Harvard Revoked Admission Offers To At Least 10 Students After They Posted Offensive Memes

Charles Krupa / AP

What started as a private Facebook group for the sharing of funny memes resulted in at least 10 incoming Harvard freshman losing their offer of acceptance to the university.

The school revoked their admission in mid-April after discovering the students shared sexually explicit, racist, and offensive memes and messages in a group chat called "Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens," the Harvard Crimson reported.

After joining the university's official class of 2021 Facebook group, about 100 students formed an off-shoot messaging group in December that became a space to share jokes and images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust and the deaths of children, often targeting ethnic or racial groups, the Crimson first reported.

The Tab later published a selection of the messages and memes, which feature subjects becoming aroused at a funeral or when you hear "your neighbor beating his kids," and "when the Mexican kid hangs himself in the school bathroom: Pinata time," followed by lol's and flame emojis.

To join, the group's founders made students post obscene material in the main group before letting them into the private chat.

“They were like, ‘Oh, you have to send a meme to the original group to prove that you could get into the new one,’” Cassandra Luca, an incoming freshman who joined the first meme group, told the Crimson. “This was a just-because-we-got-into-Harvard-doesn’t-mean-we-can’t-have-fun kind of thing.”

But then university officials found out. After learning of the group and its contents, Harvard administrators emailed students who posted offensive material demanding they show everything they had posted in the group, according to one student who lost their admission letter.

“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,” reads a copy of the Admissions Office’s email obtained by The Crimson. “As we understand you were among the members contributing such material to this chat, we are asking that you submit a statement by tomorrow at noon to explain your contributions and actions for discussion with the Admissions Committee.”

“It is unfortunate that I have to reach out about this situation,” the email said.

In an email to BuzzFeed News, Rachael Dane, a Harvard spokeswoman, said “we do not comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants," but emphasized that "Harvard College reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission under the following conditions, which are clearly expressed to students upon their admission."

The university's decision to pull student admission offers over what they shared in a private messaging group has divided some students as colleges across the country struggle with how to protect free speech that is deemed offensive or inflammatory.

Luca told the Crimson that she believes students can post what they want because they have the right to do so. “I don’t think the school should have gone in and rescinded some offers because it wasn’t Harvard-affiliated, it was people doing stupid stuff,' she said.

Saul Urbina-Johanson, a current junior, noted another Facebook meme group called "Harvard Memes for Elitist 1% Tweens," in which people joke about pop culture, politics, and campus life. The group, which now has about 30,000 members, also caused controversy last year after some members called for more regulation of posts that "played into racial stereotypes or targeted marginalized groups, while the other championed freedom of expression," according to an article in the Harvard Crimson magazine, Fifteen Minutes.

"I think there is a mutual understanding that cracking jokes at the expense of marginalized identities is not welcomed at Harvard," Urbina-Johanson told BuzzFeed News.

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