Harvard Email About Student Being Terminated is a Hoax
“was made to look like it was sent by Harvard College’s Office of Undergraduate Education”
It’s amazing that our technology has advanced so far but we still get occasional hoaxes.
The Associated Press reports:
Harvard email saying student is ‘terminated’ is fake
CLAIM: Harvard College sent an email that revoked an admitted student’s acceptance due to the student’s social media posts.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The email isn’t authentic, a spokesperson for Harvard University confirmed to The Associated Press.
THE FACTS: The bogus email, which was addressed to “student,” regarding their “admission status,” states: “It is with a heavy heart we inform you that you are being terminated from Harvard. This comes as a result of speculating your social media accounts and we believe that you do not transmit a good representation of the school.”
The email, which was made to look like it was sent by Harvard College’s Office of Undergraduate Education, does not detail what the so-called student wrote or posted that violated the school’s policies, and contains some strange vocabulary choices. A Twitter user who shared a screenshot of the false email on Aug. 10 wrote, “i feel sick to my stomach.” That tweet was liked more than 17,000 times.
But the college’s Office of Undergraduate Education does not admit students to Harvard College nor does the office withdraw admissions, according to Rachel Dane, a Harvard spokesperson.
“This is in fact, a hoax,” Dane said to the AP in an email.
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speculating your social media accounts
What?! And you people actually believed this? This is the sort of crap I get for job offers, where I have to laugh because the translator that uses King James English also inserts “y’all” and “ain’t”. I know Harvard ain’t what it used to be, but if they’re this illiterate you really don’t want to go to college there anyway!
I should specify spam job offers. The ones for a “Managed Distribution Manager”, where you trans-ship goods from China.
Exactly. No matter how ridiculous Harvard gets, I expect its communications will always be in correct and comprehensible English.
The disturbing thing is that students attending Harvard do not possess that level of discernment.
The specific email may be a hoax, but the attitude displayed is entirely too plausible.
That is likely true, but let’s keep our powder dry for a real example. There’s been too many hoaxes used to justify unnecessary “discussion” (Jussie Smollet, et. al.) in the past.
You mean the foreign minister of some oil-rich state is not hiring me to help him transfer millions of dollars of ill-gained profits from his country to a Swiss bank account?
If it is written in pidgen English, I might believe it came from Harvard, but not from Prince Whosiwhatz.
Prince Whosiwhatz. Ha ha ha LOLOLOLOLOLOL. I’m gonna have to save that one
Hoaxes do not generally get perpetrated unless they are based on a kernel of believability. A year or two ago, Harvard did withdraw admissions based on information that surfaced in students’ social media postings from years before. And although the English of this one was so poor that it was obviously a fake, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that somebody who wrote English like that could actually get a job at Harvard these days or that an admitted student could fail to spot the problem.