Dan Levin, Concepción de León and Adeel Hassan

In classrooms and dining halls, on quads and in bars, there was a similar sense of astonishment. How could they? Can you believe it? United by an admissions scandal that touched so many of their campuses, students seethed in unison. They railed against privilege and greed. They worried that their diplomas might have been tarnished even before they were handed to them on stage.

Two Stanford University students channeled their fury into a class-action lawsuit that claims they wasted their money when they applied to schools that were ultimately linked to what the Justice Department called its largest ever college admissions prosecution.

At Yale, a 20-year-old junior said she felt vindicated because her stellar grades had earned her acceptance — not cheating or kickbacks.

At Georgetown, arguments erupted between students in classes and others offered their loan applications to each other as satirical proof that their parents had not wielded their wallets to gain them a spot.

“When the rich, famous and influential game a system already susceptible to corruption, it perpetuates who remains in power,” said Jessica Wolfrom, a graduate student at Georgetown. “And, really, what does it mean when the system itself is so competitive that the people with the most privilege and wealth feel they have to cheat and lie and pay people off to get their kids ahead? Where does that leave everyone else?”

At the University of California, Los Angeles — among the campuses ensnared in the shocking scheme — students like Ayesha Haleem said she and her classmates were both heartbroken and fuming.

“The higher education system has always benefited people who come from privileged backgrounds,” said Haleem, a Pakistani 23-year-old senior. “Students of color have it so much harder to even get to these places.”

The issue of race-based admissions dominated conversations at the University of Texas at Austin, which was party to a landmark affirmative action case several years ago and has a student body that is now 41 percent white, down from 62.7 percent in 2000.

The university’s men’s tennis coach, Michael Center, was fired Wednesday after he was accused of taking a $100,000 bribe in exchange for recruiting a well-off student who was not a competitive tennis player.

“This is a big story not just because of possible corruption, but also because there is an obvious rift this has exposed on campus,” said Forrest Milburn, a 23-year-old senior who is the managing editor of The Daily Texan, the campus newspaper. “People are thinking it’s affirmative action when really it’s just wealth and privilege that gets you in the door.”

The scandal’s legal fallout is most likely only beginning, and it has already spread beyond the criminal indictments that federal prosecutors made public this week.

On Wednesday, just one day after prosecutors announced the charges in Operation Varsity Blues, two Stanford University students brought a class-action complaint in a federal court in California, and accused college after college of negligence. Although the suit was amended on Thursday — dropping one of the students but adding other plaintiffs without ties to Stanford — the case was an example of the exasperation on campuses.

The plaintiffs in the case alleged that they had wasted money when they applied to schools that were ultimately ensnared in the scheme and that every “qualified, rejected” student had also been hurt by the coast-to-coast fraud.

Many of the universities, though, have moved swiftly to fire coaches implicated in the scheme. Parents have made first appearances in court. And companies have distanced themselves from executives accused of paying William Singer, a college admissions consultant, to use bribes and deceit to raise their children’s test scores or get them admitted to their chosen schools through athletic recruiting spots, despite the fact that they were not competitive athletes.

In a brief court appearance on Friday, a Vancouver businessman who is accused of paying Singer at least $200,000 between 2011 and 2013 to have a hired test administrator to take the SAT in place of each of his two sons, and a Canadian high school graduation exam for his older son, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.

The businessman, David Sidoo, was released on $1.5 million bail, under conditions including that he was not to travel beyond the United States or Canada. He was the first parent to enter a plea.

UCLA warned this week that it might punish students who were connected to the scheme, including those already admitted or enrolled, “up to and including cancellation of admission,” the university said in a statement.

Wake Forest said that a student who had been admitted after $100,000 in payments were routed through the volleyball coach was still enrolled on the campus in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, adding that it had no reason to believe that the student had been aware of the scheme.

And Stanford said the two prospective students caught up in the case never enrolled. Still, students at the Palo Alto, California, campus said they were deeply disappointed that their university was enmeshed in the scandal.

“I worked so hard to get admitted into the school,” said Hailee Hoffman, a 22-year-old senior who is on the gymnastics team. In addition to taking advanced placement classes, she said she also trained more than 30 hours a week while in high school. “To find that someone had exploited the system and tried to buy their way in was so disheartening.”

About a year ago, federal prosecutors working on a securities fraud case were tipped off to the elaborate scheme by a suspect who hoped to be granted leniency for his cooperation. The suspect, identified by The Wall Street Journal as Morrie Tobin, who attended Yale University and is now a Los Angeles financial executive, reportedly told investigators that the college’s soccer coach had sought a bribe in exchange for getting his daughter into the school.

This week, the campus was mostly quiet because of spring break. But students were still abuzz about the scandal. Britton O’Daly, editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News, which has published just one story about the university’s connection, said he was spending the week in silence at a French monastery. But he could not stop himself from “sneaking away from monks to check my phone because of all this.”

Students whose parents were charged in the case could not be reached for comment this week. But Jack Buckingham, whose mother, Jane Buckingham, is accused of paying $50,000 for an ACT proctor to take the test in his place, told The Hollywood Reporter that he was unknowingly involved in a plot that gave those “who may not work as hard as others an advantage over those who truly deserve those spots.”

“For that I am sorry,” he told the publication, adding that this might “finally cut down on money and wealth being such a heavy factor in college admissions.”

Olivia Jade Giannulli, a 19-year-old social media influencer whose celebrity parents were accused of paying $500,000 in bribes for her and her sister to be falsely recruited to USC’s rowing team, has remained silent. But she was dropped from a sponsorship with a makeup company and her Instagram account has been the target of vitriol.

This week, as the scandal unfolded and her parents were arrested, Giannulli was celebrating spring break on a yacht owned by a USC Board of Trustees member. On Thursday, TMZ reported that she and her sister, also a USC student, decided to drop out over fears of being bullied and would not return to campus next week.

Still, there was also a measure of sympathy for those unwittingly caught in their parents’ alleged deception.

“I know that I would feel pretty ashamed if my parents were embroiled in a scandal of this magnitude,” Wolfrom said. “If I were in their position, I am not sure I’d show up to class again anytime soon.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/us/college-admissions-scandal-students.html" id="b0d433d2-4506-3800-a99e-c8bf461f9cbf">The New York Times</a>.

'So Disheartening': At Colleges Embroiled in Scandal, a Sense of Outrage and Sadness

Rarely is there a single conversation that dominates the college campuses of America, a back-and-forth that extends from Palo Alto, California, to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and from New Haven, Connecticut, to Los Angeles.

UCLA warned Wednesday that it might punish students who were connected to the scheme, including those already admitted or enrolled, “up to and including cancellation of admission,” the university said in a statement.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that a Los Angeles financial executive tipped off the authorities to the elaborate scheme. Morrie Tobin, a Yale University graduate, told investigators that the college’s soccer coach had sought a bribe in exchange for getting his daughter into the school.

This week, the campus was mostly quiet because of spring break. But students were still abuzz about the scandal. Britton O’Daly, editor of the Yale Daily News, which has published just one story about the university’s connection, said he was spending the week in silence at a French monastery. But he could not stop himself from “sneaking away from monks to check my phone because of all this.”

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Dan Levin, Concepción de León and Adeel Hassan

Articles written by the author

'So Disheartening': At Colleges Embroiled in Scandal, a Sense of Outrage and Sadness

'So Disheartening': At Colleges Embroiled in Scandal, a Sense of Outrage and Sadness

'So Disheartening': At Colleges Embroiled in Scandal, a Sense of Outrage and Sadness