In your opinion. AFAIK, and you can correct me with the ruling, but there is no case law that backs that statement. Apparently Stanford feels that the Leonard Law does not apply to admitted students and may be willing to be challenged on its grounds for rescission. Regardless, it’s a moot point as Kyle won’t be attending Stanford either this Fall.
It does seem reasonsonable to think that traumatic experiences change people. He could be a totally different person or completely the same.
“It does seem reasonable to think that traumatic experiences change people. He could be a totally different person or completely the same.”
Well, he posted a photo of himself posing at a shooting range with an AR-15 rifle on his Twitter account AFTER the Parkland massacre…surely he understood how incredibly painful that would have been for his classmates.
Why anyone is defending this student’s behavior is beyond me…hopefully a wake up call to him now and in the future.
@“Cardinal Fang” , what is the purpose of including “rural area” in the statement below?
He was talking about n******s not in an all-white rural town in North Dakota, but in a school that’s 12% African-American. He was insulting his own classmates, not some strangers he hadn’t met and didn’t know anything about.
@nomood Yes, he may have changed. But adcoms (and admins, in this case,) don’t guess. They need to see rather strong evidence and it doesn;t seem to be there. Ordinary passive words of regret aren’t enough.
Oh please, if anyone thinks I’m defending this kid, I’m not. I’m very, very disturbed by his POV. Sure it’s not Harvards responsibility to teach him, but who will? You think this kid will really learn anything from this? I think he’ll only learn more hate. But I do understand why H wouldn’t want to have this hate on its campus.
I brought my torch and pitch fork. Let’s go get him. Harvard sucks.
Harvard took a cop out. The kid has spent the past year traveling and speaking for a pro gun group and criticizing his classmates anti gun agenda. What place does a gun nut have in Cambridge, MA? They should have rejected him on the disgusting person he is today; not just the disgusting person he was two years ago.
What happened to the mythical ability of top colleges to detect every applicant’s unique personality and moral chacter? Clearly their sensors were broken that day.
My concern here is what they will do when they receive copies of similar private or group texts sent by other accepted students who do not have national media attention. What about misogyny? What if that word is used by a person of colour? What if something was said but not written? So many questions.
How to get into Harvard. Be a URM, be the child of a rich and famous person, be a legacy, be an athlete, and now be a gun rights activists with an embarrassing SAT score of 1270 (Hogg wouldn’t even be able to get into a really good public university that admits 10,000 kids a year with that score). BTW they will reserve a few spots for really smart kids. I love the UC schools. The school gets by on an outdated rep. You could get a better business education at Bentley and a better engineering education at Purdue.
In regards to Freedom of Speech, 2 things…1) the government is the only entity who can violate your right to FOS. 2) FOS doesn’t mean you can say what you want without consequences. People are fired all the time from their jobs for hate speech and a college has every right to rescind your admission based on hate speech as well. I stand behind Harvard in this decision.
@jackson5123 A 1270 is not an “embarrassing” SAT score.
Why would his gun stance be relevant to admissions?
His gun stance is irrelevant.
His “kill all Jews” and similar comments aren’t.
“In regards to Freedom of Speech, 2 things…1) the government is the only entity who can violate your right to FOS. 2) FOS doesn’t mean you can say what you want without consequences. People are fired all the time from their jobs for hate speech and a college has every right to rescind your admission based on hate speech as well. I stand behind Harvard in this decision.”
Sigh.
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Not true. Under California law private universities are bound by the First Amendments freedom of speech requirements as to students. You could try to argue that an admitted student isn’t a “ student” but I’d bet a great deal on you losing that argument in court. Also. All public universities in the US are considered part of “ the government for First Amendment purposes.
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Not true under the First Amendment. Hate speech is protected under the First Amendment. When the speech is private meaning not directed at another individual there is not even an argument that it was intended as a threat of harm to another . Even arguments about speech being a threat are almost always unsuccessful. And FoS under the First Amendment does indeed mean that you get to say what you want without consequence as long as it’s not a threat of harm or an incitement to violence. It is very very hard to establish that speech is incitement under the law. It is clear that if say Berkeley rescinded a student saying that it was because of statements they made that the student would have a successful lawsuit in their hands. I feel confident that this woukd be true of Stanford as well but because private’s have not raised this argument when it has cone up we don’t have a current court decision on this. I have written memos on the issue and do feel that this is absolutely the way court’s would rule.
Harvard can probably do what it wants. It’s private and not in California. There are decent arguments that it has some freedom of speech requirements based on their own statements about their culture of free exchange of ideas but these arguments have in my opinion a less than 50 percent chance of success.
Again let me be clear. I think this kids statements were vile and he seems pretty repulsive in general. But as free speech advocates we know that speech everyone likes and agrees with from people we all think are good doesn’t need protection
^ There’s a precedent in the Harvard case.
Advocating hate and violence against any person or group of people does not fly for highly selective colleges. Considering all the reasons that can get a student to be denied or rescinded, this one is a no brainer.
Also, hatred is not an idea.
Sorry about this, but we have attorneys and courts to argue points of law. Imo, CC sometimes veers off where it can help with college matters.