Mar 23, 2023·edited Mar 23, 2023Liked by Suzy Weiss
Dear Boston College and Cornell University,
I have just upgraded my subscription at The Free Press to "Founder". As a result, my budget is tight and I will be unable to contribute as a loyal alumnus to your respective endowments.
“The right to speak my mind out, that's America ... The right to think, speak and write as we believe without fear that Big Brother will retaliate against us because we don't tow the party line.”
Cornell grad here. I was a shy, inexperienced, sheltered kid with terrible anxiety and should never have gone to such an prestigious, intimidating university. I would have been much better off at a trade school or a "lesser" calibre college. My nephew is a living example of someone who was not cut out for college and has made a great career as a car mechanic. He's brilliant, knows everything there is to know about cars and is thriving. First in our family to NOT graduate from college and perhaps the most well adjusted and successful of all of us. I applaud my brother and sister in law for not forcing him into an impossible, over-rated experience.
We warned our kids that we would not be able to afford college for them. And we recommended a gap year (working, not playing), even if they decided to go to college.
Our oldest son was not really interested in college; he jumped into employment instead, and now makes more than his dad does at a factory that makes huge tires for earthmoving equipment.
Our middle son took the maximum amount of dual credit classes in high school and picked enough community college classes (mostly through Pell Grants) to get an Associates degree. Instead of going to college, he used the experience he gained working in a factory First Aid office to get an HR position that, again, pays more than his dad makes.
Our youngest daughter is an artist, and she attempted the community college's animation program (a feeder program for a small animation studio in our area). Between working to pay for her apartment, babysitting her roommate, and hating the non-art general ed classes she was required to take, she decided that path was not for her. I don't know what she'll end up doing, but she has a job skill she can always fall back on anywhere (security guard). She's already "woke" enough from Tumblr and high school indoctrination; college would make her insufferable (and undoubtedly 100% intolerant of her family).
One of the things that is truly great about the American college and university system along with trade schools is that you can return for further learning and bridge into another career. A plumber can morph into a CPA, a police officer a teacher, an engineer takes plumbing or electrical classes for fixing up a house and morphs into a contractor with a real estate licenses, and the list goes on. Whether motivated by circumstances like an injury or just a desire for a change, their rich experience and the maturity of their focus can bring them and our communities many benefits.
This hand wringing that an 18 yo must decide their life destiny is ridiculous, especially when there are so many options available beyond their senior year. It is amazing that children and parents are willing to go into debt to the tune of over 70k per year for destinies to be explored and discovered.
Exactly. My SIL and her husband paid their son's full tuition to George Washington Univ, from which he graduated with an MS in political science. What did he do after? Worked at the local volunteer fire dept for a few years before getting a paid job with the city fire dept. So, basically not using his degree at all, but absolutely LOVING his job.
The Panama Canal Company had a great apprentice program. I chose to go to college instead of becoming a tradesman. I often wonder how my life would have been if I had gone to the Canal Zone apprentice program.
As someone that was not a fabulous high school student and had no clear path for my future as an 18 year old, I chose to join the US Navy in 1985 to see the world and have access to the GI Bill. I never bothered taking advantage of that GI Bill. I chose instead to become an electrician, something I had no experience in my 4 years of Naval service. I relished in never working in the same building or city very often and I rather enjoyed building a plethora of unique facilities and buildings. It has been 35 years now and I am the owner of an Electrical Contracting business I started in Southern California in 2004.
I for one can say it's been the ride of a lifetime and has provided for my family and me a comfortable, well-earned life.
College is not for everyone and the idea that it is "the" way for a path to a successful livelihood is a misnomer that needs to be dispelled before it's too late. Most of today's college students leave college with a mountain of debt and fewer prospects in the workforce. How is that meant to be an advantage?
Our daughter does not attend a university as prestigious as Stanford, she is pursuing a nursing degree at a smallish private university that does not mandate the "wokeness" found in campuses across this country, and for that I am grateful considering Stanford's example of intolerance towards students and invited speakers that do not have left leaning principles. I say this as an unaffiliated political party American voter.
I am also grateful for the fact that my decision to not go to college and to become a tradesman has allowed my daughter to go to school without any student loans and debt.
That is something being a tradesman could do for many others.
I have two sons who are former Marines, one a current Navy Nuke, all straight out of HS. Husband was a Naval officer. We have for years discouraged a college path unless there was a specific need for a desired career path. I commend you for your clear headed thinking and choice. Told them all, (5), that only a serious degree would get financial help, and only AFTER graduation. One daughter spent 9 years getting a philosophy degree; no help from us. The other went the four year route right out of HS on a full ride for a chemical engineering degree; again, no help needed. Guess which one is a "progressive"? I would not wish college on any kid at this point. Our electricians and plumbers make more money, are more responsible and mature, and have a better earnings path than anyone with a "black women's studies" degree; unless of course they go straight into academic or government service. We need to starve colleges of our progeny to salvage any semblance of a future.
Great success story. I hope your left wing daughter comes to her senses and stops supporting a vicious, destructive vile Dem/Soc Party who is driving this country into the ground.
I pray for that every day. She currently lives in France with her socialist husband and my two grandchildren, taking advantage of French "social programs" to have a "better standard of living". In other words, they're cheating the French taxpayers instead of US taxpayers. Not only can I not have a conversation with her about her political beliefs, her husband has said to my face, and I quote"fu*#ing Christians" in reference to my husband and I being strong traditional Christians. Nothing else to be said.
Two different daughters. The oldest took 9 years to graduate and settled on a philosophy degree because it was easy. She did not attend school full-time, so she didn't get as indoctrinated as her sister. The younger went straight to a 4-year college on a full scholarship, got her engineering degree and two minors, then went on to get her Masters in machine learning, I. E. Artificial intelligence. She met her English husband while living in France doing a semester abroad. She married a drunk carpenter who spent the better part of his young adulthood traveling around the world and surfing. At their wedding, he said he married her because all his friends were married and he thought he should probably be married too. We were so proud.
Panama is a corrupt hell hole; even worse than the US. We spent a month there in December, got a real education on many levels dealing with their bureaucracy in order to take a vessel through the canal. Be happy you avoided it.
I was raised in the Panama Canal Zone. It was owned and run by the uS government with Us police, courts and schools. After the Army and college I went back and worked there, all toll 40 years.
Panama is a shit hole of corruption and dangerous.
My husband and I are trying to talk our high school junior OUT OF going to a university he wants to go to (because of course it has a robust DEI dept, which scares the hell out of us), and INTO a trade school that specializes in the field he wants to pursue. Never would've thought we'd be doing this. Strange times indeed.
The problem is bloated administration full of power hungry and middlingly intelligent nobody's seeking to justify their existence. While lack of free speech is one of the symptoms, bloated administration is the "root cause."
There are plenty of ways to find all kinds of success and life. To use the words of a middling intelligent Stanford administrator who seems to have no other purpose than limit the future opportunities of current law students at Stanford, not to mention stunt their ability to learn how to make persuasive legal arguments - the juice isn't worth the squeeze at these once truly elite institutions.
My husband and I, despite not coming from money and not attending super elite schools, are more successful than well over 90% of Ivy graduates our age (by a factor of 3.5 for the 90th percentile our age according to Washington Post Statistics). We have plenty of friends who went to equivalent schools to ours making in our income range. We have friends with very successful businesses who never even finished undergrad. Most importantly, we are happier and find far more joy contributing to our community than the numerous Ivy grads we know personally.
Our kids know we will not in any way support them attending an Ivy/ Ivy adjacent institution despite the fact they both check all the boxes on grades, standardized testing, leadership, character, and elite extra curriculars. If the alumni of these institutions want to save what remains of their reputations, they should focus on eliminating the counterproductive and often plainly cruel administrative bloat destroying them from the inside.
I don't know how anyone is surprised by how Stanford is run by nut case tyrants. It's the west coast, California for Christ's sake. The land of fruits, nutz and flakes. Being insanely left wing is the norm.
So is being an incompetent paper pusher. A student body of around 17,000. Around 2,300 professors. And this takes 15,750 administrators? How incompetent and petty are these “administrators” that you need almost a 1 to 1 relationship with students who are supposedly the best, brightest, most responsible, and most self motivated out there? That’s a higher administrator to student ratio than the staff to student ratio at those high schools for extremely violent kids that get booted from the general population! Prisons don’t have anywhere close to that kind of staff to prisoner ratio. But an Ivy League school needs it? It’s nothing but a works project for the low IQ with poor work ethic and delusions of power they take out on the kids who are the only people they have any power over.
Well let's take a beat before you lampoon an entire state because of extreme liberalism Lonesome Polecat.
As a longtime California resident we are not all what you claim and your mischaracterization is just another example in a long line of far right talking points that continue to perpetuate the biases that render this country into partisan tribalism and an inability to have civil and productive discourse with each other.
40+% of this state also does not agree with your assessment.
Unfortunately for California we have our own version of political grift in the forms of Governor Gavin Newsome, Feinstein, Boxer and Pelosi.
But let's be honest with each other, Republican and Democrat politicians differ only in how they screw the population to serve their corporate donor's interests and themselves.
We'd all be the better if we didn't wear our political identities as a badge of honor.
There is not very much I consider honorable in today's political classes.
Both parties are guilty for varying transgressions against the American People.
I agree with most of what you say but you get what you vote for and that is the highest homeless population in the US, DAs who won't prosecute criminals, a defund the police populace. Your state has gone off the rails and has been for the last few decades.
Look at who your state elects to high office and tell me I am wrong.
Why would I disagree with any of that? I know the things you're saying to be true. I live here. I am very aware of the rampant homelessness and crime, the weak DA's going soft on punishing criminals and I find it frustrating that it continues because of feeble minded voters and pandering politicians.
But I clearly stated 40+% of this state is in the opposition of those primarily responsible for California's current elected class of politicians.
I didn't vote for those currently in office personally, so you don't actually "get what you vote for", you get what the majority votes for. But I won't tuck tail and run away, I don't need the shield of a political party to live my life here. California is too beautiful a state with fantastic weather, some amazing people and an economy that I am certain far out earns the economy of the state in which you reside. And I'm proud of that economy and playing my part in it.
Shoot I'll bet you eat all kinds of fruits, nuts and vegetables grown right here in the "land of fruits, nuts and flakes" and all of it picked by migrant farm workers. Thanks for contributing, we appreciate you.
But I digress, you clearly missed my point in my previous comment because you are continuing to generalize an entire state by its political leaders and not the sum total of its citizens.
Political identity should not be the guide to determine how we move forward as a country.
By saying 40% don't agree with the current state of affairs doesn't mean a thing. 60% like living in a shit hole. They are called democrats and until your side gains a majority and I don't see that happening any time soon, your state will continue to slide into the garbage pit.
Thank you for your reasoned response. I particularly agree with this statement - "Republican and Democrat politicians differ only in how they screw the population to serve their corporate donor's interests and themselves." - 100%!
I've long said that petty partisanship is one of the biggest factors in this country's divisiveness (by design, no doubt), and it's so disheartening to see how many people allow themselves to get sucked into it. If they could only recognize that, they might be able to transcend party politics (and ideologies), which would go a long way toward resolving this country's many problems.
I found this article both very credible and yet scarcely believable.
The 1:1 administrator/student ratio is by itself proof of gross incompetence. What justifies the harsh treatment of students and the refusal to implement and abide by elementary principles of fairness and due process? Where is the common sense.
I wouldn’t send my dog to Stanford.
Are there any universities run by conservatives which are as bad as Stanford? How does it compare to Hillsdale College or Notre Dame?
I too found this article enlightening, credible and very revealing.
And I am abhorred by the lack of compassion shown by the administration of Stanford to their student body. The University has an agenda that is entirely intolerant to any commonsense principles. It could not be more illiberal today if they tried. And this is a place so renowned for higher thinking and education that any sense of irony is now lost on both faculty and administration.
It's fair to say they have gone to extremes to shelter themselves in policies created to cause more harm than good. Stanford is guilty of a new type of indifference, a kind that is blind to the real world around them and the impact that indifference has on its students. Shame on them.
And the 1:1 administrator/student ratio is precisely why tuition rates have skyrocketed and liberal arts colleges have such insular thinking.
Should your kids choose the path of college education, I hope they choose a school that embraces a fair and open discourse to those with diverse or opposing viewpoints and backgrounds. That is the purpose of higher education and a tenet held in high regard by Abraham Lincoln himself.
Thanks for participating in a reasonable discourse.
So to a large degree US News and World Report's college rankings depends on the percentage of graduates employed after graduation. How many of these administrators are former students who graduate not qualified for gainful employment and end up back at the university as an administrator, to help inflate these colleges rankings?
Fair enough. And yes, neither party is any good. Looking to politicians for truth, beauty, inspiration, honesty or help is a huge mistake. Like deciding which clump of dirt is better than the other clump of dirt.
You are not wrong. But it’s seeping out too. We live between two states, California and Nevada. Unfortunately the Californians that move to other states to get away from the “lunacy”, then bring it with them.
If you’re a Californian who moved, for the love of all that’s sane please leave behind your California mindset!
The people that leave California leave because of their disdain for how the state is run politically and the high taxes. If it is this exact "lunacy" they are trying to escape, why would they "bring it with them"?
If you live in a state that you feel is being influenced by "Californians seeping out" perhaps you should be asking yourself instead why the citizens and politicians of your state are changing their position because there are not that many Californians moving to one specific state to make that much influence, especially considering the fact they left California for said "lunacy".
