FUCK THE IVY LEAGUE

CONDI RICE

There, I met people who were really fucking rich and people who were way poorer than my family ever was--even my mom's family, and she grew up in the Mission Projects in San Francisco with gangs and shit. At Harvard I met people who didn't look like me or talk like me for pretty much the first time, and danced and drank with them and kissed them when they let me. We protested for living wages and we got Harvard to divest from South Africa by building a shantytown in the middle of the yard and inviting Jesse Jackson to come rip it up in front of the dean. I worked my ass off there, too, and met a lot of good friends, and married one of them. And we don't sit around swilling cognac and sneering at anyone else's diplomas; ours are in the basement or something, unframed, just pieces of paper.

I don't think that going to Harvard was the greatest damned thing I ever did in this world, and I know people who are doing a shitload better than I ever will who did NOT go to a big fancy-sounding school. And yeah, the shit ain't perfect. But come on.

shortest, gladdest, most expensive years of life...

Ah, the advantage is to watch silly little "plebes" start whole threads discussing how much they shouldn't care about it.

no, the purpose was to discuss why us "silly little plebes" should not BURN DOWN every ivy league school and exterminate every ivy leaguer (except for those specifically allowed to live).

they don't already?

I think you are forgetting "other Ivy League undergraduates". DO NOT SLEEP ON THE INTERSCHOOL RIVALRIES.

Hail to thee old ivy league
Poison ivy league
The ra-ra boys are sitting round the table tonight
The ra-ra boys have lots of plans in view
They're gonna have panty raids
And make their own lemonade
They'll live it up just like the big boys do

Poison ivy league, boys in that ivy league
Give me an itch, those sons of the rich
That poison ivy league

The ra-ra boys will go to bed so early tonight
Before exams they need a lot of rest
They gotta make good for dad
They gotta make good so bad
They'll even pay someone to take that test

Poison ivy league, boys in that ivy league
How can they flunk, they're so full of bunk
That poison ivy league

The ra-ra boys are being groomed for business some day
For better things to college they were sent
And you can bet they'll be the head of the company
As long as dear old daddy's president

Poison ivy league, boys in that ivy league
So loaded with cash, they give me a rash
That poison ivy league

So let it be told
I won't touch them with a ten foot pole
That poison Ivy league

Hahahaha... er.. that's almost true.

Nobody hates Ivy League undergrads more than Ivy League grad students who applied to, but couldn't get intoafford, Ivy League schools as undergraduates.

I love how Tad thinks my wife and I should die. That's so adorable!

"Oh, do you play football?"
"No, I just think it's important."

Thank god for the ivy league.

--you there! Yes, you! Bomb Iraq again, and make it snappy.

--where's my drink?

As for SATs - exactly where did I say that they mattered. The issue was UT's status as an elite university (to be kept in with the Ivies) - and it's not. One measure is the average SAT score. Avg. Hah-vud score - like 1450-1500. Avg. UT score - 1200 or less. Doesn't necessarily mean anything (other than Hah-vud kids could afford test prep), but that's one of the indications.

How that becomes "dissing low SAT scores" (uh, 1200 is like 200 points above-average), Lord only knows.

Don't be the guy with the one gay friend who isn't going to Hell. Either it's bad or it isn't.

Okay...

Maybe Dartmouth is like that, except it's more country than club, or Princeton or something, I dunno, I only did one road trip my whole four years. But this painting with a broad brush thing, I dunno.

And what the fuck parties did YOU get to go to? Our parties were fueled by beer from kegs and music by Prince. I didn't see anyone doing any coke in four years (my roommate saw that once I think)...shit, I must have been the wrong kind of Ivy Leaguer, a.k.a. Not The Straw Man.

if they had died you would still post about them (and the 70s film shorts they were in) in the obit thread

Given that Lori Loughlin's most prestigious credit was Full House, you may be lil bit off there mook

William H Macy also apparently involved though not named in the complaint.

