The son has no responsibility to maintain confidentiality of fraud, if that is what occurred. In fact many helping professions who do have the ethical responsibility to maintain confidentiality have a higher ethical and legal responsibility to report a crime. School honor codes or honor systems specifically guide students that loyalty is to the truth (or similar) and not to loyalty to protect fellow students.
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I don’t believe in karma. I think some people use karma as an excuse to turn a blind eye to liars and cheats. What this student did was very bad. I hope her parents weren’t involved.
@Sportsman88 Point taken. In that case, Op’s son should have contacted Stanford directly. It reads to me as he wanted/needed validation… And, unless she used the charity for monetary gain, I fail to see it as fraud… Highly unethical, but not fraud.
And if there is karma, wouldn’t it be tilted toward the greater good (and thus turning in the cheat who’s set up a fake charity), anyway?
The girl’s conscience was bothering her so much she felt compelled to share the burden of knowledge with the OP’s kid.
shakes head
It’s bad enough she’s cheating and lying, now she’s dragging other people in to it to look for support for her behavior. That chaps my hide.
This thread reminds me of the other thread where a kid went hunting on his “friend’s” common app to discover made up Science Olympiad stuff. Goes back to the whole whistleblower vs. tattletale argument.
In this case, it seems to be fairly clear that it’s something the OP’s kid should say something about because he’s had that knowledge dumped in his lap, and he has to make a choice about what to do with it.
Chances Stanford took her based on this charity are less than slim. A lot of the worry here seems to rest on the idea that founding a charity is a trump card. It isn’t. It’s exceedingly rare for any kid to collect 50k (or even 10k, without parents and their friends kicking in.) The assumption would be she misrepresented the amount of adult work this really was, IF it were real. And I’m not sure why something for deaf kids in stem is so rare that the adcoms would be falling all over themselves.
So the question isn’t why was S bowled over, but why did they ignore this. Maybe her wording, on her app, was less direct than she claimed to OP’s son. I’ve seen kids note big efforts that adcoms looked into. There is usually more than a kid’s say-so: some news articles or attention from a major umbrella organization. And good chance the GC would be mentioning it.
True. But speaking as someone in higher education, not just the chances but the absolute necessity that Stanford rescind her admission if this is true are high—very, very high.
We have a cheating problem in higher education in this country. (Worldwide, really.) Rampant cheating reduces the value of college degrees, because they become an unreliable measure. If Stanford wishes to protect the value of their degrees—which I believe they do—then they need to stop cheating at the outset by denying access to cheaters, and let students with integrity in instead.
Has anyone told the OP yet that they misspelled Stanford? Just wondering.
Study222 whistleblowers are offers anonymous, or at least the cheater may not know who initiated the investigation. And if there is no problem found, there is no consequence, other than the aggravation of the process, if they are aware they are being investigated.
That’s what let me know they had no skin in the game.
Dfb, I’m also in higher ed and am stuck on what I think should be done. We don’t know how this kid presented it, what OP has seen. I’m curious how the supposed contributions were phrased.
Maybe OP will pm one of us with a link.
Lol, it’s only a bit over 13 hours since the OP posted. Is it possible he/she has a full time job and a life?
Some people consider it unethical to “play” online during company time. I know that many corporations certainly discourage it.
The first step is for the son to go see the HS college counselor. The reputation of the HS is at stake, and the college counselor will want to know if fraudulent materials were submitted.
I agree with what some above have said - investigate the charity to make sure that they really are fake, take pictures of the website or some other kind of proof of the false claims, then notify Stanford, as well as the IRS if necessary. Liars deserve no place at Stanford, or any other top school for that matter.
@lookingforward: Right—which is why I took care to say the cheater should face consequences if the allegations are true.
And if the OP is just interested in how to best make false allegations—probably a remote possibility, but still there—then hopefully they’ll face similar repercussions if they go ahead with it.
@study222 - apologies for autocorrects. Typed that response #31) on my phone. *Offers should be *often
The story makes no sense whatsoever.
OP has only two posts. I suspect s/he is trying to have an enemy’s admission rescinded by leveling false accusations. Why be so specific about the charity if one is truly seeking advice? I don’t buy OP’s story and hope Stanford doesn’t either, assuming the whole post isn’t a hoax. People can be vicious.
I don’t really understand why OP’s number of posts is an issue. Maybe he/she needed somewhere to get advice and made an account to do so?
If it is a hoax accusation, Stanford can easily determine that.