Stanford’s war against its own students
thefp.com
thefp.com
Party hosts must also provide “EANABs,” or Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverages, to “contribute to an inclusive and inviting experience” for all partygoers. Hosts are also required to take an online “Party Planning Course” before submitting their applications. "
Is this normal!?! I feel sorry for this generation. Attempts to make their world risk free has turned it into "fuck up once and we'll destroy you".
[1] https://vaden.stanford.edu/student-party-policy-guidelines
[0] technically
I'm sure you've just committed some named, historical heresy. There's one for everything, it seems.
I can read that because of my mum's books on doing fortune telling with Viking rune stones, which she kept near her statue of a Hindu god and some magic crystals.
At this point, calling one of the sacraments by a silly name is the least of my problems if it turns out to all be real.
[0] https://todayinbritishhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01...
Obviously, it says George.
(Knowing what an inscription means is actually an important real-world method of being able to read it!)
The "Z" used by Tolkien there appears to be his own invention. The whole inscription is something of a mess; a few things are put into runes by sound, but mostly a fairly strict letter-to-letter transcription is used. This is especially bad in "published", which prints an "S" followed by an "H", reflecting nothing about the actual word. (The sound in question would, in a real Anglo-Saxon text, be represented sc, not sh; Tolkien in his other documents used a mirror-reversed S rune instead.)
Quite plausibly because, as you say, it's somewhat phonetic, given that's a silent "e".
And yes, it is indeed a mess, the futhark I learned had only "ᚲ" for both "c" and "k", while that text has a different symbol for each in "back".
He isn't using it for "e". He's using it for "eo".
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.
Yes. As others mention, many universities prohibit alcohol at official student organization events.
The way that university policy often works, is that for certain groups, especially "Greek Life" related groups, if you run an event that is included any members of that group, then the group could be held liable.
That leads to absurd situations where if a bunch of friends, host a party, in a privately owned residence, because the friends happen to be in the same fraternity, if anything bad happens, the fraternity could get in trouble.
And this is regardless of if the event is hosted off campus, in a privately owned place.
A bit organized perhaps, but not insane as some commenters suggest.
From what I understand a request is just a polite suggestion easily, routinely ignored if it requires additional work or foresight and deviates from pre-estabilished culture.
If only it were allows to host a party, with your friends who happen to be in the same fraternity, and it were allowed to do this unofficially, without having to follow university rules.
Unfortunately, this is often not allowed. As in literally, if you have a party, at a private residence, because the people going to it happen to be in the same fraternity, this is disallowed.
Unofficial parties are quite literally often not allowed, and are seen by universities as a way of getting around their draconian rules, and you could actually get in trouble for hosting them.
I would like to raise a question here - how many of the participants at these parties are of legal drinking age?
If tuition was less expensive, or free, students would be freer to not give a fuck about these ridiculous policies.
Granted you could find dozens of parties within a mile of campus there; I don't know the geography of Stanford.
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.
Yes, it's called an off-campus apartment. Students have been drinking in them for centuries.
America's pathologies around student drinking are ridiculous. But let's not pretend like the path of least resistance doesn't already exist, and isn't in wide application by just about every other college in this country. The only reason we're talking about Stanford is because it hits all of the culture war hot-topic buttons (elite college, bureaucracy, "coddling," &c.). Nothing about the actual state of affairs is remotely unusual or controversial.
Agreed as a generality. But we are discussing Stanford in particular and you were replying to this:
> 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.
The local effectiveness and externalities of rules, no matter how widespread or time honored, still depend on their local context.
Do you expect undergrads who fly come from Missouri to start paying 2k/month for housing? I'm sorry but your solution is an imaginary one that doesn't apply to Stanford. NYC is completely different because you can practically live anywhere there and use the great public transportation network to get to where you want to go. If you live in East Palo Alto (cheapest area), good luck getting to class.
95% of undergrads live on campus. There is not enough housing for them to live off-campus irrespective of the cost. There is not enough parking for that many students to commute. Freshmen aren’t even allowed to have cars. Off-campus housing is not an option.
At least up until 2016 there was an “open door policy” where underage drinking was not policed when done indoors, ironically for safety, so that students would not be afraid to ask for help or support when necessary.
If you don’t know the context at Stanford, you really can’t understand the “war” aspect and I don’t blame you. That’s why this shouldn’t be national news.
Sure, but also most undergrads are not of drinking age, so a no drinking policy is not exactly the end of the world for them. They shouldn’t be drinking anyway.
> underage drinking was not policed
Not policing underage drinking is one thing. But chartered school organizations, throwing school approved events, on school property, with school funds is absolute something Stanford must police. You don’t need to have attended Stanford to understand why.