And what is a "California mindset" exactly? And how is it so powerful as to sway so many people to change the politics of where you reside?
Respectfully, your argument in prejudicial at best and ill-informed at the worst.
Hahahaha! I love it when people couch thinly disguised disdain in politeness. Good for you, better to be civil.
Reading your post one could assume you’re taking umbrage because you’re a Californian. Maybe not, perhaps you simply enjoy defending California and its residents. Because if I have to make a case to you regarding the lunacy of California when its major cities, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, and even lesser locations such as Santa Monica are becoming uninhabitable, then I cannot help you. It’s right under your nose, everyone’s nose in fact, what the lunacy is, it’s very smelly and it’s on full display.
As to the influence California transplants have on politics, and I’m a transplant myself, the state where I live now suddenly turned Blue with the influx. As did Colorado, and now even Idaho is worried. And it’s not because the Democrats the transplants vote for are brimming with wonderful notions and ideas to make life better, it’s simply because they had a D by their name!
That’s the embedded lunacy.
So, I respectfully suggest to you if you haven’t heard of yellow dog voters yet, look them up.
They flee California because it has turned into a shit hole with high taxes and stupid restrictive laws and Its lunacy. They are banning internal combustion cars and truck in 2035 yet their electrical gride can't handle the electric cars they have now.
They move to a red state and then vote for the same for type of lunatics that destroyed California. Democrats/Socialists are truly insane.
In Texas, we need to put up signs that say "If you are from California and moving to Texas, please turn around and go back to your insane asylum . We already have too many left wing nuts in Austin."
I was ‘89. Not only would I never give them a penny, I am no longer proud to tell people I graduated from Cornell. I have two son’s currently in small private colleges in the south. It is better, but far from perfect. This is systemic in academia, professors and administrators. Some are better than others, but impossible to completely escape in college today.
I used to think it would be great if I spawned a Cornell legacy with all the kids I popped out. I really loved my time at Cornell. Now that my oldest child is 13 and just barely beginning to think about her future, I strongly recommend against going to Cornell. Which breaks my heart, to be honest. A person would have to be nuts to go ivy (or other "elite" schools) at this point in time.
I would ask an even Bigger question. Why go to College At All? Unless someone wants to be A Doctor, Lawyer, or in the HARD Sciences, why go to college? And if someone does feel The Need, may I recommend waiting a couple of years. Where does it say You HAVE TO go to college right after High School?
Steve, I think your comment should be bronzed and posted in EVERY HIGH SCHOOL in the country. WTF do we need sociology degrees and "Studies" degrees for? To train professional parasites?
Well, without all those "Studies" degrees, how will companies staff their woke and racist personnel departments? Schools and teachers unions need unqualified "Studies" majors to teach our kids. Stanford and other schools of learning need them to run greeks and conservatives off campus. And don't get me started on all the government jobs that depend on "Studies" majors. /s
I agree actually. In an effort to be completely self aware, I am writing huge checks for a piece of paper that is supposed to be valuable in our society. In the meantime, my sons are having fun, putting off adulting for 4 years and hopefully learning something academic and some valuable life lessons both positive and negative. By negative, I mean learning how to navigate a system, deal with sometimes unreasonable professors and administrators and unfortunately learning how to keep their mouths shut and opinions to themselves at times. I will say that in the colleges they are at in the South, I have seen conservative opinions being tolerated by the students, although not always the "adults" in the room.
Exactly. In addition to trying to talk our high school junior into going to a trade school that specializes in his desired career field, we're also encouraging him to take a year after high school to travel the world (on our dime, even), such as backpacking Europe or Asia, through which he'd get a MUCH more meaningful education than in university general ed classes. As a kid, he loved traveling with us, so he's actually considering it!
I get it. My youngest is a freshman and wanted to apply to Cornell. He is a really good student but I told him he didn’t have a chance but I would pay for the application fee, and on the off chance he got in, he was not going and I wouldn’t pay a penny for it. I told him he wasn’t going somewhere I would not want to visit. It is sad, because I did enjoy my time there and used to be proud of where I went to college. My sons are having relatively good experiences where they are. My 26 year old daughter went to GWU before I knew how bad it was there. Wish I could get that money back. She did survive it though, although rocky at times, with values intact.
'74. There were out-of-control protests, the school was shut down spring 69 and 70, and the student senate was a progressive joke, even back then. But the patients were not running the asylum. It has always had too much NYC influence, and see what that has produced.
I believe those were the protests that drove Thomas Sowell, perhaps the greatest living economist, out of academia and into the Hoover Institute on Stanford’s campus.
Cornell '72 here. NPS '89. Retired Navy. Retired from teaching engineering at USNA as a civilian. None of them are getting my recommendation to attend / join. Nor bequeath. Absolutely disgusted with them. Especially after the way non jabbed Mids / Cadets were & are still being treated.
My son was USNA '19, so I share your concern. Here is the latest from Annapolis -"COVID-19 Vaccination Update February 23, 2023 - Students applying for admission to the United States Naval Academy or participating in Office of Admissions-sponsored outreach programs are not required to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. This includes candidates applying for admission, Candidate Visit Weekends, Summer STEM, Day Tours and Summer Seminar."
She was a traitor and scumbag in 1,000 different ways. A devoted evangelist of the dipshit ideology that has us where we are right now. Beneath contempt.
Maybe we can build a statue of her right next to the statue of Joe Biden showering with his daughter.
Dear Lonesome, a plea: cease patrolling all these comments with your tireless (and tiresome ) diatribes a against your demons, and either offer something constructive (hint: how can we make the place better) or give over the space to those who are trying to do so. You are self-indulgent.
Who died and made you the chief censor? Are you now the sole arbiter of what should be posted on this BBS. Why should I bow to your "standards" of what is right and what is wrong?
I have been posting here for a year and have a good relationship with most of the posters. I think of them as friends. I have had spirited debates with them but we come out of just fine.
If you don't like my posts, don't read them. Maybe you would like to join the ranks of comprof. He is a pariah on the BBS. Nobody replies to his snarky posts.
I don't mind you criticizing me. I'll just ignore you.
Adding context, Ginsburg said that at Georgetown University Law School, and her friend and fellow jurist Antonin Scalia was a Georgetown alum. They clearly had a history of tweaking each other:
Their history of friendship, respect, and adversarial positions are well documented. I certainly don't agree with every decision of Scalia or Ginsburg, but I miss the era of talking through issues. Even the LA Times used to comment on "common ground": https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-na-court-odd-couple-20150622-story.html
For the record, I have an Autistic son, and Ginsberg's decision and opinion in "The Olmstead Decision" set up the path to his current life where he lives independently with support rather than an institutional setting - https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98-536.ZS.html We are building it today - https://www.endeavor21.org
Your post is jaw dropping. Our universities have gone to hell in a hand basket. We need someone with backbone (almost impossible to find in today's climate) to tell these heavily government endowed schools that if they do not adhere to the 1st Amendment and fire their anti 1st amendment, woke, administrators, their endowments will be cut off.
My alma mater Texas A&M used to be a bastion of conservatism but I see it slipping into the abyss. The admin is allowing a black professor to ignore the rules of grammar and capitalize the word black no matter where it falls in a sentence. That sounds very woke to me.
I am considering canceling my endowment to the university.
Polecat, can't believe a man with your values is giving a dime to the university, any university. I recommend that you stop your support today, and demand all previous donations be returned on the basis that they were fraudulently obtained, i.e., you thought you were giving to an institution of higher learning not an indoctrination mill. It's that bad.
In addition to government, a large amount of endowments also come from private foundations and "philanthropists" with their own agendas, of course; many of which are all too happy to see the Constitution ripped to shreds, unfortunately.
Class of '17. I loved my time at Cornell, but I'm glad I graduated when I did, and I really feel for the students there now. I noticed a major change in the atmosphere after Trump was elected and it got even worse during the pandemic. When I went back to campus to visit a friend in grad school there in 2021, the campus was unrecognizable. It seemed that all of the energy had been sapped out of the place. It looked like a bunch of robots walking around. It definitely wasn't the fun place I remember when I attended.
I agree with your sentiment, yet these universities have such bloated endowments that they don’t care so much about alums. The only way to fight back is for students and faculty to hire great attorneys and fight them in the media and courtroom.
At 18, I was a mess. I got accepted a state university but, instead I decided to enlist in the US Navy. I found out I had a new perspective in life, I needed time to grow up, I needed learn about personal responsibility and the responsibility to take care of subordinates. I went back to college after my enlistment using my GI Bill. Wow, I was glad I spent a few years getting real life experience before attending college. College calculus was hard but it was nothing comparing to working 24 hours straight, on topside, in the middle the Alaskan winter storm
Different era, no doubt. I attended our state college (Western Washington State College, now a university) in the mid-70's and I don't remember anybody who looked out for student well-being. You were on your own. Now the pendulum has swung much too far in the opposite direction.
Too bad RBG didn't understand the metaphor she used. It is TOE the line. You know, stand with one's toes against the line. Kinda like her jurisprudence, about 2/3s right, but missing a critical component to make it whole. Not a bad average, I suppose.
Fortunately in the UK tuition fees were comparatively cheap when I studied (around £3000 a year - now they're £9000 a year). And there's a lot of help available for those who struggle to finance it. It would be great if the US could take a page from our playbook, but sadly that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
I know. I don't know how you guys live! I see hope in the publication of these kinds of pieces and students reacting against institutional tyranny. It's about time!
Yes, I agree on tuition fees in the US, they’re obscene. Hence the top heavy administrations justifying their existence through punitive overreach.
It’s the same in politics in the US, grotesque sums of money involved. Hence the corruption not just of body but of spirit.
It should be said though that the lower fees don’t protect against menacing administrations in the UK. Much of the psychosis that’s permeating US universities is evident in UK universities.
I’m from the UK, but am now a newly minted US citizen, though I’ve been here on and off since 1988. I’ve watched over the years as both countries have been on a precipitous decline. It’s not a pretty picture for either country, sadly.
It would have to be a non-alcoholic punch to the face, and I would need to get approval from a harm reduction specialist. So maybe there would be no punch at all. Sorry to hurt your feelings.
When I arrived on campus in the fall of 1986 I learned that acronym, pronounced as it appears (eenabs) and was always amused that the rule seemed to be met as long as there was a two-liter bottle of Coke next to the keg of beer. In other words, it was an inside joke, and it played out as expected. But the nonsense that has gone on in the last 10+ years shows me that Stanford is a shell of what it once was—I would never send my kids there unless there was significant change. And they could start by firing half of the administrators and it would cover tuition for all the undergraduates—a true win-win.
I’m another ‘80s alum, can confirm this. Stanford was very lax about drinking on campus at the time, despite what EANABS might suggest, but that started to change in the 1990s, when for instance they started requiring that IDs be checked at parties.
Don't take EANAB if you previously have suffered from any enjoyment in your life. EANAB side effects may include being punched in the face. Not covered by most insurance plans, but ask your doctor about EANAB today!
Certainly the Stanford math majors should chime in here, but if A = B, then B should be no less attractive to those who favor A than A is to those favoring B. Hence, this policy promotes alcohol consumption by non-drinkers no less that it promotes sobriety by drinkers.
Has anyone ever been to an event where alcohol was served but non-alcoholic beverages weren't available?? Does "equally attractive" mean you must have snazzy mocktails or risk punishment and fines??
Sure, I’ve been to keggers where the non-alcoholic beverage came from the kitchen faucet. That’s all the EA meant in EANAB in the 1980s when I was at Stanford: you’ve got to have something besides water. So people made sure to put some Coke out, even though it wasn’t really policed.
There is a CS Lewis line about how moralizing busybodies produce a tyranny much worse than robber barons.
While this is a small issue, obviously, if you don’t drink, and you feel the need to use authority to manipulate the people who do drink to accommodate you, you are a totally reprehensible piece of shit and you will bring this psychopathic narcissistic behavior to other areas of life that are more significant.
What exactly is this utopia of an “inclusive society?” Specifically? What the hell does that even mean? In plain language?
It seems to me what’s plainly going on is Stanford hired a bunch of middlingly intelligent administrators who are bullying the students they are supposed to serve in an attempt to justify their paycheck. Stanford has 2,288 faculty and a whopping 15,750 administrators. It’s authoritarian style harassment under the thinly veiled guise of moral niceties like “inclusion” and “equity.” How incompetent are these “administrators” that they need 15K of them for a total student population, undergrad plus grad, of around 17K?
Your statement reminds me of Californians attempting to brag about their “great” and “progressive” state - one of the most racially unequal states in the country with a literacy rate towards the bottom and 15% lower than WV, the lowest rate of home ownership in the country, on the lower half of high school graduation rates, middle of the pack on rates of college graduates, by far the highest rate of homelessness in the country, terrible roads, and trash everywhere you walk in urban areas. It’s a joke to claim any of that represents any kind of actual progress. It’s also a joke to think having some rule to make sure there is some minimum quality of non-alcoholic beverages at a friggin frat party accomplishes anything. How infantile.
The suicidal soccer player was harassed over spilt coffee reported not by the "victim" but by an administrator. AN ADMINISTRATOR. The "victim" did not want her "punished", but the University put her diploma on "hold" the day before graduation...over COFFEE. Nudge the needle???? That is a sledgehammer.
I'm a recovering addict/alcoholic. I would never expect someone who uses to not drink or do drugs in front of me. I find it annoying that someone who doesn't know me thinks that I am incapable of walking away.
