Reference no: EM132824539
What ethics dilemmas or conflicts of interest do you see in this case for the various stakeholders?
What ethics framework (Utilitarian perspective; Rights perspective; Justice perspective) is the most helpful in understanding this case? Explain.
How did these parents justify their unethical (possibly illegal) actions? How did the college officials (Admissions Directors; Coaches, etc.) justify their actions of taking the bribes?
What can colleges and universities do to prevent these kinds of ethics violations in the future?
College Admissions Scandal
Background
In March 2019 a scandal surfaced about college admissions. In a government investigation that began in 2011, more than thirty wealthy parents were charged with buying entry to a series of selective universities for their academically questionable children.
Among the parents were C.E.O.s, a top lawyer, finance bigwigs, and even two Hollywood actors: Felicity Huffman, of the TV show "Desperate Housewives," and Lori Loughlin, of the TV sitcom "Full House."
The people were wealthy and appeared very comfortable with lying without compunction to get their way, and with throwing around hundreds of thousands of dollars in their quest to buy status for their children. In total, the people arrested were charged with paying bribes of up to $6 million to get their children into top universities like Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and USC in what authorities described as the "largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice," totaling $25 million in bribes.
Along with the indictment, the Department of Justice released a two-hundred-and-four-page affidavit, which contains the facts pertaining to the criminal complaint, including detailed records of communications between the accused parents and William Singer, who ran the scheme.
As the owner of a college-admissions-consulting business in moneyed Newport Beach, California, Singer provided his clients with proctors and test administrators who helped falsify their usually unsuspecting children's SAT and ACT scores, and he bribed college officials to recommend that prospective students be admitted to their institutions as athletes, even though they were nothing of the sort. In 2018, Singer became a witness for the government, and agreed to wear a wire; many of the conversations that are documented in the affidavit were recorded with his knowledge, after he was turned.
Singer, who owns an admissions assistance company, told parents he had built a "side door" into USC and other highly sought-after universities and could help their children walk through.
Loughlin and her husband, the designer Mossimo Giannulli, allegedly paid Singer half a million dollars to help recruit their two daughters to U.S.C. as crew coxswains, though it is doubtful whether either had ever set foot in a rowboat.
Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin and Loughlin's husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, along with dozens of other people are being charged in the criminal case and are also being sued in a civil lawsuit. The people involved were so self-satisfied and secure in their power that they greeted unethical, perhaps felonious proposals with complete nonchalance.
From and ethics perspective this Case has many aspects many stakeholders: the parents who paid the bribes; the college officials who took the bribes; the children who obtained admission through bribes; the students who earned their admission to the schools without cheating, and the businessmen who arranged the test cheating and bribery schemes.