What I have read is that the only way these students got together in the “private” Facebook group was through Harvard’s invitation to a private group for admitted students only.
That’s the key difference, and why I would be fired if I used my university’s resources for posting such material, but likely would be told to “knock it off” if someone found out me and other employees had an outside connection we were using to exchange salacious material.
These kids were taking advantage of Harvard bringing them together.
^^ I think that’s an irrelevant distinction. These incoming students can and do learn of each other through many channels. That doesn’t make the private FB group suddenly Harvard-owned or sanctioned. IMO.
Now you see one reason CC doesn’t allow users to link to social sites or encourage each other to create a private group. We don’t want to seem to be sanctioning anything!
There is a difference between something happening before students arrive on campus and after they have matriculated, I think, primarily in that before they matriculate the barrier for punishment is much lower. My guess is that Harvard’s rules and procedures make it more difficult to expel an enrolled student --even a newly enrolled one – than to prevent an admitted student from enrolling. This is a logistical, rather than a moral difference, but it doesn’t make Harvard hypocritical for taking advantage of it. FWIW, I think Harvard would probably WANT to do the same thing if this had happened during Freshman Orientation week or early in first semester, but the process would be more difficult, and would be more likely to result in a less severe punishment.
I do think there is a moral difference -or, rather, a few of them – between the Hitler cartoon posted on the last page and what was happening here.
I think the Lampoon joke was unfunny and purposelessly provocative. However, I don't see it as as offensive as several of the memes I've seen, including the Holocaust one, in that it is less graphic. It doesn't turn the Holocaust into a crude sex joke, and doesn't joke about the actual deaths of victims, the manner of those deaths, etc. It also isn't taking joy -- or representing others as taking joy -- in the deaths of real people or members of certain groups, except to the extent that making ANY joke about an atrocity does so. It involves the fact that Hitler victimized groups a, b and c in the course of an absurdist misfire of a Hitler = horse joke. That's different than jokes about gas chambers and getting aroused by child abuse.
There's a contextual difference. Good comedy is supposed to provoke and to skirt boundaries. The horse Hitler wasn't good comedy, and it overstepped those boundaries. But there needs to be a certain amount of leeway for a comedian to sometimes get it wrong because crossing lines is an occupational hazard, especially as standards for offense can differ. Of course, I would point out that, as Kathy Griffin has found, if enough people agree you've crossed a line, you might well lose your job. Losing a spot in a college class seems a different level of punishment. But these students weren't operating in a context in which crossing lines of taste was an occupational hazard of some worthy pursuit (which I think comedy is; it is not curing cancer, but it serves a variety of other purposes).They were aiming for offense for its own sake; crossing all recognized boundaries of taste was the whole purpose of the group.
This one isn't about the Hitler joke, but applies to the hypothetical case of current students found to be doing something similar. There's a difference in something you've done and something you've emphasized about yourself. I'm going to use a slightly frivolous analogy. I'd think Harvard was being snooty if it factored into an admissions decision the fact that a prospective student had "liked" some trashy soap or reality show on facebook, or even joined a fan group to discuss it. Lord knows I've liked some silly entertainment. However, if the student's social media presence was predominantly devoted to this show, with loving fan videos, convention reports, pictures of the stars, contentious debates with other fans, etc., I think it would be fair to question the student's maturity and intellectual seriousness.
Similarly, it is one thing to have made or passed on a tasteless – even very tasteless – joke, or even to join a group of friends dedicated to doing so as one of the tons of things you are doing as part of a campus community. That doesn’t mean it gets a pass, but if a current student does something like this sometime in the middle of sophomore year, it is easier for me to look at this – even if it resulted in the creation of a facebook group – as a dining hall conversation that got out of control sometime between talk of classes and writing for the Crimson and rehearsals for an upcoming tap show. But what does it say about you that one of the FIRST things you do as part of this new class, before even stepping onto campus, is organize an offensive memes group with strangers – and to do it with real names, as an off-shoot of a general thread for incoming students to boot?
That doesn’t mean I think these students are likely child molesters or rapists. I do think it shows a level of insensitivity that isn’t or wouldn’t necessarily be present in other superficially parallel cases. And while I don’t think we can make the jump to hate crimes and pedophilia, I don’t think it is unfair to infer that students who would find pleasure in this kind of activity under these circumstances might be more likely than the average admit to prove a detriment to campus climate, including in ways that might be criminal. I don’t think the Penn State guys currently facing charges for not getting help for a passed out pledge who died are all horrible people, either; certainly, they didn’t want the guy to die. But they were immature, thoughtless, and prone to peer pressure – and even when the consequences of this aren’t tragic, as they usually aren’t, that doesn’t mean a person who has demonstrated these qualities is someone you want on campus
Actually the offensive group was twice removed from the original Harvard Facebook group. My understanding is that new students were branching off creating separate special interest groups. One such group was for students interested in memes. The first meme group was not offensive. It was a group of students that branched off from the original meme group to form the “offensive” meme group with the sketchy name.
