The fact this incident didn’t take place in school/on school grounds/computers may not matter if the school’s a private school reserving the right to hold students responsible for adhering to the school’s conduct code on or off school grounds.
My elementary Catholic School certainly didn’t when they publicly shamed two older 6th grade girls and gave both a long period of in-school detention for being found equally culpable in instigating a fight in a local park off school grounds outside of school hours.
Didn’t help the girls that there were several witnesses including a neighbor who notified the principal. .
“The fact this incident didn’t take place in school/on school grounds/computers may not matter if the school’s a private school reserving the right to hold students responsible for adhering to the school’s conduct code on or off school grounds.”
It matters to the question we were discussing:whether the school has an OBLIGATION to report this incident to colleges (or to keep it confidential). It doesn’t, unless its own or local policies impose one.
I’m still startled by the severity of the punishment, given that what these kids did was merely to say/display offensive things in a public forum – something that vast numbers of people do every day (as we all know if we ever make the mistake of reading the comments on articles in the news media).
They didn’t kill anyone. They didn’t endanger anyone’s safety or force anyone to do anything unsafe (as might happen in hazing incidents). They didn’t destroy any property. They didn’t break any laws. They didn’t engage in any form of academic cheating. They simply posted things on social media that were obnoxious, prejudiced, insensitive, stupid, and well beyond the boundaries of good taste.
Yet they received a punishment far more severe than that imposed on most perpetrators of hazing incidents (where the penalties tend to be imposed on the organization more than on individual members), far more severe than those imposed on kids who get caught spray-painting bridges, and even far more severe than those imposed on four of my ninth-grade classmates, who were caught throwing rocks off a highway overpass onto the traffic below – an action that could have caused crashes and killed people.
So what do we do with someone like a Mike Adams a professor at UNCW who has a long history of making offensive comments about race, religion and sexuality on social media?
Or Professor Brian Blake at Drexel whose social media posts have caused donors to withdraw contributions?
Or the holocaust and Sandy Hook deniers teaching at numerous public and private institutions?
All of these individuals hold some extremely offensive views and have posted them on social media. Yet they are still employed by universities, are teaching in classrooms and grading student’s work.
What do we do? Nothing. We do not have a dog in that fight. Besides, Mike Adams has tenure, and discussion of whether tenure should protect free speech is a topic for another thread. Anyway, it’s UNCW’s battle, which they lost in court.
I think that we are giving Harvard way too much credit - taking them at their word that the decision was based on their desire to weed out incoming students of poor character. What about potential bad publicity? The word got out because one or members of that private meme group took screen shots and shared them. Once that occurred, it was only a matter of time before the memes became public. It seems way more credible to me that Harvard acted in an effort to “get ahead of the bad press,” not because they truly were concerned about poor character.
Wait, Isn’t it true that Harvard has refused to comment about this situation?
Allegedly the screen shots were taken and sent to Harvard Admissions in December. If I understand this correctly, they rescinded the students’ offers in April. If that’s true, then your theory doesn’t sound very likely.
“It seems way more credible to me that Harvard acted in an effort to “get ahead of the bad press,” not because they truly were concerned about poor character.”
The two aren’t mutually exclusive are they? There can be multiple reasons Harvard doled out the punishment they did. Many pages back, I mentioned my belief that once Harvard became aware of it, they had no choice but rescind for the worst offenses. Their hands were tied by the actions of the accepted students because of the backlash that would ensue had they done nothing and it had still surfaced (which I have no doubt it would have).
And I agree, Harvard has not commented on it publicly. I don’t think anyone is giving them “too much credit” just agreeing it was warranted and the correct decision to make given the details to which we’ve been privy.
I think hazers should be punished much more severely than they are.
But the main reason I see for this rescission is that they were not yet students at H. If they’d done this a few months later I am sure they wouldn’t have been kicked out.
“OK but how about the universities? Should they do anything?” @HarvestMoon1
It sounds like UNCW tried to “do” something, but lost in court of law. I assume you’re OK with having laws and courts?
Why should the rescission/expulsion decision be different between April and and August? If so many of you have concluded that these students lack morality and are likely to commit campus crime (I strongly disagree with these BTW), then they are just as awful/dangerous/hurtful to H’s reputation once on campus, aren’t they?
Some of you may answer that they are ‘not fully students yet’ and can more easily turn to other options. But I’d bet that many or all 10 had paid their deposit and foregone all other college options.
I am of course fine with laws and courts but that is precisely my point. Seems the courts are upholding a professor’s right to post the offensive material to their private social media accounts. Now you may say that private institutions like Harvard have more leeway with their students and professors. I have no idea what a court would rule in the case of one of these 10 students – Alan Dershowitz believes Harvard made a “serious mistake” in rescinding them and that it flies in the face of the spirit of the First Amendment.
The more I read about this the less black and white it becomes to me. Putting Harvard aside, I really don’t know what a university should do with professors who engage in this sort of thing. But it is not lost on me that a professor has the potential to do much more damage on a campus than a student posting offensive material in some private media group. I can avoid the student and it is likely I will have a lot of support from other students who oppose the hate – there will be plenty of push back against the offending student. But a professor is in a position of authority and I may have no choice but to take his/her class, especially if it’s in my major. If I am a member of a group that a professor is spewing hate against on social media, I just may not fare too well in the class. Who is there to push back when he or she is grading my work or providing input for a recommendation for graduate school?
My point really is that when weighing the appropriateness of the consequences or the character/morality of these 10 students, my own views have been tempered by observing what is already being modeled and tolerated on college campuses. A private institution might say to incoming students “on second thought you no longer meet our standards,” and at the same time be paying someone to teach on campus who is doing the exact same thing only in a more public manner.
There is an incongruity there that makes me uncomfortable.