Harvard Revokes Admissions From Students Who Shared Insensitive Memes

Members of a Facebook messaging group joked about topics like child abuse and the Holocaust, the Crimson reports.

Maybe they’ll learn from this. Harvard University revoked offers of acceptance from at least 10 potential freshmen after discovering they had posted memes in a Facebook messaging group mocking rape, the Holocaust and child sex abuse, The Harvard Crimson reported Sunday. According to the campus newspaper, which had obtained screengrabs of the messaging group, some participants joked that abusing children was sexually gratifying. Others targeted ethnicity, race or nationality. One poster referred to the hanging of a Mexican child as “piñata time.” Two incoming students told the Crimson the group was at one point called “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens.” After discovering the messaging group ― which had split off from what one student called a “lighthearted” Facebook chat for admitted students ― administrators informed the offending applicants in April that the admission offers no longer stood, the Crimson noted. “We do not comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants,” a Harvard spokesperson told CBS Boston, which reported the video segment above. Just last November, students already enrolled at Harvard paid the price for online postings clearly not meant to go public. The Ivy League school suspended its men’s soccer team after documents were discovered in which some players rated the sexual attractiveness of the women’s team.