Image Credit: Yale Daily News
1. Pleading Guilty
Women’s football coach Rudy Meredith has been charged with accepting a $400,000 bribe to fraudulently mark a non-athletic student as a recruit, prosecutors say. Meredith has pleaded guilty to these charges. Meredith is one of the 50 individuals included in this investigation.
Image Credit: Yale Daily News
2. The Fallout
The former coach, who resigned last November, was ordered to forfeit a total of $866,000. The Ivy League university was targeted in the scheme along with other elite universities like Stanford and Georgetown, allegedly organized by mastermind Rick Singer.
Image Credit: ABC News
3. What Happened?
According to court documents, Meredith received a copy of the student’s CV around November 2017, noting he would fraudulently revise the applicant’s art portfolio to “soccer.” Mr.Meredith would later mark the applicant as a recruit despite knowing the student did not play competitive soccer.
Image Credit: RapphaHannockUnitedWay.com
4. The Charges
The charges brought against Meredith are for racketeering. Racketeering is defined as “dishonest and fraudulent business dealings” by the Meriam-Webster dictionary. Racketeers offer a deceitful service to fix a problem that otherwise wouldn’t exist. The term derives from the word racket, a criminal activity that cheats individuals out of their money.
We’ve all heard the news about the scandals involving college admissions. Whether these students will be able to remain in their colleges is still unknown and is being treated as a case by case basis. Why is this such a big deal? Students work hard to get into good schools and work even harder to maintain being in said schools. At the end of the day, who is this doctor you want to see? The doctor who paid his way through medical school or the doctor who put in the work to get where he’s at today? The answer is an easy one. Hopefully these educational institutions will remain respected and revered places.