My campus didn't allow alcohol at campus parties, full stop[1]. It was nominally allowed at individually approved events, of which I never observed any (besides perhaps a football game?).
[1]: https://health.umd.edu/wellness-advocacy-alcohol-and-other-d...
There are at least 4 bars on the main campus, and several pubs just outside it.
They do have a policy:
> The licensed premises in the College are normally open at lunchtime and in the evening, with regular extensions during term-time for the Union bar until midnight on Wednesdays and 1.00 am on Saturdays (i.e. extended from Friday evening). It is College policy that sales of alcohol must not be promoted at lunchtime
Massachusetts was a Puritan colony and blue-laws state, but there was plenty of drinking for all undergrads using university money till the whole MADD (and related groups) national campaigns against drunk driving. (and in reaction you could get Tshirts that said DAMM, drunks against mad mothers)
The 17 and 18yo drinking ages around the country all got raised when the federal govt cut off highway funds if the state age wasn't 21. The insanity is all within my lifetime.
(but yes, various jurisdictions around the country before that were, for religi-political reasons but not puritan, "dry" with no sale of alcohol.)
As relevant history, it's less than 40 years since the October 1986 deadline for states to raise their alcohol purchase and possession ages to 21, and until sometime in the '90s a lot of schools were still pretty permissive about underage drinking on campus as long as it wasn't in the face of 'townies' and police. For a lot of HN readers who graduated in the 90s (or earlier) the kind of party and alcohol restrictions that are now commonplace are something they first encountered when their kids went to college.
I think banning alcohol on campus is foolish, and leads to worse overall outcomes. I also think this article's framing is dishonest and intentionally tendentious.
Edit: Besides alcohol poisoning, you also decriminalize injuries and re-criminalize sexual assault.
One of my acquaintances at university did an exchange year with an American university, was forced to attend an alcoholism awareness group therapy program after being caught at a party with one beer, at which (I paraphrase but by his own description) almost caused a riot by plainly describing his experiences with alcohol when the moderators of that program asked him to share.
Myself however, I was exactly the "lock yourself away in your bedroom and study (without drinking)" personality that one of the authority figures told all of us not to be.
"Felly beth bynnag, ar ôl i ni i gyd orffen y pumed peint, David, chwedl llwyr ei fod, penderfynodd roi un o'r defaid yr oeddem wedi'i ddwyn i sedd gefn car y deon. Beth bynnag, arweiniodd un peth at un arall, a nawr ni chaniateir o fewn hanner milltir i'r Amwythig."
*American stares back in monolingual, desperately grasping with one hand for some holy water as they believe they have witnessed Speaking In Tongues*
> Party hosts must also provide “EANABs,” or Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverages
Good time to invest in Liquid Death (water in a tallboy can) if their presence at parties is mandated.
Well, the way they are going, it seems Stanford admins are required to take "Party Pooper Course"
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.
Stanford is a leading indicator of campus life elsewhere.
It very much is not. Last party I went to at Stanford had corporate sponsorship.
source: went to big state university undergrad then 4 years at Stanford. Miles of difference in the party scenes.
Stanford social scene: Beige Toyota Prius
Big State U: Lime green Ferrari 250 GTO
Different.
What a terrible take. The entire purpose of college is to influence the minds that attend them before sending them out to further propagate those ideals into the world.
Furthermore, this is an elite institution that ostensibly is training future leaders - the type of people most poised to spread influence.
To your point about training future leaders, there is a reason people don't start out training with live ammo. If every element of campus life could randomly and capriciously be escalated to the national stage, how could anyone possibly expect kids to learn how to take risks or make mistakes? (I believe this is true across the political spectrum)
20 years ago this would have been a heated discussion limited to the campus community, which to me at least held the possibility of the sides having empathy for each other. Now, with the polarized, dehumanized nature of our national discourse, I have no doubt that everyone will simply dig in.
this is an exaggerated straw-man version of my argument, but yes. colleges are a training ground for young people during their formative years, a place we send them to intentionally change their personalities and come into their own being away from their parents. One college isnt going to topple the global culture, but calling bad things that happen at college "hyperlocal" is obviously wrong.
> If every element of campus life could randomly and capriciously be escalated to the national stage, how could anyone possibly expect kids to learn how to take risks or make mistakes?
i dont understand this argument. the article we're commenting on is about exactly this type of oppressive, no-mistakes, no-learning regime the college administration is creating. the media coverage isnt about highlighting mistakes students made; the media coverage is escalating to the national stage the exact thing youre complaining about. a girl got a conduct violation for intentionally spilling coffee and then killed herself.
