Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences! That’s a lesson that some people have a hard time grasping or remembering. You don’t joke with the TSA agent about having a bomb when you set off the metal detector and they have to pat you down. You can get charged for inciting a panic by falsely yelling that there’s a fire in a crowded venue. And you can get rescinded from Harvard for extreme immaturity and insensitivity.
I think the whole point of Harvard being Harvard is that their goal is to avoid admitting any “stupid” people, whatever their age. (Whether they are successful or not is another question, but I think that’s pretty much the whole point of requiring LOR’s with college applications).
I bet there are more than 10 stupid 18 year olds admitted to Harvard this year. Or any year. These 10 were just stupid enough to not get it about posting things on FB.
So I guess they have to attend their second choice schools and instead are headed to Princeton or Yale or Stanford, etc.? Lovely.
If they can still get in. I wouldn’t think that would be a given.
@planner03 - “So I guess they have to attend their second choice schools and instead are headed to Princeton or Yale or Stanford, etc.? Lovely.”
Considering that many choose Princeton or Yale or (particularly) Stanford over Harvard, I’ll take your statement as a mere sarcasm.
Moral character starts at home. From early age we’re taught what is right and wrong from our parents. Most kids even at age 7 knows that such behavior that these Harvard admission rescinded students have exhibited is wrong. With so much emphasis placed today on getting into Ivy League from early age at the cost of other, more important form of home “education,” it’s no surprise that we see such sad self-destructive episodes from time to time. It’s not just these kids that must learn a painful and embarrassing lesson; it’s their parents, as well – if they learn from this experience at all.
Considering that some people have attended or graduated from super selective colleges and gone on to prominent prestigious careers in business, government, etc. despite boorish or otherwise unpleasant behavior, it is not unambiguous that all of the behavioral examples that people see are good ones.
No, it’s not like that at all because students are NOT employees. If anything, they are customers/clients of the university.
As a lawyer who spend a lot of time on free speech issues it saddens me that people don’t understand the issue. Let me try to explain the very many wrong statements made here
- Its not a free speech issues because it’s a private not a public.
Not exactly. It’s not a First Amendment issue because it’s a private.
But It IS potentially a free speech issue. The issue is what degree of free speech one has at Harvard. Given the way institutions like Harvard make representations about how they allow for a full and feee exchange of ideas, the answer isn’t none at all. The FIRE.ORG has some interesting articles on the subject. These theories have never been tested in the courts but saying it’s not an issue is way too simple.
2 “Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences!”
That’s actually wrong. Free speech does mean freedom from consequence. The issue is whether you actually have a right to free Speech. Let’s look at some examples posters bring up:
“You don’t joke with the TSA agent about having a bomb when you set off the metal detector and they have to pat you down. You can get charged for inciting a panic by falsely yelling that there’s a fire in a crowded venue.”
Correct. Because you don’t have a free speech right to incite panic in airports. All constitutional rights ( and those apply to public institutions like airports) can be curtailed if the government has a strong enough compelling interest that takes away that right. The general belief even among free side has advocates is that in the TSA situation the governments interstest is strong enjough to curtail free speech rights.
“Freedom of speech refers to the government’s right to restrict or ban speech, not to my right to tell my boss he is a big fat pig. I have the right to do that, the government can’t restrict it, and my (former) boss has the right to fire me.”
Mostly true because again you have no free speech rights with respect to most private employers. Though in a union situations that isn’t true. One incident of calling your boss a name would be unlikely to allow him to fire you in union or contract situations.
In the specific context of this particular incident, they’re no different than employees of a private firm as like them, all students must agree to be held to terms and conditions for using Harvard affiliated online groups…which they’ve clearly violated here.
Agreeing to terms and conditions of use doesn’t make someone an employee. We all agree to the TOS as a condition of using CC, but that doesn’t make us CC employees.
I live in fly-over country and the majority of students choose to go east rather than west. Stanford always seems to lose out with cross-admits and they know it.
Re: #32
That was someone else’s quote, not mine.
Well, I’m speaking for the majority of Californians and the West and we say thank you for choosing the East and not choosing us. =D>
I imagine if Harvard had access to every social media post a student had ever made, they could come up with a reason to rescind 10%+ of the class, instead of just 10 students.
I’m sure there were more than 10 stupid kids admitted to Harvard this year. It’s just that these particular 10 were evidently stupider than the other stupid kids who could see that posting racist, sexist, insulting memes was a bad idea that might undermine Harvard’s good opinion about them.
Or as Forrest Gump put it: “Stupid is as stupid does.”
What???
Ya Stanford is really missing out.
And we wonder why it is called fly over country.
Considering many employers access publicly available social media posts of prospective hires and there has been several discussions of adcoms doing the same to applicants/admitted students, who’s to say they haven’t already done so?
You didn’t mention the factor that the First Amendment also gives private individuals and organizations the right to freely associate/disassociate with others and to express disapproval and thus, exercise their own free speech rights in the process.
Harvard as a private university did precisely that in this case by publicly disavowing/denouncing those vile posts on/abetted by an online group organized and implemented by Harvard itself and disassociating themselves from 10 posters by rescinding their admission.