Bribing admission to college for your kids

ByMacon Cowles

Gents, my good wife Regina turned me on to this literate, fabulous commentary in the Atlantic on the college admissions scandal. It is by Caitlin Flanagan. She has a BA and MA in Art History from UVa. She writes it from the point of view of a woman who taught English for 4 years (her best job ever) and then was a college counselor (worst job ever) at the “Harvard-Westlake School” in Los Angeles.

This is a terrific, and fairly short read. But in the course of her commentary, she highly recommends that people interested in how badly the plutocracy has gone astray should read the 200-page affidavit that documents the racketeering scheme. Here is what she says on the point:

All this malfeasance has led to the creation of a 200-page affidavit, and a bevy of other court documents, that can best be described as a kind of posthumous Tom Wolfe novella, one with a wide cast of very rich people behaving in such despicable ways that it makes The Bonfire of the Vanities look like The Pilgrim’s Progress. If you have not read the affidavit, and if you’re in the mood for a novel of manners of the kind not attempted since the passing of the master, I recommend that you and your book club put it on the list for immediate consumption.

So I guess this is a good idea to bring up with your book group. A regular 21st c. Bonfire of the Vanities.

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3 Comments

  2. What an unflattering, embarrassing development for our university. Poorly timed for 50 years gone from the institution. All in all, not surprising given the supposed high value of a Yale education to those with money but no conscience nor integrity.

  3. I just re-read this post and followed it up with watching Varsity Blues on Netflix where the documentation is a dramatization of the FBI wiretap transcripts.

    I am grateful to feel like a simple rube when it comes to the abusive privilege and chutzpa of the people involved in this sordid episode. Everybody is contemptible: The Leader of the Scan: Rick Singer, the Universities involved in their lust for money gobbling growth, the Parents with their contemptible assumption that their wealth justifies their aberrant cutting-in-line behavior.

    So glad they caught these people — but then again, how could the number of people engaged in this scam NOT be caught. For them to get away with it, the large number of “side-door” admissions (Rick Singer’s term) would have to keep silent about the scam. This is like a bank robbery with 35 participants staying perfectly silent.

    Sorry for going on in my outrage. Although few of us were involved in this, it tarnishes all associated with Yale, the Ivy League, and those that attended the best colleges in the country.