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    Mike Garrett was the guy before Haden.

    The place is massively dysfunctional. None of them were good at being athletic directors, but more importantly, none of them had anything to do with the university gynecologist who sexually assaulted generations of students or the dean of ophthalmology whose penchant for drug-fueled "parties" resulted in at least one young woman ending up dead.

    Swann isn't anywhere close to being the primary problem there.

    Comment


      Oh, right. The guy who said USC’s problames were just caused by other school’s jealousy. Brilliant PR.

      No, Swann not anywhere close to being the primary problem. He is, as I said, probably more of a symptom than a cause.

      But he doesn’t seem to be part of any solution. Maybe this will wake him up to the crises and he’ll make all kinds of sweeping and useful reforms, but there’s nothing in his background that suggests that. More to the point, there’s nothing in his background or USC’s recent history that suggests he was hired or is even empowered to make those kinds of changes. So if he keeps his job, boosters, fans, recruits, and potential coaching hires will have every reason to assume that nothing has really changed.


      I wasn’t thinking about all those sexual assault issues - mostly just the recent fiascos with the football coaches and the relative lack of success in the other sports, plus the fact that, as that article said, there have been two FBI investigations related to college sports in the last year and USC is the only school in both of them. It may not be his fault, but this is an organization that needs a turnaround specialist.

      Comment


        [URL]https://twitter.com/nydailynews/status/1109269351927111680?s=21[/URL]

        Comment


          Oh Babs!

          Comment


            Dear, oh dear. That's one of the worst things I've read in ages!

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              Can I just say that I've always detested her? Not surprised.

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                Bloody hell. That's pretty much off the scale.

                Comment


                  Wait until the end of the announcement...

                  https://twitter.com/thistallawkgirl/status/1109834109675847681

                  Comment


                    Jesus, I can't even click through to that streisand article.

                    As for that next link?

                    Comment


                      Hahahahahaha!

                      Comment


                        Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                        Oh, right. The guy who said USC’s problames were just caused by other school’s jealousy. Brilliant PR.

                        No, Swann not anywhere close to being the primary problem. He is, as I said, probably more of a symptom than a cause.

                        But he doesn’t seem to be part of any solution. Maybe this will wake him up to the crises and he’ll make all kinds of sweeping and useful reforms, but there’s nothing in his background that suggests that. More to the point, there’s nothing in his background or USC’s recent history that suggests he was hired or is even empowered to make those kinds of changes. So if he keeps his job, boosters, fans, recruits, and potential coaching hires will have every reason to assume that nothing has really changed.


                        I wasn’t thinking about all those sexual assault issues - mostly just the recent fiascos with the football coaches and the relative lack of success in the other sports, plus the fact that, as that article said, there have been two FBI investigations related to college sports in the last year and USC is the only school in both of them. It may not be his fault, but this is an organization that needs a turnaround specialist.
                        Maybe USC would have more success in their sports if they were not full of rich kids with no athletic prowess whatsoever.
                        I doubt this is the only one of similar scams running nationwide.

                        Comment


                          It most surely is not, and you can bet that a lot of administrators at "elite" institutions are squirming right now.

                          The New York Times ran a longish piece on the key player at USC, who appears to have taken advantage of the fact that the university let her do whatever she wanted in terms of "non-revenue" sports, so that the bigwigs could spend all their time on gridiron (and to a lesser extent, basketball).

                          Comment


                            Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                            It most surely is not, and you can bet that a lot of administrators at "elite" institutions are squirming right now.

                            The New York Times ran a longish piece on the key player at USC, who appears to have taken advantage of the fact that the university let her do whatever she wanted in terms of "non-revenue" sports, so that the bigwigs could spend all their time on gridiron (and to a lesser extent, basketball).
                            Unfortunately that article is behind a paywall.
                            So as a man with acquaintances in high places. do you think she was a lone operative that was able to do what she did with no oversight as she was good at her job and trusted?

                            I would assume with an organisation like USC that is so large and prestigious, there would be a team of administrators who dealt with admissions so anyone gaming the figures would attract suspicion if there were discrepancies in numbers and lists?
                            It would be easy to spot if you are sending a list of 80 to the head basketball coach, yet enrolling 87 people into the Basketball program. I think everyone was in on the scam and it was set up in this way for plausible deniability if it went South. Hence the high fees for this as it reflects the amount of people that had to be caked off.

                            Comment


                              BA flight lands in Edinburgh instead of Dusseldorf by mistake

                              https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47691478
                              Last edited by jdsx; 25-03-2019, 14:01.

                              Comment


                                It seems like dr Dre also forgot about dre

                                Comment


                                  Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                                  post 4599 on 20th March on this thread.

