The Ethics of Unethical Behaviour

Potential Harvard students might be deterred from fudging their resumes after reading the College application’s clause that “any intentionally inaccurate information will...be cause for recision of any offer of admission or...revocation of course credit, course grades, and degree.” But has the fine print ever been put into action?

Registrar of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Barry S. Kane says that he and his colleagues have not dealt with diploma revocation, although it may have happened sometime in Harvard’s history. But if a serious incident of fraud were to occur, Kane thinks the University could act. “One option available to the faculty would be to rescind the awarded degree,” he says.

“This is a very rare situation,” says Harvard College Admissions Director Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73. What’s the more likely scenario? “For something to change in the record a student has achieved within the time he or she is admitted and the time he or she is enrolled,” she says. The admissions decisions can be revoked if something happens after your app is in the mail, though it’s not clear whether an untruthful student would lose his degree after graduating. But what about other skeletons in your closet?

In 1995, the University revoked the admission of a Harvard admit after discovering that she had pled no contest to voluntary manslaughter after allegedly beating her mother to death with a lead candlestick five years earlier.

A creepy example, but a reminder that Harvard knows all.