@Maj. Bill Martin
@sneakypete
Are you seriously comparing serious college applicants with hood rats?
No, I'm comparing the lack of importance you apparently attach to ownership rights with that of a thief. Nor do I believe that theft is limited to "hood rats".
The individual employee who takes a bribe is
stealing from the company/university. That's why those people are being prosecuted criminally like the thieves they are. No different from bribing an employee of an electronics store to slip you a TV for $300 rather than paying the $1000 charged by the store.
Again, if some ridiculously rich guy gifts a university $5M for a new research center so that their kid gets into that school, where's the harm? A large donation like that benefits all the other students who get the benefit of that research center without having to pay higher tuition to fund it. Donations like that permit a school to afford to let in both the rich kid
and a merit-based student. But when the rich kid gets let into college solely because of a bribe to an individual university employee, nobody benefits except the crooked university employee who took the bribe, and the kid. There is no larger benefit to the school in which other students can share.
It's like the TV -- nobody else is harmed just because the rich guy can afford to buy a $1000 TV. But if the store employee gives away that TV for a $300 bribe, then the other customers are going to end up paying more in the long haul because of that theft.