To gain admission to the offensive group one had to post something not quite kosher in the original meme group.
I think many of you would be shocked if you knew how many kids do these things. They are teenagers trying to out-shock one another, all of whom have still forming judgement skills (i.e., they are teenagers).
Probably in the millions, so no, few would be “shocked”. But the fact is that millions are not getting accepted into H, or other highly competitive schools, so the point is a false equivalency.
This is just an example of how subjective the process is. I feel like I could make a reasonable argument as to why the Facebook meme should be considered less offensive than the Lampoon cartoon, although both are NSFCC. I could see future Harvard disciplinary committees sitting around debating whether a particular meme should be a 9.1 or a 9.2 on the offensiveness scale.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply @apprenticeprof . I don’t fundamentally disagree with your views, except maybe in degree on this point:
For me, the horse-Hitler and Holocaust meme jokes are pretty equivalent; horse-Hitler is arguably more Holocaust-trivializing for invoking “kill this ___” whereas the meme was more lewd for its sex imagery. One a pun and one a fart joke. BUT: the meme kids got life-changing punishment for posting their joke in a private FB group YET the Harvard Lampoon kids got full university support for their work, money and a building to disseminate their humor, all under a proud Harvard masthead. Strikes me as hypocritical. Meme kids being pre-frosh and Lampoon kids being perhaps sophomores seems a largely arbitrary distinction for such different treatment. IMO.
BTW, I found a baby-killing joke in the Lampoon too. Probably lots more but I don’t want to waste more time.
I admit it. I made friends with a couple of people from the CC board and we’re facebook friends now. We’ve discussed my son’s sartorial choices, the mountain of laundry that seems to be a lovely parting gift from every college or uni dormitory in North America, and the deeper meaning of the fight scenes in Wonder Woman to female viewers over forty.
If one really were inclined to be curious about what others of their barest acquaintance talk about when one is not around, I suppose there are two choices: ask, or give in to morbid fantasy. Morbid fantasy is probably far cooler, so I suppose there’s some appeal to that, but it’s generally less accurate.
And fwiw, this isn’t intended as a “nasty comment”, lest anyone interpret it as such- simply a counterpoint that just because things happen out of line of sight doesn’t make them automatically skeevy. Which is germane to the greater topic at hand, on a certain level.
Their punishment was basically just to join the tens of thousands of applicants who didn’t get in to H this year.
Possibly some or all of these were not as easily able to reset their hearts onto schools lower down on their college dream lists, as most of those rejected at the end of March were. But is it such a big punishment, really?
And if one was inclined to say nasty things about another CC poster, you do not have to branch off into some secret FB group. We all have PM capability.
@OHMomof2 Those tens of thousands of H rejects had other match and safeties to choose from. Due to the mid-April rescission after a December REA acceptance, these kids likely have no other ‘competitive’ immediate option. They will have to do a gap year and try again, perhaps with uncomfortable explanations and difficulty getting updated recommendations, etc. You may say they deserve this obstacle and many would agree. I was just saying it is not simply ‘resetting one’s heart’ on the next college down on their list for this fall’s enrollment.
But to further explore some of the hypocrisy I see around this story: For those who feel these kids are too immoral (and dangerous) to attend H, why do you think it is OK to say “Oh they can just go to Tufts or RPI or a UC…” Do you really think H has a higher standard of morality than any other college?
In the Adams case, the university tried to deny him tenure. He sued and won. Again, the tenure discussion is beyond the scope of this thread, but a university is not going to deny, even if it could, a tenured professor’s right to voice his/her thoughts.
Pickpocket – I see your point, but here’s another, hopefully more succinct way of putting it:
Comedy may sometimes be offensive, but its primary purpose is not to offend, it is to amuse.
The meme group’s primary purpose was to be offensive, even though its members may also have believed that the offensive content was funny.
Essentially, it is the difference between crossing a line while performing a balancing act, and joining a “we love crossing lines” club. Neither is desirable, but one is more of a problem than the other.
And when Harvard funds the Lampoon, they are funding a humor magazine, not specifically rewarding the (hopefully) small portion of the magazine’s content that the average person would find grossly offensive. I can even remember some cases – not sure where – in which campus comedy magazines did have to apologize for content of this kind. I’m thinking of one involving a Holocaust joke, and another involving a parody of an Asian student’s English. Still different, IMO, from starting a group to celebrate offense for its own sake.
