It’s not easy being an heiress. While some might think that the life of the hereditary wealthy is merely an endless round of parties, premieres and good works in glamorous locations, the reality can be much more mundane.
Take Elizabeth Paige Laurie, an heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune. She not only had to go to college, she was also expected to complete coursework. So, like any enterprising spirit, she appears to have done what came naturally: hire someone to do it for her.
But the not-so-unusual feat of paying someone to do your homework became a minor scandal when Laurie’s family decided to name a sports arena after her. But students at the University of Missouri in Columbia made it plain that they were not happy with the name of the $75-million Paige Sports Arena, which opened three weeks ago.
The fact that a $25-million donation had bought her parents a luxury suite at the arena and the right to name it after their daughter rankled. And besides, Laurie had not even been to their college, instead attending the University of Southern California.
But resentment boiled over when a former USC student came forward last week to allege that she had done all of Laurie’s coursework over the three and a half years of her studies. She was paid $20 000, she claimed.
Elena Martinez, who shared a room with Laurie in their first year in college, told ABC television that initially she had helped Laurie with one paper, for which her friend had given her $25 as thanks. But from there things spiralled until Martinez was carrying out all of the heiress’s assignments, even exchanging e-mails with tutors on her behalf.
”I thought about quitting a lot of times, but I didn’t know how. I was dealing with someone really powerful,” she told the 20/20 programme.
Laurie even criticised Martinez if she thought her work was not up to scratch. ”She was a very demanding, expect-the-best boss,” Martinez said. ”I rarely got a bad grade, but if I did, she’d say, ‘This was horrible.’ She was pretty picky.”
Despite the extra income, Martinez was unable to pay USC’s tuition fees and left the college. But Laurie continued to send her coursework.
”In a way, it was nice,” said Martinez, who moved to a local community college, ”because I was getting the quality education I had wanted.”
Laurie graduated from USC with a degree in communications this year. But the student-heiress pact came undone when Martinez decided to ”make things right”.
She is now cooperating with college authorities as they consider whether to strip Laurie of her qualification.
Saying that he had ”never heard of possible cheating of this magnitude”, Michael Jackson, USC’s vice-president for student affairs, stressed the not unreasonable principle that ”we want all our students to do their own work”.
Students at the University of Missouri said the discovery that their new sports arena had been named after a woman who had allegedly cheated her way through college was demeaning.
”The first day of every class here, they talk about academic integrity,” said Matt Sokoloff, a student at the university. ”Now we find out that our arena is named after a girl who paid her way through college? It really goes against what we stand for.”
Upset by the outcry, Laurie’s parents decided to remove her name from the arena.
Martinez says she has learned from the episode. ”I liked the classes Paige took so much I’ve decided to major in the same thing she did.” – Guardian Unlimited Â