Outraged parents are filing lawsuits in the college admissions scandal . . .
One parent, Jennifer Kay Toy of Oakland, believes her son Joshua was not admitted to some colleges because wealthy parents thought it was “ok to lie, cheat, steal [steal?] and bribe their children’s way into a good college.”
She has therefore filed a $500 billion lawsuit (sounds reasonable) accusing 45 defendants of defrauding and inflicting emotional distress on everyone whose “rights to a fair chance at entrance to college” were stolen through their alleged conspiracy.
Not reported: where (or if) Joshua is actually attending college, or which colleges Ms. Toy thinks he would have been admitted to if not for the aforementioned skulduggery.
There are also students filing suits, alleging among other things that their degrees have been devalued by skepticism over the validity of the admission process.
I think these lawsuits founder on at least a couple of points:
- None of the people or universities involved invented lying, cheating or bribing as a way to get into college. We’re now able to put actual faces to it (William Singer, Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman, etc.) but the proposition that the college admission process was untainted until Singer and his fellow fraudsters corrupted it is not going to stand up to scrutiny.
- As regards skepticism about academic bona fides, not only have students for decades been routinely admitted to colleges based on criteria other than academic achievement (e.g., “diversity”), but virtuous Americans seem to agree that rigging the system in favor of otherwise unqualified individuals is a good thing. Where are the lawsuits over diversity admits devaluing academic credentials?