Let's first acknowledge there are many competing interests in these stories. For every student who is mad about being accused of cheating, there is a student (or maybe dozens) who are worried about people cheating who cheapen the degree and educational experience for everyone. So yes, it's sad we live in a society where grades and educational records are so important, that a single black mark will limit opportunities. On the other hand, we want to make sure that the institutions of higher education are fair and rigorous in their standards. That means when students violate those standards, consequences are served. When students violate standards and consequences are not served, that's a signal the standards are not as such.
Mistakes are okay. That doesn't mean mistakes should go unpunished, and that doesn't mean punishment is oppression.
Let's consider the evidence in the article. I assume this is the strongest evidence available, because if stronger evidence is out there, I question why the author didn't include it to support her piece.
There's not much substance to this article, but I think we don't have to look at the whole thing. There are really only a few key points that cut through the noise:
“I had young kids that were 18, 19 years old who are international asking me [Paulmeier], ‘Hey, can I talk to this attorney and tell them I drank a beer, or am I going to get my visa revoked?’ ”
So he's guilty.
“Any place that sets a bar so high that you have to be literally perfect to get there; and when you get here, if you don’t stay perfect, [Stanford] will punish you with every administrative resource they have for embarrassing them,”
So if I'm going to read between the lines, my inference is that Paulmeier is the kind of person who feels that he shouldn't be held responsible for his actions, and he's trying to make it seem like Stanford is oppressing him rather than the truth: he's being held accountable for bad decisions.
In my opinion, the worst thing Stanford could do for society is to treat such people that they are above reproach. We have too many of such people at the top echelons of our society, people for whom any semblance of accountability is treated as a grave affront to all of society. We see it in politics, where just this morning in the wee hours, the former POTUS threatened "death and destruction" for being held accountable for fraud he definitely committed. We nip that behavior in the bud by punishing it when it starts in college, not by coddling it until it metastasizes into a national cancer.
--
So what do we do about this? Is it really a problem? Well, the lawyers have ideas:
implementing some of Ottilie’s ideas, such as opening up a student’s ability to reach out to witnesses, could have adverse side effects, such as a greater risk of witness intimidation.
Which brings me to this whole "due process" claim. Due process doesn't mean all the process. This is the calling card of the guilty criminal; right next to "I didn't do it" is "due process wasn't followed, therefore I get away with my crimes" It's such a potent tactic because in the case where someone's rights really are being violated, you want to make sure that is corrected.
But very often it's the case that someone who is guilty will claim that if only some other process had been followed, which is the appropriate process, that the outcome would have been different. And that the outcome was negative is a reflection on the fact the process wasn't followed, and not the fact that the process found guilt. If you can delay the result by demanding more "due process", all you have to do to delay any result is to continually demand more process.
--
This brings me to the Meyers case. This is a tragedy. If I had to read between the lines here, it would seem that a boy was accused of assaulting/raping a girl, and he went through a process, and he was cleared. Meyers seems to have had a problem with that, and assaulted him. This is disingenuously minimized as "spilling coffee" by those looking to push an angle, but it was alleged assault and injury which was alleged. Regardless of the circumstances, at minimum an investigation must be opened when such allegations are made, and the student under investigation should be notified. I believe that would be in following with due process afforded to Meyers, and not informing her that she was under investigation would have violated her due process.
The tragedy here is that Meyers ended her life when subjected to that process. The easy thing to do is to blame Stanford as the proximal cause, but that doesn't really explain the whole situation. Frankly, being less harsh here doesn't necessarily mean Meyers doesn't end up killing herself. The situation is so complex. I could just as easily say that Meyers would be alive if her friend hadn't been raped and assaulted and the rapist let off the hook, so the blame rests with the rapist. But that's unfair too, because again, it's more complex than that.
--
Finally, Paulmeier wraps it up better than I could:
Paulmeier and other students and alumni told me they’re not asking for Stanford to make it easier for students to cheat, or worse, cause harm to others. All they want is for students to have the chance to make mistakes and learn from them—and sure, allow them to let loose a bit in the process.
The class coordinator’s allegation, based not on her own observation but that of an anonymous student, was the only evidence against them, Ottilie said. But all three students were charged by OCS with cheating under the university’s honor code.
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.
Or go with the harm angle? Is Paulmeier asking for Stanford to make it easier for students to cause harm to others? Yes, emphatically he is. Because Paulmeier actually caused harm to other students. He abused his position of power and trust and authority to do that, even after he worked closely with Stanford to ensure that he wouldn't. He still did, and when he was caught, his response was not to accept responsibility, but to intone that it's the system itself that's the problem, not his behavior (although he admits his behavior has been problematic). It's not that he's wrong for his actions, it's that the system is oppressive for holding him accountable. What he wants to do is change the system so that people like him aren't held responsible when they use their position to harm others.
