TO GET A LOT OF KNOWLEDGE WE'LL PROBABLY NEVER EVER USE AGAIN

According to the Bible (Genesis 1:26), God gave man dominion over animals:  “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

Unfortunately, it appears that some creeping things didn’t get the message.  A few days ago, a young woman in suburban Phoenix decided to exercise her dominion over the jaguars in the Wildlife World Zoo, Aquarium and Safari Park.  She broke into the jaguar enclosure to take a selfie.  Hey, she was exercising dominion.  What could possibly go wrong?   

But one of the jaguars was apparently unfamiliar with the Book of Genesis, and instead of politely posing with the interloper, it attacked her.  The woman’s injuries looked painful, but did not appear life-threatening.  If you enjoy stories like this, you’re in luck, because they apparently happen all the time.  A YouTube search for “zoo animals attack” will yield hours of entertainment. 

I don’t know anything about the woman who decided it would be a good idea to get up close and personal with a jaguar.  I assume she meant no harm.  She was just clueless about jaguars.  Maybe just clueless in general.   

Speaking of creeping things, Paul Manafort has now been sentenced in two different jurisdictions, with at least one more trial to go.  His first sentence, 47 months, was considerably below the Special Counsel’s sentencing recommendation.  The judge argued that, apart from being a traitor and career criminal, Manafort had led a “blameless” life.  If you’re reading this, you know enough about Paul Manafort to know that “blameless” is not a word most people would use to describe his life and works. 

I mention the judge here simply as an example of what happens when one wealthy white man looks at another wealthy white man and thinks, “there but for the grace of God go I.”  Wealthy white men always give each other the benefit of the doubt.   

As examples of unconscious privilege, though, the judge and the jaguar lady have been left in the dust by an improbable scandal over college admissions.  Raise your hand if you thought that the biggest story of the week would involve college admissions practices. 

For nearly 40 years, I was a member of the faculty of the University of Arizona.  Towards the end of that period, I got to interact regularly with senior university administrators.  I watched the sausage being made, and sometimes it wasn’t pretty.  Most of the administrators I worked with were good people, doing good work under difficult circumstances.  A few of them were jerks.  In other words, life inside academe is a lot like life outside it.  I’m not completely cynical about 21st century higher education, but I harbor no illusions about what goes on in those ivory towers.  And yet despite all my hard-earned worldly wisdom, this particular college admissions scandal took me by surprise. 

We should quickly acknowledge that there’s nothing new about wealthy parents buying their kids’ way into a prestige college.  From legacy admissions in Ivy League schools to large building fund contributions at public institutions, rich people have more options than the rest of us.  Just like they have in all other areas of life.  Rich people having leverage and using it doesn’t surprise me.

No, the thing that surprised me about the latest scandal is that someone analyzed the college admissions process and figured out that coaches, even in minor sports, have leverage in admissions decisions.  Unlike football and men’s basketball coaches with their megabuck salaries and endorsements, coaches of minor college sports don’t make that much money.  Golly, I wonder if any of those underpaid coaches would be interested in supplementing their income?  Why yes, some of them would.  In return for large bribes, some of these coaches helped rich kids with bad grades enroll in their prestigious institution of higher learning. 

I can’t help but wonder, though.  What happens when one of those bribery-admit kids gets to campus?  Does he have to at least try to play water polo?  How many roster spots can a coach afford to give to non-contributors before somebody gets suspicious?

Opponents of affirmative action complain that those policies penalize deserving white (or male) students in favor of rewarding minorities who have less worthy academic credentials.  This week’s college admissions scandal should make it clear that wealthy white kids have their own affirmative action programs.  Some of it is “hide in plain sight” obvious – the legacy system that got George W. Bush into Yale, for instance – but parts of it have been kept on the downlow until now. 

Will shining a light on this latest sketchy scheme bring about meaningful reform?  I doubt it.  After all, bribery is already illegal, which is why the FBI got involved.  No doubt some coaches will lose their jobs, and maybe even go to jail.  It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the parents.  The charges carry stiff penalties.  But it’s hard not to imagine a scenario in which a sympathetic judge notes that apart from a little light bribery, these moms and dads have led blameless lives.  What parent doesn’t want the best for their children?  We’ll waive the prison sentence and let them off with a fine.  Maybe even a big fine.  But these are people who can afford to fork over $200,000 to a whopping $6.5 million to get their underachieving offspring into college.  How much of a deterrent is the fine likely to be?

I have a better suggestion. Randy Newman got it right when he said, “It’s money that matters in the USA.”  But there’s a way to leverage that uncomfortable truth to make elite colleges more affordable for everyone.  I call it the Robin Hood option.  Elite colleges should reserve a certain number of slots in each freshman class for wealthy underachievers, and auction them off to the highest bidders.  Then they should use that extra revenue to hire more faculty and offer tuition rebates to the rest of the freshman class, whatever their parents’ income. 

The Robin Hood option even benefits the undeserving rich.  The cost of their kid’s “enhanced” tuition could wind up being significantly less than the bribes they were willing to pay.  Not to mention the fact that they wouldn’t have to commit a felony to get their kid into a prestige school.  That sounds like a win-win solution to me.