Post a controversial opinion

It is an outstanding thing.

Harvard is a private institution that tells propsective freshman that their acceptance is conditional upon their subsequent behavior in their acceptance letters. Everyone who actually reads the letter knows that they need to behave or else they could put their admission in jeopardy. Furthermore, these kids were in a private group with a whole bunch of people that they didn't actually know, intentionally and purposefully associating their real names with reprehensible shit as a first impression to their classmates. It's not like a subset of them got together and only passed super gross stuff around among themselves; they had to show their asses to the wider audience first, which is how the school found out about it in the first place. This is also the type of thing that would get a current student brought in front of the Administrative Board for breach of student conduct and likely made to take a year sabbatical before they could finish their degrees (the schools, both undergrad and graduate, are very loathe to kick students out once they've started studies, which is why they tried to handle so many date rape situations internally and got into trouble with Title IX violations). Finally, anyone who is dumb enough to actually participate in this type of thing, particularly associated with their real names, as a first impression to the community where they intend to spend the next four years, is actually too stupid to be at Harvard.

yeah, fuck racists imo, DJP otm

Like, do you think these kids would have been offered admission had they walked into their interviews namechecking sexually explicit material and making pinata jokes about beating Mexican children? They absolutely would not. Basically, these kids helped out some waitlisters and hopefully will reflect on the consequences associated with their actions as they get their degrees at Penn.

is there anything in the harvard crimson rule book about cancelling your degree if you declared war on a country?

I think rescinding someone's acceptance to college over what they posted in a PRIVATE facebook group is gross and chilling, but I'm sure many people here will be all too happy to tell me why it's a Very Good Thing.

― evol j, Monday, June 5, 2017 2:12 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark

there's no such thing as privacy on Facebook

as they get their degrees at Penn.

stone cold

yeah solid subtweet

there's no such thing as privacy on the internet in general IMO

there's no such thing as privacy on Facebook

― 龜, Monday, June 5, 2017 6:25 PM (three minutes ago)

it is kind of amazing how many ppl do not grasp this, the thing is called "social media" ffs

This is also the type of thing that would get a current student brought in front of the Administrative Board for breach of student conduct and likely made to take a year sabbatical before they could finish their degrees

I find this very hard to believe, given that the student who hung a Confederate flag out her dorm room window wasn't disciplined in any way.

And yeah, I am basically against this move, because I think 17-year-olds, even Harvard-bound 17-year-olds, are idiotic in predictable ways, and yes I am more willing to give them a pass than I am some middle-aged clown who makes a surgeon's salary trolling liberals and weeping about the silencing of his views

I mean I haven't seen what they posted and don't want to, but based on my college experience there are hundreds of incoming first-years whose earnestly expressed political views are way more morally degraded than anything in those memes

i'm sure they'll spend daddy's money on a fine degree elsewhere

xp rivers cuomo for example

you sure, eephus?

In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson. Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.”

I'm all for the action taken but I'm also never for judging a meme by the newspaper description

the sheer breadth of shit that was mentioned as subject matter for these memes gives the impression this was a collection of people with transgressive senses of humor, unless you want to believe they were all racist, anti-Semitic child molesting rapists.

I find this very hard to believe, given that the student who hung a Confederate flag out her dorm room window wasn't disciplined in any way.

Which one? There have been several.

"Likely" is overstatement, though; the point I meant to make was that punishment to actual students is possible and that once they'd begun taking classes, you almost literally have to murder someone or steal from cancer-ridden children before the school will cut ties with you (note: these are not hypothetical situations, but actual things that happened while I was an undergrad).

"transgressive" sense of humor means dead baby jokes. i think this goes beyond that.

I definitely knew first-years in college whose political views disturbed me much more than if they'd cracked wise about the Holocaust or pedophilia.

I mean, I have a transgressive sense of humor. I always have, including when I was an undergrad. If I had witnessed this shit as a propsective freshman, my response would have been "fuck these kids" and, if the school didn't consider that a breach of conduct worthy of rescinding the offer of matriculation, I don't know if I would have gone. Neither, based on the reaction I got from my wider college social circle, would literally ANY of the other people I met while I was there.

