The University of Pennsylvania is investigating an inflammatory message emailed to the community that disparaged the school as “elitist.”
UPenn officials have said the emails are fraudulent, though at least one appears to have come from the Penn Graduate School of Education.
The email is vulgar, and it is unclear whether the school’s email servers were breached. One email shown on X has the subject line, “We got hacked.”
“The University of Pennsylvania is a dogs*** elitist institution full of woke retards,” the email reads. “We have terrible security practices and are completely unmeritocratic. We hire and admit morons because we love legacies, donors, and unqualified affirmative action admits. We love breaking federal laws like FERPA (all your data will be leaked) and Supreme Court rulings like SFFA.”
“Please stop giving us money,” the email ends.
All of the emails sent to the community appear to be similar, though the sending email address varies. Some are from the alumni listserv, and others appear to come from faculty members involved in the GSE’s alumni operations.
The school is actively investigating the emails.
“A fraudulent email has been circulated that appears to come from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education,” a Penn spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “This is obviously a fake, and nothing in the highly offensive, hurtful message reflects the mission or actions of Penn or of Penn GSE. The University’s Office of Information Security is aware of the situation, and our Incident Response team is actively addressing it.”
It is unclear who sent the email, but the content of the email points to someone who leans to the right. The email slams affirmative action, people who are “woke,” and says the university is “unmeritocratic.”
UPenn’s Annenberg School for Communication received an email from Elizabeth Cooper, the school’s IT help desk manager, saying “ASC has not been hacked,” the Daily Pennsylvanian reported.
“These emails are being received by individuals outside of UPenn as well,” Cooper wrote. “It appears that some email list, which is beyond our control, was accessed by malicious individuals who then sent out these messages.”
UPenn Medicine Academic Computing Services advised students to mark the emails as phishing or spam and avoid clicking on any links or attachments. The School of Nursing’s IT services said the “security team is actively working to block and prevent any further messages from being sent.”
The apparent email breach comes after the school rejected a select offer from the Trump administration to receive preference for federal funding and other benefits. The compact called for merit-based admissions and hiring.
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In a rejection statement, UPenn officials said they “are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability.”
“The long-standing partnership between American higher education and the federal government has greatly benefited society and our nation,” they added. “Shared goals and investment in talent and ideas will turn possibility into progress.”