That seems a very favorable reading of the evidence. But yeah they didn’t have enough to charge him.

when I was a TA at a uni famous for football I taught a class of football players & one guy who literally was "heir to a popular processed-meat company’s fortune" was in the class. he'd been given a football scholarship at this uni, & I don't think he ever played a down in his 4 years. always figured it was this kind of bullshit. one weekend during the class (it was during the summer) this guy flew the whole football team to his dad's mansion in arizona or whatever for a giant party. I think they ate a ton of canned chili.

one thing that's pretty fucked up is it seems like most of these kids had no idea what their parents were doing, so now they have to deal with the possibility that they'll be expelled from the schools they were accepted to, and the ones who aren't at least have to deal with public humiliation at having been accepted illegitimately. And they'll be labeled as cheaters even though with few exceptions they were not privy to the cheating done on their behalf. I do feel bad for most of them. Though not super bad for the Loughlin/Mossimo scion, tbh.

I do think the reporting around this has done a good job of painting the parents as the monsters over the students, with the glaring and well-deserved exception of Loughlin's daughter

well them and this guy:

Son defends parents caught in college admissions scandal while smoking blunt https://t.co/4zD4EdKM5q pic.twitter.com/rYC05uGRdt

— New York Post (@nypost) March 14, 2019

"no idea" is a stretch. many of the shady activities required the kids' participation.

to the extent that they'd have "no idea" that e.g. collaborating with friendly doctors to support a disability diagnosis allowing for extra time or unorthodox proctoring it's bc so many privileged families are doing this already but stopping sort of changing answers or submitting someone else's test.

"son, we need to have a talk. our family has been implicated in a massive college admissions cheating scandal the likes of which have not been publicized in decades, but one where it's theoretically possible the kids can mostly escape blame. so, what I need you to do is go out and be as unsympathetic as humanly possible. do you think you can do that for us?"

omg lol at that dude, wow

xp -- at least for the cases where the proctors changed the kids' scores, I've seen a couple of arguments along the lines of "of course the kids knew when they got a SAT score 400 points higher than the last one," which doesn't make sense to me at all. have people never taken an exam, walked out of the room being utterly convinced they flunked it, and then found out they got an A? or have people never just straight-up guessed on a multiple-choice test and found out they guessed correctly?

The toker, who sports a ponytail and raps under the name “Billa,” then shamelessly plugged his music. “Check out my CD, ‘Cheese and Crackers,’ ” he said of his 2018 five-track rec­ord that includes a song titled “If I Lost My Money.”

xp: Agreed, also some of these kids seem to have been actively studying for these tests, so an improvement in scores would have been interpreted by them as validation that their studying paid off.

Also, if you're a well-connected person at a school like Yale, you are going to have the opportunity to ride the coattails of other well-connected people into ventures with a possible upside of well over six to seven figures.

I will freely admit that I don't really understand the world of 'connections' but I was figuring that:

i) the kids of wealthy celebrities already have a lot of connections by virtue of being the children of celebrities and

ii) the kinds of Yale connections that would lead to starting up or being invited to join seven-figure ventures would still require you to be, idk, pretty good at what you were studying at Yale.

But yeah, clearly not a world I get.

Although now, when I put i) and ii) together, I realize you probably mean that competent go-getters at Ivies may well want to associate themselves with children of the rich and famous because of their names.

I think there are probably very few kids who were not in on it, and I am not going to feel bad about these Richie Riches when this will likely have exactly zero effect on their future life prospects.

xp: ding ding ding

I think they ate a ton of canned chili

thank you for this

i used this story in a class today to talk about financial fraud, it was wild, students have all kinds of shit to say about it

I do think the reporting around this has done a good job of painting the parents as the monsters over the students, with the glaring and well-deserved exception of Loughlin's daughter

j., you can become an influencer on ig --
"shit my students say"

Also had a girl in our shop. She was saying she just finished a year at Oxford. I asked which uni she attended in the US. She was sort of shy saying:"Oh Brown." I replied:"Don't be shy! You should be proud of it." She said she was trembling when she read ab the scam. Dunno if it was bec her parents bought her way into Brown. Lol.

or because she didn't know whether they did!!!

things that cause me to tremble: 1) pondering how they crucified my lord. 2) pondering how they laid him in a tomb. 3) pondering how admittance into Brown University isn't validation of one's life.

Apparently this investigation was kicked off by a finance dude who was under investigation by the SEC for pumping/dumping stock - when caught he flipped on the Yale woman's soccer coach who was taking bribes.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-yale-dad-who-set-off-the-college-admissions-scandal-11552588402

Harvard had $41 billion before the market crash. It would cost them almost nothing to keep paying workers. It should be socialized. https://t.co/Eh020XBbmi

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) March 22, 2020