furthermore, at least athletics are merit based. The only problems are those sports that only the rich participate in and so effectively reserve a few dozen prime slots from the ranks of elite prep schools that offer those 'sports.'



The article starts with a straw man. The claim isn't that "the rich get whatever they want" every time, in all cases, no matter the facts, but that the system is heavily rigged in favor of the rich, that rich kids start at 2nd or 3rd and the rest of the kids start at home plate. And then she proves the actual argument, which is nice I guess...

From the article:



It's a neat trick to conflate admissions based on athletic talent, which is merit based, to legacy admissions, which is NOT. I read that 14% of Harvard admissions are legacy based, worth about 160 points on the SAT. That would have been nice when I applied - from pretty good to the elite levels, Ivy League, scholarships! Too bad my dad went to a state school...

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Are you actually saying that athletic talent has anything to do with academic merit?

nota bene said:

Are you actually saying that athletic talent has anything to do with academic merit?

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No, I said, "Furthermore, at least athletics are merit based" and "admissions based on athletic talent, which is merit based."

Schools recruit good athletes because they like to have winning teams. You know this so I'm unclear why you're confused. If they do that, and hand out scholarships or slots based on MERIT, where's the problem? It's COMPLETELY different in principle than moving Hunter's application to the top of the pile because Father and Grandfather also went to that school, which is NOT based on merit, but on who your father was/is.

JasperL said:

No, I said, "Furthermore, at least athletics are merit based" and "admissions based on athletic talent, which is merit based."

Schools recruit good athletes because they like to have winning teams. You know this so I'm unclear why you're confused. If they do that, and hand out scholarships or slots based on MERIT, where's the problem? It's COMPLETELY different in principle than moving Hunter's application to the top of the pile because Father and Grandfather also went to that school, which is NOT based on merit, but on who your father was/is.

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The purpose of college is higher learning. Using football as an example, I love college athletics...but these have nothing to do with academic education, which is the purpose. Yes, they produce significant revenue, but I don't think that students should be accepted into a school unless they have academic merit, meaning that they are able to do the work. Many are not, even though at large schools, they're provided with literally around-the-clock free tutoring. I don't wish to get into the weeds about how student-athletes are exploited and should be paid or any of that but do think that those who aren't academically able should go pro if they have the talent and stop wasting their time and their professors' too.

JasperL said:

Fine, then call them out.

"Why does whoever "they" are (obviously rich people with 6 or 7 figures to waste to get their kid into the right school) implicate 'liberals' versus just the assholes who engaged in the act. I'm not a hypocrite because I didn't do it or approve of it. I imagine I'm in the 99% or so of liberals who also don't approve of bribery and fraud to get spoiled rich kids into the school of their choice."

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They have to be liberal, a Trump supporter would never do something like that...........right??

smallvoice said:

No one knows how Obama got in. Probably a foreign student minority admission.

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I think you have him confused with Trump. But you aren't biased at all, right??

Erod said:

Hey, it worked for Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, too.

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You guys just can't resist can you. What about Trump?? You think he got in on his own??

Excon said:

I spoke to you helping Russia sew discord by your bs replies.
That is about your replies, not Russia, and clearly you dislike that I am pointing it out. Go figure, huh?

---

:lamo And again you show you know not of what you speak even though I continually have pointed that out.
The underlying activity was legal. What do you not understand about that? Do you really not understand the difference between legal and illegal? Do you not understand what the legal activity the press was speaking about? That is not about illegal drug distribution.
That underlying legal activity (which was them looking out for their kids) is exactly why I hope the President pardons them for the mail fraud they were charged with.

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Not sure what you hope to gain being fixated on this. The underlying activity is fraud. The parents are paying someone to commit fraud, falsify documents, submit bribes, etc.. The fact the parents aren't doing it themselves doesn't somehow remove their responsibility. They are a party to the crime just as as much as a person who pays another to commit theft, hack a secure system, burn down a business, send a threatening letter, or harm someone.

