Conservatives around the country were outraged Harvard University withdrew its acceptance of a nationally known conservative and gun rights activist for its freshman class, but a new report shows conservatives on the Massachusetts campus have a different perspective.
Kyle Kashuv, 18, who survived the deadly shooting at Parkland, Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, announced this week that unearthed racist comments he made online when he was 16 led to Harvard's decision. The move was met with criticism from people on the right, who took Kashuv at his word he was simply being a dumb teenage boy at the time.
Some conservative students at Harvard, however, told Slate they backed the Ivy League school's decision.
"How much can you change as a person in two years?" rising junior Emily Shoemaker said. "Harvard has the right to decide who meets their moral standard."
Added rising sophomore Oluwatobi Ariyo, who is black: "Harvard was put in a very tough spot. Do we want to forgive him and risk multiple other students feeling uncomfortable, or do we make this one student uncomfortable? I think Harvard made the right choice."
Another student named Blake Barclay told Slate that Kashuv's remarks, which included the n-word and anti-Semitic language, were "disgusting."
"They're not very old — they happened while he was in high school," Barclay said. "All colleges are clear that everything you do in high school is taken into account in admissions. He should have known that they would be taken into account, and he should have known not to say things like that."
Kashuv said this week he is trying to figure out where to attend college in the fall, which could prove challenging because the semester is about two months away.
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