Operation Varsity Blues. That’s the name of a sweeping federal probe into what the Justice Department calls the biggest college admissions scam the agency has ever uncovered. On Tuesday, 50 people, including 13 college coaches, were arrested for taking part in a scheme where wealthy parents paid exorbitant bribes to secure spots for their unqualified children in elite schools, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, UCLA, USC and Wake Forest. Prosecutors have charged 33 parents, including Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. We speak with Ivory Toldson, professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and president of Quality Education for Minorities. His new book is titled No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear About Black People.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Operation Varsity Blues. That’s the name of a sweeping federal probe into what the Justice Department calls the biggest college admissions scam the agency has ever uncovered. On Tuesday, 50 people were arrested, including 13 college coaches, for taking part in a scheme where wealthy parents paid exorbitant bribes to secure spots for their unqualified children in elite schools that included Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, UCLA, University of Southern California and Wake Forest. Prosecutors have charged 33 parents, including Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin; Loughlin’s husband, the fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli; and Bill McGlashan, a founder of TPG Capital, one of the largest private equity investment firms in the world. At the center of the scheme was a man in Newport Beach, California, named Rick Singer, who ran a fraudulent company called the Edge College & Career Network. He promised parents he could get their children into…