It seems all we hear about these days is Donald Trump. Trump ended this, Trump screwed up that, oh, and he also did that. Most of the articles I write are about just that: Trump’s many scandals. So while ruining the lives of many a teen, family, businessman, and colleges, it is quite a nice turn of events to see this education bribery scandal slowly unfurl.
The “college bribery ring,” as it’s been dubbed, in short, is a recently exposed ring in which wealthy parents paid up to multiple million dollars for SAT proctors to alter test answers, for college coaches to recruit inexperienced players, and for those sitting on college admission boards to usher those who did not deserve placements into some of the country’s top colleges.
The colleges disgraced by this scandal include some of the top: Yale, USC, and UCLA, with some memorable stars and their children as well. Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are currently two of the most focused on lawbreakers, though by the day more stars and simply wealthy parents alike are being brought forward.
In terms of those doing the actual messy work, CNN reported that at last update, 13 workers on varying degrees on advantage were bribed to do everything from writing fake requests for extra time on the SAT to convincing boards to relook over a student’s application. This is in addition to the 33 parents now in for questioning.
There are quite a few things wrong with this, obviously, but among the problems are some that effect GALA and its students on a more personal level. Besides breaking any trust there once was within the higher education communities, there now is a blatant message: even if money can’t buy you happiness, it can get you pretty close.
GALA is a college preparatory school; its mission is that every girl will walk across the stage at graduation and walk through the doors of a university; and for many, college is now equated with happiness. Another one of GALA’s missions is for it to be diverse, and to reach those who because of financial situations, would not usually be able to go to an all-girls STEM school.
GALA is both these things. Why do I write this as if it is a bad thing? Because there is no doubt that it has been made clear to many girls at GALA that no matter how hard they work, no matter how much more they study, GALA is once in a blue moon. That money will win, no matter what. That just because Dr.Hicks saw what was special in them; just because they earned a spot fair and square here, that does not mean that these girls will walk off that stage and into a college they had a fair chance of getting into. When they walk off that stage as not millionaires, they know that they will have had so much less of a shot getting into these elite schools because they were honest, fair, and ethical human beings.
And to know that even if they work four times as hard as everyone else, they will never be at an equal opportunity to go where they want to in life because they don’t have four times the money as their competitors? That is disheartening enough to change a student’s life.
On a shallower scale, but a much more immediate one, the first graduating class of GALA scholars is set to graduate in less than two years. In two years, many GALA scholars will possibly have earned their places in the colleges affected by this scandal. GALA scholars will be judged and their places in these colleges doubted because of what parents who refused to prepare their children for the rest of their life and instead prepared the rest of their child’s life for them, did.
Now, when GALA scholars wear their college t-shirts, they will be judged, and people will look past their years of studying, and pushing themselves, and working for everything they have. They will see nothing but Lori Loughlin paying $500,000 for her daughter, Olivia Jade, to be recruited for the USC crew team, never once having competed for crew. Her daughter, who once on camera said, “ I don’t really care about school.”
Obviously, none of this is the students whose place in college was bought, fault. This has taken a larger toll on them than anybody, and through it all, it’s important to remember that. Olivia thought she had gotten into USC. Olivia had to resign from USC in the wake of the scandal. And Olivia now will live with the guilt of knowing she took the spot of someone who did care about school at one of the top schools of the nation.
This guilt lies on the shoulders of the business people who made this scheme possible, and the parents who made this scheme profitable. The burden, however, lies on every single honest college-bound child, their families, and their reputation.
Maya Henry, 2024- World News Writer
Photo Credit: Deseret News
A reverberation of GALA student voices 