Which brings me back to my original point; if these kids were too dumb to realize that doing this shit on a Facebook group in front of a bunch of their peers whom they didn't actually know was a terrible idea, they are too dumb to be at Harvard.

bet some real unsavory characters make it to the U of Phoenix boards. suppose it's ok if Harvard wants to use a finer comb.

I wonder if someone saw one of these memes and was genuinely offended (which would be shitty, the one aspect of this story that nags is that it seems kids had to post an offensive meme to the larger group to prove their worthiness to join the offensive memes group, and really no one who didn't sign up for that shit should have to have it shoved in their face) or it it was some white kid being a damn snitch.

lmfao

Are you really intending to argue here that a white person couldn't be genuinely offended by this behavior or that the critical detail that makes this entire scenario actionable can be handwaved as an inconvenient detail to the chilling effect this has on people's abilities to just be their shitty selves without repercussion?

lol

I know this is the controversial opinion thread and all but

DJP, I meant Bridget Kerrigan and for all I know maybe you get in trouble for that now, but not then.

The guy who stole from kids with cancer is still an alum in good standing!

the only criticism i can muster is that it was borne of some overly persnickety sense of what a "harvard man" (adjust gender as needed) is supposed to be, even though people who hold similarly vicious ideas are for sure getting in, and in fact teaching there.

three cheers for the little shitbags being exposed, that's great.

Your president is literally stealing from kids with cancer tbf

christ, i didn't mean that was the determining factor of whether this was a justifiable decision or not, just curious because that's not the kind of detail that's ever going to be in the story.

joe rogan will likely explore that detail in a 2 hour long podcast this week

christ, i didn't mean that was the determining factor of whether this was a justifiable decision or not, just curious because that's not the kind of detail that's ever going to be in the story.

― evol j, Monday, June 5, 2017 3:02 PM (forty-one seconds ago) Bookmark

why did you think it was a meaningful detail?

i didn't even say it was meaningful, i just said i wonder.

time to give this one up

even though people who hold similarly vicious ideas are for sure getting in, and in fact teaching there

i would imagine that they're not interested in policing reprehensible opinions, only the public expression of reprehensible opinions

The guy who stole from kids with cancer is still an alum in good standing!

Wait, he is???? I guess he didn't get caught until after he graduated?

I'm pretty sure that's right. He definitely wasn't jailed until after graduation at any rate, there maybe were storm clouds gathering his senior year, I don't remember the exact timeline

still an alum in good standing!

I don't think it is possible for a university to retroactively rescind a degree for actions happening after graduation.

The actions happened before he graduated; he got caught after (I thought it was right before commencement but I had my timeline off)

offensive memes group

I mean, here's yr culprit.

People haven't really decided what Facebook is 'for' yet, and also people haven't come to a consensus on what is or is not offensive, or whether decent people can laugh at offensive jokes, or if it's okay to be offensive if it's bracketed as a joke, or whether memes on facebook are the same thing as jokes anyway. So when a university makes a decision that effectively takes a position on each of these points it's going to seem wrong to a lot of people

DJP, I meant Bridget Kerrigan and for all I know maybe you get in trouble for that now, but not then.

fun fact: my wife roomed with Jacinda Townsend after this whole thing happened. It did not go well.

destroy all social media

i think we know what Facebook is for.

I was under the impression that the private Facebook was just between a few students, not between a huge number of people they didn't know. Seems spectacularly dumb.

I dunno, I see a lot of facebook arguments between people who think it's for incisive discussions about serious business and people who think it's not

As I understand it:

- There was a Facebook group for the whole class.
- A subset of the class started a Facebook group to share memes.
- The dummies decided they wanted a private message group to share really gross memes and told people who wanted to join in that they needed to post something shocking and horrible to the general meme group in order to get an invitation.
- At least one person on the meme group went "wtf" and notified the school
- The school said "lol u dummies, no Harvard for u"
- 99% of the alumni I interact with who have passed this story around have commented on it with some variation of "good" and/or "lol"

Ahh I think I'm coming round to 'good' on this in that case. If there was encouragement from some to throw the offensive stuff around in a group that was meant to be for everyone that's pretty clear cut

fuck these dumb brats

Yeah, that sounds like it wasn't private by any stretch.

also people haven't come to a consensus on what is or is not offensive, or whether decent people can laugh at offensive jokes

Oh I do hope you'll let us know as soon as you have this consensus!