I've already posted in the other threads, but I'll say a bit more here.
I wish someone would dig a little deeper into the Jessica Krug story.
When did this deception start? How exactly did she pull it off? How could she have suddenly gone from being a White student to being a Black one? Aren't things like race generally kept track of, especially in a University environment? And if she suddenly was claiming Blackness, wouldn't that raise some kind of questions?
I will add that because I am myself White, there's a lot I don't know about being Black or anything other than White. But honestly, I keep on wondering about the record keeping.
I knew Jessie when she was a student at Barstow. My two sons attended there, although neither was in her grade. I knew her from the time she started in 8th grade, until she left in disgrace at the very end of her senior year.
I even was her car pool driver, taking her to school pretty much every day during her senior year, because her mother's job made it too hard for her, and there was only one car in the family. I lived about a mile away, she was closer to Barstow, so driving her was not at all a hassle. During that year I got to know her quite well.
She was always willing to shock, anger, and offend people. It's hard to stress that enough. More to the point, she was determined to shock, anger, and offend people.
Oh, and I'm not buying her story of childhood trauma, or even her tale of being confronted because of wearing a Star of David. While she certainly never hid her Jewish identity, I don't recall her ever wearing that. The Jewish population of the Kansas City area is, I'm not even sure how to express this, but perhaps I'll say comfortably assimilated. For what it's worth, my (now ex) husband is Jewish, and so I'm slightly conversant in such things.
Her mother adored her. That was obvious from the first time I met Sherry Krug. She and Jessie's father were divorced, which I see as no big deal since divorce is very common. I honestly have no idea what role he played in her life, since he was never mentioned. If you'd have asked me back then I'd have guessed he was dead or totally out of their lives.
I suspect the turning point was the high school plagiarism. She didn't get away with it, and was effectively expelled about five days before the end of the year, but I suspect the lesson she took away was that if she were more savvy and cagy, she could get away with it the next time. Which is why I'm not particularly surprised at all this.
I doubt she tried to pass as Black at KU, but it would be interesting to know at what point, in either of her two next schools, that deception started. Plus, what puzzles me the most in this whole case, is that a person's stated race is often on a lot of official paperwork. So when all of a sudden she was claiming to be Black, why weren't any hackles raised?
It seems to me that just letting this story go with "Oh, she deceived everyone for a number of years and now her career is over" misses a lot. Misses things and issues that really ought to be raised.
So much is missing from this story.
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