The article is too long. Is the headline a clickbait or is Stanford doing something against its own students?
Depends on who you ask. According to some of my (not Stanford) students, any time I give them less than 100% I’m at war with them.
Stanford’s war against its own students
81–90 of 269 posts
Re: Stanford’s war against its own students
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the core bit you've missed is: Stanford explicitly selects for perfectionists by requiring extremely high standards of (most) students. Those students have spend several years working very hard to get in, aware that even the slightest mis-step can cost them everything they've worked for. But they're surrounded by people trying to help them get in. Then they get to Stanford and discover that the university adm…
But that's all of life, too, isn't it? If you host a party in real life that serves alcohol to minors and get caught, you'll face more annoying consequences than a 1 year party moratorium. And, as I said, I'm pretty sure that if you deliberately dump a cup of coffee onto a coworker, you'll be fired instantly.
Two things: college is supposed to be an opportunity to learn from mistakes so making the normal consequence of any mistake the end of your career goes against that. Historically the decent young men of Stanford were able to get drunk, pull dumb stunts, embarrass themselves, then graduate and join "real life". The recent decision that sexual assault should be taken off the list of allowable "dumb stunts" is still working its way through the system, and right now we seem to be at the "major overreaction" stage.
Secondly, part of the idea of Stanford and other elite schools is to create social links so that even quite serious mistakes aren't career-ending. The idea that "your first business will fail, and that's ok" is necessary because almost all new businesses do fail. Society needs that, and since the US can't have a social safety net, we need that group of rich kids with rich friends to provide at least some people who can afford those failures.
We can argue about whether the victim of the coffee-dumping was wrong to think it was a minor thing, but hopefully we can all agree that the death penalty was a bit harsh for that offense?
Re: Stanford’s war against its own students
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
The vast majority of undergrads live on campus. Off-campus housing is quite expensive (it's in Palo Alto), since you're competing with Googlers and the like for real estate.
This is not a problem or experience unique to Stanford: NYC has 600,000 university students living in it, and they manage to tear it up just fine without relying on the campus to host their parties.
Have you been to Palo Alto? It's rather different from New York. Even SF is more boring and significantly smaller than NY.
Re: Stanford’s war against its own students
#84This is such a weird article that I feel like I must not understand it. From what I can tell: A fraternity hosted one or more parties where, by finding of fact and apparently the admission of the frat itself, they served alcohol to minors, contravening an obvious Stanford policy; as a result, they had to go through an annoying adjudication process and spend several months under the thread of a long-term suspension of…
There's quite a bit more in the story, such as this from an alumni attorney helping students anonymously accused of cheating on an exam:
The students knew Ottilie ran his own law practice and reached out for his counsel. Ottilie agreed to take the students’ case pro bono and worked with two other alumni lawyers on their defense—recreating seating charts and finding over a dozen witnesses who were willing to testify to their innocence.
Ottilie said he turned up at multiple hearings for the students only to be told by university officials he was not allowed to speak on their behalf, but could advise them from behind the scenes.
After five months of a judicial process that Ottilie describes as “biased against the students,” all three of his clients were acquitted of the charges. But the experience exposed a deep flaw in the university’s treatment of its student body, Ottilie told me.
“In the process of working with those students, we discovered that Stanford. . . was denying them of their procedural due process rights at literally every step of the process,” he said.
Re: Stanford’s war against its own students
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not a problem or experience unique to Stanford: NYC has 600,000 university students living in it, and they manage to tear it up just fine without relying on the campus to host their parties.
Have you been to Palo Alto? It's rather different from New York. Even SF is more boring and significantly smaller than NY.
Boring and smaller aren't the concern: I went to a large state school in an extremely boring suburb of DC. We still managed to cram people into overpriced off-campus housing and to drink ourselves stupid.