--
My opinion of this piece is that it's very one sided. At a higher level though, it's very concerning to me that some people are trying so hard to make this into a culture war controversy. These situations are very complicated, and it's a sad that they go poorly for some students. On the other hand, other students are being protected by these processes. Could they be better? Yes. Emphatically. Is the subject of this piece salty because he got called out for being an irresponsible jerk who's decisions hurt people? Yes. Does this mean Stanford is at "war" with the student? No. And that's really the bottom line.
My attempt at a generous reading would summarize your point as "kids go to Stanford to finish their inculcation before we let them start taking responsibility for things. The idea of controlling potentiality destructive behavior is crucial for social control and stability."
The position I described strikes me as mechanistic in the extreme. I'll skip over my disagreement with "the enture purpose..." and focus on the big issue. Wouldn't it be better for everyone concerned to allow kids to make mistakes that affect just a few people, and be forced to learn how to navigate and resolve those errors-- that is, to build practical wisdom--before putting them in a position where their mistakes (due to a lack of perspective and emotional immaturity borne by living in tightly controlled conditions), affect many people?
If you didn't take into account that it is written for undergrads etc you might think it was strangely specific but then you realise these are people who in some cases have just left home. In an ideal world you could just have your policy be "don't be an idiot" but sadly the people who need that policy in the first place also need it spelled out for them in a little more detail.
>> TBH I think it is a much bigger problem that low-stakes hyper-local issues have been elevated into proxy battles for national politics.
Ironically, another hyper-local problem that's been elevated at the national level is the shoplifting epidemics that's happening not far from Stanford.
I can't help but to be amazed at the completely different treatment a shoplifting thug will receive (absolutely no repercussion) vs a model Stanford student who has one (victimless) mishap (bullied to suicide by bureaucrats).
Truly mind boggling.
It's nothing to do with risk free for the students. Nothing.
It's to reduce liability for the university. That is the world we live in.
This kind of policy existed at my alma mater 30 years ago. Even the alt beverage bit. Can't remember if we just served water or did we actually have punch of some kind. We even had (student) inspectors that went around to registered parties to verify that the rules were followed. And yes, citations were written and disciplinary hearings were held, and party privileges revoked for the semester. This was at a big 10 state school.
And student inspectors? I'm sure they enforced rules rather than just partying with everyone else.
They're a very low-lift means to reducing hospital trips, at the very least.
If the students would simply stop raping people and dying of fentanyl overdoses which lead to their parents suing the school I'm sure Stanford would not have as many rules for what occurs on campus.
Or we can choose as a society to free Stanford of civil liability for the actions of people who aren't Stanford employees on its campus.
It is normal, typical, common, and expected for universities in the United States to completely prohibit alcohol consumption on campus.
These rules seem like an attempt to regulate on-campus activities to a degree much lower than in public institutions.
My question is: why does this article try so hard to make it seem like it’s not typical?
Not disagreeing with the content, but at the end of the day it's a blog like any other that has a slant like Vox or The Intercept or The Atlantic.
You can agree or disagree with that all you want but at least that's how a lot of universities are handling alcohol and parties on campus. Blame overlitigious parents if you have to, it makes sense to be honest as no university wants to be on the hook liability wise. Look at what happened to Stanford after Brock Turner (which is also around the time Stanford became so overbearing about campus culture)
But I actually liked the EANABs policy when I was there. Granted, they mostly remained intact, but they provide something to hidrate in a party and something for those who don't drink (which is not that rare!).
That said, you're spot on about the ridiculous rules. One of the dumbest alcohol policies was to ban liquor containers over 750ml [1]. But you could still have any number of liquor bottles, as long as they were individually less than 750ml. The rationale is that since two 750ml bottles costs marginally more than a 1.5L handle of alcohol, that will reduce binge drinking. I kid you not.
From the university's standpoint they of course want to pave the way for donations and protect their reputation. If they boot an occasional animal house fraternity it just lets them open a door to a more reputable organization that is more discreet about breaking campus rules.
Welcome to the life in the internet era. every mistake, every errant post, every fuck up catalogued, stamped and preserved in perpetuity. Ready to be used in a moment's notice against you should you stray from the established narrative or the instructions of "The Party"
The university working to reduce the dangers of alcohol sounds like a very good thing to me.
Of course the rest of the article, about harsh punishments by the university that even drove one student to suicide, is also serious. It looks like Stanford needs to be a bit more concerned with their students' mental health and not just their alcohol intake. The relationship between the university and its students comes across as far too antagonistic, and that's not good.
Learning to resist tribal peer pressure without becoming an outcast is by far the most valuable life lesson I've ever learned.
