This site purports to show the offensive memes that were posted - for context. Hard to believe these were the best and brightest Harvard could round up.
I am. Harvard is perfectly within their rights to do whatever they please. I just don’t agree for the stated reasons for it. It just seems way too Big-Brotherish to me. I have not been a Harvard fan for a long time mostly because of their so-called educational model. The other Ivies (and many other schools) do it better and actually teach rather than just cherry-picking those that have the greatest chance of success on their own. Harvard just happens to be the wealthiest university in the world and acts like it. They don’t want anyone screwing up their club.
Ironically, they still aren’t the top in most departments or even for general liberal arts education. MIT, just down the street, spanks that ass when it comes to science and engineering. Princeton offers a truly challenging experience and Yale is the college of Presidents. If you want cutting edge technology education, Stanford is the place to go. The list goes on and on. Harvard is trying to turn itself into an institutionalized version of a limousine liberal and it isn’t going to work (Berklely already has that market cornered). They need to get back to their core mission - education and not an investment fund with old buildings and people that like to get offended when 17 year olds post questionable internet memes.
Can a college expel someone for a joke made in a private conversation?
Private colleges can. It isn’t a great idea but it happens. All it takes is for someone to claim harassment, mental distress or discrimination. It usually wouldn’t end up with literal expulsion but you may have to go see the Dean or go to a student court to resolve it.
Since the school was founded to educate 17th century ministers, the founders would have no problems with denying entry to people who violated the norms of those times, although those norms were different than those of today. These kids violated the norms of today, so it’s quite within the standards of the school to deny them entry.
The on-line world is not a private place and you have to work to get true anonymity on it. Don’t post anything online that you wouldn’t say in front of a group of friends, acquaintances, and strangers. That’s apparently a difficult concept, since so many people violate it.
To the people who think it’s OK to be a jerk in private: how are you defining “private”? I know people who define it as “any time there isn’t a recording or a cop in sight”, and who are perfectly happy being abusive to coworkers or passersby, on account of “whatchagonnado”.
Being a jerk is wrong-period, not wrong-depending-on-who-hears-it.
As freshmen, me and my friends would throw really stupid lines at each other, well within earshot of other people. But we weren’t stupid enough to put them down into traceable media. This was before the earnet. Young uns in my time were probably even more idiotic.
If you’re mature enough to get into Harvard you’re mature enough to deal with the consequences of acting stupidly.
Young adults, (yes, adults), often do stupid things not in their best interests. And then, they have to deal with the consequences. That’s what being an adult is.
If your kid isn’t mature enough to handle the consequences of their own words and actions, then they shouldn’t be at Harvard. PERIOD. And maybe, if your kid thinks this is okay behaviour then they actually NEED the life lesson that comes along with it. And if the parents haven’t provided learning in this regard, then I have no problem with the uni doing it for them!
“But it was a joke!”, is NOT, and should never be, a free pass to be bigoted, mysoginist, racist, homophobic etc.
Too stupid to know social media antics can bite you in the ass? You SHOULD be disqualified from entry to uni!
Our current president recently urged moderate Muslims to push out the radicals in their communities, to let them know their hatred isn’t going to be tolerated.
The conservatives cheered.
But apparently, American institutions of higher learning are evil if they have a similar stance with racists. Even though American racists have a long history of terrorism,violence, and oppression, we’re apparently supposed to invite them into our collective bosoms and elevate them to positions of power. And if we don’t want to do this, we’re the ones who are the bad guys.
Make up your fucking minds, conservatives.
A private entity is welll within its rights to withdraw offers of admission.
I am not comfortable with increased scrutiny into private conversations.
Bingo. Exactly this. Time and time again people get away with serious misdemeanours because they’re just boys being boys or whatever. No, even if that’s a widely accepted truth, they should still be punished for their transgressions.
The administration of Harvard is free to do what they will; I haven’t heard of anybody in this thread seeking to compel Harvard to follow any particular course of action.
The present discussion is more along the lines of “hypothetically speaking, if you were the king of Harvard, how would you handle the revelation that some of your newly admitted students were engaging in unseemly written discussions?”
It’s not about the fact that these kids were stupid or immature. The problem was who they insulted. Harvard is looking at the content through the lens of political correctness. If they had a chat room in which they talked about killing certain political figures or certain government employees, they would be part of a big movement and therefore would never face any questions about what they wrote.
No, Harvard is looking at it through the lens of appropriateness.
If you haven’t figured it out by uni admission time, you deserve to be dropped like a hot potato.
If you’re cool with things like volunteering at the soup kitchen helping get you into Harvard, then you should be cool with racists jokes keeping you out. And parents have no problem working every freeaking angle to please the admission folks. Volunteer, be on a team, join the debating club, etc.
Maybe this will get some of them to pay attention to character development too.
yep. too many people believe children should be shielded from the consequences of their own actions.
as if there’s a magical switch that flips at age 21 which automatically turns one into a responsible adult.
This about sums it up for me.
I just listened to an insulting song on YouTube and just seen an offensive meme on 4chan. Should the purity police ruin my life?
what does that have to do with the post you were responding to?
Wait till these search engines and data collectors piece together who you are online even when you use a so-called anonymous label on a message board. Ever tell any off-color joke? Ever see or watch content someone may judge inappropriate? How about check out a book the outragearati would be offended by?
It’s going to be funny when people start messing with each other by secretly recording someone making a joke and posting it on the internet. You folks really have no idea what the loss of privacy is going to mean and it’s sad.
Like the so-called fappening. I guess that’s cool too. Grown adults should know better. Your bank password. That’s fair game too. Who cares if you think it’s private and secure. You should know better. The DNC emails being hacked? Well, don’t write anything you wouldn’t want the “Russians” to reveal to the world. Doxxing folks? Why not? People should stand behind what they say.
Furthermore, the arbitrariness of these so-called consequences is completely crazy. Jesse Jackson said he wanted to cut off Barack Obama’s balls on a live mic. Did he get fired? Did he suffer “consequences?”
Get fired from what?