The Crisis Blog

The college admissions scandal is busy racking up fistfuls of guilty pleas of very wealthy, overly-doting parents who were so desperate to get their kids into high profile colleges and universities across the country that they actually bribed school officials and athletic coaches and paid others to take entrance exams for their kids. The amount of money that changed hands in the form of outright bribes and payments to phony test-takers is mind-numbing. Some of the payments (alleged or admitted to) far exceeded the actual cost of four years of college tuition, room and board.

LORI LAUGHLIN (AKA “Aunt Becky”) leaving a Boston courthouse.

It’s like I always say: Rich or poor, it’s nice to have money.

So far, the sentences handed down have been relatively lenient in terms of actual jail time. For example, actress Felicity Huffman, who pleaded guilty to paying $15,000 to have someone correct her daughter’s SAT answers, was sentenced to a mere 14 days in a minimum security prison (she’s now out, having faithfully served her time without a whimper), a $30,000 fine and 250 hours of community service. On the other end of that spectrum – thus far – Napa Valley winemaker Agustin Huneeus, Jr., pleaded guilty to shelling out $300,000 to secure his daughter’s admission to USC as a bogus athlete, and was recently sentenced to five months in prison, a $100,000 fine, and 500 hours of community service. And more recently, former real estate executive Toby MacFarlane pleaded guilty to paying $450,000 to get his son and daughter into USC as star athletic recruits. The boy is 5 feet, 5 inches but was listed on his phony “basketball” stats as 6 feet, 1 inch. The daughter was recruited as a star soccer player even though she never played the sport. She signed her name to a tear-jerking, ghost-written essay that accompanied her college application explaining that because she was so good at soccer, her parents didn’t attend any of her games because of the taunts of other parents. MacFarlane was sentenced to six months in prison, a $150,000 fine and 200 hours of community service.

It would seem that the prosecutors hold all the cards and the quick plea deals signal an urgent desire for the defendants to put their embarrassment and their sins in their rear-view mirrors as quickly as possible. A prolonged and public trial would only serve to further expose the transgressions in a way that would merely highlight a deeply flawed system that clearly rewards the wealthy and the privileged. And yet, a small number of defendants are surprisingly digging in their heels. But, given that the mastermind of this enterprise, Rick Singer, has pleaded guilty and named plenty of names, what sort of possible defense could any defendant mount in the face of such overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing, coupled with a full-throated confession from the ring leader?

O, Ye of limited vision: Allow me to clean your glasses.

Lori Loughlin, better known as Aunt Becky to fans of the old TV show “Full House”, is – along with her designer husband Mossimo Giannulli – accused of paying a half-million dollars(!) to get her internet-famous daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella, into USC as crew team recruits…never mind that the girls have never rowed crew. How do we know this? Because Rick Singer, remember, has confessed to everything. Nevertheless, Aunt Becky has pleaded not guilty and is preparing to go to trial and wage a vigorous defense against Tommy Trojan. With all the charges leveled against her – the feds have recently added charges of conspiring to commit fraud, money laundering and federal program bribery – if convicted at trial, she could be put away for 40 years.

Seriously, is she nuts to roll the dice like this?

Not a chance.

Will she win?

Highly unlikely.

So why is she doing it?

To expose what she (through her high-paid lawyers) will undoubtedly allege and demonstrate is the unfair double standard that has existed sub rosa at schools like USC all across the country for years. And chances are, when her lawyers get done with it, USC will be hugely embarrassed. It’s almost as if Aunt Becky has adopted USC’s athletic mantra: Fight On!

The problem for USC is that the school has no control over its own destiny in this legal quagmire, and cannot dismiss the case even if it wanted to. And I really think it wants to.

