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On Friday, actress Felicity Huffman became the first of 15 people accused of parents pleading guilty as part of the Operation Varsity Blues conspiracy. The award-winning star at the Emmy Awards Desperate housewives Indira Talwani, a federal judge, was sentenced to 14 days in jail, a fine of $ 30,000 and 250 hours of community service of the kind that you should not register on a collegiate application.
Huffman's prison sentence fell between the 30 days requested by the prosecutors and the community services proposal made by his lawyers. She will have to go to jail within six weeks, which means she can stay free long enough to watch the Lifetime movie premiere of Operation Varsity Blues on October 12th. City and countryside predictions will give viewers "the soapy conflict they desire".
Huffman's sentence was closely watched because of a legal debate reported earlier this month by The Wall Street Journal. This debate focused on whether there was financial harm caused by the acts of Rick Singer and the parents with whom he had conspired. Some of the defendants' lawyers argued that the scandal did not lead to any loss of monetary value, and that some universities had actually benefited from the donations made under Singer's scheme. There has been speculation that sentences with little or no jail sentence could influence defendants who plan to attend a trial to plead guilty.
Of course, the argument "no monetary damage, no fault" misses the point. The college admissions process is not just a business transaction, because higher education is more than just a business, although that may not always be the case. Education is a public good and access to education is access to the American dream. A university education is an experience that can transform a person's life. Obtaining a university degree can bring in $ 1 million in a career.
To be successful and to be effective, the profession of admission to colleges depends on public confidence in the process of admission to colleges. When wealthy and celebrity queues, whether through illicit means or by buying an access, the public is convinced that admission to the university is based on merit (as difficult to define as possible) and that equity be eroded, which is detrimental to both the profession and society.
Nor is it true that there were no casualties in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal. Selective admission to the types of colleges and universities targeted by Singer and his co-conspirators is a zero-sum game. In a hyperselective landscape, for each admitted student, there are several qualified candidates who are not admitted. It is true that the participants in the scandal have disadvantaged only a small group of candidates who could have earned a place as a rower, water polo player or participant in another sport, there were clearly qualified and deserving candidates deprived of the right to vote through corruption and corruption. .
The most obvious victims are the children of those who participated in the fraud. While some of them knew about or even participated in the plot, others, including Felicity Huffman's daughter Sophia, were not aware of it. Huffman's light sentence was based on the fact that she assumed full responsibility for her actions and had no precedent, but she also paid Singer $ 15,000 for Sophia's responses to the SAT are modified and that his scores amass 400 points with his confederate Mark Riddell. When Sophia Macy (Huffman is married to actor William Macy, who was not charged but who was apparently aware of the fraud) learned what Huffman had done, she burst into tears and said asked his mother: believe in me? Why do not you think I could do it myself? "
That's the $ 15,000 question that Felicity Huffman has to ponder and the broader question to be asked about the Operation Varsity Blues scandal. In my opinion, there were two mistaken beliefs that led the parents of the OVB to engage in criminal behavior.
The first was the belief that parental status, and perhaps the success of parents, is determined by the prestige of the college attended by your child. This is perhaps the ultimate legend of the suburbs, the one that US News and World Report is only too happy to promulgate and enjoy each fall.
The other is the lack of confidence in your child's ability to enter college alone. I've always thought that the college process was harder for parents than for students. It tests your basic beliefs about admission to the university, about parenting and perhaps about life. Is the college admission process rational and fair or is it a game? As a parent, is your job to help your child become independent or to protect him / her from disappointment?
As a parent, I learned early on that my children's successes made me more happy and that I felt more pain from their disappointments than anything in my life. It's natural. What is neither natural nor healthy is not to allow our children to be the main actors in their own journey.
Earning admission to the university should be a monumental achievement for a student. It should test the readiness for the academic experience itself. To remove the sense of power and success from a student is a crime. I've certainly met more parents in the past two years who firmly believe that 17-year-olds are not able to navigate the process of admission to the university. I do not want to believe it. If so, we must either change the admissions process or change the way we train and prepare students for college.
Not believing in their children is the real crime perpetrated by parents in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal. This is a terrible message to send to the children, a message that Felicity Huffman seems to have learned with the help of his daughter Sophia.
And what about co-star of Operation Huffman's Varsity Blues, Lori Loughlin? She is one of 19 accused parents who chose to fight. Who would have thought that the Olsen twins are not the only members of the Full house would not it be as cute or innocent as it was, or that Bob Saget would prove to be the moral compass of this show? The sequel to Netflix, Fuller House, enters his last season. Will Full House Corrections to be the next?
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