A Malibu parent who paid $75,000 to William "Rick" Singer — the mastermind behind the college admissions — to fix his daughter's ACT exam has died by suicide.
Robert Flaxman, the 66-year-old Los Angeles real estate agent and former CEO of Crown Realty and Development, had spent one month in jail, 250 hours of community service, and $50,000 in fines for his involvement in the "Varsity Blues" scandal. — Read the rest
Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal will premiere on Netflix on March 21.
Everything you've heard is true. But you haven't heard everything. Using real conversations recreated from FBI wiretaps, the filmmaker behind Fyre brings you Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal.
Yesterday, news broke out that the Feds had uncovered the biggest college admissions scandal in US history. This involved over 30 families, including the families of actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. But now, it looks like the scandal has blown up into something much much bigger. — Read the rest
Yesterday, federal authorities announced 50 indictments of college personnel, wealthy parents, and fixers who ran a multi-million-dollar bribery ring that ensured that the slow, plodding, undeserving fruit of wealthy grifters' loins could be admitted to the top universities in America.
Felicity Huffman is speaking out about her involvement in the College Admissions Scandal in a way intended to generate some sympathy and call attention to the charity she served her community service with, where she now sits on the board.
Everything Huffman says makes me believe she learned nothing through this process. — Read the rest
Propublica's latest longread is ostensibly a profile of two kids who attended Orange County's Sage Hill School, where tuition runs $40,000/year and where an estimated 25% of students get into elite colleges thanks to their parents shelling out for "independent counsellors" who run the gamut from people who help with admissions essays and strategic donations to the schools of their choice all the way up to William "Rick" Singer, who pleaded guilty to collecting millions to grease the path for mediocre rich kids to attend elite colleges by bribing coaches.
Thanks to the college admissions scandal the issue of inequality and access to postsecondary education is now in our national conversation, but despite the glitz of the bribery scandal, the real issue is a much more mundane form of reverse affirmative action that allows wealthy Americans to dominate college admissions, muscling out better candidates from poorer backgrounds, especially Black students.
There are some mysteries in the court documents related to the college admissions scandal: a pair of mystery students whose parents paid $1.2m and $6.5m in bribes to get them into top US educational institutions.
They put the hype in hyperbole. They put the tat in overstatement. They put the mountain in molehill.
This week's tabloids put the retch in stretching the truth, with sickening disregard for the facts.
What is "Destroying Hollywood?" According to the Globe, it's the Michael Jackson child molestation scandal, in which superstars Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross both expressed support for the late pop idol, only to buckle under savage criticism and emphasized their sympathy for any victims of pedophilia. — Read the rest
Do tabloid editors even read what their reporters write? It's hard to imagine, given the disconnect between headlines and the barely-detectable trace elements of facts contained in the stories beneath them.
"Alex Trebek — Lung & Liver Surgery" reports the cover story of this week's National Enquirer. — Read the rest
There's buying school buildings, making million-dollar "donations," photoshopping your kid's head onto a real athlete's body, hiring a grown man to take your child's SAT test, and then there's an admissions tactic that hasn't yet come up in the college admissions scandal – screwing the head of the school. — Read the rest
