Happy April Fools’ Day! You are reading an article written for our April Fools’ edition of the newspaper, The Deceiver. This is a work of satire.
Two more sets of parents have been exposed for bribing university officials for their children to attend top-tier universities, joining the more than 50 parents who have already been indicted in the scandal, this time with connections to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
In a press brief sent out by Inside Higher Ed yesterday, it was reported that the parents paid in excess of $100,000 for their children to be accepted to UMBC.
“We really just needed pictures of [name redacted] playing football,” said one parent in an exclusive interview with The Retriever. “That was all it took.” According to the Athletics Department, there is no football team at UMBC.
Another parent stated that she paid extra for her child to get an almost-perfect score on his math SAT, resulting in admittance to the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. Was it worth it? “We’ll have to see,” she said. “If he doesn’t get into UMD for graduate school, I might have to pull some more strings.”
The Meyerhoff Scholars Program stated that the student is not a member or a friend of the program, but the student’s mother disagrees. “It’s on his resume,” she said. “He’s been admitted.”
As of last Friday, the students are still attending the university, but protests have started outside the A.O.K. Library calling for their expulsion.
One Meyerhoff scholar who was protesting said that she doesn’t believe those students implicated in the scandal are true Retrievers. “I had to work for my SAT scores,” she said. “And you’re telling me they got in, no stress? I cried at least once a day during summer bridge and couldn’t touch the grass. I saw [name redacted] walking in the grass the other day. This is unacceptable.”
Another student expressed confusion about the university’s football team. “I didn’t think we had one,” she said, “but then I went into the bookstore and saw a ‘UMBC’s football team is undefeated’ t-shirt and I was like, okay.”
University officials have declined to comment on this situation, but President Hrabowski has taken care to make sure [name redacted] is distanced from the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. “This is absolute fraud,” he stated in an email sent out to Meyerhoff Scholars last Friday. “We have never, or will never, lower our standards to admit students with almost-perfect SAT scores. This student is not a member of the Meyerhoff community.”
Though the student may not be a member of the Meyerhoff community, he is definitely a member of the UMBC community. The Retriever reached out to UMBC’s financial services office to discover if the two students implicated in the scandal paid tuition, or were just imposters. “[name redacted] and [name redacted] both pay tuition to attend UMBC,” wrote the office in an email correspondence.
While this is certainly troubling, The Retriever knows campus administration will act swiftly and carefully in dealing with this matter. If not, the campus will for sure be a full house.
