Trump And The GE Cures The Varsity Blues Wednesday May 8th from 7PM to 9PM. The event will take place at at ART/New York – Spaces @520, 520 8th Avenue, 3rd Floor in Manhattan (8th avenue between 37th and 38th streets). Trump And The GE Cures The Varsity Blues will be headlined by John McLaughlin of McLaughlin & Associates. McLaughlin is arguably the top pollster in the country. He predicted President Trump’s victory in 2016 and Obama’s victory in 2008. We are excited to have Mr. McLaughlin back. He will probably have a lot to say about the 2020 presidential election as well.
The elite college admissions scandal – Operation Varsity Blues – has rocked the country and dominated the 24 hour news cycle. Wealthy parents have been accused of paying hefty sums to consultants and “fixers” to help students cheat on college entrance exams, and of bribing coaches and administrators to facilitate kids’ admission by designating them as recruited athletes. Ed Stannard of the New Haven Register referenced Shock Exchange in his coverage of the scandal:
Ralph Baker of Brooklyn, New York, said he predicted a scandal like Varsity Blues in his 2012 book “Shock Exchange: How Inner-City Kids from Brooklyn Predicted the Great Recession and the Pain Ahead.” The book was about a traveling amateur basketball team, the New York Shock Exchange, and Baker’s work to teach them financial literacy.
He said he saw how “the colleges with the biggest endowments, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, they are selling these kids bling, filet mignon three times a day. … One of the colleges had a manservant by a heated pool. That’s what they were selling.” Smaller schools were forced to spend on such amenities as well, he said, driving up tuition.
Baker’s solution is to treat the prestigious schools as for-profit businesses. “If you tax these wealthy colleges, the behavior will stop. They’re acting in a for-profit manner,” he said.
Schools like USC, UCLA, Yale, Texas, Georgetown, Wake Forest and Stanford are embroiled in the scandal. Celebrities like Felicity Huffman, William H. Macy and Lori Loughlin have also been accused of wrongdoing. Some students have filed lawsuits against these schools for depriving them an honest opportunity to attend an elite school.
