A student’s rejection from Cornell University went viral on social media when a right-wing influencer claimed, without a shred of evidence, that he was turned down because he was white.
But the high-schooler whose Ivy League dream was dashed doesn’t share that view.
“My son has never brought that up at all,” the high-schooler’s father, Tom Haag, told The Daily Beast on Monday. “He has never indicated [that he thinks it is due to] any racial preference or anything.”
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His son, John Haag, 17, inadvertently became internet-famous two days after he posted a 33-second video to TikTok of the moment he found out whether or not he had been accepted to the Ivy League institution.
John, a senior at St. Edward High School in Lakewood, Ohio, had his heart set on attending Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration and had applied early, according to his dad, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
Tom Haag said he was aware John had “uploaded something” because for the past 24 hours, has “been bragging about how many views it’s gotten.” But Tom is not on social media and didn’t comprehend the magnitude of the now-global conversation surrounding John’s video.
“As a parent, that kind of concerns me,” he said. “Not only because of what kind of response it would get, but I’m not crazy about going broad scale around the whole planet. I suppose this is a critical moment of his life, but I hope it doesn’t turn into a habit.”
The clip in question shows John sitting at a computer in his bedroom, wearing a Cornell sweatshirt as he excitedly prepares himself for the news. It’s a standard TikTok mise en scène for young people today, with reaction videos of academic dreams being realized, or instantly crushed, regularly garnering millions of views.
While the tension builds, captions come up on the screen, reading: “4.6 GPA. 1460 SAT. 460+ hours community service. Summer college courses. Built investment portfolios. $160,000 scholarships. Skipped a grade. Played clarinet for 10 years. Was on the news. Lead [sic] environment preservation projects.”
And then, “But it was still not good enough.”
John’s face falls as Tom and John’s mom stand behind him, looking on.back and forth across the screen in front of him.
“I got rejected,” John says as Tom encourages him to brush himself off and keep going.
John continues staring at his computer, hand to his mouth in disbelief, as the clip ends.
On Sunday afternoon, right-winger Josh Lekach posted John’s video on X, formerly known as Twitter, writing, “Bro got rejected bc he’s White.”
“@elonmusk should hire him,” Lekach wrote, tagging the erratic billionaire owner of the platform.
Other alt-right types immediately took up the “reverse-racism” cause positing that John had whiffed on Cornell due to his skin color, even though there is no indication of that.
“This Young WHITE MALE Busted His Ass To Excel At Everything He Did In High School All With ONE GOAL; GET INTO @Cornell UNIVERSITY! But, His SKIN COLOR & GENDER Kept Him Out!” Army veteran and former Reno, Texas Mayor Pro Tem John Basham posted on X. “He Doesn't Know It Yet, But This Is The Best Unanswered Prayer Ever!”
“His parents most likely voted for this,” another X user wrote.
“Dude just got ‘radicalized,’” insisted another.
“Heartbreaking to see the disappointment on his face,” wrote a self-described British Caymanian marine biologist. “His dad there hoping to congratulate him. This equity nonsense needs to stop.”
The backlash to the backlash was swift, with scores of people pointing out that Cornell has an acceptance rate of 7.9 percent, and applying early decision is even more competitive. At Cornell’s hotel management school, 200 kids were accepted last year out of 1,118 applicants.
“Bro got deferred to the general applicant pool cause that’s a weak application for early admission to an Ivy, even Cornell,” writer Franklin Leonard posted on X. “Get those scores up, kid, and make sure your parents donate to the school and you’ll have a real shot.”
“The MEDIAN SAT score for acceptance was 1510 last year,” someone else posted. “While he obviously worked hard and it is sad, he is far below on his SAT score.”
“No, he got rejected because another white kid from a family that donates millions to Cornell took his spot,” another X user wrote.
As of early Monday afternoon, John Haag’s video had roughly 500,000 views on TikTok, where he posted it. However, the repost on X by Lekach had 31 million views and climbing.
Tom Haag told The Daily Beast that he plans to reach out to Cornell to see if he can find out more about why John’s application was rejected, describing his family as “a little bit confused.”
“He was disappointed,” Tom said. “Being a teenager, it doesn’t surprise me. Given the importance to his future, and direction academically, we’ll probably check into it. But I don’t plan on doing it on social media.”
Tom said he “would encourage people to keep these things as a private matter between them and the institution they’re applying to. I suppose if they want to go into ‘Big Media,’ then that’s different.”
Anthony Abraham Jack, author of the 2019 book, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students, sees the controversy as a “sad reality” of our times. He said the people “who know the least about admissions” are always the ones with the loudest voices on the topic.
“What saddens me about this is that they actually don’t care about the academic dreams of this student,” Jack, a professor of education at Boston University, told The Daily Beast. “They’re using him and his rejection as a pawn for trying to say other people are ‘stealing spots that should be reserved for us,’ without questioning that entitlement to something they do not own.”
The idea spun by online agitators that John Haag was robbed of a spot at Cornell by a person of color is a “fantasy narrative,” according to Jack. The Supreme Court decision this summer that formally ended affirmative action at U.S. universities did not end the practice, he said. It merely ended the schools’ discretion to use race in making admissions decisions, but didn’t end other forms of it, such as preferred status for student athletes, relatives of wealthy donors, and legacy applicants, Jack argued.
Those insisting Cornell did wrong by Haag “believe the valuable spots in higher education should only go to white students,” Jack said. “The fact of the matter is, there are so many shortcuts and back alley pathways into elite schools for privileged people.”
On Monday afternoon, Lekach announced on X that he had deleted his post “about the Cornell University kid at his request.” He shared a screenshot of a direct message he had received from Haag, saying that his life had been “turned inside out because of this whole scenario.”
“I didn’t say it was because of race,” Haag wrote to Lekach. “If anything[,] it was my extracurriculars... I am begging for you to take down this post because it has completely jeapordized [sic] my future.”
In his reply, Lekach assured Haag that he would remove the post but warned the teen to “be careful about what you post online in the future.”
“My post was meant to be satirical and humorous,” Lekach wrote, downplaying any culpability for touching off the furor, “but unfortunately you can’t control how people perceive things online.”
He followed up with a message to everyone else, writing, “To the men mad at me, you’re acting like a chick. Are you proud of yourself? To the women mad at me, who allowed you to log online? You should be frolicking through meadows, baking pies, painting with your children, and being your retarded wholesome self. We love you that way.”
From here, Tom Haag told The Daily Beast, “I’m encouraging [my son] to move on.”
In an email, Cornell spokeswoman Lindsey Knewstub said, “Thank you for your inquiry, however, we politely decline to participate.”
