"Three points": tennis coach's alleged corruption weighs on admissions to Georgetown



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In the summer of 2015, Georgetown University tennis coach, Gordon Ernst, sent an email to an admissions officer, who was not showing any sign of scam.

Ernst, who enjoyed such stature in Washington that he had coached Michelle and Malia Obama, wrote that he wanted to "confirm my use of three spots".

These spots, a valuable commodity, represent some of the admission offers that the university would attribute to the recruitment of tennis players for the next class.

Georgetown received nearly 20,000 applications for the course started in the fall of 2016. Just over 83% were rejected. Exactly 3,369 were admitted. Ernst had a say in six of these offers, according to the university, up to three each for the men's and women's teams.

The federal authorities claim that he conspired to sell at least part of it.

The alleged corruption and cheating scandal that has upset the world of competitive admissions in colleges in recent days has taken shape discreetly over the years, while a California-based consultant, William "Rick" Singer, has found the way to exploit two major weaknesses in a system based on trust. What happened in Georgetown – from Federal Court records and university declarations, as well as interviews with government officials, admissions experts and others – opens a window into the bold racket which compromised a fundamental operation in schools from coast to coast to coast.

Singer offered affluent parents two illicit services to allow their children to attend elite colleges, prosecutors said: For $ 15,000 to $ 75,000, they could buy special arrangements for taking test from SAT or ACT offering coverage against direct fraud; and for much larger sums, sometimes over $ 1 million, they could buy special favors in the admissions office.

Prosecutors said the mechanism of these favors, which Singer termed a "side door," was to bribe sports coaches to nominate unskilled candidates as recruits at Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, and in Canada. 39, other reputed universities. This designation has considerable weight in colleges seeking to form competitive teams.

Cheating on admission tests, while disturbing, is not surprising. But the idea that coaches can be bought as part of a massive, massive ploy to circumvent admission criteria has angered their parents and students and knocked out the leaders of the day. # 39; universities.

"We are deeply troubled by these criminal charges against Mr. Ernst and his violation of the ethical standards of our university community," Georgetown President John J. DeGioia said in a statement. "We understand the feelings of shock and disappointment felt by our students and alumni who have worked so hard to prepare for their stay in Georgetown."

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Boston announced that 50 people had been charged with crimes in the case. Among them, 33 parents – including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman – and nine former coaches at Yale, Stanford, Wake Forest and Georgetown, as well as the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and the University of University of Texas at Austin.

Simultaneously, Singer pleaded guilty to racketeering and other charges. He is cooperating with the ongoing federal investigation in the hope of a light sentence. According to the criminal complaint filed by the investigators, Singer was bragging about helping 761 students enroll in the colleges of their choice, suggesting that the project has not yet been unveiled.

No students were charged and the universities were not accused of wrongdoing.

Ernst, 52, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, did not respond to phone messages and emails requesting comments. Nobody opened the door on Saturday night in a house of Chevy Chase recently ranked Ernst residence. The court documents do not identify his lawyer, and the US Attorney's Office in Boston indicates that US officials do not have information about an Ernst lawyer.

Admissions professionals have long recognized that recruited athletes receive special treatment. A federal lawsuit – as part of a separate civil suit against affirmative action – revealed last fall that Harvard was granting a decisive advantage in admitting to recruited athletes. An analysis showed that more than 80% of the candidates having obtained the best sports scores during a recent six year period were admitted. The university's overall admission rate at that time was about 7%.

Often, indignation bursts when a university is accused of having abandoned academic standards to conquer a stellar sports talent.

The novelty of the Singer scandal lies in the fact that coaches would have improved the prospects of admitting students with little or no athletic talent. Parents would have written huge checks for this to happen – in one case, $ 1.2 million for a ticket to Yale for a female football rookie who did not play competitive football.

"It really breaks the mold of ethics," said David Hawkins, executive director of content and education policy at the Arlington-based National Association for College Admission Counseling. He added that the alleged scheme seemed unprecedented for its methods and scope. "I just can not believe that adults would do everything in their power to rig the process of admitting their children to college."

A high level coach

Known as Gordie, Ernst is from Rhode Island. He played hockey and tennis for Brown University before graduating in 1990 in Behavior and Organizational Management. He competed for a few years as a professional tennis player before embarking on training, according to an official resume of his career, first at Northwestern University, then at the University of Pennsylvania. He became a men's and women's tennis coach in Georgetown in 2006 and gave classes to the Obama family at the White House. In 2014, Ernst praised the game of the first lady. "Michelle has a big setback," he told The New York Times.

In 2015, Ernst was inducted into the UK Tennis Hall of Fame.

In Georgetown, Ernst has coached many Big East players, some in recent years. Neither the men nor the women's team was a conference center. But the men's team reached the semi-finals of Big East in 2017 and Ernst would have rebuilt the women's team to help him face ranked opponents.

The teams are not big. Sometimes the players walk, says the university, but most are recruits. The men's team has 12 players this year and the women's team eight. The annual total recruitment varies. In a typical year, there may be five or six.

It is unclear how the alleged recruitment scam could have affected staffing and year-to-year performance in Georgetown. Both teams have recorded record wins and losses over the past five years.