The problem with being "nice, Nati, is that the left takes advantage of it, leaving you a sucker Kevin's approach is now the only way. Treat their lunacy with the withering contempt it deserves. Because, if you don't, it will only escalate and then you'll be left only with the alternative of physically hurting them in order to save society. And we are fast approaching that point.
There's plenty of things I think is reasonable to push back on - were real harm is caused, or your rights are infringed. I don't really think this is either.
But did you try the laguanita non alcoholic IPA? It's almost as good.
If you think that the Star Chamber proceedings that these clowns run don't cause "real harm," think again. If you think that people who reflexively stomp on due process are normal or to be trusted, you will rue that someday. These people are totalitarian lunatics who hate liberty and decency. "Including" them in a decent society is a huge mistake.
No “real harm” has been caused? Dead kids, destroyed futures, administrators harassing kids just to harass them is no “real harm?” When your fellow leftists decide to eat you, which they most certainly will eventually, don’t be surprised when no one is there to support you. After all, if there is “no harm” in destroying others in the name of being “nice,” then there is “no harm” in destroying you for the same flimsy be. Leftists always end up eating their own. One day you will find yourself claiming you didn’t know, but you can never claim that you were not told.
If I do certain things and live until May 5th I'll be clean and sober for thirty years. I didn't drink and do drugs because I liked the taste, and living under a overpass on I-75 wasn't camping, no matter how I tried to convince myself and others.
That was my point in another post. It's a no win. Young people were dying of alcohol poisoning, or at the very least considerably harming themselves by getting blackout drunk. A lot of people said "that's just kids being kid" but if having soda stops one kid from getting blackout drunk then it's good.
I'm a grown ass adult and I always provide alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks when I throw a party.
The ridiculous form to fill out and have approved is a bit much but I do support, for example, the resident advisor being required to make sure parties have some non-alcoholic drinks.
It's not only about addicts. My wife doesn't drink. Just doesn't like it. Some people are pregnant. It's not about 'oh we're afraid sober people can't handle the booze' it's more if people don't want to drink alcohol, they can have something else to drink.
There you go. Make your guests try and guess the acronym. Winner gets the world's last Zima. To be clear, I support anyone who doesn't want to drink. It's just like others have said, the fact that some 6 figure earning nincompoop got paid to make that up is absurd.
I’m having trouble squaring this account of Stanford’s harsh treatment with the contemporaneous account of the outrageous conduct of Stanford Law students against a federal judge invited to speak. Are there two separate ecosystems at this institution?
Actually it does makes sense...both situations spotlight a chilling degree of intolerance as well as appallingly sanctimonious attitudes. The ratio of bureaucrats--whoops, I mean administrators - to students made me think of Kafka. These folks have nothing to do but devise regulations and torture chambers. Finally it comes to mind that this is place where the parents who spawned Sam Bankman-Fried are employed as “professors”. Ugh. What a woke hole!
"woke hole" LOVE IT! Gonna use it every chance which will be all the damn time.
I'm all for safety on university campuses, but somehow, what started with 'free rides home and call phones on campus' then turned into hundreds of bloated, outsized bullshit administrators making huge salaries who then need to justify their existence. Sitting in their offices drafting up ridiculous polices to make sure everyone is WOKE, and then when there's a hint that someone MIGHT be offended by something, they sick their 'police' on them, send multipage letters, hire lawyers, blah blah...all to justify their existence. I am a believer in higher education (and it's NOT for everyone), but this stuff is complete CRAP.
Stanford has a total student population, undergrad plus grad, of around 17,000. They have around 2,300 professors to teach those students and 15,750 administrators to harass the students. That is a terrible, institution destroying, ratio.
Human nature is human nature. This is a fundamental postulate of Conservative--or what I prefer to call genuinely Liberal, Progressive--thinking. This is not to deny the improvability and perfectability of human kind, but rather to point out the obvious FACT that we cannot start anywhere but where we ARE; and that no human social system can rise above the sum of its parts. There is no Society. There are no Societal Norms. There are decisions reached by consensus after honest and open and mutually respectful negotiation--which is the authentically Liberal ideal--or there are decisions imposed by small cabals infested with the same sanctimonious bitchiness and cruelty that has animated every episode of mass sadism in human history, from the Salem (and other) Witch Trials (currently relevant even on this website) to the Inquisition, to Tamerlane's murder of 60,000 people during the sack of Bagdad.
I have in fact argued at length that the Marquis de Sade--who by the way did in fact sit in the Far Left part of the French Revolutionary Assembly, which is where we get these terms from--is the patron saint of the Left. The Left is about callous cruelty and human recividism and lapse into bestially primitive behavior, and that's all he liked to write about.
Here is a link to that piece, in the off chance someone has the time and interest to read it. It's also in my view an interesting and enlightening summary of little known facts about the Vietnam War: https://goodnessmovement.com/files/Download/cultural%20sadeism.pdf
If you are an honest Liberal, you oppose what Stanford and schools like it are doing.
And I say all this in the near certainly your comment was sarcastic. Please don't prove that assumption wrong!!!!
The abandonment of Truth; and in the case you speak of, simple and known truth that human nature is inherently selfish, savage and self-serving; has led to making up all kinds of Utopian "isms" that deny the truth about how awful people are. All of them are based on a fantasy that humans are inherently good. The results are in. Denying reality is, was, and always will be a form of insanity that leads to extreme emotional instability, suffering, violence, chaos and death.
Interesting and little known to who exactly? I can't honestly say it even reminded of anything I'd forgotten! :-) There are somethings that surpasseth understanding. The Cold War is one of them. Given the significant and frankly laughable overmatch that has become apparent to all since Kyiv not falling on Day 1, one has to wonder why the charade? Charlie don't surf mainly 'cos he be dead way afore he sight de beach. If the NVA was at Parrot Beak; it couldn't very well be in Hanoi at the same time. If the NKA's "equipment" was even more craptastic than the Republican Guard's; what was stopping RoK trops rocking up on the the Yalu using no more than a corps? The last hundred years plus seems to be mostly bullshit.
True. If MacArthur had got his way, not only would we have no problem with China, but Tibet would be free and something like 50 million Chinese would not have died horrible deaths, or so I would guess; and of course add to that the freedom of North Korea and 5-10 million lives there.
All I am sure about is that SOMETHING large is going on invisibly that I don’t understand.
Both cases are administrators seeking to impose their worldview on the university. And that worldview is best described as some sort of safety mindset - you can't say things that could "harm" anyone, you can't have parties that might "harm" anyone, you can't even have a band that's offensive and causes "harm".
It's a sort of maternal authoritarianism that seems to be all the rage right now. I really hope Stanford gets over it, and soon.
Lawrence, neither Stanford nor any other American university is going to get over its woke madness...the Left spent decades putting this apparatus in place and is not voluntarily going to give it up, ever. The problem is systemic, and will only be rooted out by a complete overhaul of that system.
But I also have some faith that the market will take care of this. Take this article for example - some number of aspiring Stanford students are going to stumble upon this, realize that Stanford has embraced maternal authoritarianism that sucks the enjoyment out of college, and go somewhere else for their education. And/or alumni like myself are going to see this situation and pull back on donations.
I personally think it's a phase that is nearing its end - maybe I'm too optimistic but I would hope to see some voluntary pullback on overly invasive college administrations in the near future.
Lawrence, as someone speaking to you from within the belly of the beast that is today's university, I can guarantee that this "phase" is nowhere near ending--in fact, it continues to get stronger. This is not a passing fad, it is the woke agenda in action and will only end from massive outside pressure. That starts with alumni such as yourself ceasing donations to their schools and demanding a return of past gifts on the grounds that they were fraudulently obtained, i.e., you thought you were donating to an educational institution, not a woke dictatorship.
No kidding, it's that bad. And this from someone who spent decades as a Left-Liberal.
Thank you for the honesty. So we either purge the poison in existing institutions or start new ones.
Have you come across any articles or books addressing this choice, how has this been dealt with in the past ? ? ?
It appears to me that some in corporate America are getting the message and engaging in some reforms away from their far left behavior. But this is clearly being market driven. With colleges and universities, the manner in which they are structured creates and very deep and very wide mote between these institutions and the market place. So they are far more insulated.
Thanks for your response, Brian. A couple of points: how to dismantle and reform higher ed? Not sure there are books on that topic just yet. Someone needs to write it. Chris Rufo is on the case, along with a few others.
For a long long time, the assumption was that higher ed was not the "real world," and that any mischief it was causing ideologically would be cured once students hit the job mareket. But in an age of "woke" capitalism in which HR is dominated by Leftist DEI coordinators, I'm not so sure that is true anymore.
But the rapidly escalating cost of the higher ed charade, along with its rapidly diminishing ROI in the job market, may force change, eventually.
Lady in the Lake, there is no contradiction here...the Stanford enforcement apparatus is used only against its presumed ideological enemies and will overlook anything done by its allies. It's one, corrupt ecosytem.
The two incidents are inseparable. It's the same ideological lane, no one can step outside of it, neither students, faculty, or the administrative drones who run the place. And for most of them - it's total buy in. And if you don't buy in, the slap comes down hard. Basically, it's conformity writ large - think of progressive storm troopers goose stepping over the cliff.
Students and some faculty opposing the very invitation of the judge to speak is an example of how deep into the mire of groupthink they are; the events described in this essay is an example of the administration's attempt to keep them there..
Yes, and an extreme abuse of power. When a law school dean tells students -- strongly encourages students -- to leave the room, even a student who disagrees with the dean will do so. To remain in the room would be seen as going against the dean, and that could very well result in the "slap" that Lee Morris wrote about and jeopardize the student's academic career and professional prospects. It's insidious. And the fact that Stanford Law has not fired that abusive dean says a lot about Stanford.
It’s the same eco system. A part of it imposes it’s beliefs on students around behavior. The other attacks those it disagrees with to force compliance. Same disease.
Difference: Here, the cases involve the university targeting individual students.
There are currently 613 students at Stanford Law & the dean estimated over 100 students were present at the Judge Duncan shout-down.
Perhaps the leg work required to identify each offending students and their individual offenses is not something that appeals to Stanford's violation "investigators".
Further, say Stanford identified & disciplined each offender, what percent of the current student body would then have the Judge Duncan incident & their role in it marked forever on their official Stanford records?
I suspect Stanford Law would prefer not to remind potential employers of the Judge Duncan incident every time an application from one of the disciplined students crosses their desks.
It's one thing for Stanford to go after individuals it can tell itself are one-off bad apples and quite another for it to mark in black & white forever a whole bushel as rotten.
"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.)"
There's your problem. I'm sure 8,000 of those administrators are not needed for the educational goals of Stanford. They are there for cultural reasons, i.e. social justice warriors. They have to find enough incidents to justify their huge salaries.
“Over 10,000” is actually 15,750 administrators for a total student population of 17,326 students combined undergrad and grad. That’s a whole lot of incompetence and an environment ripe for harassment in the name of justifying a paycheck. For comparison Stanford employs around 2,300 professors to educate the kids.
Our institutions are corrupt and, even worse in some ways, mediocre.
I joined the military out of high-school, even when a lot of people (including family) were trying to convince me to get into a good school.
I’ve never regretted my decision and after reading articles like this, I think I’m vindicated.
On the same token, though, it’s also been difficult to connect with most people my age. I try to relate with them, but I realize that our experiences are so utterly dissimilar that we may as well have grown up in different countries.
The military today seems equally fucked up though. Mark Milley looks perpetually like he's a deer caught in the headlight, and under him and Biden recruits being trained on pronouns and trans ideology takes priority over all else.
I was active from 2015-2019 before switching to the reserves. Even in my time, I’ve noticed a lot of cultural changes to the military and none of it for the better.
And most of the money isn't coming from the students anymore. It comes from the federal government in the form of loans to the students (which the students are on the hook for, but which the school gets up front regardless of educational outcome) and research grants. They also have huge endowments which mitigate the need to take in funds every year in the form of tuition. With a 4% acceptance rate, they also have a lot more kids to go through when they toss out the ones they no longer have use for.
It's a weird situation where the educational systems don't actually need the students to get the money. And they certainly don't need to actually provide those students with an education. Totally messed up incentives.
That’s right - places like Stanford, the Ivy League are just ‘big businesses’ - STOP DONATING $$$ to these places. They already have too much money - enough to employ 10k bureaucrats- STOP DONATING now.
Well Stanford would translate this to all languages and hire culturally appropriate translators and offer you a safe room for this...and some time off to process, cry and then take 6 months off because you are triggered and traumatized.
This is why student loans should not be forgiven. Too many administrators being paid out of that tuition. Colleges need to be reformed more than banks or corporations.
And all we have to do is allow student loans to be forgiven in bankruptcy. That would massively decrease the amount of student loans given (an unemployed 19-year-old has little credit), which would stem the inflow of loan dollars into university tuition. The result would be Universities having to get rid of a good chunk of their administrative overhead.
This is actually pretty simple to fix, just requires some amount of political will.
Current law disallows debtors of student loans to have their debts discharged through bankruptcy. If they were, not only would (ex) students get a pathway to financial freedom, they would have the leverage to negotiate lower amounts and better terms with their creditors (mostly the federal government). And as you state, with the higher amount of risk, loans in the future would be fewer, the amounts less, the lower the amount of students, the dismissal of bogus administration bloat in major universities, and voila - lower tuition fees. Much lower.
Precisely. Personally, I owe more than my net worth in student loans, largely thanks to the evil practice of capitalizing interest (done only on student loans).
