Harvard can expel anyone it wants to. Matriculated students may have more appeal rights, but Harvard controls that process too.
Harvard does what it wants to do, claiming its students are worldly and mature when it wants to and ‘just kids’ when some make mistakes.
@twoinanddone That’s the sort of thing I was thinking of when I said this reflected poorly on everyone. It’s hard to tell what they value, or maybe the standards change when a kid moves from outside the walls to inside the temple, but there’s plenty of knuckleheaded behavior by Harvard students over the years that indicates a few memes on a private FB board hasn’t always been the standard for the nuclear option. It’s hard to feel sorry for smart kids being that dumb, but the school is making a case…
Sounds like this young man is making his way forward as best he can. I hope the others who had their acceptances rescinded are also making their way forward well.
It is challenging when life suddenly turns out differently than expected. This young man is still very young.
The pediatrician I spoke with the other day says brains continue growing and developing until age 25. This guy and all the other, in fact most undergrads are well under that age.
Many of us learn to make the best lemonade we can with what we’ve got.
I sure hope my 24-year-old son’s brain is still developing, because sometimes he still does really stupid things.
Hey, I’m still doing some really stupid things as well but am well past age 25. I just try not to repeat them!
My kids do stupid things all the time, and I’m sure will continue to do so. But they would never in a million years think of posting jokes about raping babies, being sexually aroused by child abuse, or referring to a Mexican child who hung himself as a piñata. That’s not just stupid, that’s sick.
I don’t think the kids who posted the memes would have joked about those offensive things “in real life”. As @twinsmama points out, many of the memes were posted by kids who are in the group that would be most personally offended by them. (A Jewish girl posting a Holocaust meme.) Which does not make it ok, but does give insight into the kids’ mindset.
Their main goal wasn’t to be funny, but to cross society’s barriers of what is appropriate. It was basically a kind of hazing ritual where the more shocking you were willing to be, the more you would prove yourself and be accepted.
None of this is an excuse, and I think rescinding them was likely the right call for Harvard. But I don’t think they are “sick”. They were eager to impress, irreverent, steeped in meme/chat room culture, and disastrously short-sighted, but not broken or disgusting people.
Interesting interview. I still don’t think Harvard was wrong or feel particularly bad for this young man. The world is still his oyster. I just talked to a new grad from Harvard and he was kind of ho hum on his undergrad experience there. It’s a college that gets a lot of attention. But it may or may not be better for your goals than another. It’s no small thing to get the attention of a faculty member at an institution before enrolling and it’s likely he is having a great experience at his final school of choice. Penn and UCLA are great choices too.
I think it’s ridiculous that a school should be responsible for an applicant’s mental health. Even the 2nd go around the parents sounded way too invested in their kid getting in an ivy. That’s how ivy admissions go for many. Some families with elite kids don’t even bother trying because of the price tag. There are many disappointed kids every spring. And they move on. Families should take responsibility for keeping their college searches down to earth and watching their own kid’s mental health. And understand that young adults aren’t perfect. These ones were downright stupid IMO. I can’t imagine doing anything but hugging my kid and moving on quickly if this happened to my kid.
I have an elite kid at a less elite school. Actually a music kid too, not dissimilar to this one. Somehow he has managed to keep his nose clean. He couldn’t stand the new student boards and quickly got off of them. I will also say a faculty member reaching out to him directly was a huge factor in him choosing his school.
I can’t comment on the soccer team incident. Harvard is a business. For some reason Harvard thought it worth it to keep these students. Who knows who their parents/families are. Maybe if it would have escalated in the media more, the outcome for that group may have been different depending on the offenses.
“He had applied ED so had no other options for school that first year and I’m sure others were in the same position.”
Harvard is SCEA so the students could have had other options. However it’s possible they pulled the other apps once they got in SCEA.
Always felt bad for these kids. I do not like “ cancel culture” and always thought about how California state law would prevent Stanford from doing the same.
I few years ago, there was an incident at a school I know where a dozen high school seniors were caught with marijuana (one joint they were all sharing) on a school trip during spring vacation. All of them were suspended for a few days, and the colleges that had accepted them, and to which many of them had committed – this was in mid-April – were informed.
Six of the 12 kids had been accepted to one particular college, and four of them had already committed to go there. The college promptly rescinded the admission of five of the students, but did not rescind the admission of the one of them who had been admitted ED. In his case, the college deferred his admission to spring, put him on probation, and required drug counseling. But they did not yank the admission precisely because he had long ago withdrawn any other applications, and so would have had very limited options for the next year. (All of the others were able to enroll in some other college that had accepted them, and that they were more or less content with.)
In this case, part of the irony was that the college in question had (and has) a somewhat deserved reputation for having students who are not content with merely getting high on life. Everyone overreacted. It didn’t change the trajectory of anyone’s life, though, at least not in a major way.