Then again this is also the school that fired its mascot (a student) for carrying a sign that said "Stanford Hates Fun" - thereby demonstrating the sign's accuracy.
But the greater issue is hostile and punitive policies which exacerbate student stress and depression. The pandemic was handled particularly poorly, and university policies compounded with isolation seem to have greatly harmed student mental health.
A possibly positive change is that universities seem more willing to acknowledge student suicides, and to allow students (and faculty and staff) time to grieve. Perhaps they are worried about potential liability.
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 the fraternity.
Contemporaneously, a student assaulted with a cup of coffee another student that she believed was himself responsible for assaulting one of her friends. Stanford began an annoying adjudication process, this time including a thread of expulsion from the school. The student committed suicide.
The latter case is, of course, a terrible tragedy. But an adjudication process doesn't seem like a disproportionate response to an assault, however minor. Stanford students are adults; transpose this setting to a workplace and there would be no adjudication at all, only an immediate termination. The story seems dead set on pinning the responsibility for the tragedy on Stanford, and Stanford may well be at fault! But it's not clear from the article how.
Meanwhile: the organizer of the frat party is less jubilant about his campus life after his frat party ran afoul of the frat party police. I feel like I have to have missed some other detail of how Stanford messed with his life, because from what I can tell, at all times in this story, he remained a Stanford student in good standing. His frat ran a risk of being prevented from hosting parties. So what?
Again: if I sound flippant here, it's likely because there is some aspect of this story that I simply don't understand.
One only wishes, and maybe now days that is true, but even 10 years ago this wasn't a sure thing, especially if the aggressor was at a high level in the company.
Then they get to Stanford and discover that the university administration is actively hostile, it's looking for reasons to get rid of imperfect students, or students that can be blamed for imperfection (anyone running a group of students that has a problem).
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?
Stanford students are adults (indeed, many of them aren't even young adults). It is not principally the mission of Stanford to insulate its students from consequences. We just had a story here earlier today where HN is up in arms (somewhat reasonably so) because of Stanford's refusal to visit consequences on students who protested an odious speaker. Here the consequences we're talking about are even sillier: it's the right to host official school-sanctioned parties with alcohol service. Who gives a shit?
Second, it indeed may be a subtextual benefit of Stanford that attendance cements your status among an elite (this touches on the "human capital" vs. "signaling" debate). But to whatever extent that's the case, it's a bad thing. Stanford attendance is an unimaginably rarified privilege. If Stanford's disciplinary process happens to mute some of the status benefit of making it in, so much the better.
I don't have much to say about the coffee-cup case, which is very sad, and which fortunately doesn't occupy much of the attention of this article the way the frat party case does. So: let's just focus our attention on the frat party. And in response to it, I'd just remind you of the scene in The Social Network, where the Winklevii attempt to escalate to the president of Harvard their concerns about Zuckerberg stealing the idea for ConnectU. Retaining lawyers to fight sanctions against underage drinking is that, but like 6 times dumber.
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 on hold. If the issue in question is such a non-issue, why should it cause students to have to face that?
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?
Where did you read that? I think you're quoting your own expectations. Certainly, people should be allowed to learn from mistakes (at all stages in life), but college is not designed to shield you from consequences. Now, I don't know what dumb stunts you're referring to (stealing the opposing team's pig mascot like in a movie?) but if any stunt causes actual harm, there will be consequences.
> 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?
The University bears zero responsibility for her death. Unless you are suggesting that any investigation must be preceded by a mental health evaluation in case the individual has suicidal predispositions.
Do you mean helicopter parents? Or referring to the administration?
People have been arrested for throwing coffee at cashiers.
"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?
1. https://news.stanford.edu/2022/11/25/information-lawsuit-fam...
That said I do agree with a lot of what the article wrote. I was an undergrad at Stanford 2011-2015. The university was ramping up its control on social life around that time. Slav house was shut down my junior year, and they were already starting to tighten the reigns on band and greek life. I'm not sure what the outcome of this will be. Perhaps students will start to socialize more off campus, but that's not really feasible without a car (and the attended risks of driving under the influence).
1. https://news.stanford.edu/2022/11/25/information-lawsuit-fam...
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.
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.
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.
If you have ever been subject to the faceless institutional processes judicial, or non-judicial, they can be weaponized in a way that forgets there is a human on the receiving end. We need to be careful when things go overboard with applying the letter of the law and forgetting the spirit of it which is about justice.
Sometimes, the punishment is the process.
> Stanford now has more than 10,000 administrators who oversee the 7,761 undergraduate and 9,565 graduate students—almost enough for each student to have their own personal butler. (There are about 2,290 faculty members.) These bureaucrats make up an increasingly powerful segment of the university population, as they expand their portfolio and send the message that all conflict should be adjudicated by them. (OCS reports for the 2022–2023 school year have not yet been released.)
