Anyone who prepares for college struggles with the anxiety and the craziness of the SAT or ACT. It’s nerve-wracking! The constant studying gets tiring. Everything about it is a different level of stress because this isn’t just some exam; this is your future!
Our blood boils today as we learn that some wealthy parents decided their children could avoid the same stress.
How? They simply pay someone to take the exam instead or throw pay a “special” proctor to edit the exam. Then, what do you know, their child is in one of the prime schools, and gets to head forward in that direction.
Unfortunately, some of these people include some familiar faces.
We grew up watching Lori Loughlin as “Aunt Becky” from Full House. She had great morals, a great job, and was always so caring and compassionate. She is just one of many, many people charged in this fraud case. Loughlin faces charges of paying up to $500,000 to have her two daughters head towards the schools of their dreams. They were even there for athletics for the rowing team… in which they never took part of. I’m sure the picture of seeing them on the rowing machines was convincing enough for a while though.
Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives also faces charges. She allegedly paid $15,000 to have her daughters ACT answers doctored – while her daughter was unaware. Her daughter later took the test again in a different environment. Although this happened, she considered it for her second daughter, before deciding against it.
University directors and coaches also received bribes to appear unaware of the situation and pretend that students were on an athletic team.
Some went as far as faking pictures, or even photoshopping pictures of the student onto a proper athlete. From 2008-2011, coaches and administrators received roughly $25 million in payments.
These weren’t schools that didn’t know better, there are some very prestigious schools on this list, Yale, Stanford, UCLA, Georgetown and many more. One of the most unfortunate parts is that many of the students were unaware of what was being done, they had no idea that they didn’t make it on their own merit – that they were taking the place of a deserving student that very much earned their place in the school.
Rick Singer was the purported ringleader of this despicable operation, and used a “charity” called Key Worldwide Foundation.
You read that correctly, he established a false charity in order to funnel millions of dollars into bribery and false exam scores.
This is a complete disaster and has brought down many people that were once deemed credible, including a private school counselor, test administrators, coaches and administrators, etc.
There are currently no statements made by Huffman or Loughlin, but let’s just hope that this can genuinely teach people a valuable lesson.
Money may be able to buy some things, but it cannot buy the justice that deserves to be served.
Featured image via Walt Disney Television Flickr
