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Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

reason.com

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Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#791

Post by duskdozer »

shetaye wrote: post #81

Regarding Stanford specifically, I did not see the number broken down by academic or residential disability (in the underlying Atlantic article). This is relevant, because > Some students get approved for housing accommodations, including single rooms and emotional-support animals. buries the lede, at least for Stanford. It is incredibly commonplace for students to "get an OAE" (Office of Accessible Education) exclus…

It really seems strange to me that single rooms haven't become the norm, especially in light of how many people clearly prefer them. It's one thing to share a kitchen or bathroom in an apartment, but after college, how many people ever share bedrooms with anyone except a partner?

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#792

Post by bee_rider »

only-one1701 wrote: post #251
bee_rider wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of academics I’d call it manipulating, exploiting or scamming the housing system, rather than cheating. Just because academic cheating is the center-of-gravity for this type of conversation, and, IMO, a much much bigger deal. If someone says they cheated in school, the first thing that pops into your head probably isn’t that they might have gotten a single dorm room, right?

This whole comment thread has been a crazy way to find out the ways people justify immoral behavior to themselves.

Do you think my comment is doing that? Or are you just commenting on the other comments.

FWIW, just to be clear, I don’t think “manipulating, exploiting or scamming” are good things to do!

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#793

Post by duskdozer »

jrflowers wrote: post #657
JackMorgan wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The results seem pretty clear that CBT can be quite effective in helping with ADHD. Unlike insulin, which cannot be produced with any sort of therapy, it does seem that ADHD can be significantly improved. I'm sorry though that the facts seem to bother you so much. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22480189/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28413900/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32036811/

Imagine posting “sorry that the facts bother you” and then linking to - A study with a sample a size - A study that says that medication improves outcomes over CBT - A study that says that evidence for CBT improving ADHD symptoms comes from studies with such small sample sizes that the conclusions could be the result of bias The only way someone could conclude “CBT has the same outcome as medication” from the studies…

>The only way someone could conclude “CBT has the same outcome as medication” from the studies you linked to would be to not read them.

Fortunately for them, that's often the case. I've seen at least a couple internet arguments with LLM-generated "sources" that didn't actually exist.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#794

Post by michaelmrose »

antisthenes wrote: post #681
Aurornis wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being diagnosed doesn't immediately mean you should be accommodated. This is the loophole. Universities aren't the ones diagnosing, they're the ones accommodating. The current meta-game is for parents and students to share notes about which doctors will diagnose easily. Between word of mouth and searches on Reddit, it's not that hard to find doctors in any metro area who will provide diagnoses and accommodation req…

Wow. Great to know we're basically raising an entire generation without any integrity. Can't wait to be in a nursing home where all the staff are trying to meta-game for lowest amount of responsibility rather than caring for the elderly. And believe me, I'm the last person to disparage the truly disabled or those down on their luck. But 38% in a developed country is just straight up insane. Not to mention that if you…

Is it really gaming to get a doctors note to say a pet cat will make you happier?

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#795

Post by Suppafly »

aynyc wrote: post #78

I don't know about Stanford students' actual disability, so I can't say much to that. I went to shitty high school and decent middle school in relatively poor middle class neighborhood. Now, I live in a wealthy school district. The way parents in the two different neighborhood treat "learning disability" is mind blowing. In my current school district, IEP (Individual Education Program) is assigned to students that ne…

>Please note that, this doesn't take away resource for regular kids

Sure it does, those extra teachers don't work for free. I think kids should get the help they need, but it's silly to pretend that it doesn't cost money that could be going towards other things.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#796

Post by duskdozer »

Onawa wrote: post #380
tomrod wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. I think you're overstating it. To meet your anecdata, I had both the first college year, and single > double by a large margin.

It depends on the person. I lived alone in my last year of undergrad and it sent me into a deep depression. I figured out that living alone was too much isolation for me and moved back in with a roommate. That helped to pull me out of my depression and be able to finish my degree.

I don't think people advocating for more single rooms would say that no multi-occupancy rooms should exist for people who do want them.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#797

Post by com2kid »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #736
doctorwho42 wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget being observant of things that many people in our distracted (attention economy) society tend to miss/ignore. I had a friend's wife gas-light him into thinking he is on the spectrum and that many of his friends from college are as well... A well established and respected engineering school in the US. I'm not saying there aren't people there who would most likely fall onto it, but being detail oriented or…

Autism spectrum highly favors jobs where it's basically person with data. I have seen estimates that a *majority* of programmers (my own field) lie somewhere on the spectrum. I suspect I lie at the mild end of the spectrum--and I see programming as playing to my strengths and against my weaknesses.

Before software paid as well as it does now, the percent on the spectrum was definitely a high double digit %.

Normies have since invaded and finding someone to geek out with has become hard. (No one wants to discuss the finer points of CPU architectures anymore!)

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#798

Post by donny2018 »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #52
bvisness wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Reason article leaves out some helpful context from the original Atlantic article: > In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association expanded the definition of ADHD. Previously, the threshold for diagnosis had been “clear evidence of clinically significant impairment.” After the release of the DSM‑5, the symptoms needed only to “interfere with, or reduce the quality” of, academic functioning. So it's dramatically e…

Being diagnosed with the disorder does not automatically qualify as a disability. This article, and many people in this thread seem not to be able to distinguish between the rising rate of diagnoses, and being disabled or needing accommodation. I have been diagnosed as being several different types of neuro-divergent, but I am also not qualified as disabled and do not need or want any special dispensation. I would sa…

>I would have had a much easier time getting to where I am today if diagnostic criteria and awareness among clinical staff were better when I was younger.

When I have thoughts like this, I like to theorize about causality. If I had had an easier time when I was young, would I still have developed the qualities that helped me get to where I am now in the first place?

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#799

Post by fn-mote »

jbullock35 wrote: post #650
HDThoreaun wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can not think of a single test I have ever taken where I could be limited by handwriting speed. Most of the time on tests is spent thinking, not writing.

When I was a student in the United States in the 1990s, I took many tests in which handwriting speed limited me. It was purely a physical problem. When I was permitted to type, there was no issue. To be clear, I'm speaking of tests in the humanities and social sciences, for which students must write short essays. Later, when I was a professor in the United States, I saw some of my students grappling with the same pro…

> the better move would be to stop requiring students to handwrite essays under a time constraint

Alas, we now depend on "lockdown browser mode" for reliably taking tests where you can type, and still there's no support (AFAIK) for "lockdown vim in browser" for coding tests.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#800

Post by willturman »

seizethecheese wrote: post #274

There was a kid in my high school physics class who went to Stanford. One time, someone broke the curve on the midterm test, making it hard for most students to get an A. The future Stanford student’s mom visited the teacher to beg for extra credit assignments. He got his A. I suspect Stanford selects for students who are smart, yes, but most exceptional at gaming the system. Perhaps this is a natural consequence of…

I think this kid's mom was mentioned in the Atlantic article [1] the link in the post is based on.

> Other accommodations risk putting the needs of one student over the experience of their peers. One administrator told me that a student at a public college in California had permission to bring their mother to class. This became a problem, because the mom turned out to be an enthusiastic class participant.

Woof.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-universit...

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