This bothered me, and this series of occurences in Academia sounds exactly like what is happening with medicine these days.
A bunch of administrators that are not educators ((or physicians) , or professional law enforcement, or judges, or prosectuors, all having professional, and advanced legal educations )) that desperately are in need of work to justify their raison d'être.
It’s a cup of coffee that wasn’t hot or scalding and wasn’t reported by the student but by an administrator. It’s a multi month process including outside counsel hired by the university.
It sounds entirely disproportionate in the first place. This seems like a stupid and wasteful unjust kangaroo court that was designed by people to create more work for themselves to hire more people and lawyers for make work. It doesn’t seem designed to deliver justice so what is the point.
Stanford received federal funds and a system having processed this dumb likely has other faults that should be addressed if they wish to continue receiving funds.
The article is basically saying “Stanford is really stupid” and based on this article, I agree. I don’t go to Stanford and never will do it doesn’t directly affect me other than I’m generally interested in reducing the price of college.
(2) If you dumped so much as a cup of cold water on someone in a workplace, you'd be out on your ass that day.
I honestly don't understand what we're even debating here. This isn't middle school. These are adults, in one of the most selective institutions on the planet.
This also ensures there’s a proper public record for future schools or employers.
I don’t know why the author of this piece tried to wave away a felony assault. And I’m saddened that a woman who got in to Stanford doesn’t believe in due process, but instead opts for vigilante justice based on a rumor. We reap what we sow.
But the Police should have been involved too. This woman needed to have her viscousness memorialized and put on public record.
College isn’t a workplace. And even in a workplace it depends on the circumstances. In my workplace, super regulated, if a third party claimed that someone threw coffee on someone else, no one is getting fired that day. And if they were then it would be a pretty huge wrongful termination lawsuit. The only thing that gets you “out on your ass” is if you are an immediate threat to others. So maybe if it was scalding coffee that resulted in hospitalization and the person was still on the loose throwing coffee.
But like someone else said, throwing coffee is a crime. Let the police do their job. We don’t need extra judicial investigations for reasons.
That is the trade you make as a student going to a prestigious private school - you won't end up in real court unless you do something incredibly egregious, but you will have to deal with the internal disciplinary process that could (but very rarely does) expel you. If you want to be a school-sanctioned student organization, living within the legal bubble, you get to play by the rules that sustain the bubble. If you don't, live off campus and take your chances with local police.
It's literally the title of the linked article. I don't think editorializing and changing titles to placate neo-Puritans is helping anyone. If you don't like the title, contact the author and ask them to amend the title.
Thanks for the reply though, dang.
> Stanford now has more than 10,000 administrators who oversee the 7,761 undergraduate and 9,565 graduate students—almost enough for each student to have their own personal butler. (There are about 2,290 faculty members.) These bureaucrats make up an increasingly powerful segment of the university population, as they expand their portfolio and send the message that all conflict should be adjudicated by them. (OCS reports for the 2022–2023 school year have not yet been released.)
Lead to this:
> “I’m sitting in two-hour-long interviews on Zoom with lawyers who are trying to verbally and rhetorically trap people,” he said. “I had young kids that were 18, 19 years old who are international asking me, ‘Hey, can I talk to this attorney and tell them I drank a beer, or am I going to get my visa revoked?’ ”
I guess if you can't make it as a student there, you can always become an admin to bully those who put the work in to get admitted?
https://facts.stanford.edu/administration/staff/
That 10k number doesn't even sound impossible, knowing what we know about large universities now, but I just wonder where it came from. Maybe I'm missing something obvious on that PDF?
Ctrl+F -> "10,000"
There's a more granular breakdown here: https://irds.stanford.edu/data-findings/academic-and-non-aca...
Non-faculty staff have increased by about 62% since 2012, faculty increased by 16% over the same period, while students increased by less than 10%.
Further breakdown: https://i.imgur.com/UCjelDs.png
> “If I didn’t get into Stanford, I probably wasn’t going to go to college,” he told me.
> he returned for his junior year in the fall of 2021 hoping to salvage a sense of community and camaraderie
> host a party at his fraternity, Kappa Sigma, where he was now president
Is he a student, or is he LARPing some idealised college experience he saw in a movie?
> Party hosts must also provide “EANABs,” or Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverages, to “contribute to an inclusive and inviting experience” for all partygoers. Hosts are also required to take an online “Party Planning Course” before submitting their applications.
Lock it down harder. Do your parties off-campus.
The one inviolable rule for university housing at the time was "no growing of pot plants in a dorm room facing the street". Otherwise, cheerful anarchism prevailed, mixed with some anti-war near mayhem. Good times, indeed.
