Actresses Charged in College Admissions Cheating Scandal

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Samantha Valdez, Opinion Editor

Cheat. Bribe. Lie.  Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, along with 50 others, are charged with what has been named the nation’s biggest cheating scandal. Among those 50 people there are prestigious school coaches, exam administrators, and CEO’s. Celebrities would pay William Singer, who acted as a middle man for an organization named The Key. The organization was just a sham that helps place kids who aren’t qualified for big colleges into big colleges. The Key could use one of two methods: first was helping the kids cheat on the ACT tests, either the exam administrator would give them the answers or they would look the other way as they cheated. If they did not want that method they could chose to generate fake sports credentials, then college coaches would step in and help place them on their roster.

Singer referred to his organizations method as the ‘Side Door’ way to big colleges. It is estimated that parents paid Singer between $250,000 and $400,000 per child. Also parents could have paid $15,000 to $75,000 for someone to go over the child’s test afterwards and change answers in order to bring up their ACT scores. The coaches were bribed by Singer and they were instructed to act like students were actually highly sought athletes in the sports they coached, and placing the kids names in their “wanted athletes” roster even if they never had played the sport. Also kid’s social medias were fixed to look like the kid was in fact the prestigious athlete colleges wanted, pulling pictures of real athletes off the internet and photo shopping the kids’ faces on them was also a step The Key took to ensure enrollment.

Felicity Huffman is now on a $250,000 bail, but is now restricted on her travel across the U.S. She is accused of paying Singer 15,000 dollars to help her daughter get a better SAT score. Lori Loughlin is accused of paying 500,000 dollars to Singer to have her daughters placed on a crew team recruit for The University of Southern California. The court is deciding whether or not children will be charged as well. This investigation is ongoing.