Stanford's real life Animal House is a lot less fun than the movie

[dead0man]

link

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.

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The message went on to state that OCS was investigating Kappa Sigma for three “concerns.” First, an allegation of hazing after a fraternity member suffered a panic attack. Second, a claim that students under 21 were served alcohol at Kappa Sigma’s April 15 party. Third, an incident on April 24 in which a Kappa Sigma member consumed too much alcohol and had to go to the hospital. In the meantime, OCS said it was placing Kappa Sigma on probation, meaning they could not host or be involved in any parties on or off campus.

“Failure to adhere to the interim Probation with Restrictions will result in additional sanctions and will delay the completion of this process,” the letter, signed by OCS Associate Dean Tiffany Gabrielson, read.

Within the hour, a dozen other Greek organizations’ presidents were texting Paulmeier, saying they, too, had been placed on probation, according to Paulmeier and one other source.

long, but good read

[Хahar 🤔]

I know a surprising number of current Stanford undergraduates, some of whom are very socially active and get invited to parties and get laid rather more than the average college student. (My sense is that Stanford, compared to other similarly selective schools, disproportionately tends to attract this type of person; it's for athletes more than poindexters.) None of them have complained about onerous restrictions on parties, but also none of them are in fraternities. Fraternities at private schools are often in a tough place when they're not the center of social life (and they're not at Stanford) because they lack the institutional connections of fraternities at large state schools and they're an easy target for administrators who need to be seen to be doing something. The circumstances described seem annoying, but if you join a frat at Stanford you have to understand that the school sees you as a nuisance and only keeps you around because alumni who donate money would object to your removal.

The stuff about academic dishonesty is odd. Everything I've heard from people I know who teach college courses, whether as graduate instructors or lecturers, is that most of the time it's really not worthwhile to cite students for academic dishonesty. Because universities see students as consumers, they are unlikely to discipline students for cheating and thereby lose a customer. I don't have any reason to say that the claims advanced that the Stanford disciplinary process is biased against students are false, but they fly in the face of everything I know about contemporary higher education. Something else that feels like it might be germane here is that Stanford is known as a famously easy school; on the West Coast jokes about grade inflation are jokes about Stanford, and the first thing a Berkeley partisan will point out about Stanford is how little you have to do to get an A there. Nobody I know who has attended Stanford has ever seriously disputed this characterization.

The Stanford Band sucks; its whole deal is that thinks that actually being a marching band is beneath it. It ran itself for decades, and during that time it had the sort of problems with hazing and sexual harassment that you'd expect from an organization run by band kids who thought they were too cool to be band kids. It was also, again, terrible at doing the things that you would expect a university band to do. If its being brought to heel is an example of the ineffable Stanford spirit being silenced, then that's a good thing.

While I don't find the examples in this article particularly convincing, I agree with the broad argument that universities that have the ability to do so have assumed increasingly coercive power over their students. Covid was a godsend for them in that sense, since they were able to assume all manner of onerous regulations that they don't ever have to repeal. (I'm not just talking about masks or vaccines or things like that; I have friends at selective universities who ever since covid have faced punitive restrictions on their student organizations' abilities to travel or spend money.) Sort of paradoxically, I think this backdoor revival of the in loco parentis doctrine that went away in the '60s has to do with the contemporary student-as-consumer model of higher education, because the real consumers at these schools are students' parents. More often than not they probably don't mind if their children live in an increasingly total institution.