What to make of an alleged crime in which all of the participants so disturbingly abdicated their roles to not only society, but, for some, to the very loved ones they were trying to benefit������?
©2019 by Michael Raysses
Reading about the current maelstrom that has erupted in the wake of the revelations of the elite college bribery scandal, I was amazed at how taken aback I was by its utter tawdriness.
Granted, the story had a lot of elements that seem to sell these days: There was celebrity, large amounts of money exchanged, clandestine machinations by all parties concerned, and the glint that our highest institutions of higher education have presented themselves with. So why would a single man with no kids of his own be so offended, and dare I say, perplexed?
In short, because it is situation in which almost all of the relevant parties were abjectly not only missing in action, but were intentionally acting contrary to the interests of every party they were charged to hold near and dear. But allow me some back story...
Back in the aughts, I had a part-time job as a freelance writing instructor, working for a business that consulted with parents and their kids with the express purpose of helping them get into the best college they could. I didn't interact directly with the parents; that responsibility fell to my boss. She would meet with them and the client-student, going over strategy and choice of college, as well.
When it came time for me to enter the picture, I would receive a copy of the kid's essays for their entrance application. I would proof it for grammar and punctuation, and then make notes on substance. These entailed a lot of direct communication, back and forth, with the student. And there were admittedly times when I could see the potential for an abuse of process wherein my efforts would predominate to the exclusion of the student's, all because they were either unwilling or incapable of making progress. When those situations arose, I always alerted my boss, so that she could tell me exactly how to proceed. Almost without exception, she directed me to proceed in a fashion that illuminated the student's road without walking it myself.
That is, until one of the last jobs I performed.
I was told we had a special assignment, one in which I had to physically go to the client's house to consult with the child in question. I would be paid double my standard rate. Their home was in a most exclusive part of the toniest part of Beverly Hills. It was opulent beyond words. (The student's father was a studio CEO of such magnitude that even I knew who he was.)
When I arrived, I was escorted into the kitchen by a maid, and told to wait for the student. Maybe fifteen minutes passed, when in walked a young lady whose eyes shocked me--they were blank, lifeless, emitting no light. I introduced myself, and instantly was reminded me of the scene in "The Exorcist" where the young, skeptical priest meets the girl who is allegedly demonically possessed. Upon getting an instant sense of her, the priest shudders with the initial quake of realizing his own doubt. I felt that same shudder.
Adjusting to the wave of smells she presented, an olfactory cocktail of drug-induced sweat, desperation, and indifference so thick it was palpable, I tried to coax her out of the stupor she called home. My hope was that she would somehow meet me on the pages of what was to be her essays. I would have had better luck trying to get a cow to walk down stairs. There was no trick I could pull to get her to budge, no truth I could proffer to move her to react. All of this ultimately made me really both sad and angry. Here was this child who moved me to want to call 911, living on the highest rung of the most extragavant ladder, surrounded by people who allegedly loved her, yet no one seemed disturbed by the vision of this emotionally abandoned waif.
When it came time to tell my boss about how things went, I confessed to making no progress. She suggested that I might want to leave a draft of the essay in question, one I would write, as an example of what needed to be done. This seemed unreasonable on a couple of fronts, not the least of which was that it left the door open for the kid to just copy my essay and submit it as her own. I ended up leaving some bullet points to consider in any future attempt, but knew that in all likelihood there would be no such try.
It's against that backdrop that I read of the scenario that has resulted in all of this laser-like interest in the criminal behavior of so many people we don't ever see as potential crooks. Celebrities, moms. coaches, it's a who's-who of people you don't think about when you think of naked criminality. Yet there they are. And each and every one of them has done the gravest disservice to the very people they are there to serve and love. The man at the center of the enterprise has exposed himself as nothing but a 21st-century grifter of the lowest order. But the administrators and the coaches have all disraced the institutions they represented, bodies that they had a vested interest in carrying on the proud traditions those schools claim to have been built upon.
But the worst of the lot are the parents of the kids who abandoned all hope and love and reason in the name of getting their kid into a college they couldn't qualify for own their own. I get how for a twisted instant a parent would think that doing something like this was the ultimate expression of sacrifice and caring, but it is precisely its exact opposite. For the rest of those kids' lives, they will be haunted by not only the very public perception that they were failures, they were inadequate, to such an extent that their parents had to pay for their place in a school where everyone else earned the right to be there. I can't imagine the amount of therapy that is going to undo that damage.
On a personal note, I discovered today that one of the people indicted is a regular guest of mine at the restaurant where I work. I have waited on her and the very children she sought to have placed against the law. I probably won't see this person for a while, which is fine with me. I don't want to greet her, ask her how she's doing, when I know however she's doing, she's not doing well. I have thought a lot about what I would say, beyond the banal, should the need arise. This is what I would express:
"I am sorry for your lapse in judgment. I can't imagine the pain it has brought you. I know you're a good person, and I am hoping that person will return and stand by you, in this time of unspeakable challenge."
Of course I probably won't have to say that. But it is most definitely what I feel. And as inadequate as they may sound, at least those feelings and words are my own; they weren't written by someone else to make up for whatever shortcomings I may have as a writer.
And that's what kills me about the crime these parents have committed. I know they will be prosecuted for their crimes against us, the citizens of this country. But the real offense, one they will pay hell to atone for, is the crime they have inflicted on their own kids: it's character assassination by sabotage. And the penalty for this specific misdeed?
Life, in a prison of your own making.