That is because Ms. Loughlin and her husband will not actually be going up against USC…directly. This is not a civil trial; it is a criminal trial. The opposition will be Federal prosecutors, not a phalanx of private attorneys. USC is merely going along for the ride, much the same way a helpless hostage taken during a robbery goes along for the ride during the attempted getaway. That never ends well, either. Nevertheless, during the discovery phase of the trial, Ms. Loughlin’s attorneys will undoubtedly demand that the school produce reams and reams of otherwise confidential documents and answer very pointed and revealing deposition questions that will expose what will be alleged is the overall hypocrisy of the school’s admissions process. USC will try to fight this with well-founded objections and well-crafted privacy arguments. But I predict the school will lose this important argument, and therein lies the rub, and the crux of the defense argument.

It’s an open secret that wealthy donors are the engines that make colleges hum. Step onto any campus in this country – any campus – and look at the names on the classroom buildings, the sports arenas, the dormitories, the laboratories, etc. Where do you think that money comes from? Wealthy donors, yes. But more often than not, those donors have been cultivated and groomed over the years by the schools’ “development office.”

So, here are the questions Lori Laughlin’s attorneys will ask USC officials when they get them on the stand or in a deposition: Over the years, how many students have been admitted to the school who were related to, or otherwise had connections to, any of those deep-pocket donors? How long were you “cultivating” Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So as potential donors? At what point did you first discuss “Junior’s” desire to attend USC? And what exactly is the difference between donating a half-million dollars to building a research lab on campus and a half million dollars of a “discretionary” endowment?

Looked at another way, Ms. Loughlin could have most likely simply and more easily approached USC’s always hungry development office and made a contribution to, say, the school’s highly regarded film and media department.

Lawyers for Ms. Loughlin and her husband will argue that what they allegedly did was essentially no different than what other wealthy donors have done. This strategy will put the school in the awkward position of trying to defend the indefensible. What Aunt Becky will be saying, in essence, is how is what I did (or am accused of doing) any different than tapping into the farm team of donors the school has cultivated for years? What is the actual difference? The school gets money and a kid gets admitted.

(This, for anyone keeping score at home, is a quintessential quid pro quo — a well-worn phrase that has been in the news a lot lately).

Will this strategy prevail? I don’t think so…but from Aunt Becky’s perspective, it’s worth a shot. And as I said, if this were a civil trial, I could easily see USC folding and dismissing the complaint rather than having to reveal publicly the names of donors and the amounts of donations.

And finally, we come to the object of Aunt Becky’s affection: her kids, specifically her daughter, Jade — the epitome of deer-in-the-headlights vacuousness if there ever was one. Jade is what is termed an “internet influencer.” She has a heavily trafficked YouTube channel where she promotes various beauty products and other magic elixirs, such as brands of makeup, for buckets of money. At least she did until this crisis broke.

But to me, the most egregious act was her saying in a video that she, herself, posted online from her brand-new USC dorm room just before the crisis broke, and for the benefit of her vast internet audience: "I don't know how much of school I'm going to attend. But I do want the experience of, like, game days, (and) partying. I don't really care about school, as you guys all know."

Would you waste a half-million bucks on a birdbrain like that? Why on earth would anyone post anything like that? A kid that clueless probably shouldn’t be attending college anyway. Oh, and there’s a good chance the kids will be forced to testify against their parents. That could make for an awkward Thanksgiving.

But what about USC? From a crisis management and crisis communications perspective, the school needs to drastically revamp and make bulletproof its admissions procedures and do so publicly. And it’s not just USC: Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, UCLA and others owe it to current, future and even past students to restore confidence and integrity into their respective admissions standards. USC claims to have made certain thus far unannounced changes, but it should do so publicly and pronto. The school also has a rare opportunity to be a leader and exemplar for other schools across the country. (For a full list of individual indictments and schools involved, click here).

Reputations can be burnished or trashed overnight. Back in the 80s, the joke was that USC stood for University of Spoiled Children. The school overcame that sobriquet in time and with much diligence, but with scores of examples of people like Lori Loughlin and her vapid progenies, that old reputation seems to have returned with a vengeance.