                                  "am sure there is currently a desperate search for a rich brother who paid his way into College."

                                  That's why I am called the Tactical Genius (puts on noice cancelling earphones to block out the noise of OTF grinding it's teeth).

                                  Comment


                                    Seriously though, who of us wouldn't expect our kids to get a pass if we donated $75 million to the local University?

                                    If it was me, it would be doctorates all round for my extended family and posthumously for the previous two generations.

                                    Comment


                                      Yeah, lead primarily by Dr Dre himself.

                                      Comment


                                        Ron Allice, the track and field coach at the University of Southern California, assumed bad news was on the way when Donna Heinel summoned him to her office back in 2011.

                                        He was right.

                                        Heinel, the athletic department administrator who functioned as a gatekeeper over whether recruited athletes could find a spot at the increasingly competitive private university, had found a problem with the track athlete Allice was pushing. He had taken a sign language class to fulfill a foreign language requirement and, though that was the standard in the state university systems, Heinel dug in against him.

                                        Now, Allice wonders if there was another reason Heinel was so resolute. And he is not alone.

                                        Heinel, 57, who as an unyielding, by-the-book administrator rose to a position of unchecked authority during her 16 years in the U.S.C. athletic department, has emerged as a central figure in the academic admissions scandal that has ensnared members of rich — and in some cases famous — families. They are among 50 people charged with carrying out a series of bribes and rigged admissions qualifications, including making up athletic accomplishments, in order to get affluent children into prestigious universities across the country.

                                        Nowhere was the scheme more widespread than at U.S.C., where four others who have coached there — one of them until earlier this month — are under indictment. Heinel stands accused of being at the fulcrum of the scheme, conspiring with Rick Singer, a private admissions consultant, to obtain millions in bribes and then easing more than two dozen students into the school through the so-called side door of athletic admissions, using fraudulent athletic profiles.
                                        Through a lawyer, Heinel, who was fired the day she was indicted, declined to comment.

                                        Heinel is the only administrator who has been charged, and her university is the only one of eight involved at which more than one coach has been implicated.

                                        U.S.C.’s interim president, Wanda Austin, has pledged to revamp its athletic admissions process.

                                        According to the indictment, Heinel and Singer, the private counselor who hatched the plan, collaborated with the water polo coach, Jovan Vavic, and the former soccer coach, Ali Khosroshahin, who was fired in 2013, and his former assistant Laura Janke, who created phony athletic profiles. Like Heinel, Vavic was fired by U.S.C. on March 12, the day the indictments were unsealed. Image
                                        A college admissions scheme has roiled U.S.C., where several coaches are under indictment.CreditRozette Rago for The New York Times
                                        It was a stunning revelation. Heinel ran an independent business counseling parents and high school administrators on how to comply with N.C.A.A. regulations. Colleagues described her as a stickler for the rules.
                                        Tom Walsh, the former cross country coach who left U.S.C. in 2013 after 19 years, said coaches sweated the days when they had to attest to the worthiness of their recruits to Heinel. “It didn’t matter how good people were,” Walsh recalled in an interview last week. “Coaches in different sports would commiserate: damn, this is tough.” In fact, Walsh said, if you had asked him before the indictment about Heinel’s standards, “I’d have said she was as hard as it gets.”

                                        Walsh and his former colleagues are now wondering how far back the alleged scam might have gone. Heinel required coaches who recruited athletes from Europe to have their transcripts translated in the United States to limit the chances of fraud, Walsh said. One runner he recruited was an artist. Heinel demanded to see a portfolio, and copies or photos of the works were not sufficient. The originals had to be shipped.

                                        “She was basically the gatekeeper,” said a former U.S.C. coach who requested anonymity because he was concerned that being identified could hurt his career. “If you wanted to get someone in, she was the person that really made that decision. Or not.”

                                        Regardless of that power, Heinel largely kept a low profile both on campus and off. She has two children in elementary school and lives with her partner, a school-district special-education administrator, on Naples Island, an exclusive neighborhood in Long Beach, Calif., known for multimillion-dollar homes on winding canals.
                                        Neighbors were shocked when F.B.I. agents surrounded Heinel’s house on a narrow, quiet side street just before dawn 10 days ago to arrest her, instructing an inquisitive neighbor to go back in his house. Heinel was described by neighbors as quiet and unassuming, driving a red sedan reminiscent of the official color of U.S.C., walking the dog, jogging or riding a bike frequently, and flying drones or playing sports with her son and daughter.

