Education Dept. Forced to Apologize For Funny Bridesmaids Meme, Because Everything Offends Everyone

The U.S. Department of
Education issued an apology after an outcry materialized over an
apparently offensive Tweet.

The Tweet was sent from the Federal Student Aid office of DOE
and contained a picture of a captioned scene from the movie
Bridesmaids that depicts Kristen Wiig’s drunken
character saying, “Help me, I’m poor.” Accompanying the picture was
a message from the office, “If this is you, then you better fill
out your FAFSA.”

FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which
determines students’ eligibility for federal grants, loans, and
scholarships.

The office yanked the Tweet off the internet after a few hours,
but not before tons of people took to social media to lambast the
organization for making fun of poor people. Monroe Community
College President Anne Kross wrote, “Unbelievable. Take this down.
… Everything about this is tone deaf and just wrong.”

DOE agreed, according to
Inside Higher Ed:

We apologize for this insensitive Twitter post, which flies in
the face of our mission of opening doors of opportunity for every
student,” said Dorie Nolt, [DOE] spokeswoman. “It was an
ill-conceived attempt at reaching students through social media. We
are reviewing our process for approving social media content to
ensure it reflects the high standards we expect at the U.S.
Department of Education.”

But if DOE’s goal is to get as many desperate millennials to
sign up for FAFSA as possible, isn’t this just speaking to them in
their own language? As blogger Liz Gross points out, many college
applicants have used that very same “insensitive” language to
describe themselves. In fact, #helpmeimpoor—an explicit reference
to the same movie—exists in Twitter space and is used by debt-weary
students to both laugh and vent about their situations. As
Gross writes:

I’m a social media and market research strategist for a student
loan servicer. My target audience is very close to that of
@FAFSA—it’s the same students just a few months or years later,
they’ve gotten their loans and are thinking about paying them back.
I’m very familiar with the conversation that happens online
regarding financial aid and student loans. I’ve considered
sending a similar tweet. Here’s why.

The tweet reflects the language of the audience.

#HelpMeImPoor is commonly used by students when they refer to
their struggles paying for college. This exact meme has been used
by students in that context. These are their words. Here’s just one
example.

I have a different take.

The cost of college has spiraled of control, plunging students
into a collective trillion dollars of loan debt. It’s a
self-feeding loop: The federal government launches a dedicated
campaign to persuade desperate students to borrow more and more
money, which in turn empowers universities to
keep raising prices.

Isn’t the idea that the government has any business
convincing students to fall further into debt—sticking
taxpayers with the bill if anything goes wrong—the
truly offensive notion here?