Higher education in the United States has faced challenges from the Trump administration, and recently a distinct incident occurred involving New York University (NYU). The university’s website was allegedly hacked on a Saturday morning, leading to the homepage being defaced for several hours with racial slurs and graphs purporting to show student test scores categorized by race.
The perpetrator appears to be an individual who identifies on the platform X using a racial slur with the handle “@bestnggy,” though this has been censored here. The hacker manipulated the university’s homepage to display a message referring to the Supreme Court’s June 29, 2023 ruling against racial affirmative action in college admissions. The individual referred to their actions as "Computer Nggy Exploitation (CNE)" and accused NYU of continuing such practices regardless.
Following the message was a graph allegedly showing the average SAT scores, ACT scores, and GPA of admitted NYU applicants categorized by race. The hacker also shared links to mirror sites containing what they claimed was the "raw data" obtained, with personal information redacted.
On the platform X, the hacker asserted that the data originated from NYU’s own data warehouse and was shared to demonstrate alleged legal misconduct. They also took responsibility for a prior breach at the University of Minnesota in 2023, which reportedly exposed millions of social security numbers.
The hacker, through their aggressive online persona, suggested that NYU admitted students based on race, proposing that some students might not have been admitted based solely on test scores and GPA. This narrative has gained traction among certain groups on X, who used the data to allege racial preference in NYU’s admissions.
However, NYU maintains a test-optional policy, where submission of test scores is voluntary and typically pursued by students confident in their results. The test score data alone does not account for wealth disparities affecting standardized testing performance, as students from affluent backgrounds often outperform those from lower-income households due to greater resource availability.
NYU has released its own admission data, which showed a decline in historically underrepresented minority groups for the class of 2028 after the Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action. It should be noted that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives aim to provide opportunities to capable individuals from diverse backgrounds who might otherwise be overlooked.
The hacker and those circulating the so-called data often claim adherence to the rule of law, but their actions suggest a possible influence from the Trump administration’s own scrutiny of higher education institutions.