I’m not sure how you expect to be able to get a huge settlement out of Stanford with no lawyer, but best of luck to you, brother.
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.
In my day at Oxford every college had a bar worked by the students. I don't remember if ours was open every evening but it felt often enough.
> I discovered that 2004 was Peak Booze: the year when Brits drank more than they had done for a century, and more than they have done in the decade since. Leading the way to this alcoholic apogee were those of us born around 1980. No other generation drank so much in their early 20s. Why us?
> Everyone in alcohol research knows the graph. It plots the change in annual consumption of alcohol in the UK, calculated in litres of pure alcohol per person. (None of us drinks pure alcohol, thankfully; one litre of pure alcohol is equivalent to 35 pints of strong beer.) In 1950, Brits drank an average of 3.9 litres per person. Look to the right and at first the line barely rises. Then, in 1960, it begins to creep upward. The climb becomes steadier during the 1970s. The upward trajectory ends in 1980, but that turns out to be temporary. By the late 1990s consumption is rising rapidly again.
> Come Peak Booze, in 2004, we were drinking 9.5 litres of alcohol per person – the equivalent of more than 100 bottles of wine – each year.
You can't really consider an article on a "National Enquirer"-type website to be a solid source of factual information.
I've been to London several times for work and meeting extended family, and socializing almost always seemed to heavily revolve around alcohol there - let's go to the pub nearby for a couple pints, oh it's 3pm at this trade show let's start serving hard liquor and beer, fellow 20somethings entire free time spent while clubbing or over boozy brunches.
As a San Franciscan that's honestly insane - people I chat with talk more about which raves or ski slopes or state parks they're gunna check out and maybe have 1 strong IPA beer or some Soju and then call it a night.
Umm… I went to Stanford from 2002-2006 and this policy was in place back then. Why is this news now?
While I was there there was an “open door” drinking policy for freshmen. Meaning RAs would not stop you from drinking anything you chose but wanted the doors open so they could intervene quickly if someone got alcohol poisoning. It’s my understanding that hard alcohol is now banned so people just close the door.
Specific policies aside it’s clear from their actions that the university wants to purge student control from housing or social organizations. They unceremoniously eliminated the European theme houses, ended student control of band, have been picking the frats off one by one. The coops are probably next on the chopping block.
Is that normal? This sounds ridiculously excessive to me. (Also, Stanford is a lot smaller than I thought.)
Amsterdam has two universities, each with 30k+ students and about 5000 employees (+/- 1000).
As other posters have pointed out these rules are in fact liberal by university standards. Many universities ban alcohol from undergrad social events entirely, others are completely dry across the board.
The traditional approach would be for the frats to move off campus if they don’t like the rules, but that’s not possible because Palo Alto, so instead they’re trying to do culture war special pleading in conservative media.
It's not like most colleges. There's no big group of off-campus apartment buildings that nearly all upperclassmen live in.
Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverages is, without doubt, the most nanny-ish rule ever invented ("What? You only have Coke? That's not equally attractive! I'm writing you up.")
Without that, everybody would be compliant who had a tap, or a hose around the back.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/how-to-network-throu...
> "...only over the past decade has the school gone all-in on an ecosystem of startup-supporting programs, turning classrooms into job fairs and students into entrepreneurs-to-be, and effectively handing the keys of the campus to venture capitalists....The most important support system today is the network of people — and cash — who now populate and surround the institution, hunting for investments."
That's what students (more likely their parents) are now forking over $56K in tuition (not counting cost-of-living expenses) per year to gain access to. It certainly looks like the rise of elitist networking in the British Eton etc. school model. The recent spate of college-admission-payola scandals also point in that direction.
But I've attended several parties at Stanford faculty housing that were ragers, exceeding my own undergraduate memories (except no live bands). These are also on campus in the suburban faculty neighborhoods where tenured profs live. I'm even invited to one tonight that I expect will be lit (though I won't be there).
Yes, they do have "EANABs" but that's just because the hosts are grownups, and have kids so such things are table stakes.
> But in August 2020, Meyer rode her bike past a football player who she believed engaged in sexual misconduct with one of her younger teammates. Suddenly and impulsively, she spilled the coffee she was holding onto him.
Impulsively throwing coffee on someone in the name of a #MeToo rumor. It's a tragedy she killed herself, but she also shouldn't assault people. An impulsive assault is still an assault. Shame on The Free Press for not seeing this. And shame on Stanford for not letting police and courts handle this. If she gets convicted of assault, expel her. Don’t do the “kangaroo court” thing.
