We almost made it a whole semester without a scandal. We were so close. We made it all the way to April. We Hillaried it. We had it until the last possible minute, and then someone in Washington screwed us. Someone found out that the children of wealthy parents were flagged for preferential treatment and possible acceptance if they did not get in on merit alone.
You can just tell students are shocked by the revelations in the Washington Post piece. My weird friend in Brown College, who claims to possess psychic powers a la “That’s So Raven,” was just blindsided when they heard the news. Rich people got preference in their college applications, just like in the rest of their lives! Who could have possibly predicted that an administration currently in the midst of fellating the ego of every doctor, lawyer and businessman in the hemisphere for a multibillion-dollar pledge drive would have possibly remotely considered a giving preferential treatment to rich applicants? It’s unheard of. Unfathomable. Unthinkable. Unbearable.
I’m honestly tired of our administration screwing up or, at the very least, getting caught screwing up. I get it, humans make mistakes, and that’s okay. Administrators are human and humans aren’t perfect, we aren’t dogs or Joe Biden. Imperfection is acceptable but please at least try to cultivate an air of secrecy when you’re doing something you know is wrong. Be more like the hundreds of students committing honor offenses and have the decency to bury evidence of your crimes, don’t let them end up in a newspaper. It just leads to a harder job hunt for every third- and fourth-year desperately clawing around the Mad Max-esque post-payment employment landscape.
This whole episode is just boring. At the very least, the scandal could have been sexier, but even expecting a better scandal is too much for this school. This was as tedious and dull as the “slush fund” story. Why couldn’t the revelations have been something truly shocking? I would have taken an expose revealing a secret nuclear missile silo beneath the Rotunda over another financial scandal any day of the week. Maybe the Sevens all have tattoos of each other’s faces on their butts. Maybe T-Sully has a secret life as a polyamorous cannibal. Maybe there’s a secret Ghostbusters CIO that chases Jefferson’s ghost around grounds. Maybe the IMPs actually worship Satan. We will never know because these papers keep reporting on the boring crap and not even bothering to investigate all of the insane secret stuff that could be happening beneath our noses.
The student response to this has been comically predictable. Every Facebook post author loudly and proudly stating that college admissions should be based upon merit not money, what do you think you’re accomplishing? I mean, you could similarly ask me what I hope to accomplish writing a piece about you writing pieces, but I’m a clown who doesn’t take himself seriously and you all think you’re actually impacting this nihilistically immutable school, so who’s the real winner?
Anyway, back to your content: say something new. The New York Times opinion section isn’t arguing controversial claims like “poor people should be made less poor,” or “people should stop killing one another” or “the KFC Double Down tastes really good if you have consumed enough alcohol.” Scientists don’t publish studies confirming that the sky is, in fact, blue and my ex-girlfriends don’t publish academic papers confirming that I, in fact, am not always the best boyfriend. A pastor shouting a sermon through a megaphone in a church filled with evangelical gospel singers would be preaching to the choir less than you are.
Now I’m going to beg. I’m not proud of it, but it needs to happen and I’m the only one with low enough self esteem.
To The Washington Post, Rolling Stone and any other national publication, please stop writing about my school. Please? Pretty please? I know this is kind of the equivalent of praying to an unmerciful and unfeeling god, as you all will likely continue to write any and all news, no matter how unfavorable and regardless of how much I plead, but come on. Throw me a bone here. Even Moses got out of the desert eventually. We already have to deal with all the bad stuff you’re reporting about. Rape culture, the preferential treatment of the wealthy, underage alcoholism and administrative incompetence are all our lived in realities. Cut us some slack and go report on another school. I would suggest Virginia Tech, I’m sure their agricultural program has at least one aspiring pot farmer.
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