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from the anything-you-say-will-be-used-against-you dept.
The Facebook messaging group was at one point titled "Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens."
It began when about 100 members of Harvard College's incoming freshman class contacted each other through the university's official Class of 2021 Facebook group. They created a messaging group where students could share memes about popular culture — a growing trend on the Internet among students at elite colleges.
But then, the exchanges took a dark turn, according to an article published in the Harvard Crimson on Sunday. Some of the group's members decided to form an offshoot group in which students could share obscene, "R-rated" memes, a student told the Crimson. The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group.
The students in the spinoff group exchanged memes and images "mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust and the deaths of children," sometimes directing jokes at specific ethnic or racial groups, the Crimson reported. One message "called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child 'piñata time'" while other messages quipped that "abusing children was sexually arousing," according to images of the chat described by the Crimson.
Then, university officials caught on. And in mid-April, after administrators discovered the offensive, racially charged meme exchanges, at least 10 incoming students who participated in the chat received letters informing them that their offers of admission had been revoked.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @11:36PM (1 child)
Which shouldn't happen in the first place. There's your third objection: Employers, colleges, etc. shouldn't be playing speech police. Even if they are legally allowed to do so, those who support the principle of freedom of speech reject things like this. I don't believe punishing people just because they said something that others did not like or that was wrong to be justifiable.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday June 08 2017, @09:10PM
It depends on the context. I actually agree with you that this sometimes is overused, but on the other hand, employers and colleges have their reputation to protect.
Being an employee often involves being a representative of the company. In the past, this mostly happened in official capacities. The average person didn't easily have access to thousands or even millions of people in an audience for their views. Nowadays, a tweet can go viral and make someone infamous overnight. If said tweet reflects views that are grossly inconsistent with the company's ethical standards, firing may be justified.
In this case, these students weren't randomly saying nasty things in private chats on the internet. They were participating in a group of other Harvard admitted students, in a forum that deliberately associated itself (even unofficially) with an official Harvard forum. Not doing anything about this in response would mean that Harvard was "okay" with students affiliated with it acting this way.