                                        Neighbors said Heinel generally kept to herself, even when they mentioned their children had gone to U.S.C. Image
                                        Court documents allege that Rick Singer conspired with Donna Heinel to get unqualified students into U.S.C.CreditBrian Snyder/Reuters
                                        “It’s usually, ‘Hi, how you doing?’” said Keith Muirhead, a real estate broker who has lived in the house one door down for 36 years. Muirhead described Heinel as friendly, but said that they had “never socialized, never had a glass of wine, which is unusual because in Naples it’s almost a rule.”
                                        It’s not clear when exactly Heinel developed a relationship with Singer. But since 2014, Heinel had presented to admissions more than two dozen students with bogus athletic credentials, including a football player whose high school had no football team, as well as a 5-foot-5 men’s basketball player and a high school cheerleader made to look like a lacrosse star. In fact, emails and recorded phone conversations in the indictment paint a portrait of Heinel not merely as a conduit, but also as a fixer who could spot potential brush fires and swept aside skeptical questions.

                                        When counselors at two high schools reviewing applications to U.S.C. last April raised questions with parents about the listed athletic qualifications of their children, Heinel called Singer. In a voice mail message captured by investigators, she warned that the indignant parents must be stopped from going to the high school “yelling at counselors.”

                                        “That’ll shut everything — that’ll shut everything down,” she said.

                                        Around the same time, Heinel wrote a lengthy email to the U.S.C. director of admissions to set aside concerns about the athletic credentials of Matteo Sloane, the son of a drinking and wastewater systems entrepreneur who was admitted as a water polo player despite not playing the sport.

                                        Heinel said that because Sloane’s high school did not have a water polo team, he played at L.A. Water Polo Club during the school year and traveled internationally with a youth junior team in the summer, playing in Greece, Serbia and Portugal. None of this was true.
                                        “He is small,” Heinel continued in the email. “But he has a long torso but short strong legs, plus he is fast which helps him win the draws to start play after goals are scored. He is an attack perimeter player.” She then thanked the admissions director for raising the discrepancy. Sloane did not play for U.S.C.

                                        The admissions director replied to Heinel, thanking her and saying that a paraphrased version of her email would be passed along to assure the high school officials that U.S.C. had looked into the matter. “They seemed unusually skeptical,” the director wrote. Image
                                        Pat Haden increased Heinel’s power during his tenure as athletic director at U.S.C.CreditVictor Decolongon/Getty Images
                                        There seemed to be no such skepticism of Heinel at U.S.C.

                                        Through her 16 years at the school, she grew increasingly powerful, controlling two areas that were crucial to coaches: admissions and budgets. That reputation helped lead to her ascent, colleagues said.
                                        Pat Haden, a former U.S.C. football star lured from his post at a private equity firm to become athletic director after the football and basketball programs were penalized in 2010 for improper benefits to players, tripled the department’s compliance staff. He also promoted Heinel to senior woman administrator and the director of admissions and eligibility, jobs that had previously been handled by two associate athletic directors. Haden could not be reached for comment.

                                        Heinel managed to cash in on her experience navigating admissions for prospective student athletes. In 2008, she established a side business, Clear the Clearinghouse, which advised high school coaches, counselors and administrators on N.C.A.A. rules for athletes. She offered subscriptions services, for up to $700 annually, and hosted workshops that cost $100, along with offering to do consulting work.

                                        Heinel’s business held two-hour workshops at U.S.C.’s Galen Center. The notices advertising the clinics were sent to about 150 high school and private counselors, either from Heinel’s work email account or from that of Katie Fuller, an assistant director of admissions and eligibility at the school.

                                        Typically, about 50 people attended the workshops, according to one private counselor who said she attended two of them, several years apart.
                                        The workshops were unusual in that most schools, including U.S.C., put them on at no cost or for a nominal fee as a sort of public service for counselors.

                                        One of the few documented interviews with Heinel is from a panel discussion for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people she participated in at U.S.C. in 2013, at which she described herself “as a loner for mostly all of my life.” Growing up in Philadelphia, she recalled, she was estranged from her parents for more than two years when she came out to them as gay while she was a student at Springfield College in Massachusetts, where she was a member of the swim team. But she reconciled with them somewhat a couple of years later when a sister became ill with cancer. Image
                                        Heinel conducted workshops in N.C.A.A. compliance at the Galen Center.CreditRozette Rago for The New York Times
                                        The experience of coming out to her parents stayed with her. “I’ve just kind of been, ‘Do what I want to do, when I want to do it,” she said.
                                        Years later, established in her career as an athletic administrator, Heinel quickly developed a rapport with Haden, who has a gay son. Haden, and his successor, Lynn Swann, instituted few checks on Heinel’s powers.

