Harvard Withdraws Offer from Student After They Found Out About His Racist Comments in the Past

If you use Facebook frequently, you should have noticed the introduction of its “Memories” function last year.

Ever since then, I have been haunted reminded of my horrifying cringe beautiful memories of my teenage life.

Apparently, there’s a function to hide a certain part of your life so that Memories doesn’t show it to you. I will definitely try it out soon.

Well, my point is, I have posted a lot of stupid stuff online when I was a teenage boy. Hopefully, it will never come to light if I were to become famous one day.

However, some people may just be hit with such misfortune.

Harvard Admission Withdrawn Over Racist Comments

I don’t remember most of the stupid stuff I’ve said when I was 16.

The Parkland graduate Kyle Kashuv was definitely and unfortunately reminded, though.

Apparently, 2 years ago when he was 16 years old, he made a bunch of racist comments and slurs online on Google Docs shared amongst friends.

“The comments include anti-Semitic barbs and repeated use of a slur referring to black people”, as reported by Bloomberg.

After his comments surfaced online due to unknown reasons (perhaps sabotaged by a “friend”), Harvard reconsidered and eventually revoked his admission. Sobs.

Currently 18 years old, Kashuv has apparently matured, and has apologised publicly, stating that he was a “petty, flippant kid” and that “he made poor choices but bears no real racial hatred”.

He also added an apology on May 22, stating that “We were 16-year-olds making idiotic comments, using callous and inflammatory language in an effort to be as extreme and shocking as possible”, and that “I’m embarrassed by it”.

The Surfacing of Past Comments

There’s a famous quote online that says “Once something is on the internet, it is there forever.”

This is far from the first time where someone’s past comments had returned to bite them.

Even famous people aren’t immune to it. In fact, the more famous they are, the more the trolls online who want to see them fall.

The director of the Marvel movies Guardians of the Galaxy 1 & 2, James Gunn, was fired after his tweets of almost 10 years resurfaced.

Forgive & Forget(?)

The case regarding Kyle Kashuv has received a mixed reception.

Some claim that he should be forgiven, while others are praising Harvard’s decision.

If you ask for my personal opinion, I think that we’ve all made stupid comments in the past and to be judged for them and lose a potentially bright future option over it is plain unfair.

Also, most keyboard warriors online are often just trolls who wish for others’ misfortunes.

All I know is that if we were all judged for our past, then I probably wouldn’t have gotten this job at Goody Feed, and the beloved Robert Downey Jr wouldn’t have been the Iron Man that kick-started the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Let that sink in.

Of the two examples stated, I’m not sure which one would be a greater loss.

Probably the former.