IMPRESS THEM WITH YOUR PROWESS, DO: So, in case you haven't seen it yet,
Harvard has revoked its offer of admission to Blair Hornstine, the plagiarist/litigant from Moorestown (NJ) High
about whom I've already blogged at length.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this.
The one hand: The plagiarism's a bad offense. Real bad, and her own high school's code of conduct
said so as well. It casts a bad shadow over the rest of her academic work, and Harvard is right to deny admission to someone who lessens the integrity of the institution.
The other hand: But this never would have been investigated by the Camden Courier-Post, nor would it ever have been publicized, but for Hornstine's
justified litigation, and the fact that it happened right after the Jayson Blair fiasco. (How do we know it was justified?
She won.) And who knows how many other Harvard matriculants have committed similar, undetected offenses, whether on academic or non-academic work.
And where's she going to go now? (a) It's July already, and while I'm sure lots of schools would love to have a disabled female valedictorian with a great volunteer record on their campuses, schools of Harvard's caliber have all locked in the sizes of their freshman classes already.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, while Hornstine had also been accepted at Princeton, Duke, Stanford and Cornell, "Spokespeople at those schools said it was too late for any student who had already turned down an acceptance to enroll in the freshman class."
And (b): if Harvard says that Hornstine's not of sufficient quality character to merit admission there, well, what school's willing to come out and say, "Hey, we don't care about plagiarism as much as Harvard! Come on down!"
Back to the first hand: But you know what? Given
the negative publicity already surrounding Hornstine at Harvard, she's better off not matriculating there in the fall anyway. She'll be better off at a school where a large portion of the student body doesn't know who she is, and doesn't think of her negatively because of the lawsuit/plagiarism/etc.
Except that this should've been her choice to do, back in the spring. I don't quite know who's going to accept her now (my guess: Tufts,
given the Gina Grant precedent), and I don't know whether she'll be able to start anywhere in the fall with the blank slate and freedom to define herself anew that freshman year in college provides.
Wherever she ends up, Blair Hornstine will be known as That Girl Who Did Something Bad, rather than
Blair Hornstine, Point of Light, or just Hey, Who's That Girl In My Political Science Class? She's Kinda Cute. And that's a shame.
I hope she ends up at a top-level school, away from the NYC-PHL-BOS media centers that have focused on her case, and large enough that she can blend in the crowd, and succeed, or fail, on her own merits.
One last thing: Blair, whatever you do from here,
don't sue Harvard.
