Harvard is offering a new course: free of charge to all prospective students: Accountability #when life gets real.
As reported by the university’s student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, at least 10 newly admitted students had their admissions revoked in April. The individuals, who were initially part of a newly admitted Harvard student Facebook group, broke off to form a separate Facebook chat group. At one point the newly formed group allegedly called itself “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens.”
The University eventually became aware of the private chat group and memes from the Facebook messaging group reportedly covered mocking rape, child sexual abuse and The Holocaust, according to the Harvard Crimson. The paper viewed screenshots of the memes and some included referring to the hanging of a Mexican child as “pinata time”, jokes that sexually abusing children was gratifying and insensitive targeting of people related to race, ethnicity or nationality.
The University has so far, declined to publicly confirm their revocation of admission of these students or the exact number involved. What is clear is that this is not the first time that Harvard has taken a stand against students’ uses of social media. This past November the University suspended it entire men’s soccer team after it was found to have made social media postings (again meant to be within a private group) that rated the sexual attractiveness of the woman’s team.
This is clearly a case of when keeping it real (stupid) goes wrong. This generation, young and old, needs to get a firm grasp that nothing on the Internet is private… what you post on the Internet or within your cloud will be retained forever… and what you post, send, Tweet, email, Snapchat… will most certainly be used against you.
How many more people will have to lose their jobs, be suspended from school, lose political positions, lucrative endorsements, or be embarrassed by naked pictures or stupid comments… to finally learn the lessons that these 10 students apparently are learning. You have to have accountability for your actions… for your words. Hiding behind computers to bully others or say racist, inappropriate and insensitive things is not only not okay, but it comes with consequences when people eventually get caught.
Now for all you amateur Constitutionalists, who want to point to the protections of the 1st Amendment. First off, the Amendment does not exactly give you the right to say “anything” you want to say. Yet, even if language is protected legally as free speech, people need to understand so is the ability of employers and schools to punish you for that speech, within the general code of conduct that most agree to.
I fully expect to hear of some of the parents of these students suing the University regarding the admission revocation. It may even be likely that some of them have significant resources to make the challenge at least legally interesting. This would only further highlight the point, that we currently live in a generation that has little awareness of the consequences of their actions and even less accountability when finally made aware.
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#Harvard, #HarvardUniversity, #revokeadmissions, #Facebook, #memes, #wakeupcall, #reallife, #accountability
