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Stanford’s war against its own students

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Re: Stanford’s war against its own students

#161

Post by dahwolf »

verall wrote: post #145
dahwolf wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for admitting that you had not even bothered to listen to it yet confidently labelled it as ideological flamebait regardless, and then used this made-up assessment in a discussion with this site's admin to suppress another article.

I honestly appreciate your recommendation, it encouraged me to look past a clickbait title. It was a poor example but dang charitably understood me and I don't regret asking. I don't think it's necessary to be this combative, and I think it's responses like these that encourage people to never admit any wrong on the internet. HN typically _tries_ to be above this. I didn't try to suppress any articles, but I do encou…

Your hypocrisy angered me, in particular because it puts you on the side of the problem: dysfunctional discourse in politics, anti-intellectualism, suppression and silencing based on a whim, etc.

I was firm but not out of hate. I was hoping that you'd take it as a lesson learned whether you would publicly admit to that or not. It's admirable that you did. We all make mistakes and we're not static creatures.

This conversation is progress.

Further, I'm dutch and from the 80s. This would actually be my most well-behaved mild tone on a good day. A special adaptation for HN.

Re: Stanford’s war against its own students

#162

Post by hot_gril »

bennysonething wrote: post #16

"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…

This actually seems like a permissive rule compared to the usual no alcohol, period. But private schools in general have weird rules for unrelated things, mostly to protect their own reputation, so yeah it is "screw up and we'll destroy you" for those. The funniest I can think of was how my private elementary school banned all students from personally having a MySpace account, at the threat of expulsion.

Re: Stanford’s war against its own students

#163

Post by brhsagain »

pessimizer wrote: post #146
brhsagain wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, I don't think even the article is complaining that students can't host frat parties. It's about students having to deal with months of legal proceedings as a consequence when they potentially break a rule. Your characterization of frat parties as being an asinine issue is true and exactly the reason for concern here. Legal proceedings are super shitty to go through. Your whole life basically gets mentally put o…

I think he was saying that the banning of parties with alcohol for a frat house accused of serving alcohol to minors is a mild punishment and not a notable event. I don't think he was saying that frat parties serving alcohol to minors is a non-issue. It's a pretty serious crime when you're not on a campus.

You're right, I misread. That negates my second paragraph.

Again though, the article is not complaining about parties being banned, but about the process surrounding that decision:

Dealing for months with lawyers and campus investigators drove Paulmeier, typically enthusiastic and motivated, into what he calls an “exhausted, burnt-out depression.” He told me he had gone through “a state of mental and physical exhaustion and collapse.”

Paulmeier was doing graduate-level coursework before the investigation. But by the end of spring 2022, he ended up with three incomplete classes. Normally a student who earned mostly As and Bs, he said he started his senior year in the fall by failing a class for the first time in his life.

His grades dropped so precipitously he was placed on academic probation and was in danger of failing out. Worst of all, one of his academic advisors wrote him a sympathetic letter urging him “in the strongest terms” to withdraw his honors thesis, which explored how elite colleges can reform their admissions processes to attract more students like him.

From what I understand, what happened was:

* Paulmeier hosted a party which he claims adhered to the rules.

* Allegations were made that rules were broken.

* His frat was placed on probation, along with several other frats.

* The university proceeded with a months-long investigation, throwing the weight of their legal team at the students, with actual lawyers doing lawyer things.

So basically, either accept the allegations, or go through months of legal crap. And this is going to be the standard process for resolving code of conduct disputes across the board, all the way up to and including matters involving academic suspensions (the coffee cup girl). I dunno, do we really want universities to be run this way?

Re: Stanford’s war against its own students

#164

Post by Nevermark »

woodruffw wrote: post #99
gnicholas wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there are just very few Stanford undergrads who live off-campus. And most Stanford undergrads would not choose to live off-campus in order to be able to party more.

Which is fine! But that's a "them" problem, not a culture-way-proxy-how-dare-they-not-allow-students-to-booze-in-a-college-dorm problem.

That's a bit black and white. And impractical.

