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Grammy award winner, John Legend has proven that he is never afraid to speak out about controversial topics and on Thursday, he put his two cents in on the national college admissions scandal at the iHeart Radio Music Awards.
“The admissions system rewards people’s parents being wealthy and people’s parents having gone to a certain school,” Legend told Entertainment Tonight. “There’s a lot of legal ways to do that that still aren’t really that fair to a lot of other people.”
On Monday, federal investigators revealed that they had cracked the largest college admissions scam in U.S. history. Dozens of wealthy people were implicated in the scheme, which involved bribing athletic coaches at prestigious colleges, producing fraudulent test scores and donating a large sum of money to the schools. Actresses Laura Loughlin and Felicity Huffman were among the many that were charged in the case.
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The actresses are accused of spending more than $500,000 combined to get their children into good schools, which has caused outrage.
Legend, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, said the system overall is broken.
“I think it’s a longer conversation because I think a lot of people look at this, rightly, as fraudulent and dishonest, but the bottom line is, the system’s been rigged for wealthy people for a long time,” he said.
—Students at NYC’s Ethical Culture Fieldston School stage sit-in to protest racist video—
According to US Weekly, other celebrities have spoken out about the scandal, including Legend’s wife Chrissy Teigen.
On Wednesday, Teigen poked fun at the incident by posting a photoshopped picture with the faces of herself, Legend, celebrity hairstylist Jen Atkin and Atkin’s husband, Mike Rosenthal on the bodies of soccer players on social media. Teigen then captioned the photo: “Does this look real? we are trying to get into Harvard.” She also commented on her own post, stating, “I feel like mine could pass.”
Both Loughlin and Huffman were released from jail on bond. Huffman already appeared before a judge with her husband Willam H. Macy by her side. Loughlin, who was just fired from her gig with the Hallmark Channel and Netflix will have to appear in court on March 29.