Operation Varsity Blues

Ever since news of the college admissions scandal Operation Varsity Blues broke, attention has turned to the parents and the idea of “lawnmower parents” or “snowplow parents” has entered mainstream media. Lawnmower parents “mow down” obstacles their children experience, making success easy, failure impossible, and claiming credit from the child. Yet the generation who is actually being affected – the “kids” as the media calls them, even though they are all over 18 – are being ignored.

It’s only parents who are being charged, since it is only the parents who are acting out, stated the Washington Post. Parents even went to extreme lengths to make sure their children never found out the accomplishments were not theirs. One parent paid someone to take their child’s test, then faked proctoring their own kid’s test so the son would believe the test score was his own. Not only is this completely immoral, but what message are they conveying to their young adult son or daughter? What kind of psychological and social damage is this causing?

For the number of articles giving advice on “How not to be a lawnmower parent” there are astoundingly few pieces helping children stand up to their lawnmower parents. The media focus has taken the solution out of young adult’s hands, who are often the victims of these schemes and recipients of the social humiliation, and gone right into the parents’. These students’ earned merit is completely washed away by their parent’s overinvolvement, and with no way to empower themselves the message from the media echoes that of their own parents: We don’t trust you to handle any situation yourselves.

“Parents who game the system are telling their children that they can’t achieve something on their own,” Erica Komisar, psychoanalyst, wrote in The Wall Street Journal article The Sickness Behind the College Scandal.

“When parents use their money or influence to get their kid into an elite institution without considering whether it’s the right social or academic environment for the child, it may be because they’re more concerned about their own status than the child’s well-being and success. It can give youngsters a sense of entitlement rather than accomplishment,” said Komisar, who is currently writing a book on raising an adolescent in the age of anxiety.

In response to the scandal, The Wall Street Journal published an article with the apt title: “Remember, it’s their college years, not yours” where they argue that so much of the pressure college students feel comes from their parent’s projection and desire to live vicariously through their children. Their children’s success is compensation for a parent’s failure or disappointment; i.e., my child must get into an Ivy league school because I didn’t.

What’s even worse is that this suggests that offspring are just a continuation of the parent’s narrative, rather than individual, separate beings with dreams, goals, and flaws of their own.

It’s one thing to teach your children how to learn from your mistakes, and to help guide them in the direction they wish to sail. It’s another to completely lawnmow, plow, and curate the path that you wish you took and then shove them down that road. We’re talking about the difference between “Honey, would you like me to proofread your college essay?” and “You’ll never get in with this, I’ll just rewrite it.” Saying “I’ll do it myself!” is stripping your child of a learning opportunity, not to mention parental attention, and leaving them feeling that any and all judgements they make are doomed from the start. It causes anxiety in decision making, and lack of confidence in their own choices.

In an article called You Need to Teach Your Kids How to Fail, Lahey told the Huffington Post: “Like everyone, parents tend to look for concrete indicators of success and progress. But because there are no parenting report cards or performance evaluations, they simply look to their kids’ achievements and co-opt them… Parents think, ‘My child made the traveling soccer team, so that means I get an A for my parenting,’ or ‘They won the science fair. That means I’m an A+ parent,’”

Not only is our college system so broken that entrance can be purchased, but the psychological framework of expecting earned grades for effort continues even after the school ends and far into parenthood. Even ten or more years after graduating, people are still looking for obvious, blatant markings of their success in everyday occurrences, unable to measure themselves without numbers or letter markings.

What’s even more ironic: The New York Times published an opinion piece titled “How much does getting into an elite college actually matter?” The answer: Not much, apparently, unless you are a first-gen student.

“Students who are poised to succeed tend to do so even if they don’t get into the Ivy League,” said  Kevin Carey, the director of New America Ed and the author of The End of College in the piece. “It turns out that students who come from less privileged backgrounds benefit greatly from selective colleges. Elite higher education gives them social capital they didn’t already have.”

Muhlenberg, meanwhile, has some safeguards against the two largest components in Operation Varsity Blues. First off, submitting SAT and ACT scores to Muhlenberg is optional, although it is required for merit and honor scholarships. Instead, students can submit a graded paper from high school and interview with a member of the admissions staff. In other words, SAT and ACT scores are not an integral part of getting accepted to Muhlenberg.

Additionally, Muhlenberg is in the NCAA’s Division III, thus not allowing athletic scholarships to be offered to student athletes. Instead, student athletes can qualify for need-based and academic scholarships, like any other student.

That being said, Muhlenberg does, and will continue to have a budget to balance and a reputation to maintain. The Weekly intends to look more closely at the admissions process and the challenges colleges face balancing money and merit in the coming weeks. So stay tuned- the investigation will continue.