I wouldn't have applied for those loans to begin with if I hadn't believed that my salary as a university professor (the educational course I was pursuing) would cover them. But I found out too late that I would never be a university professor, with what later became known as Wokeness being used as a shibboleth to keep out the unindoctrinated.
Our income is not remotely sufficient to pay my student loans. If it were possible to discharge them in bankruptcy, we would do that in a heartbeat.
I understand and as many of your comments as I have seen on.here I did not realize your predicament. I sometimes take comfort that my people have been subjected to persecution before and if they survived, and I am proof they did, I can too. But it is hard to stomach isn't it?
It is hard to stomach. And it's one of the reasons that I, like our nation's Founders, do not trust the concentration of too much power into too few hands.
Although, of course, the primary reason I don't trust too-powerful government is the active persecution of my own people (Latter-day Saints) by the U.S. government in the 19th and early 20th century. And we are far from the only religious group that knows how seriously (not!) our government, in practice, takes the First Amendment.
With the right messaging I think the too much power in the hands of too few is the path to unity. Religious persecution has driven people to move throughout history. But now there is nowhere to go. At least for the moment.
Between Stanford’s list of unacceptable words, the suppression of free speech by a federal judge invited to speak, the Presidents falsified research investigation and this article, Stanford is losing a lot of respect in my opinion.
And the SBF parents. If you have not already, check out mama's politicsl activity and then rethink those FTX "donations". It lays bare the capture of government by those who would be our masters.
Good-looking young guy. Son of immigrants. Such a hard worker. Gets himself into Stanford to study philosophy? Immerses himself in fraternity life? Pointlessness ensues. Gee, who could have seen that coming?
This whole boring, useless story means nothing to those of us who chose not to give our money to "elite" universities filled with irrational leftists.
Philosophy from a good school can be extremely useful training for how to think analytically - if you’re thinking of law or business management, lobbying and policy making, consulting, or a variety of careers that require big picture thinking. You do need to round out the major courses with courses from your area of interest and have a plan post grad plan, network and take good internships, but I’ve known many highly successful philosophy majors (from good schools).
A Philosophy major offers the highest income prospects among all "humanities" degrees and, particularly above the median, surpasses many science/engineering majors—which isn't surprising to me, since philosophy is the bedrock of all intellectual inquiry, science included.
There are lots of potential sources on this, but this one has a handy chart:
Not all philosophies are created equal. Some people who called themselves “lovers of wisdom” gained prominence for appealingly deranged misuse of brain cells, people who were nothing but despicable scumbags whose sick thoughts created havoc in our world to this day.
The rush to judgement seems to be a key part of college campuses today. Meyer should have been seen as innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, like the actual criminal court system. Instead we have these Title IX courts that loosen the standards for proof of wrongdoing. Stanford is scared to have another Brock Turner, but that doesn't mean we should just abandon due process. In fact, there was just a recent case where a Stanford student was charged with making false rape allegations against a fellow student: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/stanford-university-employee-charged-making-2-false-sexual-assault-all-rcna75264
That is a very disturbing news report. The fact that the student organization makes a statement that 40% of "women identified" students will suffer a sexual assault is outrageous. The administration has obviously created a climate of pure fear, where panic is normalized and students are terrorized.
I think a lot of the types who gravitate to schools like Stanford LIKE the idea that a huge percentage will suffer sexual assault. It makes them feel oppressed, and therefore worthy of . . . something. Also, sexual assault is probable a very broad term for them, and may mean getting an unwanted kiss, or a cat-call, or a pinch on the bum, or morning-after regret for a consensual romp. Not really a big deal. I'd rather deal with any of those than an emailed accusation from an administrator . . .
I stick with evidence and good science. As someone that has done social science research, I know that the studies that get the most attention generally aren't well done. There also is a lot of mixing of various issues; rape, coercion, stalking, media assault, or incapacitation, etc. There is a department of justice meta-study that suggests the total of all the above is 11.2%. It also says the smallest part of that is violent sexual assault (rape) and the largest part is incapacitation. Not clear exactly how incapacitation is operationalized, but in some studies if the women has drunk an alcoholic beverage or taken drugs, then they are considered incapacitated. The actual data is not publicly posted or is behind a paywall. We know the FBI statistics for that age group is .6% for the sexual assault category. Any study that is far above that number is suspect or so widening the category to make it useless. When activist put out a figure like the usual 20% or in this case 40% no one really believes them as they shouldn't. That blunts their message at best. All that does is create fear and hysteria among some. It also points the finger at males on campus and tries to paint them as dangerous and aggressive. You wonder why males are not showing up on campus when that is how they are portrayed???
Very mysterious. I don't trust these studies either, but if sexual assault is defined to include any unwanted touching of a sexual nature, I find it hard to believe that it is as low as even 40%. When I think of all the times I've been groped, pinched, jumped on and pinned down . . . and I've never even been drunk or drugged up outside of surgery! It seems more likely that 90 percent of women have experienced sexual assault. At least 90 percent.
"You wonder why males are not showing up on campus when that is how they are portrayed???"
Bingo...we have A Winner.
Here is the problem. We (people on the Right & The Awake Left) have The Facts. They (the Progressive Left...which Is The Left today) have The Narrative.
I would definitely send my daughter to a school with a 40% sexual assault rate, but I'd rather send her to a school with a much higher rate of sexual assault, now that I've looked into the definition and considered my own life experiences. We're talking gropes, unwanted kisses, pinches, even unwanted hugs, etc. I tried to count the number of times I've experienced "sexual assault" but I'm not a numbers woman and I lost count. I can say that of all the high stress situations I've faced, only three involved sexual assault. Bullying by other women is a much greater problem, IMO. What kind of environment would it be for so few women to be assaulted? The young fellows must be terrified to do anything! Or there are police everywhere! But my daughter knows not to get drunk, and how to yell "No!" very assertively, and how to sock a man in the head and kick him in the balls if she needs to. And I doubt she'd be terribly perturbed by a guy grabbing her ass. I worry much more about my son facing false accusations than my daughter getting groped. It's awfully sweet of you guys to worry about your daughters, though. Lucky girls. But you can't really protect them, so I'd recommend focusing on making them strong.
"Bullying by other women is a much greater problem, IMO."
Most of the woke cult appears to me to be primarily about privileged white women bullying other white women and men. I think that it will increasingly become that way. The polls, however, show that the percentage of young people who support woke ideology and abusive behaviors increases with each generation.
I think a lot of the types who gravitate to schools like Stanford LIKE the idea that a huge percentage will suffer sexual assault. It makes them feel oppressed, and therefore worthy of . . . something. Also, sexual assault is probable a very broad term for them, and may mean getting an unwanted kiss, or a cat-call, or a pinch on the bum, or morning-after regret for a consensual romp. Not really a big deal. I'd rather deal with any of those than an emailed accusation from an administrator . . .
I heard that 40% figure recently, as well. I think it was Jordon Peterson's podcast, during which he made the great point that if the percentage was that high, no one would apply to that school out of fear of either being raped (females) or being accused of rape (males).
This sort of thing has happened so many times in the last couple of years, when I read a story like this, I Assume it's a Hoax. Because very often it is.
“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.”
———————————————————
Decker’s main mistake was not being a transvestite. All of this could have been avoided if he had just dressed more sexy.
Brought to you by the creators of the much more disturbing Virality Project. It's shocking how gleefully the youth of the world narc on one another and themselves. We're mere months away from creating the "Stasi class" and the Ivies seem to be the ones on the assembly line building their best version of the T-54 - the perfect machine to combat discourse and dissent.
In essence, Stanford joined forces with the government's surveillance state to censor free speech on Social Media. Couple that with Stanford's IT department and its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) last year. I took a satirical look at the EHLI in December.
"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"
Stanford's mission is indoctrination not teaching and other elite colleges and universities are following suit. .
It seems like Stanford has a math problem...a 1:1 ratio of bureaucrats to students. It sounds as though they have even turned the students on each other. This has true totalitarian overtones. No wonder the culture of these Ivy type institutions in in the proverbial toilet. My top of the top student is thriving in the honors college at an SEC school where she is learning AND living her best life. This article fills me with gratitude that she had the common sense to put the experience of her college years over the prestige of a piece of paper. It is time to clean house, Stanford! Your “harm reduction” isn’t working. Shame on you.
Much of the admin burden at universities has nothing to do with students, especially at schools that do a lot of research. That said, the bloat is real.
Fraternities and sororities are ridiculous and terrible institutions, and have no place in education. Alcohol and’ drinking culture’ could / should (but won’t) be rethought. Same thing with pot, legalized gambling (and illegal gambling too).
Mixed into the ridiculous charade that is education / ‘higher education’ - it doesn’t matter what the proportions are, no matter what, current education is a farce. And yeah, no fooling -
“It’s unethical to base your kid’s life on getting into places like this because at the end of the day, they don’t really care about your kid,” he said. “They never did.”
That’s right, ‘they never did’
My kid is using his time at [the flagship of one of the top 3 state university systems] to use judo within the administrative department of motor vehicles which is his university - to study with the few great teachers not yet canceled there, or replaced with grunt level labor, ie adjuncts who are rightly angry about having to be strippers at the same time as teachers to pay their loans down. But he’s ready, and we, his parents are too, the MOMENT he gets any kind of sanction, to tell them to f*ck off, and for him to just leave. He already is a strong worker who can pull down a grown *ss salary, as his former boss puts it, and he’s at the university to try to get some more background in the disgraced fields within humanities: classics, econ, literature, etc; to so, he has to wade through classes that say they are one thing, eg Russian literature but end up being gender studies/trauma only (and i have the course descriptions to back it up). And when he does exit, prob w/out a degree, he’s ready to freelance, to start his own thing, to NEVER be the wage slave that the indentured education industry puts them on the meat conveyor belt for.
Higher ed is busted, and has been for a long time.
It was never there to do anything but give that credential.
That credential is no longer useful, ie as a certificate to ‘get money’, ie ‘if u cn do this, u cn get a gd job’ like the NYC subway ad used to say.
But i’m glad higher ed and all this fakery around drinking & etc still exists, because it lowers lowers lowers the bar for my kids and others like them.
Stanford/Harvard got us some great stuff, but it also got us worshipping psychopaths like Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg, whose revolutionary tech companies, solved what problems again? Stack those against Edison, Ford, HP, etc. (and yeah Edison and Ford, they too not the greatest of humans, but that’s why i ain’t a columnist)
Dear Boston College and Cornell University,
I have just upgraded my subscription at The Free Press to "Founder". As a result, my budget is tight and I will be unable to contribute as a loyal alumnus to your respective endowments.
Everyone,
It is a start - https://cornellfreespeech.com
Ruth Bader Ginsburg On Free Speech
“The right to speak my mind out, that's America ... The right to think, speak and write as we believe without fear that Big Brother will retaliate against us because we don't tow the party line.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Cornell '54
Associate Justice / United States Supreme Court
Cornell grad here. I was a shy, inexperienced, sheltered kid with terrible anxiety and should never have gone to such an prestigious, intimidating university. I would have been much better off at a trade school or a "lesser" calibre college. My nephew is a living example of someone who was not cut out for college and has made a great career as a car mechanic. He's brilliant, knows everything there is to know about cars and is thriving. First in our family to NOT graduate from college and perhaps the most well adjusted and successful of all of us. I applaud my brother and sister in law for not forcing him into an impossible, over-rated experience.
We warned our kids that we would not be able to afford college for them. And we recommended a gap year (working, not playing), even if they decided to go to college.
Our oldest son was not really interested in college; he jumped into employment instead, and now makes more than his dad does at a factory that makes huge tires for earthmoving equipment.
Our middle son took the maximum amount of dual credit classes in high school and picked enough community college classes (mostly through Pell Grants) to get an Associates degree. Instead of going to college, he used the experience he gained working in a factory First Aid office to get an HR position that, again, pays more than his dad makes.
Our youngest daughter is an artist, and she attempted the community college's animation program (a feeder program for a small animation studio in our area). Between working to pay for her apartment, babysitting her roommate, and hating the non-art general ed classes she was required to take, she decided that path was not for her. I don't know what she'll end up doing, but she has a job skill she can always fall back on anywhere (security guard). She's already "woke" enough from Tumblr and high school indoctrination; college would make her insufferable (and undoubtedly 100% intolerant of her family).
One of the things that is truly great about the American college and university system along with trade schools is that you can return for further learning and bridge into another career. A plumber can morph into a CPA, a police officer a teacher, an engineer takes plumbing or electrical classes for fixing up a house and morphs into a contractor with a real estate licenses, and the list goes on. Whether motivated by circumstances like an injury or just a desire for a change, their rich experience and the maturity of their focus can bring them and our communities many benefits.
This hand wringing that an 18 yo must decide their life destiny is ridiculous, especially when there are so many options available beyond their senior year. It is amazing that children and parents are willing to go into debt to the tune of over 70k per year for destinies to be explored and discovered.
Exactly. My SIL and her husband paid their son's full tuition to George Washington Univ, from which he graduated with an MS in political science. What did he do after? Worked at the local volunteer fire dept for a few years before getting a paid job with the city fire dept. So, basically not using his degree at all, but absolutely LOVING his job.
The Panama Canal Company had a great apprentice program. I chose to go to college instead of becoming a tradesman. I often wonder how my life would have been if I had gone to the Canal Zone apprentice program.
