Harvard Rescinds Admission Offers To 10 Incoming Freshmen For Obscene And Hateful Memes Shared On Facebook


Getting your college acceptance offer is a moment that every high school student longs for, but there is always the possibility that something that can go wrong. Ten incoming freshmen actually had their acceptance offers taken back from them by Harvard University after the administrators of the school learned something very disturbing. The group of freshmen was discovered to be sharing offensive and hateful memes via Facebook, and the school simply wasn’t having it.

According to the Harvard Crimson, 10 prospective members of the Class of 2021 were found to be sharing sexually explicit memes on Facebook before beginning school. Not only were the memes sexual in nature, but some of the messages in the private Facebook chat often targeted minority groups.

The Facebook messages were passed around in late December, and at one point, the private messaging group was titled “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens.”

The messaging group was simple in nature as a small group of incoming freshman students admitted that they just sent things to one another. The memes were graphic and extremely offensive to numerous groups of people, which are something that Harvard administrators would not let go unnoticed.

[Image by William B. Plowman/Getty Images]

After Harvard administrators had discovered the details of the messages on Facebook, they decided to rescind the admission offers to at least 10 of those involved. Making matters worse is that the private messaging group was a branch-off of the official Harvard College Class of 2021 Facebook group, which has a direct affiliation with the university.

Once the students took it to a private conversation, the content was actually quite horrific,according to The Crimson, which received screenshots. Some of the content included, but was not limited to memes and pictures:

  • The Holocaust
  • Deaths of children
  • Ethnic and racial slurs
  • Child abuse
  • Sexual abuse

There was even a comment from one student which referred to the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child as “pinata time.”

As reported by CNN, Harvard has confirmed that once they rescind an offer to a student, that decision is final. Harvard even states on their official Facebook page for the Class of 2021 that the university “reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission under various conditions.”

There is one of those conditions which includes a student who “engages or has engaged in behavior that brings into question their honesty, maturity or moral character.” Upon knowing those standards and stipulations, Harvard chose to revoke the offers to those 10 students.

[Image by Joe Raedle/Getty Images]

In the email sent to the students by the Harvard admissions office, the main reason for having their offers rescinded was due to “offensive messages and graphics.” In a copy of the email obtained by The Crimson, which was sent to the students in mid-April, the students were asked to disclose every single picture they sent in the private group chat.

The students speaking to Harvard about the situation stated they would only discuss things under the condition of anonymity.

“The Admissions Committee was disappointed to learn that several students in a private group chat for the Class of 2021 were sending messages that contained offensive messages and graphics.”

According to Harvard College spokesperson Rachael Dane, the university was not going to publicly comment on the admission status of individual applicants. There were some very interesting statistics, though, and they show just how coveted an admission offer from Harvard really is.

For the Class of 2021, Harvard College accepted 2,056 students out of 39,506 applicants for a percentage of just 5.2 percent.

Receiving your college acceptance letter is one of the greatest days of a person’s life, and even more so if they get into the school they were hoping for. It is not easy to get an acceptance offer into Harvard University, but getting one doesn’t mean your experience is over. For 10 incoming freshmen, their Harvard journey ended before it ever really started, and it was all due to sharing explicit and hatefully offensive memes on Facebook.

[Featured Image by Darren McCollester/Getty Images]

Share this article: Harvard Rescinds Admission Offers To 10 Incoming Freshmen For Obscene And Hateful Memes Shared On Facebook
More from Inquisitr