By Penny M. Venetis

Colleges are expected to send out acceptance letters to high school students in the next few days notifying them if they have been granted coveted spots in their incoming classes. We now have confirming evidence that the admissions process in some of the nation’s top colleges is rigged to favor the children of the tippy top of the 1 percent.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department charged Hollywood celebrities, the chairs of publicly traded corporations and the co-chair of a white-shoe New York law firm with crimes committed to get their children into the nation’s most elite colleges, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and USC.

These members of the 1 percent, parents who earn millions of dollars, are accused of: bribing college employees to pretend their children are skilled athletes, and paying others to either take the SAT/ACT for their children, or changing incorrect answers to correct answers after their children took the test.

These parents also abused accommodations meant for students with dyslexia and other learning differences. Several parents had their children tested by corrupt specialists who concocted learning disabilities so the students could take the college entrance exams in more relaxed settings, where “fake students” were used to actually take the exams.

The U.S. attorney who announced the indictments stated that this was not a situation where the wealthy donated buildings to the schools in efforts to make the admissions process easier for their children. This is a case of graft-pure and simple. The prosecutor, in his comments, inadvertently endorses donating a building as an acceptable form of rigging the admissions process in favor of the wealthy.

Critics of affirmative action should keep these indictments in mind next time they challenge or call for an end to affirmative action. The indicted parents have millions of dollars at their disposal to offer their children every conceivable educational advantage. Yet, still, they believed they had to break the law to secure coveted spaces at universities for their children - and likely, bragging rights for themselves. How could any middle class, working class or poor student compete with these efforts?

Affirmative action is meant to level the playing field for promising students whose parents most likely could not afford enrichment programs (or perhaps even pre-school), tutors, summer camp, dance classes, or “club / travel” sporting activities that are expensive to participate in and require parents to travel with their children, at times out of state. Affirmative action is meant to bring to the same table as the children of celebrities, and children of the middle class, talented students who are able to thrive academically while overcoming seemingly debilitating adversities (at times homelessness or the incarceration or hospitalization of a parent).

Won’t our colleges be better off with students who succeed even though the odds are stacked against them? Aren’t those students the embodiment of the “American ingenuity” that we are so proud of? Our country as a whole will most certainly benefit when students who have managed to excel in environments where nobody around them is succeeding display their grit in the workplace.

What we don’t know is how many other scams like this exist. There is absolutely no indication that the recently-exposed conspiracy is the only one of its kind. Rather than sending out their admissions letters in the next few days, colleges should review all of their applications to ensure that no student who has cheated will be admitted into their incoming class. This will take some time, but it’s worth it. The integrity of our colleges is at stake.

Admissions offices can easily verify whether a coach’s enthusiastic endorsement is legitimate or concocted. They can also review the applications of students whose test scores do not seem to be in sync with their grade-point averages. This will require calling schools to verify reported test scores and grades. If colleges do this, it is likely that questionable applicants will be children of the 1 percent and not affirmative action students. So, let’s make the college admissions process fairer, by embracing affirmative action.

Penny M. Venetis is a clinical professor of law at Rutgers Law School, where she is the director of the Human Rights Clinic.

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