As someone that was not a fabulous high school student and had no clear path for my future as an 18 year old, I chose to join the US Navy in 1985 to see the world and have access to the GI Bill. I never bothered taking advantage of that GI Bill. I chose instead to become an electrician, something I had no experience in my 4 years of Naval service. I relished in never working in the same building or city very often and I rather enjoyed building a plethora of unique facilities and buildings. It has been 35 years now and I am the owner of an Electrical Contracting business I started in Southern California in 2004.
I for one can say it's been the ride of a lifetime and has provided for my family and me a comfortable, well-earned life.
College is not for everyone and the idea that it is "the" way for a path to a successful livelihood is a misnomer that needs to be dispelled before it's too late. Most of today's college students leave college with a mountain of debt and fewer prospects in the workforce. How is that meant to be an advantage?
Our daughter does not attend a university as prestigious as Stanford, she is pursuing a nursing degree at a smallish private university that does not mandate the "wokeness" found in campuses across this country, and for that I am grateful considering Stanford's example of intolerance towards students and invited speakers that do not have left leaning principles. I say this as an unaffiliated political party American voter.
I am also grateful for the fact that my decision to not go to college and to become a tradesman has allowed my daughter to go to school without any student loans and debt.
That is something being a tradesman could do for many others.
I have two sons who are former Marines, one a current Navy Nuke, all straight out of HS. Husband was a Naval officer. We have for years discouraged a college path unless there was a specific need for a desired career path. I commend you for your clear headed thinking and choice. Told them all, (5), that only a serious degree would get financial help, and only AFTER graduation. One daughter spent 9 years getting a philosophy degree; no help from us. The other went the four year route right out of HS on a full ride for a chemical engineering degree; again, no help needed. Guess which one is a "progressive"? I would not wish college on any kid at this point. Our electricians and plumbers make more money, are more responsible and mature, and have a better earnings path than anyone with a "black women's studies" degree; unless of course they go straight into academic or government service. We need to starve colleges of our progeny to salvage any semblance of a future.
Great success story. I hope your left wing daughter comes to her senses and stops supporting a vicious, destructive vile Dem/Soc Party who is driving this country into the ground.
I pray for that every day. She currently lives in France with her socialist husband and my two grandchildren, taking advantage of French "social programs" to have a "better standard of living". In other words, they're cheating the French taxpayers instead of US taxpayers. Not only can I not have a conversation with her about her political beliefs, her husband has said to my face, and I quote"fu*#ing Christians" in reference to my husband and I being strong traditional Christians. Nothing else to be said.
I think you must mean a series of degrees. Otherwise, the problem was with your daughter, not philosophy as an area of study.
Two different daughters. The oldest took 9 years to graduate and settled on a philosophy degree because it was easy. She did not attend school full-time, so she didn't get as indoctrinated as her sister. The younger went straight to a 4-year college on a full scholarship, got her engineering degree and two minors, then went on to get her Masters in machine learning, I. E. Artificial intelligence. She met her English husband while living in France doing a semester abroad. She married a drunk carpenter who spent the better part of his young adulthood traveling around the world and surfing. At their wedding, he said he married her because all his friends were married and he thought he should probably be married too. We were so proud.
Well said.
Panama is a corrupt hell hole; even worse than the US. We spent a month there in December, got a real education on many levels dealing with their bureaucracy in order to take a vessel through the canal. Be happy you avoided it.
I was raised in the Panama Canal Zone. It was owned and run by the uS government with Us police, courts and schools. After the Army and college I went back and worked there, all toll 40 years.
Panama is a shit hole of corruption and dangerous.
The DIEvy league is fully demoralized. Here are the rankings of how woke the “elite” universities are: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-get-into-harvard-part-3
My husband and I are trying to talk our high school junior OUT OF going to a university he wants to go to (because of course it has a robust DEI dept, which scares the hell out of us), and INTO a trade school that specializes in the field he wants to pursue. Never would've thought we'd be doing this. Strange times indeed.
Love this!
The problem is bloated administration full of power hungry and middlingly intelligent nobody's seeking to justify their existence. While lack of free speech is one of the symptoms, bloated administration is the "root cause."
There are plenty of ways to find all kinds of success and life. To use the words of a middling intelligent Stanford administrator who seems to have no other purpose than limit the future opportunities of current law students at Stanford, not to mention stunt their ability to learn how to make persuasive legal arguments - the juice isn't worth the squeeze at these once truly elite institutions.
My husband and I, despite not coming from money and not attending super elite schools, are more successful than well over 90% of Ivy graduates our age (by a factor of 3.5 for the 90th percentile our age according to Washington Post Statistics). We have plenty of friends who went to equivalent schools to ours making in our income range. We have friends with very successful businesses who never even finished undergrad. Most importantly, we are happier and find far more joy contributing to our community than the numerous Ivy grads we know personally.
Our kids know we will not in any way support them attending an Ivy/ Ivy adjacent institution despite the fact they both check all the boxes on grades, standardized testing, leadership, character, and elite extra curriculars. If the alumni of these institutions want to save what remains of their reputations, they should focus on eliminating the counterproductive and often plainly cruel administrative bloat destroying them from the inside.
I don't know how anyone is surprised by how Stanford is run by nut case tyrants. It's the west coast, California for Christ's sake. The land of fruits, nutz and flakes. Being insanely left wing is the norm.
So is being an incompetent paper pusher. A student body of around 17,000. Around 2,300 professors. And this takes 15,750 administrators? How incompetent and petty are these “administrators” that you need almost a 1 to 1 relationship with students who are supposedly the best, brightest, most responsible, and most self motivated out there? That’s a higher administrator to student ratio than the staff to student ratio at those high schools for extremely violent kids that get booted from the general population! Prisons don’t have anywhere close to that kind of staff to prisoner ratio. But an Ivy League school needs it? It’s nothing but a works project for the low IQ with poor work ethic and delusions of power they take out on the kids who are the only people they have any power over.
Hell, infant daycare doesn't have that kind of ratio.
It is sad but true and the Dems are all for it.
The Dems created it besides being for it
Well let's take a beat before you lampoon an entire state because of extreme liberalism Lonesome Polecat.
As a longtime California resident we are not all what you claim and your mischaracterization is just another example in a long line of far right talking points that continue to perpetuate the biases that render this country into partisan tribalism and an inability to have civil and productive discourse with each other.
40+% of this state also does not agree with your assessment.
Unfortunately for California we have our own version of political grift in the forms of Governor Gavin Newsome, Feinstein, Boxer and Pelosi.
But let's be honest with each other, Republican and Democrat politicians differ only in how they screw the population to serve their corporate donor's interests and themselves.
We'd all be the better if we didn't wear our political identities as a badge of honor.
There is not very much I consider honorable in today's political classes.
Both parties are guilty for varying transgressions against the American People.
Thanks for the respectful understanding.
I agree with most of what you say but you get what you vote for and that is the highest homeless population in the US, DAs who won't prosecute criminals, a defund the police populace. Your state has gone off the rails and has been for the last few decades.
Look at who your state elects to high office and tell me I am wrong.
Why would I disagree with any of that? I know the things you're saying to be true. I live here. I am very aware of the rampant homelessness and crime, the weak DA's going soft on punishing criminals and I find it frustrating that it continues because of feeble minded voters and pandering politicians.
But I clearly stated 40+% of this state is in the opposition of those primarily responsible for California's current elected class of politicians.
I didn't vote for those currently in office personally, so you don't actually "get what you vote for", you get what the majority votes for. But I won't tuck tail and run away, I don't need the shield of a political party to live my life here. California is too beautiful a state with fantastic weather, some amazing people and an economy that I am certain far out earns the economy of the state in which you reside. And I'm proud of that economy and playing my part in it.
Shoot I'll bet you eat all kinds of fruits, nuts and vegetables grown right here in the "land of fruits, nuts and flakes" and all of it picked by migrant farm workers. Thanks for contributing, we appreciate you.
But I digress, you clearly missed my point in my previous comment because you are continuing to generalize an entire state by its political leaders and not the sum total of its citizens.
Political identity should not be the guide to determine how we move forward as a country.
Be well
By saying 40% don't agree with the current state of affairs doesn't mean a thing. 60% like living in a shit hole. They are called democrats and until your side gains a majority and I don't see that happening any time soon, your state will continue to slide into the garbage pit.
If it weren't for CA, you'd probably be starving.
What police departments have been defunded?
San Franciso's was to the tune of $120,000,000
Thank you for your reasoned response. I particularly agree with this statement - "Republican and Democrat politicians differ only in how they screw the population to serve their corporate donor's interests and themselves." - 100%!
I've long said that petty partisanship is one of the biggest factors in this country's divisiveness (by design, no doubt), and it's so disheartening to see how many people allow themselves to get sucked into it. If they could only recognize that, they might be able to transcend party politics (and ideologies), which would go a long way toward resolving this country's many problems.
Dean
I found this article both very credible and yet scarcely believable.
The 1:1 administrator/student ratio is by itself proof of gross incompetence. What justifies the harsh treatment of students and the refusal to implement and abide by elementary principles of fairness and due process? Where is the common sense.
I wouldn’t send my dog to Stanford.
Are there any universities run by conservatives which are as bad as Stanford? How does it compare to Hillsdale College or Notre Dame?
I too found this article enlightening, credible and very revealing.
And I am abhorred by the lack of compassion shown by the administration of Stanford to their student body. The University has an agenda that is entirely intolerant to any commonsense principles. It could not be more illiberal today if they tried. And this is a place so renowned for higher thinking and education that any sense of irony is now lost on both faculty and administration.
It's fair to say they have gone to extremes to shelter themselves in policies created to cause more harm than good. Stanford is guilty of a new type of indifference, a kind that is blind to the real world around them and the impact that indifference has on its students. Shame on them.
And the 1:1 administrator/student ratio is precisely why tuition rates have skyrocketed and liberal arts colleges have such insular thinking.
Should your kids choose the path of college education, I hope they choose a school that embraces a fair and open discourse to those with diverse or opposing viewpoints and backgrounds. That is the purpose of higher education and a tenet held in high regard by Abraham Lincoln himself.
Thanks for participating in a reasonable discourse.
Cheers
So to a large degree US News and World Report's college rankings depends on the percentage of graduates employed after graduation. How many of these administrators are former students who graduate not qualified for gainful employment and end up back at the university as an administrator, to help inflate these colleges rankings?
Fair enough. And yes, neither party is any good. Looking to politicians for truth, beauty, inspiration, honesty or help is a huge mistake. Like deciding which clump of dirt is better than the other clump of dirt.
You are not wrong. But it’s seeping out too. We live between two states, California and Nevada. Unfortunately the Californians that move to other states to get away from the “lunacy”, then bring it with them.
If you’re a Californian who moved, for the love of all that’s sane please leave behind your California mindset!
I politely disagree JAE.
The people that leave California leave because of their disdain for how the state is run politically and the high taxes. If it is this exact "lunacy" they are trying to escape, why would they "bring it with them"?
If you live in a state that you feel is being influenced by "Californians seeping out" perhaps you should be asking yourself instead why the citizens and politicians of your state are changing their position because there are not that many Californians moving to one specific state to make that much influence, especially considering the fact they left California for said "lunacy".
And what is a "California mindset" exactly? And how is it so powerful as to sway so many people to change the politics of where you reside?
Respectfully, your argument in prejudicial at best and ill-informed at the worst.
Be well
Hahahaha! I love it when people couch thinly disguised disdain in politeness. Good for you, better to be civil.
Reading your post one could assume you’re taking umbrage because you’re a Californian. Maybe not, perhaps you simply enjoy defending California and its residents. Because if I have to make a case to you regarding the lunacy of California when its major cities, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, and even lesser locations such as Santa Monica are becoming uninhabitable, then I cannot help you. It’s right under your nose, everyone’s nose in fact, what the lunacy is, it’s very smelly and it’s on full display.
As to the influence California transplants have on politics, and I’m a transplant myself, the state where I live now suddenly turned Blue with the influx. As did Colorado, and now even Idaho is worried. And it’s not because the Democrats the transplants vote for are brimming with wonderful notions and ideas to make life better, it’s simply because they had a D by their name!
That’s the embedded lunacy.
So, I respectfully suggest to you if you haven’t heard of yellow dog voters yet, look them up.
I am very well thank you, same to you.
They flee California because it has turned into a shit hole with high taxes and stupid restrictive laws and Its lunacy. They are banning internal combustion cars and truck in 2035 yet their electrical gride can't handle the electric cars they have now.
They move to a red state and then vote for the same for type of lunatics that destroyed California. Democrats/Socialists are truly insane.
In Texas, we need to put up signs that say "If you are from California and moving to Texas, please turn around and go back to your insane asylum . We already have too many left wing nuts in Austin."
What we need is another 10,000 administrators to monitor the existing 10,000!
God no, not MORE power-hungry bureaucrats! I hope you were being sarcastic (hard to tell on here).
Cornell alum here '98. I can't recognize what has happened to a place I used to consider a force for good. Thanks for the posting the link.
I was ‘89. Not only would I never give them a penny, I am no longer proud to tell people I graduated from Cornell. I have two son’s currently in small private colleges in the south. It is better, but far from perfect. This is systemic in academia, professors and administrators. Some are better than others, but impossible to completely escape in college today.
I used to think it would be great if I spawned a Cornell legacy with all the kids I popped out. I really loved my time at Cornell. Now that my oldest child is 13 and just barely beginning to think about her future, I strongly recommend against going to Cornell. Which breaks my heart, to be honest. A person would have to be nuts to go ivy (or other "elite" schools) at this point in time.
