Haven’t seen Caddyshack since it came out, so I didn’t recognize the reference. Thanks for explaining it to me. 
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I’m mostly surprised that teens were using Facebook. My understanding is most of them either don’t have an account or don’t use it and that most teen communication is through text message, instagram and snapchat.
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Heresy!
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Same. I thought the Book Of Face was for 40-year-olds who for some reason care about what their high school classmates are up to. The kids these days are using apps that I’m not woke enough to have heard of.
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It’s for status-conscious middle-aged people of all ages who want to record their specialness for the ages. Facebook was founded by a Harvard student, and was originally intended for exactly the kind of person who you (can’t help but) overhear at a party saying “DidyougotoHarvard?IwenttoHarvard!Isn’tHarvardgreat?Harvardisthebest…”
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If you sue a university for not admitting you, you’d better be able to point to a protected grounds from discrimination. If you can’t make a really strong case they rejected you because of the colour of your skin, you aren’t even going to get into a court room at all.
Maybe it would be different if these were fourth year students a month from graduating. These people don’t even go to the school.
Also, with regards to “private” chats. Unless the administration hacked into something illegally - which is far fetched - there wasn’t any breach of anyone’s privacy.
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From what I heard, people in the chat took screen caps and sent them to Harvard.
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And if my kid were one of the admitted students, I’d be very thankful that the school was proactive in keeping riff-raff like that out of her class (and dorm life).
This is a whistle-blowing situation. We should celebrate the courage of those who exposed the rot.
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Maybe some of them are lucky and have a criminal father who will pay Harvard to admit them.
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I’d think that, even if it were my kid who had their offer rescinded.
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Yep. It didn’t even explicitly ask them to hand over their contributions to the private chat, although my understanding is that at least some did.
The whole “post something on the school’s page to get in” seems to be poking the bear. And the school’s response seems to have been to try to separate blatant misogynists and racists from those who made a bad decision while trying to get into a perceived private club.
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20 posts were split to a new topic: Free speech and the case of Saily Avelenda
Would it be sexist to say that largely depends upon gender?
Slightly OT but I’m reminded of a case that actually happened when a very badly behaved rich child did little work at school and failed to get into his parents’ school of choice. (The father told me this, btw)
He applied to a certain private school in the South-West of England. They were interviewed by the Head, who then asked to speak to the father privately and said
“We do have a special kind of scholarship here. We will admit your son but you have to agree to pay the fees for a poor scholarship child who would benefit from our education.”
The father called the son in and asked the Head to repeat what he had just said. Then he said to his kid “You see, actions have consequences. And now you’re going to the local State school.”
I do think Harvard might have considered this option. Double fees and mandatory anti sociopathy training.
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I thought about this on an off since last night. I won’t comment about the sexism part, but I’ll note that in my experience, young women mature a bit faster than young men, but mostly by being more conformist and displaying less overtly aggressive behaviour. Paradoxically, this seems to hurt them later, when they start underestimating themselves with regards to achievements and salary, while men tend to err on overestimation their skills.
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