[HN Gopher] Stanford's war against its own students
___________________________________________________________________
Stanford's war against its own students
Author : fortran77
Score : 99 points
Date : 2023-03-23 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thefp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thefp.com)
| kodyo wrote:
| Commissars gonna commissar. No reason to submit to people like
| that.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I didn't attend Stanford, but I've been on campus a zillion times
| for various functions (cultural events, choir, extension
| classes).
|
| 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.")
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I can't take the use of "war" in this headline seriously at all.
| Why is everything framed so threateningly? Maybe this is a bad
| policy, but it seems to me they want to ensure on-campus,
| official student organization run, parties that serve alcohol do
| so responsibly and provide other drinks so people don't feel like
| they have to drink booze. Maybe they've gone too far in another
| direction, but seems something Standford and its students can
| hash out without it being a fan for culture war bullshit.
| dang wrote:
| I don't like that either and if someone can suggest a better
| title (i.e. more accurate and neutral, preferably using
| representative language from the article itself), we'd be happy
| to change it.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I'm not really sure if you can do anything about it - it is
| the actual title of the article. I went through the site and
| it seems to be mostly culture war related editorial pieces,
| so maybe this one's just on me to not click through when I
| see thefp.com
|
| Thanks for the reply though, dang.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| "Stanford's aggressive crackdown on its own students" ?
| throwawayacc5 wrote:
| How about "Standford's Orwellian Peace Against its Own
| Students"?
|
| 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.
| cpgxiii wrote:
| Many US colleges/universities maintain a particular kind of legal
| bubble, where the surrounding city/state law enforcement largely
| leaves college police/security to their own devices to create an
| environment in which students _very rarely_ face actual legal
| consequences for their misdeeds. On the whole, this is generally
| a good thing, in that it mitigates the worst effects of a broken
| national drug and alcohol policy. Local law enforcement doesn 't
| want to have to deal with the large number of student alcohol and
| drug-related offenses (and especially not their parents), schools
| want to avoid the bad publicity of their students ending up in
| jail, and students definitely don't want to end up in the court
| system either.
|
| 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.
| ihateyouall123 wrote:
| The future of America will be a bunch of sexually frustrated
| incels
| qintl55 wrote:
| I love the covid angle thrown in for dramatic effect-- "poor
| students wanted the parties to get over covid blues and look how
| the college is punishing them!! Evil College!" My immigrant
| 0.02$-- if you care about building a life, being a frat president
| or organizing parties are optional activities. But then again, I
| also don't get why college football coaches are paid more than CS
| professors...
| TheMoonToMyLeft wrote:
| [dead]
| tptacek wrote:
| 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 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.
| tedunangst wrote:
| 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.
| Psychlist wrote:
| 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
| 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).
| tptacek wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| Psychlist wrote:
| 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?
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't accept either of these premises.
|
| 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.
| brhsagain wrote:
| 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 on hold. If the
| issue in question is such a non-issue, why should it
| cause students to have to face that?
| khazhoux wrote:
| > college is supposed to be an opportunity to learn from
| mistakes
|
| 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.
| wombatpm wrote:
| SouthPark-There is a time and place for everything. And
| that is college.
| [deleted]
| majormajor wrote:
| > But they're surrounded by people trying to help them get
| in.
|
| Do you mean helicopter parents? Or referring to the
| administration?
| heffer wrote:
| I understood it as meaning a social and academic
| environment that is supporting them in getting into
| Stanford.
| Psychlist wrote:
| I mean supportive parents, and very likely also a
| supportive school and supportive community. "led a youth
| group" on the application doesn't arise in isolation, any
| more than high grades in external exams come from
| homeschooling (they can in both cases, but you're in the
| 0.1% of the 1% who get into Stanford territory).
| nitwit005 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| com2kid wrote:
| > transpose this setting to a workplace and there would be no
| adjudication at all, only an immediate termination.
|
| 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.
| bgentry wrote:
| 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._
| tptacek wrote:
| 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.
| bgentry wrote:
| _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.
