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<p>I will indicate my agreement with this statement, and also note for the record that one of the lousiest things that Marilee Jones did was let down her staff.</p>
<p>Agree. There are a lot of terrific folks in that office who were left hanging on a limb in the aftermath. I will add they continued through with grace, aplomb and integrity.</p>
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<p>But see, Laura, that’s something people on CC will never acknowledge or admit. You find it everywhere here (and flying in the face of my previous sentence, I admit to jeering a bit at Sarah Palin on CC a few months ago, but I recognized it and reformed :)) I especially don’t think it’s appropriate to pile on Laura and take apart her statements. She is simply expressing an opinion, which is just as valid as anyone’s.</p>
<p>You can say it until you’re blue in the face: I think NOBODY HERE is condoning breaches of ethics, dishonesty and title inflation. Everybody – especially in the MIT community – roundly condemns what Ms. Jones did under the aegis of MIT.</p>
<p>My simple point is that you close doors to sober discussion when the TONE of the posts reflects an insidious Schadenfreude (that’s a good word and I will keep using it). People get defensive, and it gets ad hominem all over the place. </p>
<p>That said, some of the posts on this thread I find admirable – for instance the last 3 posts before this one. They express personal opinions without sounding like Snidely Whiplash.</p>
<p>It’s been a while since I read Dante. Can someone remind me which circle of Hell is reserved for those who commit academic dishonesty? I recall something about disembowelment and torment at the hands of imps, but after that I draw a blank.</p>
<p>LOL mantori.</p>
<p>As for the tone ascribed to posts, why is it any different to opine about the tone or feelings of posters here than of the behavior of a public figure?</p>
<p>With the following message, I don’t mean to offend anyone who does not share my faith!
But the spirit of the approaching season is one of joy, hope, good will, and redemption. Perhaps in that spirit, we could close this thread out?</p>
<p>This is a very tame cc thread. Intelligent discussion and fact based. No one is being disrespectful.</p>
<p>I’m not going to shut off my critical thinking and morality switches just because it’s Yuletide. On with the thread!</p>
<p>Love the levity, mantori! The humor season is 12 mos/yr</p>
<p>All kidding aside, I reread most of this thread, and am not sure which posts laura or annudahmom feel are “giddy”. I dont see that, but I do see the reaction to Merilees website, and IMO the reaction is justified. The website quotes are, IMO over the top</p>
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<p>What is it about being in the college counseling business that makes some participants so self-promoting? [Present company on website not included] Is that the way to grow the business exponentially?</p>
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<p>That has never appealed to me at all, but evidently some clients are drawn in by that kind of thing. I knew an immigration lawyer once who did things that all the other immigration lawyers in town thought were beyond the pale in self-promotion, but he definitely had the biggest caseload and hence the highest income of immigration lawyers in that town.</p>
<p>Schadenfreude - Guilty as charged and Unrepentant - :)</p>
<p>The joke is on the self-appointed moralists complaining about MJ. Not only does she not care, she just got a free NY Times publicity piece to help her trumpet the theme that she was right all along. Having put a finger in the eye of American credentialism, she is now doing the same to all those textureless resume hounds who were just such a drag on her career. (Of course, her fees may be lower this time.)</p>
<p>MJ is, above all, a performance artist. Her first show was an “erased de Kooning” laugh at the academic establishment. The second is a laugh at you.</p>
<p>Drawn like a moth to the flame . . .</p>
<p>That’s an interesting take, siserune, but some of us don’t see it that way. I believe that a person who had earned a degree from Rensselaer would very probably have set different priorities for admissions, based on a different philosophy and a different understanding of the best match with MIT. For anyone in that camp, her action actually tends to reinforce credentialism.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t subscribe to credentialism. However, I’d be inclined to look a little more closely at the judgment of someone starting out, if I knew that he/she did not have the credentials that are usually looked for.</p>
<p>Bottom line? The women has knowledge of what colleges want to see and hear and she’ll make great money like the others that do. This is an industry like many others-- law, banking, accounting-- where the top do great service and make what their clients want happen, and there will always be folks lined up to pay their high fees.</p>
<p>I have to admit that it’s a shame those fallen out from the adcom offices seem to to thrive, but it’s just the reality.</p>
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<p>The point is not whether or not credentials are necessary but that she lied about them and continued to perpetuate the fraud for many years.</p>
<p>If she presented herself as a “scared straight” type counselor who made her main message that applicants be honest and learn from her mistakes, I’d have more respect for her. Her current posture of “I’ve put that behind me” is just the opposite.</p>
<p>I understand your point, Billy Pilgram. I didn’t become uncomfortable with this thread until the discussion included “disembowelment.” Actually, I think that <em>is</em> vicious, when directed at a particular individual. Drawing on my vast knowledge as a Dante scholar–i.e., I’ve seen a few lectures by Prof. Kenneth Bartlett, Univ. of Toronto, on DVD–I think that the reference is authentic, but that Dante was indulging in a spot of malice against one of his contemporaries, by having him show up in the Inferno.</p>
<p>However, I disagree with siserune that Marilee Jones “put a finger in the eye of American credentialism.” She did show that one could select classes for MIT, without having the background she claimed. But I think she would have selected differently, if she’d had that background–so it’s not exclusively the resume issue. </p>
<p>The second issue is not a question of the prestige of the undergraduate institution; it’s the coursework. A random faculty member at MIT would probably assume that MIT’s admissions decisions were being made by someone who had taken rigorous, calculus-based physics and multi-variable calculus. (At some institutions, including mine, it’s possible to obtain a degree in biology without either.) A lot of students take those courses in high school now. But whether one struggles with the concepts or breezes through them, I think those courses leave their imprint on one’s thinking.</p>
<p>Who knew what she was thinking during admissions? Was she more inclined to believe that people were not telling the truth on their resumes? Did she give kids with less accomplishments a leg up because she believed others might not give then a chance. We will never know. What we do know is that she believed it was okay to continually lie to others to continue to get what she wanted.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure I have the requisite background to understand yours, Quantmech :D, but I do agree that she did not commit an offense worthy of physical injury or incarceration.</p>
<p>IMO, a little humility and penitence would have gone a long way, though.</p>