Prosecutors accused Ernst of taking more than $ 2.7 million in bribes from Singer – "falsely labeled" counseling fees "- from 2012 to 2018, according to an indictment filed in the US District Court of Massachusetts.

According to prosecutors, Ernst nominated at least 12 candidates as recruits, including some who did not play competitive tennis, which made it easier for them to travel to Georgetown.

On 19 August 2015, an applicant allegedly sent Ernst an e-mail containing a fake list of tennis achievements. The indictment was sent to an admissions officer by Ernst, followed two days later by an email verifying his "three points". All three were sent to Singer 's clients, says the indictment, and Ernst received checks totaling $ 700,000 as of September. 2015 to August 2016.

Georgetown came across problems with Ernst's recruitment methods at the end of 2017, as intake officers had routine conversations with high school counselors and other educators. The details of these discussions were not clear. Georgetown spokeswoman Meghan Dubyak said admissions officials had discovered "irregularities in the sporting and other qualifications" of two Ernst recruits. The university put Ernst on leave in December 2017 and opened an investigation with an outside lawyer. This investigation, said Dubyak, revealed that Ernst had breached the rules of the university, but she found no evidence of criminal activity or bribes.

The university asked Ernst to resign and he left Georgetown on June 30, 2018. He then secured a position as head coach of women's tennis at the University of Rhode Island. Local officials said they checked Ernst before hiring him and that he had received a positive recommendation from Georgetown Sports Director Lee Reed. (The university put Ernst on leave last week, waiting for his own review.)

Asked why Georgetown would recommend it, Dubyak said, "It was common knowledge that Mr. Ernst had been on leave since December 2017 and had not been allowed to coach students since that time. Any statement made by Georgetown after asking him to resign concerned only his sports record. "

Dubyak said that Georgetown had learned of the existence of an alleged criminal activity when the US Attorney's Office contacted the university in November 2018. She stated that the university had fully cooperated with l & # 39; investigation.

According to experts, the best way to prevent athlete recruitment problems is to consult with and consult sports officials.

"The gold standard is a very close collaboration with your coaches by examining every rookie," said Andrew Flagel, former admissions officer at George Mason and Brandeis Universities, now vice president of the Association of Colleges. and American universities.

Sometimes the two offices compete for admissions. But Flagel said the "most insidious model" is to give coaches "slots" to recommend refueling with minimal supervision or internal controls. "They have a number," he said, "and sometimes it's up to the coach to decide how to play those cards."

According to prosecutors, in Georgetown, 158 admissions positions per year are reserved for the recruitment of athletes. The Jesuit university, which has approximately 7,400 undergraduate students, has more than 600 student-athletes in 29 inter-university college programs.

Georgetown officials insist that sports recruits be subject to rigorous review by admissions committees and adhere to high academic standards. They must submit the same requests as non-athletes and answer the same writing questions on a single form in Georgetown. Dean of Long-term Admissions, Charles Deacon, oversees the committees that make the final calls to whoever enters.

In November, Georgetown tightened its internal controls to require a more systematic review of its referees' sporting credentials and checks on the number of admissions admitted into teams.

Discouraged candidates

Sarah Hua, 19, a tennis player at Lehigh University, said she met Ernst a few years ago. She grew up in the Washington area, her heart being in Georgetown. Hua moved to Florida during high school to train with the best tennis coaches. She played six hours a day and took classes online.

When Ernst invited her for an official visit in her first year of high school, Hua thought her chances were good. "It seemed really authentic," said Hua. "He loved all the girls on his team as if they were his daughters."

Ernst told Hua that she needed a higher SAT score. She said that she had increased her score by 100 points, to about 1300. But during a subsequent visit to Georgetown, she was heartbroken to learn that she had been refused because of questions about his score and his school. "Honestly, I really felt like I was being cheated," Hua said.

On the northwestern campus of Washington, students expressed their resignation and dismay at the reminder of the power of wealth. In recent years, Georgetown has sought to increase the number of students from families with modest means. But federal data show that more than half pay the full price for tuition, accommodation, room and meals. This school year totals approximately $ 70,000.

Gabby Elliott Brault, 20, a sophomore, said the scandal is disheartening.

"As a low-income student and a first-generation university student, I feel a little attacked by the news," she said. "This is another example of high net worth students who are taking their studies to university and taking away positions from deserving candidates who are having a harder time entering Georgetown."

For Christian Paz, 21, the scandal has provided more evidence that the system is directed against people like him, a first-generation student from south of Los Angeles. And this has resurfaced memories of his own admission process, filled with stress, he had to navigate without the help of his parents.

He said that first-generation students "are trying to enter these higher education spaces and. . . were made to feel as if we did not belong.

"There are real impostors on this campus, people who should not be here."

John Hasnas, professor of economics and executive director of the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics, has entrusted the university with the merit of having discovered a problem with Ernst in 2017. Nevertheless, Hasnas said that the scandal was shocking by its national scale. duration.

"The blatant nature of the schemes suggests that the people involved knew that the universities were not paying proper attention and were easily defrauded in this way," Hasnas said.

As a father of a girl related to the university, Hasnas said that he was stunned by the sums that would have been spent on fraud and corruption.

"To be willing to spend so much money, you have to be very attached to the status of the school," he said.

Morgan Smith contributed to this report.

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