Reference News Network reported on June 14th US media said that Stanford University former sailing team coach John van dermer was sentenced to probation on June 12th local time, rather than imprisonment. He had previously accepted a bribe of $610,000 (1 USD is approximately RMB 6.9 - this website note) and pretended to accept certain students applying to enter the university as new members of the sailing team, allowing these applicants to be admitted to Stanford University.
According to the website of " USA Today " on June 12, federal judge Ria Zobel sentenced Van Demer to two years of parole, and he was restricted at home in the first six months and was not allowed to go out. He was sentenced to only one day in prison, but believed he had served his sentence and was fined $10,000.
Zobel said it was important to punish Vandermer, "because it was too easy to do this," but she didn't think Vandermer needed to go to jail because he put the money he received into Stanford's sailing program instead of having his personal pockets.
reported that Van Demer was the first of 22 defendants to plead guilty to guilty in a national college admissions scandal. He pleaded guilty to extortion in March 2019.
Former Stanford University sailing team coach John Vandermer (left) left federal court on June 12 local time. He was sentenced to two years probation for participating in the admissions fraud case. ( Reuters )
reported that the verdict was a blow to prosecutors who demanded a 13-month jail sentence. Prosecutors believe that the verdict on Vandermer should be a warning and that imprisonment is "the only way to deter people in a similar position."
Van dermer's defense team said that Van dermer did not benefit from bribery and should only receive a probation, not a prison sentence, and Stanford did not lose funds in the bribery case.
According to the US website of the Washington Post on June 12, University of Michigan is one of the top ten sports competition leagues; Brown University is not. The University of Michigan's sports team "Wolverines" is a household name and often attracts many viewers to watch their football and basketball games on national TV stations; the Brown University's sports team "Bears" are unknown and cannot attract audiences. But federal data shows that Ivy League Brown University is comparable to the University of Michigan in one aspect: both schools had 910 college team athletes in 2017.
Because Brown University has a smaller number of students and higher admission requirements, this means that a larger portion of the admissions that many students dream of every year (nearly 9%) are left to sports students in programs from baseball to water polo. As the state's most important public university, the University of Michigan admits athletes every year is 2%.
Brown University (Visual China)
This is two of the many examples obtained from interviews, documents and polls conducted by The Washington Post reflecting the powerful and universal role of sports in the admissions of the most prestigious private colleges and universities in the United States.
Since March 2019, the admissions bribery scandal has brought special attention to the relationship between sports coaches and college admissions. Some schools acknowledge that coaches or sports officials say good things about some applicants whose academic performance may not meet the admission requirements are likely to receive strong “help.” In schools with the strictest admission standards, most applicants have excellent grades, but sports talents can help applicants stand out.
In the scandal, wealthy parents, including actor Lori Loughlin, were accused of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to help children use fake sports certificates to enter well-known universities through what the consultant calls “indirect pathways.”
The 2019 U.S. college admissions bribery scandal investigation, known as "Operation Campus Blues," highlights a bigger problem: Athletics students have greater opportunities to enter schools with strict admissions standards, which has led to questions about fairness and academic achievement standards. Gerald Gerney, who has been a sports official at the University of Oklahoma, said: "Americans are concerned about celebrities in this scandal and the high bribes that celebrities can easily get.In my opinion, what they should be talking about is why colleges and universities value sports so much? This runs contrary to the mission of the university. "
reported that as one of the most stringent enrollment standards in the world, Harvard University admits that the annual admission rate of freshmen is less than 5%. However, court documents on Harvard admission cases show that in the past six years, when applicants obtain sports students, their admission rate is 86%.