| tptacek wrote:
| Here we're talking about a case where students were, in
| 2012, accused of cheating on a bio test, and _not found
| guilty_. Meanwhile: cheating is absolutely rampant ---
| and has presumably only gotten much, much worse since
| 2012.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| How could this:
|
| > 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?
| blakesterz wrote:
| Where is that 10,000 number coming from? I don't see it on the
| PDF they link to, and I don't see it on the Stanford site:
|
| 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?
| stagger87 wrote:
| On the linked article.
|
| Ctrl+F -> "10,000"
| fatnoah wrote:
| I assume it comes from this line: 12,336* managerial and
| professional staff
|
| There's a more granular breakdown here:
| https://irds.stanford.edu/data-findings/academic-and-non-
| aca...
| bennysonething wrote:
| "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 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".
| tqi wrote:
| > 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.
| testfoobar wrote:
| Stanford is an elite institution that others watch carefully.
| Administrators go to conferences & workshops to discuss their
| practices. They get promoted into positions at other
| universities.
|
| Stanford is a leading indicator of campus life elsewhere.
| tqi wrote:
| Do you attend college parties, or administer a university?
| fortuna86 wrote:
| > Stanford is a leading indicator of campus life elsewhere.
|
| It very much is not. Last party I went to at Stanford had
| corporate sponsorship.
| huevosabio wrote:
| A lot of people the stuff I see coming out of Stanford admin is
| absolutely ridiculous.
|
| 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!).
| etrautmann wrote:
| yeah I agree, I've tried to follow that EANAB's example when
| throwing parties elsewhere too. I most certainly do not
| submit any party plan to anyone in advance
| grammers wrote:
| This sounds so crazy. Can't they just leave the premises to
| have a good party?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Can 't they just leave the premises to have a good party?_
|
| Yes. As others mention, many universities prohibit alcohol at
| official student organization events.
| mwcremer wrote:
| Likely a result of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner
| havblue wrote:
| I think this was more or less normal over twenty years ago when
| everyone started to crack down on underage drinking. Get caught
| serving minors or hazing and the university might take your
| house away.
|
| 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.
| scotty79 wrote:
| As a non-drinker all of those seem to me pretty reasonable
| requests for any kind of gathering.
|
| A bit organized perhaps, but not insane as some commenters
| suggest.
| nickff wrote:
| They're not _requests_ , they're _requirements_.
| tptacek wrote:
| So don't host official fraternity parties if you're not OK
| with those requirements. What's complicated about this?
| Fraternities are "official" organizations; official
| organizations have to deal with official policies. Just
| have unofficial parties.
| ihateyouall123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| scotty79 wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not a native speaker. I think I used the word
| request improperly. I am aware that those conditions must
| be met. But then again I am not surprised that those were
| stated as requirements rather than requests.
|
| 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.
| vkou wrote:
| As a drinker, these all sound like pretty reasonable requests
| for an official party.
|
| I would like to raise a question here - how many of the
| participants at these parties are of legal drinking age?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| The real problem is that this is presumably enforceable. How is
| that possible?
| geodel wrote:
| > Hosts are also required to take an online "Party Planning
| Course"
|
| Well, the way they are going, it seems Stanford admins are
| required to take "Party Pooper Course"
| jiveturkey wrote:
| > Attempts to make their world risk free
|
| 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.
| glonq wrote:
| > 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".
|
| Yeah, back in my day it was totally fine to have a bunch of
| sexual assaults, several fights, a few car accidents, and maybe
| a death or two. Every weekend. That's a fair price to pay so
| that everybody can have fun, right? /s
| ihateyouall123 wrote:
| Got to love people like you who makes the world boring for
| some sense of safety that doesn't simply exist.
| [deleted]
| bennysonething wrote:
| Everyone I grew up with was underage drinking none of these
| things you've listed happened to anyone I know. Regulating
| parties might be one way to lessen the chances. But I'm not
| sure that price is worth it.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| No sexual assaults? I think the people you know are very
| lucky, or you don't know the people you know as well as you
| think you do.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| This looks to apply to on-campus parties only? If so, it's more
| liberal, if also more complicated, than the university I went
| to where the policy for alcohol on-campus was "No."
