Harvard College (the undergraduate liberal arts college of Harvard University) revoked at least 10 of their acceptance offers from their incoming class of 2021 in mid-April, and I’ve got the tea on why.

Revoking acceptances from the few who are actually lucky enough to receive them, sounds a bit uncanny for the elite institution. How the college unraveled that there were students who did not meet the Harvard caliber happens to be the most interesting part.

Social media is proving to be quite the tool when it comes to branding your image, getting a job, and now getting into college; however it can also be what ruins a really great opportunity. The students who no longer obtain offers from the prestigious college, were actually outed by other students; who like them were apart of a facebook page originally created to bring the students together before attending in the fall. The page was operated by the office of admissions, who did explain prior to the incident that they were capable of rescinding acceptances if the students chose to exhibit conduct going against their community standards.

According to Harvard Crimson (Harvard University’s daily newspaper) The students were exposed and responsible for creating and sending out memes that joked about “sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children” in a group chat named “Harvard Memes for Horny Bourgeois Teens” on facebook. Other messages in the chat were related to the use of punchlines about specific racial groups and how they find child abuse arousing(So I guess this means getting into an ivy league doesn’t make you better than your peers who didn’t?...darn). According to the other students apart of the page, a groupchat of over 100 students was first initiated to share memes and jokes with one another, and from that chat a more inappropriate chat was formed. Students reported that in order to be added to the more inappropriate chat (“General Fuckups” also referred to as the “dark chat”) they were asked by it’s creators to send “funny” (offensive) memes to the original chat.

Cassandra Luca who is apart of the 2021 graduating class (and the class’ facebook page), spoke with Harvard Crimson and explained, the more explicit chat was created by its founders, to show that getting into Harvard doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun. It is clear that the definition of fun interpreted by the founders of the “dark chat” is one i’ve yet to learn about. Those who took part in such unsuitable behavior definitely forgot that what you do and say on the internet stays there for quite sometime and in this case, comes back around to haunt you. There has been controversy between law professors over the situation, claiming that there has been a violation of the first amendment and freedom of speech. Some argue that the students should not have been punished for what they chose to say and what they believe and value, while others argue that because Harvard is a private institution they have full responsibility, to act on the behavior in anyway they choose.

By now like many of us you may be wondering what makes you Harvard worthy? You’ll really want to question the office of admissions after knowing that this is the 2nd time in two years that an incident like this has occurred. Just last spring members of the class of 2020 demonstrated that they are capable of the same behaviors, by sharing messages containing jokes about race and gender in a GroupMe chat, not authorized by the school.Regardless of what the outcome would or could have been, I think we can all agree that it is important that we become more cautious when posting and reacting to subject matter on any form of social media. Many often forget that what you post on the web, you are exhibiting a representation of yourself, and employers and now schools are looking towards personal profiles to reveal whole truths about one’s self. With the aspiring ambitions that fill our heads as we reach college level education, it is only right that we protect our futures by filtering our mouths and curving our fingers.It seems as though an effort to be like other college kids, thinned out the line separating the classic ivy league student from one who is not. Where you choose to go to school definitely does not eliminate the ignorance you might possibly encounter.