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New York Times celebrates teenager’s cancellation. University president offers her a full ride.

Vindictive classmate, now enrolled at Christian college, has no regrets

You won’t be surprised at all that The New York Times wrote a glowing profile of a high school student who methodically destroyed a classmate for acting her age.

What might surprise you is that a university president is offering this victim of cancel culture a second chance.

A brief synopsis, in case you haven’t followed the kerfuffle:

Mimi Groves sent a private Snapchat video to a friend in 2016, when she was 15, celebrating her new learner’s permit. “I can drive, [n-word],” the white rap-loving freshman reportedly said.

The video didn’t stay private long among her classmates, but Jimmy Galligan, who is biracial, didn’t see it until last year. He was not only outraged but calculating, saving the video for when it would do the most damage to Groves – his onetime friend.

He posted the video the same day Rogers expressed her support for the racial justice protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The high school senior lost her spot on the University of Tennessee cheer team and then her admissions offer within a few days.

Galligan is now a freshman at Vanguard University, a southern California Christian institution that apparently rewards applicants for vindictiveness. He has no regrets about the “lesson” he taught a classmate for privately saying something crass – something she apologized for long before Galligan made her a target.

MORE: UF rescinds admission to student for old ‘racist’ posts

Groves now attends online classes at a community college. Her life will forever be associated with something millions of people said privately in their teenage years, including today.

While some writers have heaped scorn on Galligan – Rod Dreher called him a “hateful progressive who takes pleasure in causing others unnecessary pain and suffering for the sake of virtue” – others have more forcefully denounced the powerful institutions that made his cancellation attempt successful.

Robby Soave slammed the Times and reporter Dan Levin for choosing to “assist a teenager’s desperate quest to ruin the life of a young woman who said something stupid when she was 15”:

While the piece strives for a veneer of neutrality, it clearly lionizes Galligan, whose portrait—which appears early in the story—calls to mind The Washington Post‘s excessively flattering photograph of Lexie Gruber and Lyric Prince, who extorted the paper into humoring their Halloween-costume-related grievance. Levin never really challenges Galligan; in fact, the reporter lets Galligan get away with the assertion that his white father suffers from “white privilege.” …

If Groves had cheated on her math test, or planted a kick-me sign on a rival’s back, would this constitute national news?

MORE: Marquette threatens to rescind admission over pro-Trump TikTok video

Something amazing happened after this gleeful destruction of a teenager’s life. Mathematician James Lindsay, a member of the “grievance studies” publishing project and University of Tennessee alum, tweeted that a university president reached out to him to pass along an offer to Groves: “full-tuition scholarship.”

Lindsay called on other colleges to “step up to show that we refuse to condone [and] incentivize the malicious behavior ruling our age.”

He asked UT, which told Groves it would rescind her offer if she didn’t withdraw, to pass along the message, since it has the student’s contact information. Lindsay said another alum pledged to redirect donations from UT to a potential scholarship fund for Groves.

Lindsay declined to tell me which university is offering Groves a second chance, because “it’s not in anyone’s best interest” for that information to be public. Asked Tuesday if he had connected Groves with the university, he said “tried.”

If this university president is reading this, please get in touch with The College Fix to explain the thinking behind this offer. We’ll keep the institution’s identity private.

MORE: Harvard grad loses job for threatening to stab people who say ‘All Lives Matter’

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About the Author
Associate Editor
Greg Piper served as associate editor of The College Fix from 2014 to 2021.