Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal on Netflix

TYFYS

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Maybe Singer was recording the phone calls himself before hand?

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When this story broke, there was definitely someone in the administration that had been recording the calls. Do not recall who, or what position they held, but it very well could have bene Singer thinking he was covering his arse, or future blackmail purposes.

Given how conscious and adept singer always was about sidestepping any questions remotely related to the ethics of what he was doing even before the fbi got involved, and how quickly prepared he was to turn informant, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he was recording conversations the whole time to use in exchange for a lighter punishment should he ever get caught.

Thoughts, assuming everything in the documentary is true:

After watching the documentary, I’m still not sure what was done criminally wrong here by the parents outside of claiming the payments as charitable contributions, and everyone knows wealthy people skirt the tax laws as much as possible already anyway.

The whole “they used their wealth to get things they didn’t earn” is a literal fact of life. They use their wealth to put their kids through private schools, fly on private planes, sit courtside at nba games, and do all kinds of other things that non-wealthy people can’t do. Why is this different? And this isn’t even touching on things like affirmative action that, quite literally, prevent better qualified candidates from getting opportunities they did earn by giving preferential treatment to less qualified candidates. The documentary also mentions multiple times the “backdoor option” where families give multi-million dollar gifts to schools and get preferential treatment going forward. Why is nobody upset about that?

The idea that the universities were harmed in all this is fricking absurd. The cost to attend these places is completely absurd and absolutely exploiting students and their families. But now they’re mad that people were able to find and exploit loopholes in their own admissions processes? As the lawyer said towards the end, name another case in history where the “harm” to the “victim” was receiving $770,000.

Does the fact that all of the schools involved in this, or at least mentioned in the documentary are private schools that don’t receive public funding not matter at all?

I know he was portrayed as a sympathetic character, but the sailing coach got absolutely fricked over if it’s true that all of the money from singer went to the sailing program and not in his pockets. The fact that he is now a convicted felon is absurd. And I 100% believe his version of the AD knowing who singer was and what he did. As for the other coaches, outside of not reporting their payments as income I don’t see why they are criminals either. The only thing they are guilty of is exploiting loopholes at their private universities, and that’s between them and their employer.

Admittedly, I went in not knowing much about how this all actually happened but not understanding why it was such a big deal. Now that I know, it seems like a giant waste of resources to punish a bunch of rich people that did very little if anything wrong.

You are pretty much getting at everything I thought after watching it. It was super intriguing but those were my exact thoughts. So you are saying those were Private universities? I didn't know if they were public or private but the fact that they are Private makes whatever happened as far as punishment seem more puzzling.

If you take Federal funds, you are open to Federal regulation and oversight.

The distinction between Public and Private is usually Public universities are land grant and Private have an endowment collected from donors and alumni.