Haverford Student Impersonates President, Announces Major Initiative

Move over Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.

According to Philadelphia Magazine, last week a Haverford College student causes a bit of an uproar when he posed as the school’s interim president and attempted to send out a mass email announcing a major, and controversial, change in admissions policy.

Apparently frustrated with attitudes towards illegal immigration, on January 28 Haverford sophomore Ed Menefee created a fake Gmail account for president Joanne Creighton and tried to send an email to all Haverford staff and students announcing that the university would be extending need-blind admissions consideration and financial aid to prospective students who are not in the country legally.

The email read:

For the past few months, we have been considering how to rectify this conflict between our values and our policies.  Therefore with my approval, Jess Lord has directed the staff of the Admissions Office to extend the same fair, need-blind admissions consideration to undocumented applicants as is currently granted to documented applicants.  Jess Lord has said that undocumented admits will receive at least the same financial aid packages as U.S. citizen admits…

This is progress that we should all be proud of, but there is more work to be done to both move us forward and to repair the harm inflicted.  That’s why I am now apologizing on behalf of Haverford to the undocumented American community for our history of discrimination and exclusion.

While, according to Technically Philly, the email did not make it out to all those it was addressed to, the college didn’t consider the act a laughing matter. In a subsequent, official email, the college called Menefee’s act fraudulent and said it “threatens to discredit what is otherwise a meaningful and important discussion.” The student body of the school had made national news last May when it asked the university to consider implementing immigration-status blind admissions consideration.

On February 1, Menefee, who copped to sending the email shortly after the story broke, released this statement:

On Monday, The World As It Is and The World As It Should Be met for a brief second and said hello. They took a good look at each other and the World As It Should Be said, “It pains me to look at you- so ugly, hateful, and unfair you are. Why don’t you accept me? Let’s be one in the same.” But The World As It Is decided this was not to be and yelled out, “You are a fraud! How dare you show yourself?! I am The World As It Is, and we are indefinitely separate and different!”

The story was originally reported by the Haverford Clerk, the college’s student newspaper.