On Tuesday, the largest college-admissions cheating scandal in U.S. history rocked the lives of dozens of students. Aside, perhaps, from the influencer daughter of Full House actress Lori Loughlin—Olivia Jade Giannulli, who has 1.4 million Instagram followers—the young men and women whose parents were implicated in the scheme were relatively unknown to the general public. But now that court documents have been dumped onto the Internet—detailing a brazen $25 million cheating scheme masterminded by Rick Singer—all that has changed.

Even if, as the documents suggest, most of the students were oblivious to their parents’ alleged actions, they will be linked to a low chapter in American academic history history—one that could have wide-ranging repercussions. “One thing that really concerns me,” Angus Johnston, a student-activism advocate, historian, and CUNY professor, told Vanity Fair, “[is] that what’s going to potentially happen as a result of this scandal is a backlash against accommodations for students with disabilities.” Some of the implicated parents, including Felicity Huffman, allegedly helped finagle unnecessary special-needs loopholes for their children, all so that their standardized tests could be proctored under unusual circumstances—allowing co-conspirators to reportedly change their incorrect answers, or take the tests for them.

As of Friday, some of the students involved had deleted their social-media accounts, disabled comments, or gone private to limit their exposure. Only one implicated student, it seems—Jack Buckingham, the son of youth-marketing expert Jane Buckingham, who did not know his mother allegedly paid a $50,000 bribe to have another student take his ACT college-entrance exam—has issued a public statement. “I have been advised not to speak on the matter at hand but what I will say is this,” Jack wrote to The Hollywood Reporter. “I know there are millions of kids out there both wealthy and less fortunate who grind their ass off just to have a shot at the college of their dreams. I am upset that I was unknowingly involved in a large scheme that helps give kids who may not work as hard as others an advantage over those who truly deserve those spots.” He added, “It was probably not a smart idea to say anything but I needed to get that off my chest.”

While other implicated parents and students—who were admitted to prestigious colleges including Yale, U.S.C., Georgetown, U.C.L.A., and Wake Forest—have not spoken out, they may be working behind the scenes with crisis-management experts to minimize the damage to their reputations. “Even though the criminal lawyer will likely give the direction to remain quiet and don’t say anything to the press, if public image is extraordinarily important to the work that these people do . . . there’s often an overwhelming need by the client to at least do something,” litigator and crisis-management expert William M. Moran explained. If he were working with these students, he said, “I would try to work out how they can get their story out, and, if so, how to do so without hurting their criminal case.”

One way of doing that might be contacting press outlets and leaking information as “a source close to”—tidbits that could create sympathy for the affected students. “If I was their crisis-management lawyer, I would be looking at all the evidence to determine, ‘All right, what can you say that will hurt? What can you say that won’t hurt? And what can you say that’s not likely to hurt?’” said Moran. “Look for something along the lines of, ‘My family needs to have some time together.’ It’s not exactly wise for them to be going out there and saying anything specific.”