The massive, historic, and already infamous college entrance cheating scandal that hit on Tuesday, March 12th that included the arrests of famous and award winning actresses Felicity Huffman (of Desperate Housewives fame) and Lori Loughlin (of Full House fame) hit a lot of people like an avalanche mostly because so many people were turned down by so-called “elite” colleges and universities for one reason or another – and they were fully qualified to attend those places.
Meanwhile, some (not all) children of rich and famous people whose money can grant them access to influential people get pushed into these places for … just being the children of rich and famous people whose money can buy them pretty much whatever they want.
And this is far from a surprise to those of us who have been paying attention to the news for most of our lives. Rich people have been buying their kids places in universities worldwide for ages – namely those overrated, overhyped, and overpriced Ivy League party schools.
Modern-day examples include the likes of Donald Trump, George W. Bush, and Jared Kushner – none of whom had the academic competency to handle the much hyped Ivy League schools they attended.
It was hurtful throughout the years to read about Dubya being given so-called “gentlemen C’s” – meaning he was passed basically for showing up to class and for being H. W.’s son. Donny boy Trump never got a degree. To this day, no one can produce attendance records from the Wharton school of the University of Pennsylvania for the turd.
And it’s well-known Kushner’s family bought his place in Harvard with a generous $2.5 million “donation.” https://www.theroot.com/remember-that-time-when-jared-kushner-s-dad-donated-2-1833241931 He also got a top-level government security clearance he never earned, either, simply because he is married to another entitled, spoiled brat, Ivanka Trump – herself the beneficiary of a legacy placement at UPenn (known in Philly as the bottom of the Ivy Leagues). Tiffany Trump was the recipient of the same entitlement.
Like Lori Loughlin’s daughter, Olivia Giunnuli, I, too, wanted to go to a four-year joint to do some partying. But, unlike Olivia, I would never have that chance.
I was crushed when I missed out on moving to a dorm. I wouldn’t get to decorate it, wouldn’t get to experience what it was like living with a roommate, wouldn’t get to go to parties, wouldn’t pull all-nighters studying for midterms and finals in my dorm room, study halls, or the library, and that I wouldn’t get to go to school sports events, among other things. It would have been so nice to not have to figure public transportation into getting to class and, instead, just wake up, shower, and walk to class.
And, again, unlike Olivia, I wouldn’t get a big, fat endorsement from a major corporation to decorate my dorm room and then publicize it (my college days were pre-social media).
Of course, my first priority would have been studying, but I so wanted to live in a dorm and have that experience to reminisce about, but that wasn’t in the proverbial cards for me. To this day, I feel as though I missed out on a HUGE chunk of my life – and I did.
In the end, all I could afford to go to was a community college – and even that was a financial hardship. I had to borrow every single penny to go there, and it took me forever and a day to get a two-year degree, much to my embarrassment.
Even now, in my early-40s, I am still trying to get my bachelor’s degree. It’s not because I don’t have the academic competency to get it, it’s because I can’t afford it. I’m already in the student loan hole more than I would like to be and there has been bureaucratic red tape that has gotten in my way as well – red tape that always magically vaporizes when it comes to rich peoples’ kids … if it even appears at all for them.
And, for the record, it is NOT every child of a celebrity, or a famous person in their own right, who goes to college who doesn’t deserve to go or who had special dispensation in getting there. Actress Jodie Foster went to Yale and she deserved to go to college because the woman is a brain top to bottom. Brooke Shields suspended her acting career to attend Princeton in the 1980s and it seemed to me she, nor anyone else, had to buy her way in there.
It’s times like these when I admire former President Bill Clinton even more than I already do. That man worked his ass off from the literal bottom on up to get to where he is today – and he became a Rhodes Scholar in the process – something no one is handed. Not bad for a guy from a broken family in trashy Arkansas, huh?
