Lifetime’s “The College Admission Scandal” Fell Drastically Short
By Alexandria Millet, Culture Staff Writer
The American education system is unequal. It can be seen in school funding formulas, access to advanced placement courses and in the development of new facilities. Most recently the inequalities were exposed for all in “Operation Varsity Blues”, the college admissions scandal that was the epitome of white and rich privilege in the American education system.
In Spring 2019, the investigation revealed 35 wealthy, mostly white, parents paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to inflate their children’s resumes to get into the top universities. And shockingly, or not, Lifetime wasted no time making a movie out of this straight-off-the-press tale.
“The College Admissions Scandal” premiered on Lifetime on October 15, 2019. It starred Penelope Ann Miller, Mia Kirshner and Michael Shank. Names and storylines were altered, but it showed two rich families do all that they could to get their children into college.
Conversations around the actual, real-life scandal chronicled the impact of race, class, access and privilege in college admissions. The movie, however, did not touch on one of these critical subjects adequately and in so, failed their viewers and failed the true victims of overly-zealous rich parents and underserved students who are wrongly rejected.
The film never acknowledged whiteness. It never even mentioned the role that the white identity played in them having access in the first place.
The movie centered around overly eager parents and their desire to see their child succeed. The moviemakers missed a critical opportunity to center it around the privileges they already held. The ignoring of this angle makes the scandal into just another mistake instead of a continued perpetuation of systemic issues.
The access the students had to test prep and private schools is a luxury people from low-income neighborhoods do not have. They were already given a head start by what family they were born into but decided that head start was not sufficient for what they “deserve.”
For example, one of the mothers, Bethany Slade, played by Kirshner, convinces her daughter the manipulation of her application is not inappropriate because kids from low-income neighborhoods will also do all they can do to get the spot. This whole dialogue ignored the fact that her daughter had been given everything on a silver plate already, unlike many low-income families that struggle to keep food on the table, let alone pay for tutors.
The movie victimized these families and urged the viewer to empathize with their perspective, giving them pity because they were caught. Even as this scheme was unraveling, Slade said to her nanny—a woman of color—“Wouldn’t you do the same for your children?” The directors even went to the extent of trying to validate the scandal with the confirmation of a marginalized person.
What attempted to be a humanization of these parents, became victimization of the most privileged in society for taking things they think are indebted to them.
The other mother, Caroline DeVere, played by Miller, says to her son in the climax of him finding out that his parents paid his way into Stanford University: “This was an act of violence against you.”
These are heavy words that were haphazardly put into this scene—not considering the true violence that happens in the erasure of marginalized students in admissions processes.
These parents bought admission in an illegal way—but this doesn’t mean we can ignore the perfectly legal ways of buying students an admission spot in top universities. This simply requires parents sitting on the board, financing a new sports facility or just being a legacy.
Due to this dramatized scandal, college admissions processes are under review nationwide. Fifty people have been indicted for Operation Varsity Blues. One of the most notable names is Emmy-award winning actress Felicity Huffman who will serve a 14-day sentence at a Federal Correctional Institution for being involved in the scandal.
Two weeks in jail for willingly and actively participating in a college admissions scandal that was the epitome white and rich privilege in the American education system.
Lifetime should have never picked up this story if it was unprepared to deal with racism and classism in education that enabled this to happen in the first place. The hardworking and dedicated students whose spots were stolen by kids with rich parents deserved better.