I would ask an even Bigger question. Why go to College At All? Unless someone wants to be A Doctor, Lawyer, or in the HARD Sciences, why go to college? And if someone does feel The Need, may I recommend waiting a couple of years. Where does it say You HAVE TO go to college right after High School?
Steve, I think your comment should be bronzed and posted in EVERY HIGH SCHOOL in the country. WTF do we need sociology degrees and "Studies" degrees for? To train professional parasites?
Well, without all those "Studies" degrees, how will companies staff their woke and racist personnel departments? Schools and teachers unions need unqualified "Studies" majors to teach our kids. Stanford and other schools of learning need them to run greeks and conservatives off campus. And don't get me started on all the government jobs that depend on "Studies" majors. /s
I can't take credit for it. That goes to Mike Rowe.
I agree actually. In an effort to be completely self aware, I am writing huge checks for a piece of paper that is supposed to be valuable in our society. In the meantime, my sons are having fun, putting off adulting for 4 years and hopefully learning something academic and some valuable life lessons both positive and negative. By negative, I mean learning how to navigate a system, deal with sometimes unreasonable professors and administrators and unfortunately learning how to keep their mouths shut and opinions to themselves at times. I will say that in the colleges they are at in the South, I have seen conservative opinions being tolerated by the students, although not always the "adults" in the room.
Exactly. In addition to trying to talk our high school junior into going to a trade school that specializes in his desired career field, we're also encouraging him to take a year after high school to travel the world (on our dime, even), such as backpacking Europe or Asia, through which he'd get a MUCH more meaningful education than in university general ed classes. As a kid, he loved traveling with us, so he's actually considering it!
The more "elite" a school is, the bigger a stalinist hell hole it is.
I get it. My youngest is a freshman and wanted to apply to Cornell. He is a really good student but I told him he didn’t have a chance but I would pay for the application fee, and on the off chance he got in, he was not going and I wouldn’t pay a penny for it. I told him he wasn’t going somewhere I would not want to visit. It is sad, because I did enjoy my time there and used to be proud of where I went to college. My sons are having relatively good experiences where they are. My 26 year old daughter went to GWU before I knew how bad it was there. Wish I could get that money back. She did survive it though, although rocky at times, with values intact.
I went to GW when JFK was Pres. Wouldn’t go near the place today
'74. There were out-of-control protests, the school was shut down spring 69 and 70, and the student senate was a progressive joke, even back then. But the patients were not running the asylum. It has always had too much NYC influence, and see what that has produced.
I believe those were the protests that drove Thomas Sowell, perhaps the greatest living economist, out of academia and into the Hoover Institute on Stanford’s campus.
Sowell's contribution to this country cannot be measured.
Ah, I was a freshman for the 1969 takeover of Willard Straight. An amazing time and I don't think Cornell ever really recovered.
Love Mr Sowell!❤️
'72. I lived through the madness.
Cornell '72 here. NPS '89. Retired Navy. Retired from teaching engineering at USNA as a civilian. None of them are getting my recommendation to attend / join. Nor bequeath. Absolutely disgusted with them. Especially after the way non jabbed Mids / Cadets were & are still being treated.
My son was USNA '19, so I share your concern. Here is the latest from Annapolis -"COVID-19 Vaccination Update February 23, 2023 - Students applying for admission to the United States Naval Academy or participating in Office of Admissions-sponsored outreach programs are not required to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. This includes candidates applying for admission, Candidate Visit Weekends, Summer STEM, Day Tours and Summer Seminar."
Ginsburg said that we needed to have nine females justices to make up for the historic wrong of having male justices.
Worse - she said that South Africa's Constitution was a better model than our own.
Why this nitwit is worshipped escapes me.
She was a traitor and scumbag in 1,000 different ways. A devoted evangelist of the dipshit ideology that has us where we are right now. Beneath contempt.
Maybe we can build a statue of her right next to the statue of Joe Biden showering with his daughter.
You've done it once again Kev, made me laugh. Have you considered stand up?
Hell, I'm considering a career as his straight man.....
Tell me what club you two are opening at so I can be there.
Kevin: that was beneath you. Take a deep breath and consider your responses
Don't be such a self-righteous twit. I like Kev's posts. He's funny and on point.
She’s only worshipped on the Left.
Some are besotted by Trump and some by Hillary or Obama. The parties are different, the psychosis is the same.
However, no reasonable person “worships” another human being, whether they’re on the Right or the Left. We have a lot of unreasonable people it seems.
You are 100% correct. Why worship politicians? Very uninspiring people for the most part.
I'll bet she would never say the Dem Party should be dissolved because of its racist history.
On a side note, where is the woke movement on canceling the racist Dem party?
Dear Lonesome, a plea: cease patrolling all these comments with your tireless (and tiresome ) diatribes a against your demons, and either offer something constructive (hint: how can we make the place better) or give over the space to those who are trying to do so. You are self-indulgent.
Who died and made you the chief censor? Are you now the sole arbiter of what should be posted on this BBS. Why should I bow to your "standards" of what is right and what is wrong?
I have been posting here for a year and have a good relationship with most of the posters. I think of them as friends. I have had spirited debates with them but we come out of just fine.
If you don't like my posts, don't read them. Maybe you would like to join the ranks of comprof. He is a pariah on the BBS. Nobody replies to his snarky posts.
I don't mind you criticizing me. I'll just ignore you.
Adding context, Ginsburg said that at Georgetown University Law School, and her friend and fellow jurist Antonin Scalia was a Georgetown alum. They clearly had a history of tweaking each other:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/justice-ginsburg-enough-women-supreme-court
Their history of friendship, respect, and adversarial positions are well documented. I certainly don't agree with every decision of Scalia or Ginsburg, but I miss the era of talking through issues. Even the LA Times used to comment on "common ground": https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-na-court-odd-couple-20150622-story.html
For the record, I have an Autistic son, and Ginsberg's decision and opinion in "The Olmstead Decision" set up the path to his current life where he lives independently with support rather than an institutional setting - https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98-536.ZS.html We are building it today - https://www.endeavor21.org
Your post is jaw dropping. Our universities have gone to hell in a hand basket. We need someone with backbone (almost impossible to find in today's climate) to tell these heavily government endowed schools that if they do not adhere to the 1st Amendment and fire their anti 1st amendment, woke, administrators, their endowments will be cut off.
My alma mater Texas A&M used to be a bastion of conservatism but I see it slipping into the abyss. The admin is allowing a black professor to ignore the rules of grammar and capitalize the word black no matter where it falls in a sentence. That sounds very woke to me.
I am considering canceling my endowment to the university.
Polecat, can't believe a man with your values is giving a dime to the university, any university. I recommend that you stop your support today, and demand all previous donations be returned on the basis that they were fraudulently obtained, i.e., you thought you were giving to an institution of higher learning not an indoctrination mill. It's that bad.
In addition to government, a large amount of endowments also come from private foundations and "philanthropists" with their own agendas, of course; many of which are all too happy to see the Constitution ripped to shreds, unfortunately.
Class of '17. I loved my time at Cornell, but I'm glad I graduated when I did, and I really feel for the students there now. I noticed a major change in the atmosphere after Trump was elected and it got even worse during the pandemic. When I went back to campus to visit a friend in grad school there in 2021, the campus was unrecognizable. It seemed that all of the energy had been sapped out of the place. It looked like a bunch of robots walking around. It definitely wasn't the fun place I remember when I attended.
I agree with your sentiment, yet these universities have such bloated endowments that they don’t care so much about alums. The only way to fight back is for students and faculty to hire great attorneys and fight them in the media and courtroom.
At 18, I was a mess. I got accepted a state university but, instead I decided to enlist in the US Navy. I found out I had a new perspective in life, I needed time to grow up, I needed learn about personal responsibility and the responsibility to take care of subordinates. I went back to college after my enlistment using my GI Bill. Wow, I was glad I spent a few years getting real life experience before attending college. College calculus was hard but it was nothing comparing to working 24 hours straight, on topside, in the middle the Alaskan winter storm
Amen. Joined Navy late. Learned a lot.
cornell never pretended to give a crap about its students when i went there
Different era, no doubt. I attended our state college (Western Washington State College, now a university) in the mid-70's and I don't remember anybody who looked out for student well-being. You were on your own. Now the pendulum has swung much too far in the opposite direction.
Too bad RBG didn't understand the metaphor she used. It is TOE the line. You know, stand with one's toes against the line. Kinda like her jurisprudence, about 2/3s right, but missing a critical component to make it whole. Not a bad average, I suppose.
I am RBM Cornell, '72
Thank you so much for this link! This kind of sharing is no doubt the greatest asset of The Free Press's community.
Good for you and congratulations on using your money wisely!
Fortunately in the UK tuition fees were comparatively cheap when I studied (around £3000 a year - now they're £9000 a year). And there's a lot of help available for those who struggle to finance it. It would be great if the US could take a page from our playbook, but sadly that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
When I first rode into college on my horse, tuition, fees, room and board and laundry were $950 a year Now it I over $25,000 a year.
I know. I don't know how you guys live! I see hope in the publication of these kinds of pieces and students reacting against institutional tyranny. It's about time!
Yes, I agree on tuition fees in the US, they’re obscene. Hence the top heavy administrations justifying their existence through punitive overreach.
It’s the same in politics in the US, grotesque sums of money involved. Hence the corruption not just of body but of spirit.
It should be said though that the lower fees don’t protect against menacing administrations in the UK. Much of the psychosis that’s permeating US universities is evident in UK universities.
I’m from the UK, but am now a newly minted US citizen, though I’ve been here on and off since 1988. I’ve watched over the years as both countries have been on a precipitous decline. It’s not a pretty picture for either country, sadly.
It's largely a phenomenon of the entire Anglosphere, but is starting to creep into European institutions.
“Party hosts must also provide “EANABs,” or Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverages”
—————————————————————
Can someone please knock me unconscious? Just punch me in the face.
It would have to be a non-alcoholic punch to the face, and I would need to get approval from a harm reduction specialist. So maybe there would be no punch at all. Sorry to hurt your feelings.
Okay how about a karate chop to the face and we have all of the necessary AAPI mediators and ombudsmxn in place to ensure we are being sustainable?
Isn't karate chop cultural appropriation?
Yes but that’s what the AAPI mediators and ombudsmxn are for. Duh.
I like the way you're thinking. But, I think your privilege just disadvantaged all the people who could never learn to karate chop.
Yeah, I never thought of that. Kev is an elitist martial artist who doesn't believe in inclusion.
Where do I sign up for woke membership?
When I arrived on campus in the fall of 1986 I learned that acronym, pronounced as it appears (eenabs) and was always amused that the rule seemed to be met as long as there was a two-liter bottle of Coke next to the keg of beer. In other words, it was an inside joke, and it played out as expected. But the nonsense that has gone on in the last 10+ years shows me that Stanford is a shell of what it once was—I would never send my kids there unless there was significant change. And they could start by firing half of the administrators and it would cover tuition for all the undergraduates—a true win-win.
Yea, but Sam Bankman-Fried lives in a million-dollar cottage rent-free while people are still being stiffed by his fraud.
It's ironic that SBF's law-school parents are allegedly experts in legal ethics.
The ideological foundation of what is happening at Stanford now was firmly in place in the 1980's.
Nat, you are absolutely right. Today's BS had been decades in the making.
I’m another ‘80s alum, can confirm this. Stanford was very lax about drinking on campus at the time, despite what EANABS might suggest, but that started to change in the 1990s, when for instance they started requiring that IDs be checked at parties.
Same. Geezus. The administrative class at these institutions is simply bored which breeds incompetence. Read VDH's "What Happened to Stanford".
I think it is that idle hands thing.
This "violation" had me scratching out my eyeballs...
"First, an allegation of hazing after a fraternity member suffered a panic attack."
If you can't find your safe space it can be very scary
Yes, punch would be an acceptable alternative. Thank you for bringing the punch
Don't take EANAB if you previously have suffered from any enjoyment in your life. EANAB side effects may include being punched in the face. Not covered by most insurance plans, but ask your doctor about EANAB today!
Damn you Stanford, now I want a Pepsi.
When I read EANAB, I had to go a pour myself a stiff drink.
Tequila straight up is my dink of choice. I drink it and sing songs in Spanish.
Ya gotta give Cava de Oro, Extra Anejo a shot! ;-)
Certainly the Stanford math majors should chime in here, but if A = B, then B should be no less attractive to those who favor A than A is to those favoring B. Hence, this policy promotes alcohol consumption by non-drinkers no less that it promotes sobriety by drinkers.
Or am I getting too deep in the weeds here?
right? Sounds like something from a communist party
We'll have a DEI administrator look into doing that for you.
Until then, just carry on.
You mean DIE? :-D
Are there similar rules for weed and other substances of choice
Kale must be mandatory ;)
A lot of people don't drink. It's a nice courtesy. You know, you're allowed to be nice sometimes.
“We are just mandating with extreme penalties that you be a little bit nicer or we will destroy you. That’s all.”
Creepiest shit ever.
Has anyone ever been to an event where alcohol was served but non-alcoholic beverages weren't available?? Does "equally attractive" mean you must have snazzy mocktails or risk punishment and fines??
Sure, I’ve been to keggers where the non-alcoholic beverage came from the kitchen faucet. That’s all the EA meant in EANAB in the 1980s when I was at Stanford: you’ve got to have something besides water. So people made sure to put some Coke out, even though it wasn’t really policed.
