If you’re a new reader to the blog, welcome to Tantrum Tuesday! On Tuesday I pick a topic that pisses me off and, well, I throw a tantrum about it.

Engineering Our Social Vehicles

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2022-07-06 19:30:08

If you’re a new reader to the blog, welcome to Tantrum Tuesday! On Tuesday I pick a topic that pisses me off and, well, I throw a tantrum about it. Today, we’re going to talk about how our society has a very nontraditional sort of moral relativism: one based on cold hard cash.

In 2019 a college admissions scandal broke news in America, the code name for the investigation into the scandal was “ Operation Varsity Blues.”

Varsity blues tracked a college admissions coach who had formed a cabal with several athletic coaches of obscure sports at top universities to sell a “side door” to guaranteed admission via falsified athletic excellence.

Why was this called a “side door” and not a “back door?” Because there was already a backdoor, and it’s perfectly legal to use: large donations to university development funds. The price of the side door is off by a magnitude from the price of the back door. If you wanted to buy your child back-door admission into an Ivy the price tag starts in the tens of millions and goes up. The side door, however, started in the 500k-1 million range.

When the story broke, people were outraged. Implicated students and coaches received death threats despite the decades-long open secret of the back door. Harvard maintains special interest lists “Dean’s Interest List” and “Director’s List” during the admissions process which noted applicants from 1-.1% families who were likely to give generously to the endowment.

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