Exactly. So far there is no reason for any of us to believe that what the Harvard fencing dad did (purchase a coach’s house at an inflated price in a private sale and have a fencing foundation give money to the coach’s newly formed non-profit) is either illegal or that Harvard finds it improper. I’m going to assume it is both legal (from the feds’ perspective) and proper (from the university’s perspective) until I have any indication from either party that it isn’t. That doesn’t mean I don’t personally find those actions questionable, but if the feds and Harvard don’t have a problem with it, that’s their decision and not mine. I’m just a spectator.
“LL is charged with what she IS charged with. Not someone else’s crimes.”
I am not sure who you are talking to here because no one said LL is being charged with anyone else’s crimes. I think we are saying that there is nothing wrong with parents accused of breaking the law of having their day in court. Loughlin and her husband’s case is uniquely their case and the facts are clearly different than at Harvard (they definitely didn’t buy the coach’s house!) and they are different than those of the parents at Yale (although those cases do have more similarities.) There is no reason for anyone to weigh in about one being worse or better. Not sure why you keep talking about getting LL “off the hook” unless you believe you are talking to her lawyer. I doubt anyone here cares about anything but recognizing defendants’ right to a trial and presumption of innocence until guilt has been proven. And presumably we will all be more enlightened about what is legal and what isn’t when it comes to college admissions.
You defend LL by consistently pointing out she didn’t pay for test cheating and referring to the H fencing issue. Other people’s specifics don’t change what she’s accused of. Or imply anything.
And you keep bringing in H fencing.
If you just want to withhold judgement. fine. But neutral is not assumibg it’s legal.
@lookingforward “You defend LL by consistently pointing out she didn’t pay for test cheating”
Why do you call pointing out a true fact “defending” Loughlin? I have made it clear that I believe that what she did was unethical. But you are the one who keeps pointing out that each case is legally unique and that is one fact that happens to make Loughlin’s case different from parents like Felicity Huffman who already pleaded guilty.
You keep commenting on Harvard fencing when I am just pointing out that it is silly for any of us to believe that Harvard thinks what happened is wrong when Harvard has given us absolutely no indication that they believe anything that was done is wrong. It’s not up to me to “judge”, it is up to Harvard. If they don’t have a problem with a recruit’s dad purchasing the coach’s house for an inflated price, that’s the university’s prerogative to not have a problem with it.
Not really. Over and over you have attempted to minimize her actions. You’ve practically put all the blame on Singer for corrupting this poor naive woman. The old “the Devil made me do it” theme again and again.
Not to single out one user, because it’s getting widespread on this thread, but we’re getting into dead horse territory. Per forum rules, the site is not a debate society. State your position, defend once if needed, then move on.
Knowing the corruption culture in China first hand, I don’t believe for a second that these Chinese parents are innocent because they are ignorant of the admission process in the US and they are duped by Singer. They know fully what they are doing. And Yusi Zhao, who must know that her sailing experience is falsified, is not innocent either.
The reality is everyone involved besides maybe a few kids knew it was wrong. There is Grey in everything but this is not that. There was a blatant mission to accomplish. I know many that would pay $15,000 to get better scores for their kids. I know few that would agree for someone else to take their kids test. I know no one that would take pictures of their kids to be used in a photo shop fashion and no no one that would agree to put their kid on a team and get admitted under those false pretense.
Harvard, at this point, owes us no explanation. All we can say is we don’t know why they haven’t acted. Not that H sees nothing wrong or the implication it’s fine.
Anyway, my concern would not be donations through legit channels, directly to a U. Rather, the possible, yet to be seen volume of back door, via sports. (Whether or not a kid played that sport at some time.) There’s a gaping hole, it seems, in giving the power of a recruit list (or deep interest list) to coaches. I’m less worried about a random issue than what more is discovered, going forward.
Personally, I’m on Team Hanna, as well. We only know what we do know. That likely isn’t all if it.