|
| Granted you could find dozens of parties within a mile of
| campus there; I don't know the geography of Stanford.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Stanford campus is somewhat inconveniently distant from any
| off campus housing. As in two miles is more than a quarter
| mile when you're running late to class.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Right. The article bends over backwards to make this sound
| like a repressive policy, but it's _significantly_ more
| permissive than most campuses ' alcohol rules.
|
| 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...
| Symbiote wrote:
| * * *
| gnicholas wrote:
| 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.
| woodruffw wrote:
| 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.
| gnicholas wrote:
| The point is that the vast majority of Stanford
| undergrads live on-campus. That is presumably not true
| for universities in NYC. Given that Stanford undergrads
| live almost entirely on-campus, it is not surprising that
| on-campus parties form the backbone of the party scene.
| And given that most undergrads in NYC do not live on-
| campus, it is not surprising that their party scenes are
| not as impacted by campus rules.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Have you been to Palo Alto? It's rather different from
| New York. Even SF is more boring and significantly
| smaller than NY.
| woodruffw wrote:
| 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.
| gnicholas wrote:
| 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.
| woodruffw wrote:
| 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.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| All of these rules sound onerous, but they boil down to the
| same rules as when I was in college ~15 years ago in a very
| different place (and only applied to public and openly promoted
| parties).
|
| They're a very low-lift means to reducing hospital trips, at
| the very least.
| ben_w wrote:
| The welcome event for freshers at Aberystwyth uni had the
| speaker (Chancellor? Don't remember) practically encouraging
| people to relax and drink as well as studying.
|
| 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.
| version_five wrote:
| Lol, from how I understand you post I feel like it could be a
| comedy skit about a Welsh guy going to the coastal US and
| acting normally, like telling drinking stories, while the
| sheltered people around him are horrified.
| ben_w wrote:
| *Welsh student*
|
| "Felly beth bynnag, ar ol 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*
| fmajid wrote:
| You rebel you
| [deleted]
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| >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".
|
| 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.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > It is normal, typical, common, and expected for
| universities in the United States to completely prohibit
| alcohol consumption on campus.
|
| My question is: why does this article try so hard to make it
| seem like it's not typical?
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Because no one reads "normal" news?
| boc wrote:
| The concept of registering on-campus parties is nothing new at
| private universities, but these requirements are pretty insane.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| 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
| yamtaddle wrote:
| 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.
| filoleg wrote:
| > 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Look we are trying to have a moral panic about political
| correctness here get in the spirit please.
| sideshowb wrote:
| Spirit? That's a rule violation sorry
| ben_w wrote:
| I was raised Catholic[0], so I could argue that wine is a
| Holy Spirit.
|
| [0] technically
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The blood of Christ, surely.
|
| I'm sure you've just committed some named, historical
| heresy. There's one for everything, it seems.
| ben_w wrote:
| The original cover of The Hobbit has runes running along
| the outside; the runes read "The Hobbit or There and Back
| Again, being the record of a journey by Bilbo Baggins of
| Hobbiton compiled from his memoirs by JRR Tolkein and
| published by G?rge Allen and Unwin Ltd"[0].
|
| 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...
| YeahNO wrote:
| Only when they have gathered for the ritual at the
| annointed hour, when the cleric speaks the incantation
| does the transubstantiation occur, that they may feast
| upon the flesh and blood of their god.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation
| yamtaddle wrote:
| God, now I'm thinking about how much better our
| fundraisers would have been if we could have sold drink
| tickets, for the organizations I was involved in. And how
| much more I'd have cared about fundraising if we could
| have diverted some of the proceeds to buy ourselves
| alcohol "for official functions", LOL.
| Lammy wrote:
| > prohibiting the serving of any hard liquor
|
| > 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.
| shagie wrote:
| As an aside, the marketplace article on them from a few weeks
| ago: https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/25/liquid-death-is-
| an-en...
| ginger2016 wrote:
| The article is too long. Is the headline a clickbait or is
| Stanford doing something against its own students?
| ModernMech wrote:
| 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.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Image-conscious corporatization of academics is a strange
| spectacle, certainly. Enforcing strict behavioral norms is
| something large corporations are known for, and that seems to be
| what's going on here.
