Stanford’s war on social life

I think the implication is that multiculturalism is very hard to get right, and that one solution to it is to be very careful all the time. This leads to a sort of vague blandness that has become more prominent in the Bay area over the past few years. If you don't want to be cancelled, just don't say potentially controversial things.

The thing with unique, interesting group identities (like in Stanford social groups) is that they will, invariably, offend and push some people's boundaries. This over the years has been viewed more and more negatively (as a solution to multiculturalism imho). When cancellations abound and price of offense is high, just make everything as neutral as possible. 580, 610, 113, whatever.

But people's souls get slowly sucked out of them.

The report is withheld, and the statute of limitations ignored, so it's likely to be something mundane that couldn't really get them into trouble if shown in broad daylight

I spent 3 years living in one of the co-ops briefly mentioned in the article ("In 2013, the administration took over the student-run anarchist house and painted over the old murals."). I wouldn't call it an "anarchist house" but it sure as hell was a lot of fun to live there. I painted some of those murals that are now apparently gone. We built a giant illegal loft in our room to make it two stories (which we would disassemble for a day every year when the fire inspection happened). We did some stupid and illegal shit, sure. But the sense of community was unparalleled. The alumni association owned the house, so we had to deal with all the maintenance. We came back to campus a week before everyone else every year to work on the house. We cooked and cleaned for ourselves. I've never since experienced anything close to that same feeling of communal pride. It was a mess, but it was our beautiful mess.

The point being made is not that the Greek system is being pushed out and that worsens the social atmosphere. It's that Stanford is losing its atypical social community (which includes not only the Greek system but also co-ops), and that will hurt the uniqueness and advantage of Stanford as a breeding ground for interesting thinkers.

Not to mention these are just symptoms, there are more problematic things that are not ostensible.

I think I'm close to an outside observer - I didn't go to Stanford and don't have a dog in that fight, as the saying goes. I don't trust the conclusions of this article.

It starts with a story about a frat which filled their building's first floor with sand, so much that they had to rent a bulldozer to relocate it to the campus lake. Then they call the Stanford admins killjoys for not supporting it. But... of course Stanford wouldn't support that! That would try anyone's patience.

What kind of impact does dumping all that sand have? What about running the bulldozer over the Stanford campus? What if someone is injured by the bulldozer? I wouldn't trust teenagers renting an after-party bulldozer who never cleared that with anyone, never notified anyone, and have no proof of training.

Then, the article talks about Stanford letting the lake "go dry." I live in California and I can tell you what happened: the drought. There's a killer drought, nonessential water use is discouraged, and a manmade lake in a little-used corner of a campus is the definition of nonessential. Stanford did the right thing by not artificially pumping it up. There's no malice involved; a lake like that, in 2022, is destined to dry up.

So based on those things, I don't think I can trust the article to be taking a balanced, sensible position. My "middle of the road" position wold be that, yes, sometimes adventurous college kids can get away with something - once in a while. But over the long term, it's the institution's job to prevent one-off events from turning into ongoing disaster generators.