Re: Stanford’s war against its own students
#86This is such a weird article that I feel like I must not understand it. From what I can tell: A fraternity hosted one or more parties where, by finding of fact and apparently the admission of the frat itself, they served alcohol to minors, contravening an obvious Stanford policy; as a result, they had to go through an annoying adjudication process and spend several months under the thread of a long-term suspension of…
Senior year my dorm was slapped with a one month party prohibition because we had an unsanctioned party the night before school started. It was slightly annoying, but also provided the obvious theme for the permitted, sanctioned, registered party held one month later.
The rules have been changing, though. At the time, nobody was responsible for enforcing the law on drinking age except the drinker. I think the article has more appeal for people whose past fun is being stolen.
Re: Stanford’s war against its own students
#87"For the past several years, Stanford has required students to adhere to a Student Party Policy, which includes a highly detailed “Harm Reduction Plan” mandating multiple sober monitors and designated alcohol service areas, and prohibiting the serving of any hard liquor. Party hosts must also provide “EANABs,” or Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverages, to “contribute to an inclusive and inviting experience” for a…
> Attempts to make their world risk free has turned it into "fuck up once and we'll destroy you".
TBH I think it is a much bigger problem that low-stakes hyper-local issues have been elevated into proxy battles for national politics. Truly, the fact that anyone who is not either attending or administering this university cares about their party policy at all (let alone enough to write about it professionally) is completely absurd.
Re: Stanford’s war against its own students
#88This is such a weird article that I feel like I must not understand it. From what I can tell: A fraternity hosted one or more parties where, by finding of fact and apparently the admission of the frat itself, they served alcohol to minors, contravening an obvious Stanford policy; as a result, they had to go through an annoying adjudication process and spend several months under the thread of a long-term suspension of…
There's quite a bit more in the story, such as this from an alumni attorney helping students anonymously accused of cheating on an exam: The students knew Ottilie ran his own law practice and reached out for his counsel. Ottilie agreed to take the students’ case pro bono and worked with two other alumni lawyers on their defense—recreating seating charts and finding over a dozen witnesses who were willing to testify t…
I get that there are process concerns here (and that people think the rules Stanford is enforcing are dumb). But the stakes seem very low: we're talking about procedural due process protecting the rights of fraternities to host parties with alcohol.
Re: Stanford’s war against its own students
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The policy looks like it's only for parties held by student organizations [1], not all parties held by its students, which makes the whole thing more silly than dystopian. [1] https://vaden.stanford.edu/student-party-policy-guidelines
I'm surprised they allow alcohol at student organization events, period. My boring public university no-one's heard of sure didn't, years back.
> I'm surprised they allow alcohol at student organization events, period
According to the link above, "student organizations" also includes fraternities/sororities and athletic teams. Never heard of fraternities/sororities not being allowed to have alcohol at their parties before, outside of schools with a religious lean (e.g., BYU) or edge cases. I didn't go to college that long ago either, been barely 6 years since I graduated.
The only relevant thing I remember we had was a "dry week", iirc during the first week of any given semester. During "dry week", fraternities/sororities weren't allowed to have alcohol at their events, period. Which made sense, because it was also the rush week, and the school didn't want fraternities/sororities to entice students with alcohol during their recruitment week.
Re: Stanford’s war against its own students
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's quite a bit more in the story, such as this from an alumni attorney helping students anonymously accused of cheating on an exam: The students knew Ottilie ran his own law practice and reached out for his counsel. Ottilie agreed to take the students’ case pro bono and worked with two other alumni lawyers on their defense—recreating seating charts and finding over a dozen witnesses who were willing to testify t…
I get that there are process concerns here (and that people think the rules Stanford is enforcing are dumb). But the stakes seem very low: we're talking about procedural due process protecting the rights of fraternities to host parties with alcohol.
But the stakes seem very low: we're talking about procedural due process protecting the rights of fraternities to host parties with alcohol.
No? The quote is in reference to a lawyer defending students accused of cheating on an exam and facing an administrative process with no presumption of innocence or right to a proper defense. A process which could permanently destroy their college education and career prospects.