They are adults, and if there are no reasonable venues for being able to do regular adult things, for intentional reasons or not, they will create venues somehow, someway.

If there is anything to be learned from Prohibition, it is if you make rules too strict for the context, either you have to enforce them with unreasonable measures, or people break the rules in ways that cause more harm than you were trying to prevent.

Usually both.

Re: Stanford’s war against its own students

#165

Post by carrionpigeon »

verall wrote: post #30
dang wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN, we go by article quality, not site quality: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... There are quite a few sites whose content is mostly skewed but which occasionally publish good articles that, for whatever reason, wouldn't get published by less tendentious sites. Our approach is to downweight such sites but not to ban them, and to turn the penalty off when an article seems good for HN—…

Hi dang! I think this article is a tough case. This is an interesting and intellectually curious article, but it is not separable completely from the rest of the website - there is a large "EXTRA! Listen to 'The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling'" which is ideological flamebait that would not be allowed on HN, along with most of the rest of the website. Has HN ever considered amending the "original source" policy to use t…

"Witch Trials" I read as more tongue-in-cheek than provocative, given the content of the Harry Potter books. A decent pun, by my standards.

I already listened to much of it, but gave up on the 5th episode in frustration. For a podcast series about J.K. Rowling, there is very little of her voice in it. It's mostly audio from an interview recorded a year or more ago that has been padded out immensely by inclusion of often-immaterial commentary from frankly bloggers and video streamers. Judging by accent, almost all are Americans, not British, and their analyses are invariably superficial. Essentially, the interviewer asks them to give an impression of what was happening years ago on the online fora where they were spending their time.

If they just released the audio for the interview alone, only interrupting for adding context and not commentary, it would be interesting. A desire, I think, to milk it for all it's worth ruined it for me.

And to the point of the original article posted, whatever you think of its contents, my God was it badly written!

Re: Stanford’s war against its own students

#166

Post by balozi »

Consider this writer's observation then juxtapose the crazy incident involving the Fifth Circuit Judge protest just a few day prior to publication of this article. It seems like a tale of two very different institutions. One where the students are victimized by a ruthless bureaucracy, and the other where the students are the true menace. The only common factor is a twisted administrative state.

Re: Stanford’s war against its own students

#167

Post by akerl_ »

jtmcmc wrote: post #144
tptacek wrote: post #32

This 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…

considering the bent of this publication towards conservatives I think you are in fact getting it, you're just not primed for outrage

I didn't realize underage drinking was part of the conservative party platform.

Re: Stanford’s war against its own students

#168

Post by prepend »

> the university hired outside lawyers to step in

Cynically I think that the university spending lots on billable hours makes these types of investigations more likely to continue and grow.

It seems like universities having infinite money through their endowments lets them fund stupid projects like these investigations and a near 1:1 student to admin ratio.

This seems like something like alumni and benefactors can help by requiring some governance of this stupid pork. Or maybe federal funds will not pay for orgs that spend more on admin than teaching or research.

Re: Stanford’s war against its own students

#169

Post by fencepost »

nitwit005 wrote: post #101
Psychlist wrote: post #53

Earlier 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…

This isn't an issue of a student being "imperfect". The issue is actual criminality. Throwing hot coffee at someone is an assault. People have been arrested for throwing coffee at cashiers.

Maybe I'm wrong, but a misdemeanor (or a meeting between the students if acceptable to both, except apparently it was an administrator and not the coffee-dampened football player who filed the complaint) might have been preferable to a 5-page single-spaced letter threatening a final-semester senior with expulsion.

"Where'd you go to school?" "7 semesters at Stanford, finishing as captain of the women's soccer team, then they expelled me a month before graduation for throwing coffee on someone who'd sexually assaulted one of my teammates."

Yeah, I'm pretty sure misdemeanor charges with a fine and maybe community service would've been preferable to threats of expulsion from VERY EXPENSIVE school you were about to graduate from. All the time, all the money, all the student loans, but no degree.

Good thing Stanford apparently makes its money on research. What are the odds ANY of the women on the soccer team she was captain of ever give money to the school as alums?

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