Editorializing a bit, this may reflect general social changes in the US - schools are seen as being "in loco parentis" though many of the students are legally adults, and parenting in the US has changed in the last 40 years from "go play at the park with your friends, but be back by sunset" to helicopter parenting and the very thought of unsupervised children at a park being something deserving of reports to Child Protective Services.
So, now the school is helicopter-"in loco parentis"ing, and covering its butt with paper to shield it from the actual helicopter parents.
I've been trying to compare the various football codes (soccer, american, gaelic, australian, etc). Mostly as a way to try to make up new codes. Get a big chart together, find permutations, viola, new game. It's going okay-ish.
However, when you start diving into this you run into where these games originated. And they mostly come out of the 'public' schools around London in the later part of the 1700s. What's amazing is that a lot of these codes are still played to this day. You can find YT videos of them, drone shots, the works.
One of the strangest ones is called the 'Eton Wall Game'[0]. The rules are pretty simple. You and 11 other 'friends' get together along a 100 meter long wall and smash into 12 of the other blokes. There's a ball too. That's pretty much it. The wiki is a bit funny when it compares it to rugby, since the Wall Game was invented 57 years beforehand.
But the culture of the Eton Wall Game (and we're coming back to the article now) is what is just bonkers (pardon the pun). The 'big game' is on Saint Andrew's Day, November 30th (and you do have to call out the Gregorian calendar now, as it's so old). Here the Collegers and Oppidans play each other for bragging rights.
An aside on UK 'public schools': These are, in US terms, very much very elite private schools. Only the richest of the rich go to these places. Like, I think every UK prime minister went to one of these few schools, many royals too. They are also, and this is important to remember, for ages 12-17 and almost exclusively male. At Eton, they all wear top hats and tails to class, as far as I can tell, every single day. They speak latin. It's like just totally wild to me here in 2023. Boris Johnson was the 'keeper' of the aforementioned Wall when he was there as a Colleger. Gives the Catholic Church a run on sticking to tradition. Also the Collegers number just 70 students, so I think just 10 in each year (not entirely certain here). Oppidans run about 1200 students, I think. But, I'm a rando from the US, so I know very little here about how things are post covid and whatnot. Etonians, please chime in.
Back to the Wall Game. I want to remind that this is a predecessor game to soccer and rugby. It's like a coelacanth of sports. The Wall itself is on a field 'controlled' by the Collegers, so they are the ones that can practice on it. Not entirely sure about how that is ... possible for 12-17 year olds, but that's the super rich for you. The poor-boy Oppidans then hop over the wall, the Collegers walk up arm in arm, they then bash each other against the wall like so many pencil erasers for 50 minutes. The game is limited to the oldest boys, so just the 16 and 17 year olds. Scoring is seemingly rare and complicated. Suffice to say, a true-blue goal in the St Andrew's Day 'big game' was last scored in 1909, like over 100 years ago. Really. Also, these 'goals are just a shed door and a tree that's starting to get old now. Like I said, a living fossil of sports.
You'd think that the Collegers having the ability stop the Oppidans from, you know, practicing, would put a damper on the Oppidans chances, right? (And now here is where we get back to the OP article). But no! Because culture.
As far as my internet research can take me, it is tradition for the Collegers to be completely hungover during the game. Sometimes they have missed the game entirely.
Hang on a second. Hungover? Yes! The night before is a huge bash for the Collegers. They all get drunk, the only adult headmastery-person in charge leaves for the night to escape the riot, and the drunken older boys then go about terrorizing the younger ones, including beatings and strippings. I don't know what the last few years of reading the news has done to you, but drunk 16+ year olds without any adult supervision (culture) that are, like, super-hazing the younger boys is not a, let's say, bright place. Yes, okay, that's a dark place. I am not saying that assaults happen (because I do not have any evidence that I could lazily find online), but come on.
As far as I can tell, this has been going on for centuries. The current heir to the throne of England and his brother both went through this particular school. Like, most of the heads of the UK government went through this system and culture, these dark places, for years during their most formative times. After this dive into a strange little game, I don't wonder about the debacle that was Brexit.
So, bringing this all back to Stanford. Look, it's one of the elite schools here in the US. The culture of this school, like it or not, really does shape the minds of the future leaders of the US and beyond. When the admins do things to these young adults, whether by malice or beneficence or accident, then that has huge effects downrange. Making all these kids into nervous purebreds sure is a lot better than St. Andrew's Eve at Eton, but it's not the best thing either.
I don't know how the pressure is going to get let out, but it's gotta happen somehow. Otherwise we end up broken leaders like the UK has.
Yeah, but, . . . not all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marn_Grook
https://store.museum.wa.gov.au/products/marngrook-the-long-a...
( allegedly )
The question of how that relates to politics is fraught, of course, but if you or anyone want to know how we approach that, there are past explanations here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
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