Stanford’s war on social life • Hacker News Board

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#81

Post by whymauri » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 1:36 AM UTC

hprotagonist wrote: post #45

mensetmanusman wrote: post #35

“Stanford's new social order offers a peek into the bureaucrat's vision for America. It is a world without risk, genuine difference, or the kind of group connection that makes teenage boys want to rent bulldozers and build islands. It is a world largely without unencumbered joy; without the kind of cultural specificity that makes college, or the rest of life, particularly interesting.” This is true at MIT as well. Ca…

pour one out for senior house.

and east campus (next year)

and random hall (when it comes)

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#82

Post by scarmig » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 1:37 AM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #54

scarmig wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a slightly more trenchant critique if Stanford weren't simultaneously declaring war on houses devoted to everything from French culture to cooperative vegetarian meals. But, as little as I liked the frats, I'm not going to throw them under the bus and push the idea that they were some kind of dens of misogyny and rape. They're not. If Stanford really wanted to combat those ills, perhaps it should focus…

In my sophomore year, my roommate came back at 7am after being out all night with his thighs literally purple from paddling. He couldn't stand up for a day - I had to bring him meals. He was in the professional society for international relations students . It's not just frats.

Originally you were critiquing

> the un-fucking-believably fraught legacy that the Greek fraternity system has

And now it seems you've expanded to every independent student organization, which apparently are all too brutalizing to students and must be abolished, to be replaced by the perfect all-seeing vision of university bureaucrats and administrators.

I can say that my house (which admittedly was explicitly themed around nonviolent activism) never beat or hazed any member of it in the three years I was there. And yet it still has fallen under the eye of Sauron.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#83

Post by majormajor » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 1:37 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #74

zdragnar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a quiet but persistent thought pattern that outdoor / nature activities- hiking, camping, etc- are endemically white and that any attempt to organize around it without making overt, aggressive attempts to include minorities is a sign of white supremacy. This is the main thrust of the "anti-racist" movement. If you aren't talking about being inclusive in every aspect of any social interaction you partake in,…

Nature activities are "endemically white"? Is this a serious comment? Even if we buy into the ridiculous naturalistic fallacy here, it's completely ahistorical: our modern history is primarily the history of white countries colonizing and industrializing nonwhite countries and alienating them from nature in the process. Suburban white America is arguably even more alienated from nature than city dwellers, in its rede…

Leaving aside the inanity of zdragnar's broad-bush painting of "anti-racism," it's worth noting here that this is somewhat falling victim to some historical propaganda of other races being "inferior" - e.g. "we're bringing civilization to the savages."

There were pretty substantial urban civilizations in Central America and around the Indian Ocean that Europeans (Portugal, first, I believe) waged war on early in the colonial era for reasons like religion, prior to industrialization, and this had a lot to do with shifting the economic center of gravity of the world to Europe from Asia in the first place.

(At a meta-level, this is the sort of thing - pointing out bits of history that often get left out of Euro-centric history lessons in the US - that my understanding of "anti-racist" would include; not stopping attendance in a hiking club... any school administrator who believes a hiking club couldn't be compatible with diversity is wrong... but the existence of wrong people who think they're fighting racism is not the same thing as it being wrong to fight racism.)

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#84

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 1:38 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #60

pigscantfly wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a (possibly-overly-blunt) attempt to tie this cultural shift to outcomes the bureaucracy cares about, but absolutely the biggest loss is to the undergraduate culture and future students' experiences. Both future grads and the university will obviously be fine financially.

My theory is that the root cause is the financialization and rat-race-ification of everything. You gotta go to college to make a good living. You gotta go to a TOP college especially. You gotta work your ass off in high school to get in. And so everyone just is told their whole childhood to compete harder and harder in this race to the bottom and there's no more room for interesting experiences since a truly interest…

> there's no more room for interesting experiences

So people will become infantile and inexperienced. Between this and atomisation of society, the bill will come due. Aociao connections have massive value, beurocrats just dont know how to measure ir

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#85

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #60

pigscantfly wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a (possibly-overly-blunt) attempt to tie this cultural shift to outcomes the bureaucracy cares about, but absolutely the biggest loss is to the undergraduate culture and future students' experiences. Both future grads and the university will obviously be fine financially.

My theory is that the root cause is the financialization and rat-race-ification of everything. You gotta go to college to make a good living. You gotta go to a TOP college especially. You gotta work your ass off in high school to get in. And so everyone just is told their whole childhood to compete harder and harder in this race to the bottom and there's no more room for interesting experiences since a truly interest…

Is it possible this is a consequence of proportionally fewer economic opportunities (i.e. increasing income/wealth gap)? Maybe the combination of low hanging fruit having been picked, and automation and technology allowing for massive economies of scale inevitably lead to a “big getting bigger” scenario. And because the lower hanging fruit has been picked, the risk and hence barrier to entry is very high for non conventional routes.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#86

Post by ketzo » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #82

ketzo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my sophomore year, my roommate came back at 7am after being out all night with his thighs literally purple from paddling. He couldn't stand up for a day - I had to bring him meals. He was in the professional society for international relations students . It's not just frats.

Originally you were critiquing > the un-fucking-believably fraught legacy that the Greek fraternity system has And now it seems you've expanded to every independent student organization, which apparently are all too brutalizing to students and must be abolished, to be replaced by the perfect all-seeing vision of university bureaucrats and administrators. I can say that my house (which admittedly was explicitly themed…

Not all. Not even most!

I was in a fraternity, and we never laid a hand on a person. Extremely strict zero-tolerance towards even suggesting that someone was required to drink. The worst hazing that we ever allowed was asking new members to go get us some coffee -- if they had time.

But just because your house is ostensibly "devoted to French culture" or whatever doesn't mean you can't get up to some horrible shit. It doesn't give you a free pass just because you're missing the Greek letters.

I mean, do you think fraternities are "devoted to" hazing? That it's on their mission statement?

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#87

Post by tylergetsay » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 1:40 AM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #43

It is absolutely impossible to take this article seriously, because the author refuses to acknowledge the un-fucking-believably fraught legacy that the Greek fraternity system has, at Stanford and at every other school. > Driven by a fear of uncontrollable student spontaneity and a desire to enforce equity on campus Oh, yeah, Stanford’s really afraid of “student spontaneity.” They’re definitely not afraid of organiza…

1500 college aged kids die per year due to alcohol related injuries

https://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/statistics/consequ...

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#88

Post by armchairhacker » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 1:41 AM UTC

car_analogy wrote: post #38

armchairhacker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiculturalism does work. The way it works is, people with different cultures / wants / ideas form their own communities and mind their own business. And when someone feels part of one community and part of another, they band together with others in the middle and create a third community. Multiculturalism often fails because people on all sides get offended too easily. Maybe it’s my personality but I really can’t…

> Multiculturalism does work. The way it works is, people with different cultures / wants / ideas form their own communities and mind their own business. You're describing nationalism.

nationalistic societies don’t keep to themselves. They each consider themselves “the one true society”, and generally try to expand as much as possible and make everyone else second class citizens.

By “keep to themselves” i don’t mean communities should reject outsiders who want to join. They just need to not bother outsiders who don’t support them and don’t want to join. People from completely different cultures can and do exist together, however they share some other beliefs or commonalities; people who are polar opposites generally can’t coexist unless they’re separate.

Even then, a community which rejects all outsiders and secludes itself would be fine. Like that one native tribe who attacks any modern intervention. As long as they’re not subjugating their own citizens and preventing people from leaving like North Korea.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#89

Post by m463 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 1:41 AM UTC

I wonder if this is just the march of "accountability" that comes from ubiquitous cellphone cameras, cloud photos and the general erosion of student privacy (both self-inflicted and external)

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#90

Post by majormajor » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 1:42 AM UTC

pvarangot wrote: post #77

majormajor wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that the root cause is the financialization and rat-race-ification of everything. You gotta go to college to make a good living. You gotta go to a TOP college especially. You gotta work your ass off in high school to get in. And so everyone just is told their whole childhood to compete harder and harder in this race to the bottom and there's no more room for interesting experiences since a truly interest…

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.

I don't know where you're going with "if for whatever reason you buy into that" or whatever.

But it's just mathematics. Normalization, basically. If there are X high school seniors in the country, and Y incoming seats in Stanford's next class, you can't take everyone. So if everyone works harder on their profile it's the same as if nobody does.

I don't think it's in question that this has happened. I would also go a bit further and say that I believe that assembly-lining more "directed" academic effort into every bit of students' time is going to be counter-productive for innovation and creativity, since those are by nature more spontaneous.