Influencer Olivia Jade Giannulli has finally broken her silence on the college admissions scandal in an eye-opening Red Table Talk interview on Wednesday morning.
Giannulli, the daughter of Full House star Lori Loughlin and designer Mossimo Giannulli, was accepted into USC under a rowing scholarship after her parents fraudulently paid $500,000 to have her and her sister admitted to the prestigious school.
In her first interview since Operation Varsity Blues blew the lid off the scam, Olivia Jade admitted that she doesn’t “deserve pity” and opened up a really interesting conversation around wealth and privilege.
Before we get started, it’s worth noting that what the Giannulli family did was objectively wrong, and Olivia Jade should have known better and therefore, done better. I’m not defending her actions whatsoever, but it’s interesting to look at how her privilege warped her view of reality in the situation.
Throughout the interview, Olivia described how she didn’t really realise that what her parents were doing was wrong (and illegal) because donating large sums of money to colleges (legally) was normal within her community of uber-rich kids.
“When all this first happened and it became public, I remember thinking — my thoughts are completely different now — ‘How are people mad about this?’ I know that sounds so silly, but in the bubble that I grew up in, I didn’t know so much outside of it. A lot of kids in that bubble, their parents were donating to schools and doing stuff that advantaged,” she said.
“It’s not fair and it’s not right, but it was happening. And so, when this first came out, I was like, ‘I don’t really understand what’s wrong with this.’”
Although there’s a difference between donating funds to a school for a fancy new library and blatantly paying for your child to be admitted under false grounds, it’s easy to see why Olivia Jade may not have realised something was wrong when throwing cash around like this was so normal.
Obviously, donating a building to a school isn’t – on paper – guaranteeing your child’s entry into a prestigious school. But when you look at situations like Les Wexner (yes, *that* one) donating large sums of money to Harvard around the same time that four of his children started at the school, it’s easy to see how it might influence the admissions team’s decisions.
While it’s not illegal to donate to schools, hearing Olivia Jade throw the concept around as if it was the normal protocol within her wealthy and privileged circle of friends really makes you question the fairness of prestigious school admissions and the legality of these huge donations.
Thankfully, Olivia now seems to understand that what she did was wrong, noting that she simply wasn’t aware of her privilege at the time.
“I didn’t realise at the time that was privilege,” she said.
“I didn’t put those two together. I was like, ‘Well, this is what everybody does, and my parents worked really hard and I don’t understand.’ But that’s not how it should be and unfortunately, that’s how it was, and I’m grateful for this situation to see that big change and that big difference in my own mind.”
During the interview, she literally admitted to being “the poster child for white privilege.”
“That’s embarrassing to admit,” Giannulli said. “That’s embarrassing within itself that I walked around my whole 20 years of life not realizing you have insane privilege: You are the poster child of white privilege.”
To put it simply, she was blinded by the privilege she was quite literally born with. And although it’s not an excuse for rorting the system, it is worth noting.
But thankfully, the whole episode wasn’t just an Olivia Jade sob story, with Banfield Norris putting her square in her place by pointing out that even after being involved in the biggest college admissions scandal ever, her life will still be a lot better than most.
“‘Child, please,’” Norris said. “I am exhausted with everything that we have to deal with as a community and I just don’t have the energy to put into the fact that you lost your endorsements or you’re not in school right now because, at the end of the day…your parents are going to go in and they’re going to do their 60 days and they’re going to pay their fine and you guys will go on…and you will live your life, and there are so many of us that it is not going to be that situation. It just makes it very difficult right now for me to care.”
The whole interview was basically Olivia Jade swearing that she’s learned from her mistakes and want to use her platform and experiences to genuinely help people, so here’s hoping she actually sticks to her word and uses her wealth to fund scholarships for underprivileged POC.
Personally, I don’t believe in cancel culture, but I do think Olivia Jade should remove herself from the influencer space after the scandal. Sure, she’s young and has plenty of time to learn and grow from her mistakes, but I think if we allow her to continue being a YouTube star with a young audience, it sends the message that it’s okay to rort the system, as long as you’re rich and privileged.
You can watch the full episode on Facebook below.
