Senators are taking fresh aim at legacy and donor preferences for admission to college, as advantages given to certain students and groups come under increasing scrutiny following a recent Supreme Court ruling striking down the use of race in college admissions. A bill introduced Tuesday by Sens. Todd Young (R., Ind.) and Tim Kaine (D., Va.)—called the MERIT Act—would try to end legacy admissions at colleges and universities. The bipartisan legislation would add a new standard for accreditation under the Higher Education Act that would prohibit institutions from giving preferential treatment during the admissions process based on an applicant’s relationship to alumni or donors.

Interest in the legal basis for legacy admissions picked up right after SCOTUS dropped SFFA v. Harvard. Besides noticing that affirmative action was still good enough for the military to use to decide who gets to be eligible to die for country, people also noticed that legacy admissions — which is basically affirmative action for wealthy white people — was still in play. For a people whose mythic discourse often evokes themes of individualism and meritocracy, I find it hard to see getting rid of legacy admissions as anything other than a deeply American decision to step away from the long history of quasi-nepotism baked in to our institutions.

“America is a land of opportunity, not a land of aristocracy,” Young said. “Legacy admissions restrict opportunities for many bright and talented young Americans and provide unmerited advantage to the most connected individuals in our society.”

Don’t feel too bad for the legacy families that will be affected if this passes, though. I get the feeling that their kids will be just fine with the tutors and secretive donation bribes that totally never happen at these sorts of schools. Looking at you, Lori Loughlin.

Capitol Hill Targets Legacy Preferences for College Admissions [WSJ]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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But Henriquez did go to prison, as did former PIMCO CEO Douglas Hodge, former TPG Growth founder Bill McGlashan, former Wilkie Farr co-chairman Gordon Caplan, and of course Felicity Huffman, Aunt Becky and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli. We’re sure none of them wanted to go, and that none of them liked it one bit. But none of them served more than nine months in prison. In spite of not only not getting the low end of the range but the very highest, Henriquez appears to have spent less than three months in the pokey.

Which brings us to private-equity executive John Wilson. He opted not to grovel before court and prosecutor, and, well….

Mr. Abdelaziz and Mr. Wilson were both convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and fraud; Mr. Wilson alone was found guilty of additional fraud and bribery charges and of filing a false tax return for taking a deduction for a payment that the government called a bribe.

They face up to 20 years in prison on the most serious charges. But experts said that under the sentencing guidelines they would get far less, perhaps less than three years for Mr. Abdelaziz and less than five years for Mr. Wilson.

However much Wilson has convinced himself that he’s a victim for paying $1.2 million in bribes to get his kids into Harvard, Stanford and USC—and we have no doubt that he, like many rich and privileged white people, has a near-limitless capacity for baseless self-pity and grievance—surely spending a few months in a white-collar federal resort is preferable to a few years. Even a private-equity executive ought to be able to do that math. Instead he stands as a stark lesson to the 10 remaining defendants in Operation Varsity Blues cases, and most especially those proud parents set to stand trial themselves next year: Take your chances with a jury at your own risk.

The verdict was a swift, resounding victory for the prosecution. The jury came into the courtroom a little after 2:30 p.m. Friday, just more than 24 hours after it began deliberating. The court clerk read the verdict form, pronouncing each man’s name and a separate “guilty” verdict, over and over again, five times for the charges they had in common, and another six times for Mr. Wilson, a crushing pile of guiltys.

2 Parents Are Convicted in the Varsity Blues Admissions Trial [NYT]

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The payments were “legitimate donations, in order to assist with (but not guarantee) the admission of his very qualified children to their preferred universities....”

Of course, when $1.5 million of your $1.7 million in targeted educational philanthropy goes not to Harvard and Stanford, but to USC, where being a pretty good polo player would suffice to get you in, some might be suspicious. And, indeed, as you might have deduced from the fact that we’re writing about it, some did, and some of those people were FBI agents and federal prosecutors. They also thought it strange that the “legitimate donations” went through a man Wilson calls a “highly reputable college admissions counselor,” Rick Singer, who the authorities call the mastermind of a college admissions and testing scam and also a cooperating witness.

Unlike his similarly-situated peers like former PIMCO CEO Douglas Hodge and former hedge fund manager Manuel Henriquez, Wilson has not taken the easy way out and pleaded guilty. No, no: Those were honest gifts paid through someone he thought was an honest man and his kids didn’t really need the help anyway. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

Still, facing trial on charges that could send him to prison until he’s in his 80s—and that did, in fact, send the more cooperative Hodge and Henriquez to prison, albeit for months rather than decades—you’d think Wilson would be singularly focused on his defense. But as with the thought of having done enough raising three great kids that any college would be lucky to have, no: Wilson is opening a second legal battle, this time with Netflix, producer of a new and very popular documentary on the amazing Operation Varsity Blues scandal.