Yeah, parents always want the best for their children and some of those parents will go the extra mile – crossing the line into the criminal – for their kids. Like Lori Loughlin, they will think nothing of forking over a lot of bribe money to get their unqualified, lazy, stupid, do-nothing kids into so-called prestigious schools or score big-name product endorsements that could make them a “social media influence” to be reckoned with.
Olivia Giannulli turned out to be your stereotypical spoiled brat who never had to work for a fucking thing in her life, yet, here she is with a million followers on Instagram, a few hundred thousand followers on YouTube and for … why again?
What the fuck did this chick do to rate all that except be born to two famous people? Why certain people are famous for doing nothing is something I’m still waiting on an answer for from the Kardashian cult, but no time for digressions here.
Anyway, in this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lveMkZc-NRE&feature=youtu.be Olivia begins the college talk at 5:17 and announces she doesn’t care about school in such a nonchalant way that you just want to bitch slap the fucking brat. She was only too happy to make it crystal clear what her priorities were: Game days and partying. She would have to talk to her deans about fitting in studying. Hardy har fucking har.
Meanwhile, you can almost hear a kid who busted their ass to get into the University of Southern California (USC) and who was denied despite their years of hard work crying because this brat’s parents’ $$$ meant more to USC than being academically competent. WTF?!
And, of course, Ms. Entitled backtracked because people wasted no time in calling her out for her brazen entitlement. As far as anyone with a brain is concerned, that was a textbook cop out – a way to whitewash oneself against future taint (hindsight proved it didn’t work).
Such brazen entitlement coming from certain people just cuts like a knife every single time to us poor and working class kids who wanted so desperately to go to college, but couldn’t for one reason or another or who tried and couldn’t finish. It’s also a sucker punch to all of us who had to work for everything we have.
And when we find out that people lie, cheat, and steal to get where they are (like Donald Trump) after a lifetime of being preached to that “crime doesn’t pay” and to do the “right” thing (whatever the fuck that means), the only thing that comes to one’s mind is, “Why did I bother listening to that bullshit?” If only we did what those cruds did, we would have had a whole lot more fun, eh? And, if we were loaded with the family $$$, we would have gotten away with everything time and again.
Many inner-city kids wanted a quality education to move into better circumstances and we had unbelievable odds stacked against us, many times insurmountable. After so long, you just give up and melt into the drama and filth of the ghetto because you realize the game is so fucking rigged. This sting, dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues” by the FBI, prove that … in spades.
My heart is literally crying for the kids who were rejected by all the schools involved in this scandal. You have a dream of where you want to go to school and you spend your youth working your ass off to get there:
- fulfilling the academic requirements
- doing the extra curricular activities when you would have loved nothing better than to stay in bed on those Saturday mornings
- going to all the sports practices and your parents second mortgaging themselves into buying your equipment, many times sacrificing some money to leave work early to go to practices and games
- kissing the asses of people at school who you wouldn’t even glance at in the street under normal circumstances – all just to butter them up to write glowing letters of recommendation on your behalf to admission committees.
After spending prime years of your life breaking yourself to get into your dream college, you’re rejected … and then you come to find out the game was beyond rigged and you didn’t have a remote chance in the first place. I can only imagine the depth of disillusionment felt by every single one of those kids (and I say kids because their parents are my age, maybe a few years younger).
But … one mother decided to fight back and just filed a class action lawsuit to the tune of 500 billion dollars (yup, that’s billion not million) for the reasons I just mentioned above.
According to the lawsuit, her son – who is also her only child – was fully qualified to attend the colleges involved in this scandal and was rejected all the way around. [Note: She didn’t specify what colleges her son applied to in the complaint.] He sported a 4.2 GPA among other things and that wasn’t good enough to the likes of USC and others, but USC had no problem accepting an empty-headed twa* who couldn’t even figure out how to fill out the fucking application. Just wow.
(And serious question here: When did GPAs go over 4.0? What’s considered the perfect GPA these days?)
To be continued …
donnad1976 