You are confusing the crime with the underlying motive. Sure, they want to help their kids - but that's not an excuse, any more than it would be if they robbed a store to by groceries.

jghiretire said:

I think you have him confused with Trump. But you aren't biased at all, right??

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Well, clearly no more biased than you. Trump has never pretended to be a foreign student, nor a minority for that matter. So no, I don't have them confused. Obama didn't have any actual experience, other than being a "community organizer".

Erod said:

Hey, it worked for Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, too.

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What possesses you to even mention George W. Bush in this discussion? People such as he are playing an entirely different game on an entirely different playing field than "everyone" else.

His grandfather was Prescott Bush:

• US Senator from CT
• Skull and Bones
• Yale Corporation member
• Cheerleader
• Varsity golf
• Varsity baseball
• Yale Glee Club president
• Legacy: James Bush (grandfather), Robert Sheldon (maternal uncle)
• CBS Board of Directors
• Co-founder Union Banking Corp
• Vice president Brown Brothers

That alone was enough to ensure "W's" admission, but his father too matriculated at Yale and "W" went to Andover. "W" was going to get admitted to Yale even if no other school in the country would have him, and all that was expected of him was that he at least earn a "Gentleman's C," because his pedigree alone was enough to ensure his existential success.

And besides, what's the point of earning more than Cs but not enough to finish with honors? The degree is the same and for "W" and his ilk -- megarich "blue bloods" -- being in a league that no egalitarian meritocratic notions or policies will affect, nobody gives a damn what grades one earned.

dcsports said:

Not sure what you hope to gain being fixated on this. The underlying activity is fraud. The parents are paying someone to commit fraud, falsify documents, submit bribes, etc.. The fact the parents aren't doing it themselves doesn't somehow remove their responsibility. They are a party to the crime just as as much as a person who pays another to commit theft, hack a secure system, burn down a business, send a threatening letter, or harm someone.

You are confusing the crime with the underlying motive. Sure, they want to help their kids - but that's not an excuse, any more than it would be if they robbed a store to by groceries.

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Red:
Well, yes. That's what it means to conspire to commit a given crime.


Blue:
I don't know that the other member is doing that so much as flat-out disregarding the substance of criminal conspiracy.

Perhaps these elite Universities should publish their exact admission requirements, if more than the numbers of openings apply, have a lottery.
What could be more fair that a truly random luck of the draw.

longview said:

Perhaps these elite Universities should publish their exact admission requirements, if more than the numbers of openings apply, have a lottery.
What could be more fair that a truly random luck of the draw.

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Well, at least some of them do:

• UCLA Admission Requirements
• Yale

Stanford doesn't seem to provide as detailed information, but, IMO, the most important requirement for going there is willingness to risk the earth moving under one's feet and the roof falling on one's head.

Xelor said:

Well, at least some of them do:

• UCLA Admission Requirements
• Yale

Stanford doesn't seem to provide as detailed information, but, IMO, the most important requirement for going there is willingness to risk the earth moving under one's feet and the roof falling on one's head.

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The stated requirements are easy, it is the subjective judgement of who get in among those who meet the stated requirements.
The likely will not put in writing that they use racial and gender quotas, both minimum and maximums.
There is a reason that race is required on college applications, even though they say it is optional, they will not process the application without it filled out.

smallvoice said:

Well, clearly no more biased than you. Trump has never pretended to be a foreign student, nor a minority for that matter. So no, I don't have them confused. Obama didn't have any actual experience, other than being a "community organizer".

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You apparently forgot what was being discussed here. You don't need "experience" to get into college. Obama was a community organizer after he graduated from Columbia, not before he matriculated there. Obama also never pretended to be a foreign student (although his residence was out of the country when he applied to college, and he was educated in another country), and he never pretended to be a minority that I'm aware of, but that's because he didn't have to. His father was black.