<p>I remember in high school, a bratty girl pulled the fire alarm right before going into a test and of course, the students had to leave the building. The delay caused the teacher to have to reschedule the exam…which is what she wanted. </p>
<p>This guy may avoid prison if some plea bargain can be had, but he’s really screwed up his life. If he was stealing tests in high school and then does this, it sounds like either he’s lazy or he’s under intense pressure from parents to get only top grades.</p>
<p>This is nothing new. I remember a few similar incidents when I was an undergrad at Berkeley back in the Dark Ages. If I recall, some professors would even station their TAs around the fire alarms just to make sure that no one pulled them during their exams.</p>
<p>It’s nothing new and laughable in the old time but it’s very offensive and imprisonable after 911 and the Boston marathon bombing, the death of an MIT police officer, and the scary hunt for the Tsarnaev brothers in Cambridge in April 2013. Kim was in Cambridge at that time and he should have known about those horrific events.</p>
<p>Hopefully, his situation will be appropriately handled to deter others from being copycats. If he truly “cracked” as has been posted at least one place, I hope he gets treatment as well, so he can move forward once he has had his day in court or reached an appropriate resolution based on his actions. </p>
<p>Have not read or heard how the students will be making up the exams and disruption to their schedule caused by the bomb threats.</p>
<p>I do recall bomb threats being made pretty widely when my kids were in elementary school, 15 or more years ago. H’s workplace also had bomb threats called in to his office with some regularity; many (if not all) the threats required evacuation and caused great losses in productivity and manpower, as well as stress and great inconvenience to all affected.</p>
<p>He used TOR, which would have made the source of the threat almost impossible to trace, but he should have used an off-campus internet site. Duh.</p>
<p>I hope he gets his life straightened out after he gets out of prison.</p>
<p>The student emailed the threat for 4 buildings. He is likely to be made an example of, as the amount of resources used to evacuate the highly congested area and search for the bombs was massive. Add to this the fact that the it has only been 8 months since Boston marathon bombings.</p>
<p>He faces a maximum of 5 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. He is not likely to get that, but it is definitely going to be a lot worse than taking the final exam would have been.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see what Harvard will do with this student. </p>
<p>I wonder how this will impact his family life. Will he be disowned by his parents for shaming the family, will they welcome him home with open arms, will they stand behind him?</p>
<p>I would like to see him get weekends in jail for a year and have to repay all agencies that responded from his future earnings.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I don’t think his situation was properly handled. They’ve exempted all students from all exams, even though the situation was pretty obviously a hoax and it was resolved in 2 hours. Only one dorm was involved, and also those students who happened to be taking exams in those few buildings at that particular time. No one was hurt. I think it would have been more appropriate to offer students the option to begin their next exam at the end of its regularly scheduled time, in case they lost a few hours of preparation time due to this event. Not to let everyone skip all exams if they choose.</p>
<p>Future earnings? LOL. This guy will be lucky to be flipping burgers.</p>
<p>That is a pretty light punishment. Apparently, this guy acted intentionally and tried to cover up his tracks. The student should be expelled forever. If he is reinstated it sets a bad precedent for future students who may behave similarly. It would not surprise me if Harvard reinstated him at some point because Harvard’s administration is full of wimps.</p>
<p>I note that he is from Seoul, but went to a public HS in Washington. As I found out when we hosted a South Korean student here, there is an entire subculture of Koreans who ship their kids to the US at various ages, hoping to sidestep the brutal Korean university application process and get their kids into US universities. One strategy is to rent a house in a good school district, fill it with teens, and have one adult live there with them. Sometimes the adult is a parent–usually a mother–and the parents of the kids may rotate through, sometimes it is an unrelated adult who runs the house long term, sometimes it is a Korean graduate student. I know of houses like this run in the DC area and on the west coast, where the adult is an unrelated male who is providing the service for pay. It is a scheme to “steal” tuition on a technicality of residence. Other families have the mother live abroad with the kids from an earlier age. This happens in New Zealand and Australia, too. The goal is to live in an English-speaking country. I note that his older sister was also at Harvard in some capacity, so perhaps she went through this also.</p>
<p>There are other schemes involving poor quality private schools, many of them church affiliated, that will take any student and find local families to board them, but that would not appear to be the case here. Others have their children go to school as ostensible exchange students starting at the age of 14 or so, switching host families–who are not paid–and school districts–which are rooked out of tuition–every year.</p>
<p>All of the above are much cheaper than sending one’s kid to a good boarding school, something that is probably beyond the means of most of the families in question. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on these kids, as I have witnessed.</p>
<p>I suppose it is possible that his family actually emigrated, but I have to wonder, knowing what I know.</p>
<p>I think Harvard made its stance pretty clear when it took no action whatever against the young woman from NJ who was packaged by Ivywise with a book deal, who subsequently plagiarized the book.</p>
<p>We understand most students are expressing eagerness to take the exams for which they have prepared. However, if for any reason a student does not feel able to take an exam including anxiety, loss of study time, lack of access to material and belongings left in one of the affected buildings, or travel schedule that student should be in touch immediately with his or her resident dean. Any such student will have the option of being graded on their coursework to date, excluding the exam. Those students will have the option of requesting to be graded Pass/Fail for the course without incurring any penalty in their progress toward degree.</p>
<p>Consolation; yep, I’ve also read about these schemes, which are often orchestrated by Korean nationals, reportedly. I understand that some communities in California have stepped up enforcement of regulations regarding multiple unrelated persons living in the same single-family abode.</p>
<p>If any of you have read “The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got that Way”, you could speculate on the cultural background for this kind of desperation regarding grades. </p>
<p>It’s too bad because Harvard actually has a lot of supports for students who are on the verge of “cracking”: deans, advisors, mental health at HUHS, and the Bureau of Study Counsel. Kim could have met with a dean, described distress or illness, and been able to take a make-up exam in a month or two.</p>
<p>The mood of law enforcement at this time, particularly after the marathon, will make things really tough for Kim. Also, he may be here on a student visa so there may be immigration issues. I think he may end up incarcerated for some period of time, and Harvard certainly will not take him back.</p>
<p>Let’s word of Kim’s ultimate fate be posted on a big sign at the entrance to his path to perdition (with apologies to Dante Alegheri); “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Here being the foolishness and selfishness of his act.</p>
<p>That’s what he deserves; perdition. Figuratively speaking.</p>
<p>“I think Harvard made its stance pretty clear when it took no action whatever against the young woman from NJ who was packaged by Ivywise with a book deal, who subsequently plagiarized the book.”</p>
<p>Huh? Plagiarism isn’t a crime. Kim just admitted to a felony where his classmates and his school were the victims. What stance did Harvard make clear for this situation?</p>