Stanford’s war on social life

I read this whine-piece and it had the opposite effect of what the author intended. I read it and thought, "Well, fucking good."

I don't have anything against most Stanford students. (I mean, the startup bros and spoiled legacy kids can choke, but I imagine many if not most of them are normal people.) However, he's describing a college culture that is racist, classist, and misogynist... and I'm happy to see it get crushed. And sure, the crushing is being done by neoliberal authoritarian capitalists, who aren't my favorite people, but if a side effect of this is the next generation hating neoliberal authoritarian capitalists for whitewashing and degrading their college experience, then I'll take it.

Go a layer deeper.

Liability to whom?

Blame the lawyers and blame the parents both.

The lawyers part... that's a broader issue with how the American legal system is intentionally adversarial.

The parents part... that could be changed more easily, but reducing risk is absolutely what they're pushing for currently.

So, short of not depending on parents' money... which is of course tough at an expensive private school, but also even tough at public schools that are no longer even close to as affordable as they used to be too... what ya gonna do?

You might live in California and have certainly seen the drought, but the lake didn't go dry due to drought.

The lake was fed by diverting water from nearby San Francisquito Creek. The university chose to stop filling the lake for recreational use in 2001 to protect the endangered California tiger salamander as the article notes. The lake was still sometimes artificially filled to support salamander breeding, but it was not maintained to a level suitable for (most forms of) recreation (though I still saw members of KA attempt to take a raft out on 1-2ft of water during a rainy week -- I think their raft was more full of beer than the lake was of water, though my memory is hazy).

The university has since removed the dam used to divert water to Lake Lag as part of a process of habitat restoration upstream. I'm not sure how that will affect the population of salamanders that depended on that water in Lake Lag, but I believe they also breed upstream and will have more sustainable natural habitat. Also, water from Searsville Dam just upstream from this project is used to irrigate Stanford's golf course, and that is cited as a reason not to remove that dam (the other reason is that removing it would change habitats that formed from the lake it created).

The school has sometimes turned off its campus fountains during periods of drought. They shut the fountains down for 2 years while I was there. During that same time I didn't see them shut off water to the golf courses though, and that consumes substantially more water than the fountains. They did restore water in the fountains for the weeks leading up to our graduation, and I can recommend grabbing a pitcher of beer or two from the CoHo and walking it straight down to the fountain outside the bookstore for a soak, if the school still allows it.

To summarize, if we are to infer Stanford's priorities based on how it has approached the complex dynamics around Lake Lag and its (former) tributary, I believe that would look like: golf course > endangered salamander > students.

Yeah degree inflation is really hard on you if for whatever reason you buy into that. The Meritocracy Trap is a good read if you want to witness the existential horror of someone that realizes it's a thing when they come out on the other side.

> This is true at MIT as well. Can’t imagine the hacks of old being allowed.

Indeed, at a time the admissions process was advertising MIT's hacks of old, and they were featured in the museum, the administrators changed both the makeup and mission of the campus police. From experienced and wise older officers who were looking for a calmer post before retirement into younger aggressive sorts, and they started arresting and charging people doing non-destructive hacks, harassing parties that would previously have been tolerated and so on.