By Lynasi Gapelu 

Reporter

As a struggling child of a single-parent, I am very frustrated with certain privileged members of society as I begin planning for college. Not only do I have to take the ACTs and SATs on my own, pay for college on my own, and pray I’m still emotionally and mentally stable to obtain a college student’s mindset, I must endure in the fact that I may not be able to attend a certain college because spoiled, privileged kids like Olivia Jade may be admitted just to have the “experience of game day” and “partying,” as she said on her YouTube channel. I cry every time. For some students in high school striving to attend their dream college, there are some other advantaged student getting that position just because their parent cheated to get them in.

According to New York Times, dozens of parents have been charged by the FBI with bribery and fraud in the widespread college admission scandal. Prosecutors have identified 58-year-old William Rick Singer as the mastermind behind the scandal which involved many elite schools such as Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, the University of Southern California, and others. Coaches are also under fire as authorities investigate the illegal arrangement to help students cheat on college entrance exams and the recruitment of athletes, despite them not having any athletic ability.

Now let’s discuss my frustration with this specific young scammer, shall we? Not only is Olivia Jade the daughter of a famous actor, Lori Loughlin (Aunt Becky from “Full House” and “Fuller House”), and a designer, Mossimo Giannulli, Olivia is also a “social influencer” with about 2 million subscribers on YouTube and a longtime Instagram partnership with Sephora (not anymore), Olivia Jade had all the financial resources to get into college on her own. She did not need her parents to pay half a million dollars to say that she was on USC’s crew team knowing too well she probably has never rowed a day in her life. Instead, they could have paid a tutor to help Olivia and her lack of academic abilities.

Through my annoyance, I am aware that, in most of these cases, the child was not the one committing the scandal. The parents, coaches, and everyone else who knew about it, deserve to be held accountable. I believe that they should be punished for trying to illegally secure the college bag. Even though they will probably pay a million for bail and still have millions of dollars left over, they should just spend the rest of their money building their own D1 sons and daughters.

Now it’s time for me to drag the corrupt parents. First, let’s imagine you have a son or daughter who is a varsity player for whatever sport at their high school. You are a proud parent because your child obtained that position on their school’s team on their own. You are excited to receive all the pictures of them in action, playing the sport. Now imagine Felicity Huffman, who appeared in Desperate Housewives (ironic), photoshopping her daughter’s face over your child’s face just to make it look like her daughter was good at something other than not getting into college on her own. I’m going to chill on her daughter because I feel bad for her. But as an athlete who spends a great amount of time after school at practice, I cannot imagine all my hard work being stripped by a single photoshopped picture. The audacity. Anyways, Ms. Huffman also paid $15,000 to arrange for cheating on her daughter’s SAT test. Tragic. Huffman, and many others, did own up to their faults and pleaded guilty to the college admissions fraud charges.

I speak for every high school student who doesn’t have the financial resources as the ones above. We are tired of the rich taking advantage of their privilege therefore hurting those who don’t have those opportunities. For all the student-athletes working their hardest to play in college, they deserve those advantages more than those frauds who have never even picked up a ball during a game.