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Stanford’s war on social life

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Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#211

Post by [deleted] »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #24
kenjackson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh. I think it sometimes sucks for those for which the past lack of equity benefitted them. Probably more than anywhere I see this in athletics with boys and girls. Certain Dad’s of boys complain about how when they were boys they could do all these things that are now off limits because they say girls complain about them. I’m not sure the girls feel the same way.

I think viewing this in terms of society-level power dynamics is a little too simplistic, and we can show that by example. I have a white friend who moved into the Mission District in SF, mostly sight unseen, and hated it. For those not familiar, the Mission is a primarily hispanic community with lots of loud music, partying, street races, and people setting off fireworks at night. My friend from out of town was mise…

[deleted]

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#212

Post by insightcheck »

ryandrake wrote: post #187
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children don’t always make responsible, adult decisions.

Imagine how boring the world would be if everyone made responsible, adult decisions at all opportunities!

On the other extreme end of the scale, consider a young person with lots of potential entering university, who then decides to rebel by trying increasingly harder drugs, and ends up with drugs tainted with fentanyl and dies of an overdose. Similar situations have happened before, such as this report of a physics senior dying of fentanyl [1].

Consider young people who try black hat hacking as a prank or for illicit means, and getting a criminal record (source of this happening in Canada [2]. Students also cheat on their courses, get caught, and get expelled. Others make TikTok videos on train tracks, touch the electrified rail, and end up hospitalized or dead.

This is the extreme end of the scale, but these cases and personal experience have led me to believe that it's typically far better to follow the law while questioning conventions. I admit there are cases (e.g. Uber) where people and companies succeeded by breaking the law, but I figure the risks are pretty high, and there is still plenty of opportunity to innovate while respecting the law in one's personal and professional life.

[1] https://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/june2010/features/drug_po...)

[2] https://globalnews.ca/news/3870338/mcmaster-university-hacke...

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#213

Post by lmm »

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…

> 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.

That's exactly the attitude that causes this problem - there's always a reason to say no. These are supposed to be adults, they (presumably) legally rented the bulldozer, they got the consent of the groundskeeper.

There's no possible fun so innocuous that you can't come up with one more bureaucratic requirement to slap on it if you really try. Thought experiment: if it turned out the bulldozer driver did in fact have some kind of training/license, would that change your mind? Or would you just look for another reason to say this was bad?

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#214

Post by brailsafe »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #145
tzs wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Less population density and more cars might cause more congestion if anything

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#215

Post by yojo »

hyperbovine wrote: post #111
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…

Meanwhile, the coop system at Berkeley is alive and well.

God bless the USCA (or BSC, or whatever they call it now).

It breaks my heart that other students don’t have that opportunity for community. It’s not for everyone, but by far the most interesting years of my life were living in the Berkeley coops 2002-2005.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#216

Post by lmm »

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…

How does 29 dead in 12 years (across the whole US) compare with the increase in suicides mentioned in the article?

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#217

Post by suzzer99 »

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…

This is so ridiculous. I spend a lot of time hiking the mountains around LA. White people are not a majority and I'm not even sure a plurality. I'm not Latino but still somehow wound up in a mostly Latino hiking club. I hear so many different languages on the trail. I see people of every ethnicity.

This really could be as simple as minorities tend to be more working class, and don't have the wherewithal for a big road trip to the national parks. But put hiking trails near their communities, and they utilize the heck out of them.

Makes me think of this: https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1536491555426652162. Progressive non-profits are getting destroyed by this kind of internal strife.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#218

Post by suzzer99 »

andai wrote: post #151
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…

From the Stanford Daily: >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 ou…

Hiking - so expensive! GAHHHH

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#219

Post by insightcheck »

MikeTheRocker wrote: post #120
hemloc_io wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is tempting to blame universities entirely for this, and I can go on all day about it, students culture has changed a lot too. I'm not sure what has caused it.

Can you elaborate on this? How do you think culture has changed?

An essay that thoroughly explores this is called "The Coddling of the American Mind," which was published in The Atlantic in 2015 [1]. The essay presents an argument against the aversion of covering certain points of views in a university course, with the rationale that it might cause emotional harm against students. Another article that shows how student tolerance of opposing views in the US has changed over time was published in Vox [2.]

However, for a diversity of views, a strong counter-argument to the above narrative was published in Times Higher Education [3], which argues that it's quite feasible to teach courses with controversial material, and educators should not be afraid of their students.

These articles include evidence that university student culture has indeed changed, with reports of certain groups of university students being more outspoken about the coverage of certain controversial material in courses. There are arguments for and against about whether or not this change is good for the development of university students as people, but there has certainly been a change in university student culture.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

[2] https://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afrai...

[3] https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/06/09/essay-reject...

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#220

Post by savingsPossible »

ketzo wrote: post #57
csdvrx wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - forced people to consume dangerous amounts of drugs and alcohol Forced, really? > Yeah, sorry, you don’t get to pull Animal House-style pranks any more. You lost your privileges after killing a fucking kid. > > https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Family-sues-Stanford-ro... Hmm, did they kill a kid, or did the kid OD'ed THEN declined medical attention? > According to Weiner’s family, the sophomore overdosed two d…

> Forced, really? Lol. No friends at SEC schools, huh? Do we really need Lord of the Flies to tell us that in certain environments, at certain ages, around certain people, people can be pressured into doing things that they would never do otherwise?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-...

Lord of the flies is not an argument for or against anything. Its pessimism is unwarranted, it does not reflect reality, just the mind of a depressed man

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