I recently discovered that a girl that I have only met a few brief times is applying for a transfer to another university. As is operating procedure, she had to write 3 essays.
Every college app I have ever seen has had “how did you overcome adversity?” type questions for the essay section. According to her roommate, who got drunk and told a few people, she lied about having been raped and being hispanic (she’s white) in her essays to conjur up some sympathy and make up for her less than stellar grades.
This pisses me off so much! The rape lie is just heinous. It’s offensive to every woman, especially rape victims.
The lie about being hispanic offends me on a more personal level. My grandmother was Spanish. She grew up speaking Spanish in her home, but after she was married it fell by the wayside and my dad and aunts never learned how to speak the language. I feel like so much of my family’s background was lost in an effort “not to draw attention to themselves.”
I’m 1/4 hispanic, but it’s the Greek in me that gives me dark skin and hair. I’ve never been discriminated against because of my appearence, but people like my grandmother were. I feel like she’s using my grandmother’s trials and tribulations, as well as the trials and tribulations of other minorities to her advantage.
The rape lie is indeed heinous and disgusting, and I also don’t see why it would be effective. If she can write an intelligent and insightful essay about the experience, that might impress the admissions office; but so would an intelligent and insightful essay about some experience that isn’t made-up. If she’s just hoping to use it as an excuse (“I couldn’t get decent grades because I was traumatized by the rape”), I seriously doubt it will make a good impression.
As for trying to pass herself off as Hispanic (presumably to take advantage of some admissions ethnic diversity goals), it sounds pretty stupid. Most college application forms ask you to provide your parents’ names (though it may be optional information), and if you’re talking about being Hispanic while neither you nor either of your parents has a Hispanic name, it will probably be noticed.
Also, college applicants who request a personal interview generally have something of an admissions edge over the ones who are solely on paper. If this person submits an application essay about her Hispanic heritage, and then shows up for an interview with nothing Hispanic in her appearance and with no information about her supposed Hispanic background, it will definitely be noticed. Moreover, since it’s a transfer, the admissions office of the college she’s applying to may even talk to people at her current college.
College admissions offices have seen a lot of attempted scams by applicants, and they are frequently quite good at spotting dishonesty.
Exactly how did the roommate know the rape story was a lie? And are you positive she’s not hispanic? One of the “whitest” girls I know is half-mexican.
Any chance the roommate is just trying to stir up shit for her own reasons?
Either way, I’d be very very cautious about going to an authority and accusing someone of lying about a rape. Unless she’s claiming to have gone through a trial or even an investigation that can be proven not to exist, there’s always the chance that she’s telling the truth. Maybe when her roommate saw the essay she lied and said it was a lie because it was personal and she didn’t want to talk about it? Maybe she never reported it to anyone, like tons of other women?
Not saying it’s impossible for someone to lie about these kind of things, just that it’s certainly not something you should automatically believe third-hand, you know?
Kimstu, I can only hope that if this is all true (which I do believe it to be. I don’t think that I’m a gullible person), that the admissions people will find out.
She told her roommate that she thought that it would be a good way to get sympathy, despite not having been raped.
I have plenty of very “white” friends who are half-hispanic, so I understand why you’re asking. My dad’s half-hispanic, and he is very “white.” Again, she told the roommate that she was lying, and that she felt that she could get away with it because of the things that we just discussed above.
Agreed, and I wasn’t planning on going to any type of authority figure for these reasons. I just needed to rage about it. It just disgusts me that she’s using the pain of rape victims and minorities to get some type of weird leg up. What a bitch.
And that’s the first thing I though of. I’m betting that the roommate is either delighting in yanking your chain or pissed off at the subject of your ire or simply misunderstood what she has seen or was told.
You’re getting second hand information from someone who was drunk. Unless you can conclusively prove yourself that the girl is 1)Not Hispanic and 2)Never Raped, keep quiet. You could be screwing up this girl’s chances of getting into the university based on gossip.
That’s a fair point. How would the OP know if the woman was lying about being raped? Maybe she was and was keeping that little tidbit of information to herself, for obvious reasons.
No matter who, if anyone, is lying here, it’s got to be a pretty hard-hearted admission board reader who won’t bump up, if just a little, a rape survivor who’s overcome that hardship and the disadvantage of a minority background.
Well, you don’t need to worry about that. I did say before:
Hell, even if I did somehow manage to find out for a fact that she lied, I still wouldn’t take it to anyone but her, with the hope that she would do the right thing and notify the admissions officers. If not, karma seems to get these kinds of people in the end.
Pardon my cynicism, but my experience has been that this kind of person seems to get away with things like this way more often than not. They do get caught once in a while, but whatever their sense of fair play is, it seems to trump any sense of fairer play in the real world.
But what does define “hipsanic”? What nations define “hispanic”? What % can you be and still *be *hispanic? 1/2? 1/4? 1/16th? Is it personal appearance?
Since they seem to have no rules for this, how can she be breaking them?