Sounds like MaineLonghorn and Harvard have similar strategies for dealing with problems. 
@Marian my opinion is that it is not Harvard’s responsibility to provide training in general sensitivity and responsible use of social media. Truly, those lessons should have been taught/learned in junior high school.
Also, I disagree that not getting to go to Harvard is a “lifelong consequence” - it’s not as if these kids won’t get a college degree.
As an aside, I am wondering whether the guidance counselors and teachers of the kids who were rescinded will mention it in their new letters of recommendation (assuming the kids are applying to a different set of schools next year). I’d be interested in @Hanna 's take on how this will play out next year.
My somewhat cynical bet is that the daughter of the big donors will eventually be admitted, whether as a member of the class of 2022 (after a lot of community service work and an essay containing both self-flagellation and evidence of maturing) or as a transfer student.
@beebee3 I am not sure what the issues you raise in your post #258 have to do with the rescission of the Harvard admits. It is simply a fact that the abuse of social media is bordering on a national epidemic. And yes, adults and students alike are engaging in it. No one on this thread is saying it is OK. Many of us are just pointing out that it seems to be omnipresent–not that any of us are engaging it in ourselves or don’t think it is wrong.
To acknowledge that a pervasive problem exists with social media certainly does not mean anyone is on board with extra marital affairs or cheating on taxes. Not sure why you would link these things. You are confusing the acknowledgment of a problem with acquiescence,
My point in bringing up the experiences I have had with acquaintances saying, “Everyone cheats on their taxes” during parties/small gatherings is that we all know or have met people who can seem very nice/interesting and then say/do something that is deeply offensive to our sense of propriety/rightness when we least expect it. I was pointing out that the young adults who had their admission rescinded were the “Everyone cheats on their taxes” party guest on the Harvard admitted students site. I wasn’t saying that their choice to disseminate foul and obscene memes meant they would cheat on their taxes, I was saying their behavior is unacceptable to decent people, just as cheating on your taxes is unacceptable to decent people.
And Harvard did what I would have chosen to do - decided that they didn’t want to have association with people who would do something that is deeply offensive to Harvard’s mission statement regarding character.
This sounds like a good approach, @beebee3, at least when dealing with adults.
But bringing the discussion back to the rescinded Harvard students: We have no idea what they believe. We know that they posted offensive things on social media. We do not know whether they actually believe these things or were trying to be accepted in a particular social group or were competing to see who could say the most offensive thing.
I suspect that adults who say that they condone cheating on taxes or having affairs probably do believe what they say. I’m not so sure about 18-year-olds who do obnoxious things on social media (or elsewhere). Sometimes, they’re mostly testing limits or showing off.
When I was a kid (about middle school age, I think), there was a period when people told dead baby jokes. The kids who told them, the kids who laughed at them, and the kids who competed to come up with the worst possible ones would all have been deeply saddened by the death of any real-life baby that they knew. I suspect that at least some of the Harvard kids are like the dead baby joke tellers of my childhood.
Must be that Yankee sensibility! 
Our schools start harping social media posts in elementary school. But probably like the DARE program, it does in one ear and out the other.
@beebee3 – guess I was thrown off by the first sentence of your #258 – “Some of this conversation reminds me of other conversations I have listened to (and internally shaken my head at) while at parties or other social gatherings.”
I thought you were speaking of CC posters not the Harvard admits.
Forgot to add to post #263 (before editing time elapsed) - A person can transgress against what decent people would do, learn from their poor choice and go on to be good people. A big part of that, though, is accepting the unacceptability of the action taken, and responsibility for one’s own choices.
I hope the men and women who had their admission rescinded learn something beyond “don’t get caught behaving badly”. I hope they come to realize why so many people were outraged by their poor behavior and choices. They are all clearly bright and accomplished - they have the ability to make better choices. I hope they choose to do so and do well going forward.
@Marian I hear what you are saying in post #264. My issue with this is that we are talking about adults, not elementary or middle school students. Young adults, yes, but adults. This experience can be a important learning moment for these young adults. But, they don’t need to learn it while attending Harvard. Some might argue that attending Harvard after their behavioral choices would actively work against them learning all the lessons their choices have brought to bear.