It's just trying to foster an inclusive society. I don't think they would have punished over that. But trying to nudge the needle in that direction.
There is a CS Lewis line about how moralizing busybodies produce a tyranny much worse than robber barons.
While this is a small issue, obviously, if you don’t drink, and you feel the need to use authority to manipulate the people who do drink to accommodate you, you are a totally reprehensible piece of shit and you will bring this psychopathic narcissistic behavior to other areas of life that are more significant.
"Inclusive" is another one of those nice sounding words that is a stalking horse for totalitarianism.
What exactly is this utopia of an “inclusive society?” Specifically? What the hell does that even mean? In plain language?
It seems to me what’s plainly going on is Stanford hired a bunch of middlingly intelligent administrators who are bullying the students they are supposed to serve in an attempt to justify their paycheck. Stanford has 2,288 faculty and a whopping 15,750 administrators. It’s authoritarian style harassment under the thinly veiled guise of moral niceties like “inclusion” and “equity.” How incompetent are these “administrators” that they need 15K of them for a total student population, undergrad plus grad, of around 17K?
Your statement reminds me of Californians attempting to brag about their “great” and “progressive” state - one of the most racially unequal states in the country with a literacy rate towards the bottom and 15% lower than WV, the lowest rate of home ownership in the country, on the lower half of high school graduation rates, middle of the pack on rates of college graduates, by far the highest rate of homelessness in the country, terrible roads, and trash everywhere you walk in urban areas. It’s a joke to claim any of that represents any kind of actual progress. It’s also a joke to think having some rule to make sure there is some minimum quality of non-alcoholic beverages at a friggin frat party accomplishes anything. How infantile.
The suicidal soccer player was harassed over spilt coffee reported not by the "victim" but by an administrator. AN ADMINISTRATOR. The "victim" did not want her "punished", but the University put her diploma on "hold" the day before graduation...over COFFEE. Nudge the needle???? That is a sledgehammer.
Talk about reprehensible--that is it.
I'm a recovering addict/alcoholic. I would never expect someone who uses to not drink or do drugs in front of me. I find it annoying that someone who doesn't know me thinks that I am incapable of walking away.
The problem with being "nice, Nati, is that the left takes advantage of it, leaving you a sucker Kevin's approach is now the only way. Treat their lunacy with the withering contempt it deserves. Because, if you don't, it will only escalate and then you'll be left only with the alternative of physically hurting them in order to save society. And we are fast approaching that point.
I agree. A laugh, or yawn, at the antics seems to be very unsettling for them.
There's plenty of things I think is reasonable to push back on - were real harm is caused, or your rights are infringed. I don't really think this is either.
But did you try the laguanita non alcoholic IPA? It's almost as good.
If you think that the Star Chamber proceedings that these clowns run don't cause "real harm," think again. If you think that people who reflexively stomp on due process are normal or to be trusted, you will rue that someday. These people are totalitarian lunatics who hate liberty and decency. "Including" them in a decent society is a huge mistake.
The fact that their attempts to "prevent harm" are actually causing real harm is the central point of this article
No “real harm” has been caused? Dead kids, destroyed futures, administrators harassing kids just to harass them is no “real harm?” When your fellow leftists decide to eat you, which they most certainly will eventually, don’t be surprised when no one is there to support you. After all, if there is “no harm” in destroying others in the name of being “nice,” then there is “no harm” in destroying you for the same flimsy be. Leftists always end up eating their own. One day you will find yourself claiming you didn’t know, but you can never claim that you were not told.
If I do certain things and live until May 5th I'll be clean and sober for thirty years. I didn't drink and do drugs because I liked the taste, and living under a overpass on I-75 wasn't camping, no matter how I tried to convince myself and others.
Congrats, that's fantastic!
It's like Personal responsibility is a foreign concept
That was my point in another post. It's a no win. Young people were dying of alcohol poisoning, or at the very least considerably harming themselves by getting blackout drunk. A lot of people said "that's just kids being kid" but if having soda stops one kid from getting blackout drunk then it's good.
I'm a grown ass adult and I always provide alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks when I throw a party.
The ridiculous form to fill out and have approved is a bit much but I do support, for example, the resident advisor being required to make sure parties have some non-alcoholic drinks.
It's not only about addicts. My wife doesn't drink. Just doesn't like it. Some people are pregnant. It's not about 'oh we're afraid sober people can't handle the booze' it's more if people don't want to drink alcohol, they can have something else to drink.
LOL. That was the only thing I thought “I’m going to do that myself for my parties.”
There you go. Make your guests try and guess the acronym. Winner gets the world's last Zima. To be clear, I support anyone who doesn't want to drink. It's just like others have said, the fact that some 6 figure earning nincompoop got paid to make that up is absurd.
The reason houses are unaffordable is because the administrator who came up with that acronym is paid $210,000 per year.
Exactly
Power corrupts. Bureaucrats love their power and need to exercise it to legitimize their positions.
Community college. Learn a trade. Learn how to build things. How to fix the junk made in China
There is nothing "borderline" about their sociopathic bent.
You are right.
I’m having trouble squaring this account of Stanford’s harsh treatment with the contemporaneous account of the outrageous conduct of Stanford Law students against a federal judge invited to speak. Are there two separate ecosystems at this institution?
Actually it does makes sense...both situations spotlight a chilling degree of intolerance as well as appallingly sanctimonious attitudes. The ratio of bureaucrats--whoops, I mean administrators - to students made me think of Kafka. These folks have nothing to do but devise regulations and torture chambers. Finally it comes to mind that this is place where the parents who spawned Sam Bankman-Fried are employed as “professors”. Ugh. What a woke hole!
"woke hole" LOVE IT! Gonna use it every chance which will be all the damn time.
I'm all for safety on university campuses, but somehow, what started with 'free rides home and call phones on campus' then turned into hundreds of bloated, outsized bullshit administrators making huge salaries who then need to justify their existence. Sitting in their offices drafting up ridiculous polices to make sure everyone is WOKE, and then when there's a hint that someone MIGHT be offended by something, they sick their 'police' on them, send multipage letters, hire lawyers, blah blah...all to justify their existence. I am a believer in higher education (and it's NOT for everyone), but this stuff is complete CRAP.
Stanford has a total student population, undergrad plus grad, of around 17,000. They have around 2,300 professors to teach those students and 15,750 administrators to harass the students. That is a terrible, institution destroying, ratio.
It truly makes me sick.
And don’t forget their involvement with the USG in stifling internet speech..
The DIEvy League is fully demoralized: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-get-into-harvard-part-3
It's okay to behave badly in the name of social justice.
Human nature is human nature. This is a fundamental postulate of Conservative--or what I prefer to call genuinely Liberal, Progressive--thinking. This is not to deny the improvability and perfectability of human kind, but rather to point out the obvious FACT that we cannot start anywhere but where we ARE; and that no human social system can rise above the sum of its parts. There is no Society. There are no Societal Norms. There are decisions reached by consensus after honest and open and mutually respectful negotiation--which is the authentically Liberal ideal--or there are decisions imposed by small cabals infested with the same sanctimonious bitchiness and cruelty that has animated every episode of mass sadism in human history, from the Salem (and other) Witch Trials (currently relevant even on this website) to the Inquisition, to Tamerlane's murder of 60,000 people during the sack of Bagdad.
I have in fact argued at length that the Marquis de Sade--who by the way did in fact sit in the Far Left part of the French Revolutionary Assembly, which is where we get these terms from--is the patron saint of the Left. The Left is about callous cruelty and human recividism and lapse into bestially primitive behavior, and that's all he liked to write about.
Here is a link to that piece, in the off chance someone has the time and interest to read it. It's also in my view an interesting and enlightening summary of little known facts about the Vietnam War: https://goodnessmovement.com/files/Download/cultural%20sadeism.pdf
If you are an honest Liberal, you oppose what Stanford and schools like it are doing.
And I say all this in the near certainly your comment was sarcastic. Please don't prove that assumption wrong!!!!
Thomas Sowell referred to what you’re mentioning as the “constrained” vs the “unconstrained” visions of human nature.
The abandonment of Truth; and in the case you speak of, simple and known truth that human nature is inherently selfish, savage and self-serving; has led to making up all kinds of Utopian "isms" that deny the truth about how awful people are. All of them are based on a fantasy that humans are inherently good. The results are in. Denying reality is, was, and always will be a form of insanity that leads to extreme emotional instability, suffering, violence, chaos and death.
Interesting and little known to who exactly? I can't honestly say it even reminded of anything I'd forgotten! :-) There are somethings that surpasseth understanding. The Cold War is one of them. Given the significant and frankly laughable overmatch that has become apparent to all since Kyiv not falling on Day 1, one has to wonder why the charade? Charlie don't surf mainly 'cos he be dead way afore he sight de beach. If the NVA was at Parrot Beak; it couldn't very well be in Hanoi at the same time. If the NKA's "equipment" was even more craptastic than the Republican Guard's; what was stopping RoK trops rocking up on the the Yalu using no more than a corps? The last hundred years plus seems to be mostly bullshit.
True. If MacArthur had got his way, not only would we have no problem with China, but Tibet would be free and something like 50 million Chinese would not have died horrible deaths, or so I would guess; and of course add to that the freedom of North Korea and 5-10 million lives there.
All I am sure about is that SOMETHING large is going on invisibly that I don’t understand.
Yes. 100% sarcasm! I appreciate your thoughtful comment. :)
Just like you can call black people the n-word and an Uncle Tom... provided they’re politically conservative, of course
Think BLM. Antifa
Yes, woke is right and anything else is wrong. Simple concept from simple minded people. No logic or intelligence required to follow.
They're the same.
Both cases are administrators seeking to impose their worldview on the university. And that worldview is best described as some sort of safety mindset - you can't say things that could "harm" anyone, you can't have parties that might "harm" anyone, you can't even have a band that's offensive and causes "harm".
It's a sort of maternal authoritarianism that seems to be all the rage right now. I really hope Stanford gets over it, and soon.
Lawrence, neither Stanford nor any other American university is going to get over its woke madness...the Left spent decades putting this apparatus in place and is not voluntarily going to give it up, ever. The problem is systemic, and will only be rooted out by a complete overhaul of that system.
De-fund, dismantle, and reimagine higher ed--now.
That's certainly a concern.
But I also have some faith that the market will take care of this. Take this article for example - some number of aspiring Stanford students are going to stumble upon this, realize that Stanford has embraced maternal authoritarianism that sucks the enjoyment out of college, and go somewhere else for their education. And/or alumni like myself are going to see this situation and pull back on donations.
I personally think it's a phase that is nearing its end - maybe I'm too optimistic but I would hope to see some voluntary pullback on overly invasive college administrations in the near future.
Lawrence, as someone speaking to you from within the belly of the beast that is today's university, I can guarantee that this "phase" is nowhere near ending--in fact, it continues to get stronger. This is not a passing fad, it is the woke agenda in action and will only end from massive outside pressure. That starts with alumni such as yourself ceasing donations to their schools and demanding a return of past gifts on the grounds that they were fraudulently obtained, i.e., you thought you were donating to an educational institution, not a woke dictatorship.
No kidding, it's that bad. And this from someone who spent decades as a Left-Liberal.
Thank you for the honesty. So we either purge the poison in existing institutions or start new ones.
Have you come across any articles or books addressing this choice, how has this been dealt with in the past ? ? ?
It appears to me that some in corporate America are getting the message and engaging in some reforms away from their far left behavior. But this is clearly being market driven. With colleges and universities, the manner in which they are structured creates and very deep and very wide mote between these institutions and the market place. So they are far more insulated.
Thanks for your response, Brian. A couple of points: how to dismantle and reform higher ed? Not sure there are books on that topic just yet. Someone needs to write it. Chris Rufo is on the case, along with a few others.
For a long long time, the assumption was that higher ed was not the "real world," and that any mischief it was causing ideologically would be cured once students hit the job mareket. But in an age of "woke" capitalism in which HR is dominated by Leftist DEI coordinators, I'm not so sure that is true anymore.
But the rapidly escalating cost of the higher ed charade, along with its rapidly diminishing ROI in the job market, may force change, eventually.
Lady in the Lake, there is no contradiction here...the Stanford enforcement apparatus is used only against its presumed ideological enemies and will overlook anything done by its allies. It's one, corrupt ecosytem.
👏👏👏
It's all the same. Both sets of behavior come from the same half baked place.
Lady in the Lake -
The two incidents are inseparable. It's the same ideological lane, no one can step outside of it, neither students, faculty, or the administrative drones who run the place. And for most of them - it's total buy in. And if you don't buy in, the slap comes down hard. Basically, it's conformity writ large - think of progressive storm troopers goose stepping over the cliff.
Students and some faculty opposing the very invitation of the judge to speak is an example of how deep into the mire of groupthink they are; the events described in this essay is an example of the administration's attempt to keep them there..
Yes, and an extreme abuse of power. When a law school dean tells students -- strongly encourages students -- to leave the room, even a student who disagrees with the dean will do so. To remain in the room would be seen as going against the dean, and that could very well result in the "slap" that Lee Morris wrote about and jeopardize the student's academic career and professional prospects. It's insidious. And the fact that Stanford Law has not fired that abusive dean says a lot about Stanford.
What they both have in common is an egregious abuse of power by bureaucrats with a hugely offensive ideology of totalitarianism and intolerance.
It’s the same eco system. A part of it imposes it’s beliefs on students around behavior. The other attacks those it disagrees with to force compliance. Same disease.
I was thinking the exact same thing
Difference: Here, the cases involve the university targeting individual students.
