Kyle Kashuv, the sole outspoken conservative from Parkland, Florida, has been booted from his Harvard admission on account of unveiled racial slurs on a Google Doc from tenth grade.  Former peers with a leftist bee in their bonnets were all too eager to release his adolescent antics to his school of choice and the press. 

He was granted 72 hours by the dean of admissions to "provide a written explanation of your actions for the Committee's consideration."  Unsurprisingly, his subsequent apology did him no good: "As you know, the Committee takes seriously the qualities of maturity and moral character.  After careful consideration the Committee has voted to rescind your admission to Harvard College."

Kyle Kashuv (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

Any consideration of Kashuv's profile would reveal him to be a focused activist worried about gun safety in schools.  He has unabashedly taken the conservative position on guns while being pummeled in the process; he's been derided as a Fox News puppet, bullied by his school for taking a gun photo, and  branded "The Next Hitler" by his teacher.  Dealing with this vitriol daily must take maturity.  Attempting to reach across the aisle to help further gun legislation — something Kyle repeatedly emphasizes — should indicate a developed character. 

Harvard proudly asserts how its "admissions process enables us to give deliberate and meticulous consideration of each applicant as a whole person.  It is labor intensive, but permits extraordinary flexibility and the possibility of changing decisions virtually until the day the Admissions Committee mails them."  As the hard truth would have it, Mr. Kashuv's tailor-made admissions process was but a fleeting hit job.  He was instead forced to face the dubious deliberations of his ideological enemies as they summarily put the kibosh on his college aspirations.

In 2016, a certain Michelle Jones applied to Harvard's Ph.D. program after serving more than two decades in an Indiana prison for murdering her four-year-old son.  Out of three hundred applicants to the history program, she was one of just eighteen accepted.  Harvard president Drew Faust praised Ms. Jones as being among the "most talented students and faculty" this university claims that it must "attract and support."  In an unexpected twist, she was rejected by top-tier administrators for slightly covering up her past.  Elizabeth Hinton, a Harvard historian who was pained by this sudden dismissal, deemed Jones "one of the strongest candidates in the country last year, period."  She added that the ordeal "throws into relief" the question "how much do we really believe in the possibility of human redemption?"    

Along the same lines, Kyle will reflect: "Harvard deciding that someone can't grow, especially after a life-altering event like the shooting, is deeply concerning."

For an institution that expresses reconciliatory sentiments toward former delinquents, shouldn't a thoughtless teenage tirade be of petty concern?  Of course not.  Apologies are useless, and transformation is impossible — if you possess a conservative mind, that is.  What exactly would repentance on Kashuv's part entail?  He even closed his nose and wrote to Harvard's Office of Diversity and Inclusion in humble pursuit of guidance toward improved treatment of minorities.  If he registered for the KKK tomorrow, it wouldn't make the slightest difference in the level of castigation he'd get from the media. 

Despite receiving his just deserts in the form of derogatory headlines on the national scale, the door remains bolted.  The password?  "I promise to never diverge from the liberal quagmire in college and beyond."  Apology accepted.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore