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Stanford’s war on social life

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Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#101

Post by majormajor »

woodruffw wrote: post #92
majormajor wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're completely right, which is why I took pains to avoid the word "civilizing." Colonization created an industrial base in its victim countries not as an end in itself, but as a means towards wealth extraction.

Yeah, in that case the nit I'm picking is just that it started a few hundred years prior to industrializing in the name of religious conversion + greed even without any ability to bring meaningful technological quality of life changes.

(It's a fun way to back yourself into being pro-military-spending, this history... the technological advantage of the Europeans was really just in military tech, because the continent had been far more war-ridden than the states involved in the more-recently-quite-peaceful trade around the ocean. And so if you don't have the weapons, you might get screwed by another country that does.)

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#102

Post by compiler-guy »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #30
humanistbot wrote: post #8

I read the whole article, and it seems to be entirely about the push to remove Greek / Frat / Sorority life from campus and convert these houses to more traditional dorms. I know that some people who got a lot out of Greek Life equate it with Social Life, but most college students don't pledge/rush and it doesn't get in the way of social life. There are plenty of ways to socialize without frats.

This seems to be like "they're removing greek/frat/sororities, so they're coming for co-ops". That said, you know, you're going to a rich private university with other rich kids, what do you expect the administration to do?

The article well documents that they have come for the coops. It’s not speculation.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#103

Post by civilized »

julianeon wrote: post #19

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…

I don't think your disagreement with a couple points in the essay really merits a knee-jerk conclusion that the whole thing is untrustworthy.

You didn't show anything the author said was dishonest or egregiously wrong. You just have your own ideas on a couple of particulars.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#104

Post by sanj »

dougmccune wrote: post #15

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 d…

This was wonderful to read.

I lived in a similar beautiful mess, but it still exists!

https://pika.mit.edu/

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#105

Post by car_analogy »

armchairhacker wrote: post #88
car_analogy wrote: post #38

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. 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…

> They each consider themselves “the one true society”, and generally try to expand as much as possible and make everyone else second class citizens.

No, that is imperialism. You're trying to eliminate the option of a society that doesn't try to expand, but also doesn't accept all outsiders, by shifting definitions.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#106

Post by robocat »

marcosdumay wrote: post #39
googlryas wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When do you think multiculturalism was implemented? Hasn't America been multicultural for...hundreds of years? Different immigrant groups had their own culture, different states had their own culture, different religions had their own cultures, hicks/urbanites had their own cultures, educated/uneducated had their own cultures, etc.

Going on the GP's line¹, diversity of cultures is a result of balkanization. Just like genetics speciation, but with memes. Once people start moving around, multiculturalism dies. 1 - I'm not sure I agree, but after reading the comment, I'm tending this way.

> balkanization

FYI: I suspect the meaning you are trying to convey diverges from the meaning many others would use by that word. And perhaps tautological?

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#107

Post by carapace »

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…

You're talking about something else.

OP's referring (I think) to how black people in the USA were discouraged from "white" recreational activities like camping, hiking, skiing, and beach-going.

(FWIW, back in high school a black friend of mine explained to me one day that black people don't go skiing, etc., because their lives are so dangerous already that it doesn't make sense to go do dangerous things for entertainment. It kind of blew my mind.)

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#108

Post by majormajor »

car_analogy wrote: post #99
woodruffw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Nature activities are "endemically white"? Is this a serious comment? The Unbearable Whiteness of Hiking and How to Solve It - https://www.sierraclub.org/outdoors/2016/12/unbearable-white... Why Are Our Parks So White? - https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/diversify-... The unbearable whiteness of cycling - https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycl... Five ways to make the climate m…

Some of these are paywalled but I don't see where the ones that aren't support the claim re: hiking that "...any attempt to organize around it without making overt, aggressive attempts to include minorities is a sign of white supremacy"

Observing that, say, parks are being patronized by certain demographics is far from condemning those parkgoers as white supremacist.

The only bits you link about white supremacy seem to be about climate change which has a whole different angle (marginalized communities being first in line for ill effects in many areas) and isn't particularly relevant to the original claim here.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#109

Post by Godel_unicode »

Steven_Vellon wrote: post #100
ketzo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"technically not Stanford" meaning I have heard horror stories from 15+ fraternities at 5+ schools -- but not Stanford. So hopefully you'll forgive me if I generalize. Especially when one of the most widely-storied campus sexual assault cases in recent years happened at the Stanford Kappa Alpha house [1] -- the first fraternity house mentioned in the linked article. [1] https://archive.ph/hxcgw

Please read your sources, Turner did not carry out the assault at KA. He and the victims met at a part at KA and Turner assaulted after leaving the fraternity. The article writes that it was "just outside" but it was out of sight of the fraternity house, some ways away.

This is a distinction without a difference.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#110

Post by II2II »

dgs_sgd wrote: post #46

I can see why there's a push to eliminate Greek life given all the unfortunate events associated with it. But I'm extremely confused this example: > One such case was the end of Outdoor House, an innocuous haven on the far side of campus for students who liked hiking. The official explanation from Stanford for eliminating the house was that the Outdoor theme “fell short of diversity, equity and inclusion expectations…

> They can't even organize around a common interest unless it passes some bureaucrat's standard of diversity?

It depends upon how the members behave, rather than the common interest they are supposedly organized around. I remember student organizations from my days on campus that sensible students wouldn't associate themselves with. The stated interest may have been some form of outdoor activity, but they were better known for their hard partying. Hard partying being an euphemism in this case. They would fall short of diversity, equity, and inclusion since their riskier activities (activities that had nothing to do with their stated purpose) would drive away those who weren't interested, couldn't afford to take the risk, or were the target of the risk.

For those who think it is worse today than it was 25 years ago, I somehow doubt it. Though, perhaps, that doubt is borne from a hope that it isn't any worse. Crimes as extreme as sexual assault were real, and that was at a time when something that should be taken seriously was taken less seriously. Then there was the common stuff such as vandalism and other property crimes. It happened then and it happens now.

The article makes it sound like the university is being far too heavy handed in its treatment of these student organizations. Perhaps they are. On the other hand, the author is ignoring some of the darker aspects of student life.

(I also cringe at the use of student life in this discussion since a good portion of students, if not the vast majority, avoided it because they knew it was wrong.)

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