|
| 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.
| mrkeen wrote:
| Sounds completely orthogonal to higher education.
|
| > "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.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Pure politics, nothing technology related.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| Considering how many tech startups are founded by Stanford
| grads (or current students), I think it's pretty relevant on
| HN, in my humble opinion.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| But do we really care about Stanford's alcohol policy and
| it's permissiveness?
| [deleted]
| jonathankoren wrote:
| That's what an alumni group is for.
| dang wrote:
| HN is explicitly for more than technology related topics:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| 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/?dateR
| ange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
| windowshopping wrote:
| Hacker news doesn't exist purely to curate tech articles. It's
| really for anything that people here find interesting. There
| are countless posts here every day that are about systems or
| policy or non-tech science or just simply something thought
| provoking.
| karaterobot wrote:
| * * *
| singleshot_ wrote:
| > "He decided not to hire an outside lawyer for his defense
| because he said he was confident the allegations were nothing
| more than misunderstandings."
|
| 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.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| US needs to stop treating 21 year olds like children.
| tatrajim wrote:
| As I reminisced on an earlier post about the chilling atmosphere
| for students at Stanford, the situation was a mite different in
| the 1970s. My first day there as a callow freshman from the
| Midwest, the cool guy next door in the dorm kindly approached me
| and muttered "Hey kid, you want a hit of hash?"
|
| 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.
| cratermoon wrote:
| [flagged]
| jdkee wrote:
| _cites The Guardian_
| version_five wrote:
| Do you have anything to say about the article?
| uejfiweun wrote:
| This is the most blatant ad hominem I've ever seen, and you
| should be ashamed of yourself.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site
| guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| matchapples wrote:
| Pure ad hominem: don't address the content, criticize the
| speaker
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| Bari Weiss, formally of the Wall Street Journal and the New
| York Times, is a "professional rightwing attention seeker" now?
| [deleted]
| dekhn wrote:
| I wouldn't call her "rightwing"
| michaelhoffman wrote:
| I wouldn't call her "professional"
| marcusverus wrote:
| Why not?
| wrycoder wrote:
| Well, she's basically a traditional Democrat, but the woke
| activists woke her up.
| dekhn wrote:
| maybe "centrist"?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yes actually.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| Care to back that up with any facts or is it just because
| you disagree with her?
|
| From what I've read she's a pretty run-of-the-mill liberal
| who's had some disagreements with the current orthodoxy of
| the left. That doesn't make her a tiki-torch bearing
| radical.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Since leaving nyt and even shortly before she's been
| almost completely focused on the censorship-of-
| conservatives moral panic and the anti trans crusade.
| Moderate-right and far-right projects respectively. She
| uses her newsletter to publish and amplify voices of the
| right, and writes from their perspective about issues
| they care about.
| dahwolf wrote:
| There's nowhere else to go if you do not subscribe to
| left wing orthodoxy. Even centrists and center-left
| nowadays aren't ideologically pure enough, and thus also
| "right-wing".
|
| Recently a feminist on Twitter expressed this problem
| quite well. She was pushing back against the toxic parts
| of radical feminism which she considered counter
| productive. But in doing so, got a lot of heat from the
| radicals. She's very much left-wing, progressive, and
| reasonable. The side effect of her pushing back against
| left-wing extremism is that she gained a lot of attention
| from the right wing. Actual right wing, not "anybody that
| slightly disagrees".
|
| She didn't ask for that nor does she want to chose
| between these two extremes, but that's the dynamic right
| now.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| That sounds like an interesting dynamic but not really
| relevant to bari weiss consistently endorsing right wing
| positions and figures and so being accurately described
| as a rightwing attention seeker, which was the original
| topic.
|
| I don't know anything about the specific situation you're
| alluding to so can't responsibly comment. But "the
| leftists made me turn to the right" has been an excuse as
| long as I can remember and it's a thin one. Radicals
| simply aren't responsible for the actions their opponents
| choose to take.
| dahwolf wrote:
| I suppose it depends on the position in question.
