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Article snippet: Harvard has rescinded acceptance offers to at least 10 incoming freshmen who posted offensive jokes about school shootings, the Holocaust, bestiality and the death of children and minorities — among other obscene topics — to a private Facebook group. The jokes were posted in the form of memes, those photographs or images overlaid with captions that you see everywhere on the internet. That young people post offensive memes on Facebook is not news. What’s unique about this situation is that Harvard found out about incoming students who were doing so and retracted their admission, sending a strong message that this kind of behavior is unacceptable. One of the jokes referred to the hypothetical hanging of a “Mexican kid” in the school bathroom as “piñata time.” Another, an image of a Pokémon lying in bed with an erection, was captioned: “When you’re tryna sleep but your neighbor is beating his kids.” Most of the memes could not be printed or explained in this newspaper. This situation is a stark reminder of our collective failing to teach the first generation of digital natives — those who were born and raised on high-speed internet — that there are real-life consequences for virtual actions. Since Facebook became widely available, incoming freshman classes have connected with one another in Facebook groups before arriving on campus. Each graduating class usually has its own group. But splinter groups also form, and meme groups with names like “Yale Memes for Special... Link to the full article to read more