Colleges Reject Students for Their Tweets — and for Those They ‘Follow’

Prospective college students — especially conservatives — have another reason to beware: Schools are increasingly scouring social media accounts for damaging information that could lead to rejected applications.

It’s not just a student’s own messages that college recruiters may frown upon, but also the people or organizations the student follows on social media platforms, as The Daily Wire recently reported.

And this isn’t just about swear words or graphic material.

Many colleges are making sure their applicants’ “worldview” is a fit for today’s hypersensitive, PC-policed “safe spaces.”

A big part of ensuring college campuses are “safe spaces” today includes sheltering students from disruptive intellectual views — such as conservative thinking.

Bradley Shear, an attorney who specializes in social media, recently shared a story about a client who was asked by a college recruiter why he “followed” conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Twitter.

“While one of my legal clients [a 17-year-old teen] was being interviewed by one of the most competitive colleges in the country, he was asked why he was following Alex Jones on Twitter,” Shear wrote.

“My client, a teenager, expected to talk about his stellar grades, top test scores, amazing extracurricular activities and volunteer work, but the interviewer focused on who he was connecting with online,” Shear continued.

“My client had never ‘liked’ or retweeted any of Mr. Jones’ content. His alleged ‘transgression’ was that he followed Mr. Jones on Twitter. That was it,” the lawyer added.

But Shearer’s story gets even more Orwellian.

Universities are now apparently encouraging informants to snitch on both prospective and accepted students.

“Many college admissions offices such as Harvard are encouraging anyone who has ‘digital dirt’ on an applicant or accepted student to send it to the admissions department so they can reject an applicant or revoke an offer,” Shear wrote.

“This happens regularly and finally made international headlines last year when Harvard revoked offers to at least 10 applicants based on their digital footprint,” he added.

College campuses appear to be policing potential students for conformity to the views of liberal professors: Democratic instructors outnumber Republican professors by a margin of approximately 10 to 1, according to an April 2018 study done by a Brooklyn College professor, as reported by The Washington Times.

Colleges are surely not patrolling students’ social media to see if they follow such far-left publications as Media Matters, Salon, or Daily Kos.

Related: Conservative Students Self-Censor to Cope with Liberal Bias on Campus

Almost certainly, they are looking out for such publications and websites in the conservative orbit as Breitbart, The Daily Caller, Fox News, and others.

All of this has very little to do with “educating” young people so that they can become critical thinkers; instead, it has to do with grooming students to carry the radical torch forward into future generations.