Operation Varsity Blues: One Corrupt Tree in the Forest of White Wealth Privilege
It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Andrew Lelling, the US attorney for Massachusetts, made a nearly laughable opening claim in his press conference about a college admissions scandal named “Operation Varsity Blues”:
“This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud,” Lelling said. “There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy, and I’ll add that there will not be a separate criminal justice system either.”He added, “For every student admitted through fraud, an honest, genuinely talented student was rejected.”
Nearly laughable, in part, because this grandstanding of justice wants to proceed from the position that discovering the wealthy gaming a system they already control is somehow shocking (it isn’t), and nearly laughable as well because Lelling offered as context and with a straight face the following:
We’re not talking about donating a building so that a school’s more likely to take your son or daughter.We’re talking about deception and fraud – fake test scores, fake athletic credentials, fake photographs, bribed college officials.
The layers of bullshit in what is being called a “massive admissions scandal” are nearly as complicated as the story itself, an intricate web of complicit parents, college and athletics officials, SAT/ACT shenanigans, and CONTINUE READING: Operation Varsity Blues: One Corrupt Tree in the Forest of White Wealth Privilege | radical eyes for equity