The memes as described are not analogous to hypothetical dead baby jokes. The memes used real pictures of real dead children (some from Syrian chemical attacks) to make obscene ‘jokes’, some sexual in nature. There is (imo) a real depraved indifference to humanity being shown in this behavior. I remember this past summer/fall - there was a CNN program which shown a Syrian toddler who had been pulled from the wreckage of a bombing. The reporter on screen did her level best to help us (news viewers) understand what had happened to this baby, what was happening where he lived. The reporter wasn’t able to keep her composure during the news report, though she did her very best. I could well understand her difficulty, I cried watching what was happening to a very real, very traumatized baby. My middle school and high school aged children cried seeing what people could do to other people (babies!), and were amazed by the bravery shown by rescue workers who willingly went into danger to save others.
I shudder to think of what is going on in someone’s mind who would take a copy of a picture showing dead children and make a ‘joke’ using their image. I am willing to accept the people who used those pictures might have thought of the images the same way your middle school friends thought of the hypothetical dead babies in their adolescent ‘jokes’. The big difference is that those Syrian children were real, those pictures were real and an 18 year old accepted to Harvard has no realistic way to argue they didn’t understand the realness of the image and what had caused those children’s deaths. That’s the depraved indifference I am speaking of. It is horrifying to me that anyone could use those images as described. It makes my skin crawl.
I, too, don’t know what was in the hearts/minds of these 18 year old when they chose to post these memes. I don’t think I want to know. I do know they weren’t thinking about the helpless children whose images they used in the memes they posted.
Very good points, @beebee3. Thank you for posting them.
“I’d be interested in @Hanna 's take on how this will play out next year.”
Everything depends on whether they are individually outed in public. It hasn’t happened so far, and I hope it won’t.
@hanna do you think the recommendation writers have a moral obligation to (or an obligation not to) mention what happened if these 10 kids will be applying to different colleges next year?
Do the students themselves need to disclose it to the colleges?
Interested in everyone’s opinions.
I, too, hope these individuals aren’t outed in public. I don’t think that would serve anyone well.
I don’t think there is an obligation for the student to disclose where the college doesn’t ask the question. (“Were you ever admitted to an institution that changed its mind?” is not on the Common App.) There may be circumstances where it is strategically wise to disclose. As for recommenders/schools, this didn’t happen in school and it isn’t a criminal matter…I don’t see an obligation to disclose in the counselors’ paperwork, either, but school/district policy may create one. IMHO, students and recommenders should be discussing this before they make decisions about what to do next year. Recommenders have every right to give their honest opinion in a letter, but IMHO if they’re going to add a torpedo to a letter, they should let the student know that they may want to ask a different teacher.
At least they were showing leadership.
The academic senate at Harvard will be preoccupied with the final club issue in the fall. So if Harvard is against them how can they tolerate much worse behavior by these 10. The public relations nightmare by letting these 10 students in could have been disastrous for Harvard.
When these incidents took place the students were still enrolled in their high schools. What these kids did are suspendable offences, many high schools have zero tolerance when it comes to racism whether it happened in school or not. If Harvard had reported (I think its Harvard’s obligation to do so) the incidents to the high schools, these students would have been suspended.The GC/teachers need not write about Harvard rescinding the offers, but should write about what the kid did.
If someone burned me on a recommendation once then didn’t come clean when asking me for a second one, I’m pretty sure I’d go out of my way to light it up.
Way out.
However, fess up, discuss it, and there’s an excellent chance for another rec.
I agree with Hanna. Plus these kids have been “punished”. I don’t like that it feels like public sport sometimes to just want to tank young people’s lives. It’s nobody’s business but the college that rescinded the admissions the kids and their parents. I also hope that if teacher’s are asked for recommendation and they don’t feel that they can give a recommendation, the teachers would gracefully decline. A recommendation is an endorsement and hopefully most high school teachers are capable of declining if they can’t offer an endorsement. I just told my kids to think carefully about which teacher knew them best as an individual. We live next door to a “mother superior” so the kids knew how narrow-minded some people can be.
@beebee3 said
I do not see corroboration of this. Can you please check that this is actually true?