Harvard lawsuit, SAT, Rick Singer...where will affirmative action strike next?
In addition to helping children of celebrities cheat on their SAT, college consultant Rick Singer is accused of urging parents to falsify the ethnicities of students so that they would be more eligible to receive affirmative action in the college admission process.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Rosen described one of Singer’s ploys as “lying about students’ ethnicities and other biographical information in an attempt to take advantage of perceived benefits from affirmative action and other programs,” according to the New York Post.
Singer would allegedly advise students to lie about their race. He has pleaded guilty to racketeering, money laundering, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice, USA Today reported.
[RELATED: DOJ not buying Harvard’s defense in affirmative action case]
For example, he would instruct rich white parents to list their children’s race as black, Hispanic or Native American on college applications, reported The Daily Mail. He would tell his clients that if they did not list their children as racial minorities, the children would be at a “competitive disadvantage.”
This allegation against Singer comes amid other news items pertaining to affirmative action.
Harvard University is embroiled in a lawsuit in which plaintiffs claim that the school has discriminated against Asian American applicants.
Additionally, the College Board, which operates the SAT exam, recently introduced an “adversity score,” which evaluates the crime rate of the student’s neighborhood, whether they live in a single-parent household, and other factors. The score is only visible to the College Board and colleges to which students apply.
[RELATED: WSJ: SAT set to assign ‘adversity scores’]
Campus Reform spoke with Dion J. Pierre, a research associate at the conservative nonprofit National Association of Scholars, about the allegation against Singer of urging others to falsify ethnicity.
“Mr. Singer’s actions exemplified the pernicious effect of racial preferences on the college admissions process,” Pierre said. “That certain racial categories have an edge over white and Asian American students is an open secret in higher education. We shouldn’t be surprised that unscrupulous characters like Mr. Singer encouraged the children of woke Hollywood actors and Wall Street fat cats to exploit the system.”
The NAS researcher claimed that each year, millions of dollars worth of grants, scholarships, and other items are awarded to applicants solely because of their skin color.
[RELATED: New report SLAMS Ivy League over ‘neo-segregation’]
“Repairing the breach between the races in this century will largely depend on our ability to purge practices like these from American higher education and anywhere else they undermine our national unity by placing an undue value on race,” Pierre told Campus Reform.
The nationwide college admissions scandal has implicated high profile celebrities, including Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @conservative013