                                        From October until April, Heinel would meet every other Thursday with a subcommittee from the admissions office that included the dean of admissions and two assistants. At each meeting, Heinel would go through a list of recruits, including their test scores, transcripts and athletic profile, and within a few days would get a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on whether they would be admitted, according to both colleagues and the indictment.

                                        Sprinkled among those hundreds of recruits in 19 sports were the fraudulent athletic résumés that Heinel is accused of shepherding.

                                        Often those profiles were created by Janke, who was paid by Singer, but according to the affidavit, on at least one occasion, Heinel created a profile on a U.S.C. letterhead that made it appear as if the U.S.C. lacrosse coach were lavishing praise on a recruit who in reality had never played the sport.
                                        Almost always, within days of one of Singer’s clients being conditionally admitted to U.S.C., a check for $50,000 or more made out to “U.S.C. women’s athletics” or “U.S.C. athletics” would arrive in an envelope addressed to Heinel. In all, those checks added up to $1.3 million, which were deposited into accounts that Heinel largely controlled and could distribute to various teams. (Heinel also received $20,000 per month dating to last July from Singer in what court documents referred to as a “sham” consulting agreement.)

                                        In explaining to Todd Blake why he had received a solicitation call asking for another donation to women’s basketball when his daughter was admitted fraudulently as a volleyball player, Singer said: “the money went toward her,” referring to Heinel, “and she gets to decide where it goes within the department.”

                                        Eight years later, Allice, the retired track and field coach, remains annoyed. Memories of that hurdler were dredged up by the allegations against a woman who now stands accused of fraud. The athlete Heinel said did not measure up to the school’s standards was hardly a borderline athlete, much less one of the fakes she and Singer created.

                                        The hurdler, Johnathan Cabral, ended up at U.S.C.’s Pac-12 rival, Oregon, where he would finish second in the N.C.A.A. finals in the 110-meter hurdles as a senior. A year later he finished sixth during the 2016 Olympics while representing Canada.

                                        Comment


                                          TG, I genuinely doubt that everyone was in it. At the same time, I doubt that Heinel was acting completely alone.

                                          I think your invocation of plausible deniability is almost certain to have played some role. If that is right, we are likely to find out more, as flipping on higher ups is one of the few strategies that she has available to her (assuming that there isn't an admissibility issue with the evidence).

                                          Comment


                                            Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                            TG, I genuinely doubt that everyone was in it. At the same time, I doubt that Heinel was acting completely alone.

                                            I think your invocation of plausible deniability is almost certain to have played some role. If that is right, we are likely to find out more, as flipping on higher ups is one of the few strategies that she has available to her (assuming that there isn't an admissibility issue with the evidence).
                                            Thanks Ursus for the post and response.

                                            from the article, this interesting snippett jumped out,
                                            Almost always, within days of one of Singer’s clients being conditionally admitted to U.S.C., a check for $50,000 or more made out to “U.S.C. women’s athletics” or “U.S.C. athletics” would arrive in an envelope addressed to Heinel. In all, those checks added up to $1.3 million, which were deposited into accounts that Heinel largely controlled and could distribute to various teams
                                            So it looks like the University got a lot of the money, didn't anyone wonder where this money came for and why?
                                            This gives the impression the University is implicated. She wouldn't deposit the cheque into the university accounts and then withdraw for personal use?

                                            Comment


                                              That is certainly the most likely implication, but it isn't the only one available.

                                              There have been other cases in which administrators have managed to get sole signature authority over such accounts without any meaningful oversight and/or set up accounts with names like that which have no actual connection to the university.

                                              Given USC's long record of profound administrative dysfunction, I wouldn't rule those possibilities out at this point, though we will obviously learn more as the case progresses.

                                              Comment


                                                That's fair enough, the article says, "Heinel largely controlled and could distribute to various teams". Which could mean anything.
                                                Are these kids so mediocre that even with the best private education money can buy, they still cannot get a place at USC. Wouldn't it be cheaper to hire a bunch of tutors and lock them in a room with your kids for the whole summer before the tests.

                                                I did the same with my kids and they hated me for it. A little bit less now that they are studying Law and Medicine respectively.

                                                Comment


                                                  Well, a couple of them were too busy being "influencers" to actually study. And the parents appear to have had a very low opinion of the aptitude of many of the others.

                                                  These families have problems. Rich people problems, but those can be real, too.

                                                  Comment


                                                    It must be heartbreaking as a parent to come to terms with your child being as thick as two planks and bone idle to boot.
                                                    Especially if you came from new money and knowing that they will piss away all your money within a decade of your death.

                                                    You could almost feel sorry for them... almost.

                                                    Comment

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