Bribery in College
Admissions
Americans believe
that our country is a meritocracy. Each person reaches the level in
society that corresponds to their particular accomplishments. In a
meritocracy no one gets ahead because they are rich, because their
parents are famous, or because their relatives are wealthy and
powerful. But along comes the college admissions scandal where people
spent very large amounts of money to get their children into decent
colleges even though the youngsters did not qualify to attend those
institutions. College admissions are not a meritocracy.
These bribery
cases have produced an enormous uproar because they show very clearly
that those who believe that they live in a meritocracy are just
fooling themselves. They are, of course, also denying the grim facts
of American life where the color of your skin has a lot more to do
with where you end up in society than your hard work and abilities.
Native Americans, Hispanics, African-Americans and many other groups
most definitely do not live in a meritocracy. Neither--the college
admissions scandal shows--do whites.
It is important to
repeat this well-known fact simply because so many people are taken
in by the drumbeat of propaganda that claims that all it takes to
succeed in America is hard work. That's clearly false and this
scandal is just one more piece of evidence.
But the scandal
conveys other messages about our culture which deserve closer
attention. Ask yourself: what were these parents trying to do? Their
children seemed, on the whole, not interested in being educated.
Their high school performance had been mediocre or worse. And they
were apparently not interested in learning. Learning requires effort.
Without effort and work a good education is out of reach. Getting
into a good school will not provide you with a good education if you
are not prepared to work in your classes. So what were the parents
willing to spend half a million for? They were trying to build the
brand of their hapless children, to burnish their façade and make
them appear what in fact they were not. They were launching their
offspring into a world where appearances counted for everything and
reality was constantly asking to be reconstructed, reinterpreted and
even reinvented.
"Meritocracy
does not exist" these parents tell their children. To get ahead
you need to have a record that appears impressive because, for
instance, you went to Harvard or Stanford – and hopefully managed
to graduate. The fact that you cheated your way into these schools
when your parents paid bribes to the soccer coach is of no importance
as long as it remains a secret. You do not need to be competent; you
only need to have a record that suggests competence and that record
is for sale. Integrity, trustworthiness are of no importance. No one
cares, or should care about being honest and decent. The only thing
that matters is the appearance you managed to create.
None of this would
be of any importance if the dishonesty were the failure of a small
number of people, the few bad apples in the large barrel of honorable
and upstanding Americans. But that is unfortunately not what this
scandal represents. Valuing appearances, what you look like more than
what you really are, is a significant theme in our culture. Many
politicians are quite shameless in presenting themselves as very
different kinds of people to different groups of voters. If you write
a letter to an elected official you are more likely than not to
receive a reply protesting the officials' total agreement with you
regardless of what it is you had written.
Important persons
in public life have someone who speaks for them. Their job is to make
that employer look good and to increase their popularity. If in the
course of this effort, the spokesperson misrepresents the truth, no
one is surprised or outraged. The standing of persons in public life
is not affected by their moral integrity or that of the people who
speak for them.
Making one's
clients look good regardless of what kinds of persons they are is a
lucrative profession in the United States. According to one of the
associations of public relations practitioners “At its core, public
relations is about influencing, engaging and building a relationship
with key stakeholders across a myriad of platforms in order to shape
and frame the public perception of an organization.” You can make a
living in our country by making people appear competent who are not
and make officials appear reliable who are actually quite dishonest.
Looking good is what matters. Being good is much less important.
The college
admissions scandal shows what that attitude leads to. Public life
becomes an intricate game of deception. At issue is always how many
people you can deceive into trusting , into believing that you have
their interest at heart while, in fact, all you care about is getting
elected to the next higher office, keeping your name in front of the
public, promoting your brand.
Public life,
politics, affects the quality of life of many citizens in so far as
it provides, or takes away, their chance to get a decent education,
to have good health care available, to keep a roof over their head,
and food in their kitchens. In the interest of appearing as champions
of law and order, politicians, for instance, neglect the prisons
under their control and force prisoners to live under inhumane
conditions. Children go hungry so that politicians can show that they
value hard work and do not give away tax payers money to "welfare
cheats."
Playing the game
of appearances, our leaders not only perpetuate immorality but they
play cruel games with the lives of the citizens they pretend to value
and care for. The college admissions scandal is a reminder of the
pervasive corruption of public life.