|
| It's not "leftists made me turn right" in all cases, it's
| also formerly progressive points (equality instead of
| equity, freedom of speech, science over safetyism)
| shifting into being seen as right-wing positions. The
| position didn't change, the label did.
|
| As to whether this is the case with Weiss, supposedly
| not. I believe you.
|
| Radicals may not be responsible for the actions of
| opponents, but for sure they are accountable. Or at the
| very least deal with the predictable back-lash.
| dang wrote:
| 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--that
| is, intellectually interesting and not too repetitive of what
| has been discussed recently. Needless to say (I hope?), we do
| this irrespective of ideological orientation, so you'll find
| articles appearing here from all kinds of sources.
|
| The longer we've had this policy, the better I think it's held
| up. For a community organized around intellectual curiosity,
| it's super important not to miss interesting outlier articles.
| Finding something interesting doesn't imply that one agrees
| with it, and turning off the penalty on a particular submission
| doesn't imply that one endorses everything else on a site.
|
| Guilt by association has pros and cons--it can be a useful
| shortcut, but fails badly when it does fail, and when applied
| repeatedly it has a slippery-slope downside that can get pretty
| bad. Still, I don't think your argument is wrong; I just think
| it's a tradeoff and the question is which side of the tradeoff
| one should take.
|
| In HN's case, many tradeoffs are resolvable by remembering that
| there's only one thing we're trying to optimize for*:
| intellectual curiosity. I think this principle (of evaluating
| articles rather than sites) follows pretty easily from that.
|
| *
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
| verall wrote:
| 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 the internet archive rather than the original for
| specific websites which are almost completely flamebait but
| do sometimes have good quality articles?
|
| Just an idea :)
| dang wrote:
| > This is an interesting and intellectually curious
| article, but it is not separable completely from the rest
| of the website
|
| It sounds like we're agreeing. See what I wrote above about
| tradeoffs; I was editing and might have added it after you
| posted (sorry).
|
| > 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
|
| Yes, that's one problem with tendentious sites: it's hard
| to evaluate an article independently of the provocations
| one encounters in situ. I think that's what we have to do,
| though. It's probably helpful to remember that this
| approach ends up irritating everyone in the long run--that
| is, whatever any reader's buttons are, something's going to
| occasionally appear on HN that pushes them--at least, if
| we're applying the policy correctly.
|
| > use the internet archive rather than the original
|
| I don't think that would help; it would just push the
| provocation to a different spot under the carpet. For
| example we'd get second-order flamewars about why site X
| was getting that treatment but not site Y. And I think it's
| pretty core to HN to have the (original) domain displayed
| beside a title.
| dahwolf wrote:
| Way to argue _against_ intellectual curiosity.
|
| If anything, "The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling" is
| intellectually rich and fascinating. Almost everybody who
| bothered to open their minds and actually listen to it is
| incredibly positive about it. It's incredibly thorough. Not
| only does it discuss the controversy from different angles,
| it also does a deep dive on the roots of online activism.
| It's near impossible to not learn something from it.
|
| It's not "ideological flamebait", it's a well-researched
| master piece.
|
| Had you given some right-wing/left-wing cheap shot, you'd
| have a point, but this isn't it. Perhaps the time you spent
| on silencing articles or entire publications should be
| spent on actual curiosity.
| verall wrote:
| It's not against intellectual curiosity to avoid
| flamebait. Based on your recommendation I wanted to give
| this a chance, but as it's hours of podcast without
| transcript that's unlikely.
|
| "The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling" seems to qualify as
| clickbait, it's title is intended to provoke, while
| reading the podcast episode summaries it seems to be well
| researched and interesting. I admit, I did not research
| it beyond the provocative title and that most other
| articles on the site are ideological flamebait.
|
| It's usually not worth it. And this equally applies to
| publications with a left-liberal bent, like say the
| Washington Post. I appreciate the rec, though.
| dahwolf wrote:
| 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.
| wrycoder wrote:
| I find the Guardian's ideology annoying most of the time, but
| I occasionally click through HN links to their articles. When
| I find an interesting one that I might not have found
| elsewhere, I PayPal them $5. I probably give them $15 a year
| in that manner. So, thanks, and keep it up.
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