In the aftermath of the “Operation Varsity Blues” bribery scandal, in which actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman were among 33 other parents charged for allegedly paying off college admissions staff to their child’s benefit, world-famous rapper and record producer Dr. Dre wished to assure his fans that his daughter, Truly Young, got admitted to USC entirely on her own.
“My daughter got accepted into USC all on her own. No jail time!!!!” exclaimed Dr. Dre over the weekend in an Instagram post alongside his daughter holding up her acceptance letter to the prestigious university.
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The former N.W.A. singer forgot to mention the fact he donated a whopping $70 million to the school, according to HuffPost.
“Dre and his producer Jimmy Iovine gave $70 million to USC in 2013 to create the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation, according to a university press release,” reports HuffPost. “The men also have a campus building named after them. The school hailed them at the time as ‘forward-thinking visionaries.'”
Dr. Dre’s proud post lasted until Sunday when he erased it after people on social media pointed out his previous donation. Needless to say, Dr. Dre is not the only rich man to have been accused of buying their child a college acceptance letter through a hefty donation. Here’s how screenwriter David Mamet put it in his response to the “Operation Varsity Blues” admissions scandal that ensnared Loughlin and Huffman:
I worked for very many years in and around our Elite Universities. I am able to report that their admissions policies are an unfortunate and corrupt joke.
Harvard was once sued for restricting the admission of qualified Jews; a contest currently being waged by Asians.
The unqualified may be accepted for many reasons, among them, as Legacies, and on account of large donations made by their parents. I do not see the difference between getting a kid into school by bribing the Building Committee, and by bribing someone else.
Others have asserted that these elite school parents use their children as props to gain status, caring little about their kids’ education.
“What these parents did wasn’t for love, it was for fancy diplomas,” wrote actress Olivia Munn. “Love would’ve made you spend that money on tutors to make your kids smarter, giving them an actual education.”
Indeed, Loughlin’s own daughter, Olivia Jade (who also got accepted to USC), openly admitted on camera that she cared very little about college and simply wanted to enjoy being a social media influencer. In the aftermath, Oliva Jade now blames her parents for ruining her life by pushing her to go to college even though she did not want to.
“She has been passionate about her career and wanted to work and was doing well but that wasn’t enough,” a source told Entertainment Tonight, according to Fox News. “Her parents said she would have to juggle college and her career. Now she’s devastated because everything she built imploded before her eyes. She feels they ruined everything.”
Olivia Jade is reportedly “so embarrassed she doesn’t even want to go out.”