The specifics are found in the complaint:
http://www.bergermontague.com/pdfs/Hidd ... plaint.pdfi havnt read it over recently, but you should.
to sum it up off the top of my head, Leslie Goldberg was taking favors from buccelatto, including airfare for trips.
Her relationship with bucci went like this: She had "professional" respect for him, and he likewise to her. She was well-connected in the TBS/emotionalgrowthschool/boardingschool circles, and was well-respected. schools and colleges all over the country knew her name. a simple CC to leslie on a student's email to the admissions department of many schools could greatly improve a students chance of getting in. Getting on leslie's good side - being on her list of leslie-approved schools could also result in that school gaining significant enrollment increases from big-ticket families. How she gained that sort of reputation i dont have a clue about. bucci wanted to be at the top of her list, so he did semi-unethical things to get there. (i say semi-unethical because i have to admit this sort of thing is common practice in both american and international business and politics). There were benefits to leslie though if you had her as an ed-con. your kid at hla became a high-ticket item, care was taken not to mistreat them to the extent that you may be driven to pull them. if your kid complained to leslie about something bucci would never hear the end of it. also, if you really insisted she would do her best to try to get your kid into a good school and not keep you at HLA.
as for the comment before about commission - ed consultants dont get paid for keeping kids post-grad, but the peer group counselors do (or did).
This was HLA's ed consultant/postgrad scam:
-Your kids in fire/wind element and you are looking at boarding schools for your kid's junior/senior year at high school.
-You have been highly cooperative and have signed along with the program with great enthusiasm. this makes you a target for this scam
-they try to convince you that your kid needs to finish up high school at HLA - there exists a booklet which details specifics to counselors as to what they should say to parents in this situation. dont have time now, but i'll write some of the things up later.
-you insist otherwise, and they say they will not offer any help in getting your kid into the next school - that means no recommendation which is sometimes necessary when coming out of a TBS
-they have you talk to an ed-consultant, they give numbers to you
-ed-con tries to agree with school
-you insist otherwise
-pressure begins - the school threatens to withold your kid's transcript because your kid's failing a class (teacher instructed to fail them). they say kid must repeat class, which at HLA entails another year becouse said class is not offered in the summer and although they'll get the credit in the winter, schools rarely accept transfers mid year, especially for seniors. This can be especially bad if your kid is already a senior.
-ed-con charges large sum for service of getting your kid into next school
-kid magically starts passing the class again.
-despite attempt to get into "traditional" schools, ed-con arrogantly steers you towards emotional growth schools and other TBS's, as a "step down". there's not much of a "step down" involved with these schools, it's always more of the same presented on a different color plate. This is because these types of schools are more open to doing business with ed-cons than traditional schools - "normal kids dont need ed-cons".
-After alot of arguing your kid finally gets into a boarding school.
HLA benefits because they gave the ED-con business, and now the ed-con is more likely to refer kids to HLA, ED-con benefits because now he/she has your money, and your kid barely gets into another school.
i'm not sure if all this still goes on at HLA. i'd put my money on not happening. BUT, you must understand: If someone is willing to compromise their morals once, they are willing to do it again. don't play into HLA's claims of "reform", they havnt reformed. they just changed the way they operate on the surface.
