Lady Gaga pushing Harvard to award degrees to gay students kicked out in 1920
Tue. February 28, 2012 4:47 PM by GoPride.com News Staff
Cambridge, Mass. -
Lady Gaga will arrive at Harvard on Wednesday, to announce the creation of her "Born This Way" foundation and also to push the school to posthumously award degrees to gay students who were kicked out in 1920.
The seven students -- Donald Clark, Eugene Cummings, Kenneth Day, Stanley Gilkey, Joseph Lumbard, Ernest Weeks Roberts, Edward Say, Keith Smerage and Nathaniel Wollf -- were "persecuted" by a secret court at Harvard, the group "Their Day in the Yard" says, and were kicked out of Cambridge as well.
The school told parents that their children were depraved. Cummings ended up killing himself.
"The acts in question are so unspeakably gross that the intimates of those who commit these acts become tainted and... must for the moment be separated from the College," Acting Dean Chester N. Greenough told Gilkey's dad.
Harvard went on to try to ruin the young men's futures, preventing them from applying to other schools by telling other admissions offices Harvard "had no confidence" in them and that the men had exhibited "moral turpitude" -- which is to say behavior that is grossly offensive.
Now Lady Gaga has stepped in, using Harvard as a platform for the official unveiling of her foundation. The announcement is going to attract a lot of media attention, and will be attended by Deepak Chopra, Oprah Winfrey, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The seven students -- Donald Clark, Eugene Cummings, Kenneth Day, Stanley Gilkey, Joseph Lumbard, Ernest Weeks Roberts, Edward Say, Keith Smerage and Nathaniel Wollf -- were "persecuted" by a secret court at Harvard, the group "Their Day in the Yard" says, and were kicked out of Cambridge as well.
The school told parents that their children were depraved. Cummings ended up killing himself.
"The acts in question are so unspeakably gross that the intimates of those who commit these acts become tainted and... must for the moment be separated from the College," Acting Dean Chester N. Greenough told Gilkey's dad.
Harvard went on to try to ruin the young men's futures, preventing them from applying to other schools by telling other admissions offices Harvard "had no confidence" in them and that the men had exhibited "moral turpitude" -- which is to say behavior that is grossly offensive.
Now Lady Gaga has stepped in, using Harvard as a platform for the official unveiling of her foundation. The announcement is going to attract a lot of media attention, and will be attended by Deepak Chopra, Oprah Winfrey, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.