But we can certainly judge Harvard negatively, again, for what seems like business as usual, with powerful rich people manipulating admissions. See Jared Kushner for back door admissions story. Harvard opens ALL DOORS all the time, and will continue to do so, until we just say NO to Harvard. See Asian American lawsuit against Harvard. Its just business as usual, so well known that brazen Harvard can get away with it. I have to say that Stanford is the opposite, quickly moving to punish its own students. Harvard? Never, Harvard students are the donors, Harvard will not punish the hand that feeds!
Again, Kushner senior donated through legit channels and no one here knows Jared was underqualified. No one. People point to some unattributed shade from some hs associates. Not enough.
So far, the fact some group brought suit against H proves nothing. I get that plenty are emotionally vested in asserting H is guilty simply because someone brought suit.
Anyone who knows Harvard’s history of tossing out various fakers wouldn’t claim, “Harvard? Never…”
And for that, go ahead and Google the media reports.
I cannot help but thinking Stanford case was different from Yale in terms of level of guilt on the institution. In case of Yale, Singer and the coach took the entire sum; Yale’s sin lies in negligent supervising of its coach, an employee, which could happen anywhere. In case of Stanford, the school took at least some money (500k). What did Stanford think its nature and source were? Did they not at least owe a duty to find out? More heads should roll there. We will see.
@lookingforward “no one here knows Jared was underqualified. No one.”
That is an excellent point.
It is also true of all of the students caught up in the VB scandal whose parents did not pay for academic fraud (i.e. having someone else take their standardized tests in their place or change answers). No one knows whether they were “underqualified” academically and presumably they were just as “qualified” academically as the typical student athlete at that university. Or in the case of Stanford, as any other student admitted.
In my opinion, the gray area isn’t about “underqualified” students because those students aren’t admitted without fraudulent academics. Singer seemed to have the Harvard grad SAT testing guru on speed dial because he understood that even a large bribe won’t get an “underqualified” fake student-athlete admitted just like a large legal donation won’t get an “underqualified” kid of a billionaire donor admitted. The gray area is when a “qualified” student’s application gets an admissions boost purely based on a donation that other students just as qualified and arguably even much more qualified do not get.
“Again, Kushner senior donated through legit channels and no one here knows Jared was underqualified. No one. People point to some unattributed shade from some hs associates. Not enough.”
It’s actually a lot more complicated than just giving money to get a kid into Harvard, which happens all the time, and really is Harvard’s prerogative how many spots they want to auction off. That being said, it was his school’s officials that said (without revealing his info), that he was under-qualified for Harvard, not peers or associates. That and Kushner’s parents being on the Harvard donor list even though neither were alums, his connections to Ted Kennedy who called Harvard on Kushner’s behalf, got Golden to investigate deeper. And Harvard usually publicizes donations, and they never did for Kushner, Golden got lucky that the Feds subpoenaed his tax records since he was being investigated for a lot of unseemly stuff.
“There is Grey in everything but this is not that.”
Speaking generally about criminal prosecutions, even if someone’s guilt or innocence is crystal clear, there are still individual differences that matter. That’s why we have professional prosecutors and judges with discretion to consider all the unique circumstances around each person’s actions. We may know for sure that John killed Jane and that the killing was wrong. But shades of culpability matter when charging and convicting John of murder one, murder two, manslaughter, etc., and they matter even more when deciding if John should get probation or 10 years or life. So having a firm certainty of someone’s guilt is perfectly consistent with seeing shades of gray in the case.
I think there should be a class action suit by parents that submitted applications to schools that were promised a holistic review and any of these students were admitted. We were duped! I think we all knew there was a huge element of luck because there were so many qualified applicants and we knew that celebrity and large donors cut to the front of the line, but I don’t think we knew that the spots were literally for sale and we had virtually no chance of admittance. I think those schools should refund any application fee where a student could prove they were “more qualified”. And in LL’s daughters case, that is probably 99% of the USC applicants.
And on the subject of who is to blame, if you hire a shady tax attorney to complete your taxes you don’t get to plead innocent. Everyone who submits a college application is responsible for the accuracy of the information, whether they knew or not (and I believe everyone was fully aware).