“They [the Wilson family] have been forced to endure the ultimate destruction of their reputations in the eyes of more than 200 million global Netflix subscribers,” wrote family attorney Howard Cooper of the 100-minute film that began streaming March 17.

Prior to the movie’s release, Wilson allegedly warned Netflix in writing and provided “publicly available and fully exculpatory facts,” insisting that he and his family shouldn’t “simply be grouped into a narrative” with co-defendants who have pleaded guilty….

Wilson says he even supplied Netflix with the results of a two-day polygraph test to show his innocence.

“Yet, Netflix and the other defendants knowingly and recklessly ignored those facts and painted the Wilsons with the broadest and dirtiest brush possible,” Cooper wrote.

Indeed, John, Netflix did have access to the publicly available evidence, the same ones that prosecutors are hoping to send you to prison on, and like those prosecutors they apparently didn’t think much of your “fully exculpatory facts” in the face of that evidence, specifically the e-mails you allegedly sent to Singer that make those donations sound a lot less legitimate (and your son a lot less like Olympic material).

In 2013, Wilson e-mailed the witness to “confirm for which schools is side door option really viable,” according to the complaint.

The witness explained [USC polo coach] “Jovan Vavic is giving me one boys slot and as of yet no one has stepped up to commit…”

Also that year, Wilson e-mailed the witness and asked, “Would the other kids know my son was a bench warmer, side door person… Obviously his skill level may be below the other freshmen. In your view will he be so weak as to be a clear misfit at practice etc?”

The dad was told his son would not be expected to play water polo for USC, the transcript said.

Also in 2013, Wilson inquired about the timing of his payments to Vavic to secure his son’s admission.

Wilson wrote: “What does Jovan need… do I make the first payment to u then…also let me know when and where to wire money.”

Dad sues Netflix over college admissions scandal documentary [N.Y. Post]

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If only U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton—last seen shipping former PIMCO CEO Douglas Hodge up the river for nine months—were as amenable to such wheeling and dealing.

A federal judge in Boston sentenced Manuel Henriquez, the founder and former chief executive of specialty finance company Hercules Capital Inc., on Wednesday to six months in prison for his role in the Varsity Blues college-admissions cheating scandal….

The sentence exceeds the five month recommendation from prosecutors. Mr. Henriquez’s attorneys had urged the judge to give him a sentence at the low end of the zero-to-six-months range.

In asking for a lighter sentence, his lawyers noted unspecified health issues and concerns about placing him in a prison setting as the coronavirus pandemic rages across the country and in correctional facilities.

Silicon Valley Parent Sentenced to Six Months in Prison in College-Admissions Scandal [WSJ]

The former head of asset management firm Pimco was sentenced on Friday to nine months in prison for his part in a scheme in which privileged parents paid bribes to get their children into U.S. colleges, federal prosecutors said.

Douglas Hodge, who retired as chief executive of Allianz SE’s California-based Pimco in 2016, also was sentenced to two years of supervised release, a $750,000 fine and 500 hours of community service, a spokeswoman for Boston U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in an email.

We’d ask if it was worth it, but the answer is obvious, and not just because it was USC. But what’s perhaps most amazing in the whole thing is which of the schools it was hardest to bribe a child’s way into. Here’s a hint: It’s the one with the 50%-plus acceptance rate and an endowment almost too negligible to speak of.

He tried and failed to offer bribes to get a fifth child into Loyola Marymount University, they said.

Former Pimco CEO sentenced to nine months in prison for US college admissions scam [CNBC]

Now, one of the things we’ve loved most about Operation Varsity Blues, even more than seeing entitled Hollywood types going to prison, has been those parents’ idea of what constitutes an elite college worth spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for the right to spend hundreds of thousands of further dollars so their kids can continue not studying or working hard. Sure, a handful sought your Harvards, Yales and Stanfords. But most of them seem to have thought that a USC degree is the sort of thing that would impress someone.

Manuel Henriquez was under no such illusions: After all, he allegedly paid through the nose to get his daughter into Georgetown. But if other parents were willing to pay top dollar for an acceptance letter from some third-rate school like the University of San Diego, as Singer knew they were, perhaps the two could cut a little deal?

