Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stanford’s war on social life

palladiummag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 402 posts

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#141

Post by kart23 »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #22

I thought Kappa Alpha got "un-housed" as part of the fallout for hosting the party where the Brock Turner assault took place. That kind of event would have led to a frat being dissolved on my campus in the 1990s. Obviously there are many other examples in this article, but that one doesn't seem to quite fit.

Turner wasn't a member of Kappa Alpha, I don't think the fraternity had any impact on the case other than hosting the event that led to the crime. They lost their house in 2019, the case happened in 2015 and the reason they lost their house is because apparently they let people live in without paying rent to the university.

https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/19/kappa-alpha-fraternity-...

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#142

Post by n8ta »

woodruffw wrote: post #61

Since it keeps getting trotted out onto this site: Palladium is a far-right magazine masquerading as an independent publication. It's bankrolled by Peter Thiel, and its founders and editors are a veritable "who's who" of reactionary (and explicitly white supremacist[1]) thought leader types. [1]: https://splinternews.com/leaked-emails-show-how-white-nation...

Anywhere else I could read about this? Never heard of splinternews and I'm not familiar with it or Palladium.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#143

Post by preordained »

woodruffw wrote: post #61

Since it keeps getting trotted out onto this site: Palladium is a far-right magazine masquerading as an independent publication. It's bankrolled by Peter Thiel, and its founders and editors are a veritable "who's who" of reactionary (and explicitly white supremacist[1]) thought leader types. [1]: https://splinternews.com/leaked-emails-show-how-white-nation...

Uh huh. And as to the article in question...exactly what is "far right"? I think the Overton window is rapidly running out of shifting room...

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#144

Post by at_a_remove »

My last university is in the throes of getting rid of Greek Life. First it was crackdowns on dangerous hazing behavior, but you know how the slippery slope goes: next was alcohol, then just vague accusations. Meanwhile, there's a strong attempt from the usual suspects to convince students that Greek life is inherently racist. The sororities seem to have bought this concept more than the fraternities and some have closed their own chapters.

Now, I have no love for Greek life but I think it ought to be an option. Some people really benefit from it.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#145

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

tzs wrote: post #128
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…

> Suburban white America is arguably even more alienated from nature than city dwellers. I doubt that. Suburban people are more likely to have cars, making it easier to get to get to more natural places. For nature activities that need equipment I would expect suburban people are more likely to own such equipment because they have bigger houses with more room to keep things. City people are more likely to need to ren…

There is another factor: a lower population density means less transit congestion on days when going into nature is popular.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#146

Post by ip26 »

avindroth wrote: post #17
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.

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 n…

Wait, people see Stanford as a hotbed of interesting thinkers? I didn't think that was their brand.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#147

Post by preordained »

cs137 wrote: post #71

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 cr…

It sounds like you took away from it exactly what you came for

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#148

Post by andai »

>When Stanford could not remove a student organization for bad behavior, they found other justifications. One such case was the end of Outdoor House, an innocuous haven on the far side of campus for students who liked hiking.

Stanford Daily writes:

>The URGC also wrote that Outdoor House should pursue “meaningful engagement with faculty and staff in the important areas of equity and inclusion to more fully address the cultural concerns of the previous outdoor house that you included so explicitly in your application.” The house’s theme applicants focused on shifting its framework to address issues inherent in centering a house around outdoor culture — a traditionally white and wealthy space. In a Letter to the Community, Outdoor House community members wrote that “Centered on expensive hobbies, the house has not shown enough regard to the people we exclude, the land we recreate on, or perspectives outside the mainstream interpretation of outdoor recreation.”

https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/20/outdoor-house-loses-app...

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#149

Post by zbrozek »

My interactions with Stanford administrators convinced me that I didn't need a graduate degree and that I would never donate to the school.

Beyond that, I also got totally fed up trying to figure out how to get definitive positive permission to do anything. At one point I asked facilities if I could build an oven to cure composites. They reviewed and approved the plans. But when some other group within the school saw the result, they flipped out and hired a consultant to trump up false hazards. I was only clued in because a sympathetic dean leaked an email to me. I invited the fire marshal out to take a look, and I got a thumbs up to operate.

I eventually moved the oven to rented space elsewhere since I was told I couldn't keep the thing on campus. I was then told my student group would be dissolved if we used off-campus facilities. We agreed that if I brought it back that my group could use it for its intended purpose for a year and then find another solution next year.

I found a crew demolishing it at 4 AM the following morning. A deal's a deal, I guess. We went back to heating our composites with propane heaters aimed into a collapsible wood-and-plastic box, rather than our electrically heated concrete and flame-resistant foam box. The propane solution has been used every year since.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#150

Post by sprayk »

majormajor wrote: post #108
car_analogy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

I suspect that this is the point GP was trying to make. A criticism of anti-racism I've encountered many times is that most arguments for something (e.g. parks) being racist or white supremacist are unfalsifiable and based solely on a specific demographic outcome (e.g. national park visitors are disproportionately white) while ignoring other factors.

Post reply on HN