Fake Yale student scandal raises alarms over academic fraud, foreign influence risks

[rangerrebew]

Fake Yale student scandal raises alarms over academic fraud, foreign influence risks
Story by Michael Ruiz • 1h

It’s a privilege, not a right, to have a student visa here: Ned Ryun

An Ivy League student accused of making up an entire life story to gain admission was expelled earlier this semester, prompting fresh concerns over academic fraud and gaps in university vetting that experts say could also expose elite institutions to foreign influence and espionage risks.
 
At Yale University in Connecticut, administrators recently kicked out an undergrad student identified as "Katherina Lynn" after she allegedly lied about her background, according to the Yale Daily News, a student-run paper.

She reportedly comes from California's Bay Area but adopted a "Western name" to distance herself from her Chinese-American roots, the online magazine Air Mail reported, and allegedly concocted a fake origin story, reinventing herself as a daughter of rural North Dakota.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fake-yale-student-scandal-raises-alarms-over-academic-fraud-foreign-influence-risks/ar-AA1PENrv?ocid=BingNewsSerp&cvid=3e56a56fb8c249ebf81701f31c4e42fd&ei=3

[PeteS in CA]

The lack of details in this article and the Who-Is-That behind-a-paywall source on which it is based is a huge yellow flag to me.

First, if she is from the SF Bay Area, Chinese people came to SF and California in 1850 or 1851, during the Gold Rush. So her place of prior residence is not suspicious, except to California-haters unaware of basic California history.

Second, there are many Chinese people present in the US and Silicon Valley who came here from Taiwan (separated from mainland China governance since 1949) and from Hong Kong, which reverted from British rule to mainland Chinese rule in 1997.

Third, though the article mentions it briefly, Ivy League universities have been discriminating against east Asian people for 2 or 3 decades (at least), using not only family names, but vetting using the locations of student applicants' high schools, and stereotypes of "typical Asian" interests (e.g. playing piano or a musical instrument , but not seeking a musical scholarships).

Since details are lacking, such as any ties this student has with mainland China, let me propose a very realistic scenario different from her being a CCP spy. This student, possibly a first- or fourth-generation American, possibly a legally present immigrant, has done well in high school, well enough that she wants to go to Yale. She knows Ivy League universities discriminate against east Asian applicants, so she concocted a fictional identity that concealed details from her neighborhood and high school (which might have high %es of Asian of Asian residents and students) to her family name in order to boost her chances of being admitted to Yale. An extreme approach, but a benign and very plausible, not-a-spy, explanation.

Maybe she is a spy, maybe she just tried an extreme attempt to evade Yale and Ivy League racism. Absent actual information about her, taking this story with a very large block of salt would be appropriate at this point.