In 2017, the indictment said, the couple paid Singer at least $25,000 to pad their younger daughter’s SAT and ACT scores.

The tab for that scam was initially set at $75,000, but Singer told investigators that “in lieu of paying for the cheating, MANUEL HENRIQUEZ agreed to use his influence at Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts — where he is an alumnus and former member of the Northeastern University Corporation, one of the university’s governing bodies — to help [Singer] secure the admission of an applicant to that school.”

This allegedly worked out even better for Singer than for Henriquez. The latter may have saved $50K, but the former allegedly conned some suckers into paying him $250,000 to get their kid into freakin’ Northeastern.

Former hedge fund boss to plead guilty in college admissions scam [Boston Globe]

And thanks to the WSJ, we now know how right we were: 

The original tipster who led federal authorities to the biggest college-admissions scam they’ve ever prosecuted was Morrie Tobin, a Los Angeles resident who was being investigated in a securities fraud case, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Mr. Tobin was being questioned in an alleged pump-and-dump investment scheme—in which people conspire to inflate the price of a stock so they can sell it at a profit—when he offered a tip to federal authorities in an effort to obtain leniency, according to people familiar with the matter.

Looking at the SEC paperwork about Tobin, it gets even more predictable sad and dumb:

And now we also know how a Newport Beach-centric fraud came to be in the hands of Boston feds. We never bought the whole "Because we can handle it," routine [it was way too Boston] so it's comforting to know that a dumb criminal not nabbed over his head and in a panic blurted out "I bribed my dumb daughter into Yale!" when pressured if he had anything to trade.

This is all so perfect and terrible at once. Hooray!

The Yale Dad Who Set Off the College-Admissions Scandal [WSJ]

It's not easy thinking about the institutionalized lack of fairness throughout American society, or confront the reality that elitism and wealth are symbiotically protective phenomena built on exclusion and craven self-preservation. And it was galling for all of us to realize that those precious few people walking around with degrees from the most elite schools might not, in fact, be as special nor innately valuable as we had sheepishly assumed them to be. In some ways, it was enough to make us rethink the world order, and call for a reckoning of the existent power structure.

Luckily, a true standard bearer of the power elite made a canny decision to quell the uprising:

Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon '84 and Thomas Tull '92, chairman and CEO of Pittsburgh-based investment-holding company Tulco, will discuss how emerging technologies are revolutionizing today's businesses in a special program at Hamilton College.

The moderated discussion, titled "Driving Innovation and Entrepreneurship with Technology," will take place on Tuesday, March 12, at 7 p.m., in Wellin Hall at Hamilton, where Solomon and Tull are both alumni and trustees. The free event is open to students, faculty, and the general public.

Yes, thank you, DJ D-Sol. With these United States primed for a future in which graduates of state schools took to the barricades driven by bloodlust for their Ivy League suzerains, the head of the company most synonymous with wealth and privilege appeared at his own alma mater to prove that the link between an elite education and future success is not an exact science. One can, still, succeed if their parents fail to grease the wheels and get them admitted to the kind of top-flight college that educates the world's true ruling class.

You have our respect and admiration, David Solomon. You have changed the conversation for the better, and you might have saved America.

Now get your second-in-command, Goldman COO and President John Waldron to follow your lead and give an interview at his own embarrassing alma mater.

Goldman Sachs' David Solomon at Hamilton College [Yahoo Finance]

It's very embarrassing and dumb, and the press is eating it up because two of the people named are vaguely famous Hollywood actresses: Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. But we were also intrigued because when a bunch of people are using their money and influence to buy status for their children, we assume that finance people MUST be involved. 

And, oh, are they...

The biggest finance name caught up in "Operation Varsity Blues" appears to be former PIMCO CEO Doug Hodge. Well, it's almost certainly him:

Yikes. But the part of this that really grabbed our eye was how bad Doug Hodge is at doing a criminal conspiracy:

Um, Doug? You do have to talk in code. You're doing a fraud.

JFC, you'd think a guy who spent that much time with Bill Gross would know how to bullshit properly.

But Hodge isn't alone. Another bold finance name in the complaint is TPG Capital's Bill McGlashan:

McGlashan, who runs TPG's growth fund and is CEO of the non-profit of The Rise Fund that he started with his buddy Bono, is a guy that knows how to produce a good investment. Just look:

And McGlashan was smart enough to not just stop at pretending his kid was a kicker on a nonexistent team, he got INTO it:

We are combing through to find anyone else involved but feel free to look for yourself. The complaint is quite a read.