There are currently 613 students at Stanford Law & the dean estimated over 100 students were present at the Judge Duncan shout-down.
Perhaps the leg work required to identify each offending students and their individual offenses is not something that appeals to Stanford's violation "investigators".
Further, say Stanford identified & disciplined each offender, what percent of the current student body would then have the Judge Duncan incident & their role in it marked forever on their official Stanford records?
I suspect Stanford Law would prefer not to remind potential employers of the Judge Duncan incident every time an application from one of the disciplined students crosses their desks.
It's one thing for Stanford to go after individuals it can tell itself are one-off bad apples and quite another for it to mark in black & white forever a whole bushel as rotten.
"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.)"
There's your problem. I'm sure 8,000 of those administrators are not needed for the educational goals of Stanford. They are there for cultural reasons, i.e. social justice warriors. They have to find enough incidents to justify their huge salaries.
And we wonder why college is so expensive.
I think closer to 9900 of them are useless.
“Over 10,000” is actually 15,750 administrators for a total student population of 17,326 students combined undergrad and grad. That’s a whole lot of incompetence and an environment ripe for harassment in the name of justifying a paycheck. For comparison Stanford employs around 2,300 professors to educate the kids.
Right direction, wrong magnitude: 9990, or maybe just a few more.
The DIEvy league is fully demoralized: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-get-into-harvard-part-3
I think 100%.
You said, not I. But you will also notice that I am not disagreeing with you.
Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach become administrators
…aka “grifters.”
Not necessarily.
In England the punchline is "... work for Ofsted"
Nasty bits of work. Perfidious Albion and all that.
Yes, the worthless administrators must justify their existence. So they create crimes against their desired cultural norms. Insanity really.
Our institutions are corrupt and, even worse in some ways, mediocre.
I joined the military out of high-school, even when a lot of people (including family) were trying to convince me to get into a good school.
I’ve never regretted my decision and after reading articles like this, I think I’m vindicated.
On the same token, though, it’s also been difficult to connect with most people my age. I try to relate with them, but I realize that our experiences are so utterly dissimilar that we may as well have grown up in different countries.
The military today seems equally fucked up though. Mark Milley looks perpetually like he's a deer caught in the headlight, and under him and Biden recruits being trained on pronouns and trans ideology takes priority over all else.
Too true, man
I was active from 2015-2019 before switching to the reserves. Even in my time, I’ve noticed a lot of cultural changes to the military and none of it for the better.
Sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs Ben. Being the sheep dog can be lonely. But the alternative? Ugh.
“They don’t really care about your kid. . . “
It’s about the money, period.
And most of the money isn't coming from the students anymore. It comes from the federal government in the form of loans to the students (which the students are on the hook for, but which the school gets up front regardless of educational outcome) and research grants. They also have huge endowments which mitigate the need to take in funds every year in the form of tuition. With a 4% acceptance rate, they also have a lot more kids to go through when they toss out the ones they no longer have use for.
Everything government touches turns to crap.
It's a weird situation where the educational systems don't actually need the students to get the money. And they certainly don't need to actually provide those students with an education. Totally messed up incentives.
Exactly!
The DIEvy League is fully demoralized: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-get-into-harvard-part-3
That’s right - places like Stanford, the Ivy League are just ‘big businesses’ - STOP DONATING $$$ to these places. They already have too much money - enough to employ 10k bureaucrats- STOP DONATING now.
My exact thought when I read that.
“‘Hey, can I talk to this attorney and tell them I drank a beer, or am I going to get my visa revoked?’”
————————————————————-
Imagine being a member of MS13 with a smuggling operation based in El Paso and you’re reading this. You would never stop laughing.
Of course they can’t read, but you know what I mean.
Well Stanford would translate this to all languages and hire culturally appropriate translators and offer you a safe room for this...and some time off to process, cry and then take 6 months off because you are triggered and traumatized.
Stanford would make sure that they referred to you as Latinx in the letter revoking your visa.
Psst. The cartels operate in SF too.
This is why student loans should not be forgiven. Too many administrators being paid out of that tuition. Colleges need to be reformed more than banks or corporations.
Agreed.
And all we have to do is allow student loans to be forgiven in bankruptcy. That would massively decrease the amount of student loans given (an unemployed 19-year-old has little credit), which would stem the inflow of loan dollars into university tuition. The result would be Universities having to get rid of a good chunk of their administrative overhead.
This is actually pretty simple to fix, just requires some amount of political will.
100% correct, Lawrence.
Current law disallows debtors of student loans to have their debts discharged through bankruptcy. If they were, not only would (ex) students get a pathway to financial freedom, they would have the leverage to negotiate lower amounts and better terms with their creditors (mostly the federal government). And as you state, with the higher amount of risk, loans in the future would be fewer, the amounts less, the lower the amount of students, the dismissal of bogus administration bloat in major universities, and voila - lower tuition fees. Much lower.
Win. Win. Win.
That does provide a solution for those genuinely unable to pay versus those who do not want to pay.
Precisely. Personally, I owe more than my net worth in student loans, largely thanks to the evil practice of capitalizing interest (done only on student loans).
I wouldn't have applied for those loans to begin with if I hadn't believed that my salary as a university professor (the educational course I was pursuing) would cover them. But I found out too late that I would never be a university professor, with what later became known as Wokeness being used as a shibboleth to keep out the unindoctrinated.
Our income is not remotely sufficient to pay my student loans. If it were possible to discharge them in bankruptcy, we would do that in a heartbeat.
I understand and as many of your comments as I have seen on.here I did not realize your predicament. I sometimes take comfort that my people have been subjected to persecution before and if they survived, and I am proof they did, I can too. But it is hard to stomach isn't it?
It is hard to stomach. And it's one of the reasons that I, like our nation's Founders, do not trust the concentration of too much power into too few hands.
Although, of course, the primary reason I don't trust too-powerful government is the active persecution of my own people (Latter-day Saints) by the U.S. government in the 19th and early 20th century. And we are far from the only religious group that knows how seriously (not!) our government, in practice, takes the First Amendment.
With the right messaging I think the too much power in the hands of too few is the path to unity. Religious persecution has driven people to move throughout history. But now there is nowhere to go. At least for the moment.
It also requires having a conscious, something that seems lacking in college administrators.
Not more than bank or corporations but, along with. They are all equally corrupt.
Colleges should refund the tuition.
Consumer litigation?
This and thousands of other reasons loans should not be forgiven. Forgiving loans teaches people exactly what?
Forgiving loans isn't meant to teach, it is meant to give borrowers a break from the financial corruption of colleges.
And to punish those smart enough to avoid the scam to pay the bill instead.
No thanks.
This is very true IMO. Otherwise the students will not wake up to what has been done to them.
Between Stanford’s list of unacceptable words, the suppression of free speech by a federal judge invited to speak, the Presidents falsified research investigation and this article, Stanford is losing a lot of respect in my opinion.
And the SBF parents. If you have not already, check out mama's politicsl activity and then rethink those FTX "donations". It lays bare the capture of government by those who would be our masters.
All the members of my family went to Stanford. Obviously, we were a Stanford family. This article is very disheartening.
Good-looking young guy. Son of immigrants. Such a hard worker. Gets himself into Stanford to study philosophy? Immerses himself in fraternity life? Pointlessness ensues. Gee, who could have seen that coming?
This whole boring, useless story means nothing to those of us who chose not to give our money to "elite" universities filled with irrational leftists.
Philosophy from a good school can be extremely useful training for how to think analytically - if you’re thinking of law or business management, lobbying and policy making, consulting, or a variety of careers that require big picture thinking. You do need to round out the major courses with courses from your area of interest and have a plan post grad plan, network and take good internships, but I’ve known many highly successful philosophy majors (from good schools).
The DIEvy League is fully demoralized: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-get-into-harvard-part-3
Yeh, his choice of majoring in philosophy struck me as a worthless endeavor.
Don’t a lot of philosophy and history majors go to law school?
Some to law school, yes. Philosophy helps them learn how to think.
Some go onto worthless social science endeavors too.
But if you go to a school with a worthless or evil philosophy, your philosophy degree is going to be worthless or evil.
Not all philosophies are created equal.
A Philosophy major offers the highest income prospects among all "humanities" degrees and, particularly above the median, surpasses many science/engineering majors—which isn't surprising to me, since philosophy is the bedrock of all intellectual inquiry, science included.
There are lots of potential sources on this, but this one has a handy chart:
https://dailynous.com/2019/01/03/philosophy-majors-make-money-majors-humanities-field/
Not all philosophies are created equal. Some people who called themselves “lovers of wisdom” gained prominence for appealingly deranged misuse of brain cells, people who were nothing but despicable scumbags whose sick thoughts created havoc in our world to this day.
I’m not talking about “philosophies.” I’m talking about philosophy—the rigorous study and application of logical reasoning.
The foundational failure of our incredibly screwed-up educational system is the failure to teach philosophy.
…but he’s not the “son of immigrants.” He’s the grandson of immigrants, semi at that. There was no point in even bringing that quality up.
The rush to judgement seems to be a key part of college campuses today. Meyer should have been seen as innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, like the actual criminal court system. Instead we have these Title IX courts that loosen the standards for proof of wrongdoing. Stanford is scared to have another Brock Turner, but that doesn't mean we should just abandon due process. In fact, there was just a recent case where a Stanford student was charged with making false rape allegations against a fellow student: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/stanford-university-employee-charged-making-2-false-sexual-assault-all-rcna75264
That is a very disturbing news report. The fact that the student organization makes a statement that 40% of "women identified" students will suffer a sexual assault is outrageous. The administration has obviously created a climate of pure fear, where panic is normalized and students are terrorized.
I think a lot of the types who gravitate to schools like Stanford LIKE the idea that a huge percentage will suffer sexual assault. It makes them feel oppressed, and therefore worthy of . . . something. Also, sexual assault is probable a very broad term for them, and may mean getting an unwanted kiss, or a cat-call, or a pinch on the bum, or morning-after regret for a consensual romp. Not really a big deal. I'd rather deal with any of those than an emailed accusation from an administrator . . .
I stick with evidence and good science. As someone that has done social science research, I know that the studies that get the most attention generally aren't well done. There also is a lot of mixing of various issues; rape, coercion, stalking, media assault, or incapacitation, etc. There is a department of justice meta-study that suggests the total of all the above is 11.2%. It also says the smallest part of that is violent sexual assault (rape) and the largest part is incapacitation. Not clear exactly how incapacitation is operationalized, but in some studies if the women has drunk an alcoholic beverage or taken drugs, then they are considered incapacitated. The actual data is not publicly posted or is behind a paywall. We know the FBI statistics for that age group is .6% for the sexual assault category. Any study that is far above that number is suspect or so widening the category to make it useless. When activist put out a figure like the usual 20% or in this case 40% no one really believes them as they shouldn't. That blunts their message at best. All that does is create fear and hysteria among some. It also points the finger at males on campus and tries to paint them as dangerous and aggressive. You wonder why males are not showing up on campus when that is how they are portrayed???
Very mysterious. I don't trust these studies either, but if sexual assault is defined to include any unwanted touching of a sexual nature, I find it hard to believe that it is as low as even 40%. When I think of all the times I've been groped, pinched, jumped on and pinned down . . . and I've never even been drunk or drugged up outside of surgery! It seems more likely that 90 percent of women have experienced sexual assault. At least 90 percent.
"You wonder why males are not showing up on campus when that is how they are portrayed???"
Bingo...we have A Winner.
Here is the problem. We (people on the Right & The Awake Left) have The Facts. They (the Progressive Left...which Is The Left today) have The Narrative.
"It makes them feel oppressed, and therefore worthy of . . . something."
I'm thinking.....Kick In The Ass?
I have a small question. Would you send your daughter to a place where she gad a 40% chance of being sexual assaulted? Because I damn sure wouldn't.
I've seen statistics like this for some time. They were blown out of the water.
Of course not as no parent would. That just demonstrates that no one believes these stats as they shouldn't.
I would definitely send my daughter to a school with a 40% sexual assault rate, but I'd rather send her to a school with a much higher rate of sexual assault, now that I've looked into the definition and considered my own life experiences. We're talking gropes, unwanted kisses, pinches, even unwanted hugs, etc. I tried to count the number of times I've experienced "sexual assault" but I'm not a numbers woman and I lost count. I can say that of all the high stress situations I've faced, only three involved sexual assault. Bullying by other women is a much greater problem, IMO. What kind of environment would it be for so few women to be assaulted? The young fellows must be terrified to do anything! Or there are police everywhere! But my daughter knows not to get drunk, and how to yell "No!" very assertively, and how to sock a man in the head and kick him in the balls if she needs to. And I doubt she'd be terribly perturbed by a guy grabbing her ass. I worry much more about my son facing false accusations than my daughter getting groped. It's awfully sweet of you guys to worry about your daughters, though. Lucky girls. But you can't really protect them, so I'd recommend focusing on making them strong.
"Bullying by other women is a much greater problem, IMO."
Most of the woke cult appears to me to be primarily about privileged white women bullying other white women and men. I think that it will increasingly become that way. The polls, however, show that the percentage of young people who support woke ideology and abusive behaviors increases with each generation.
LOL..........very good................love the attitude!
I always wonder what type of world these folks live in where young people act appropriately at all times and no young men or women push the envelopes,
I think a lot of the types who gravitate to schools like Stanford LIKE the idea that a huge percentage will suffer sexual assault. It makes them feel oppressed, and therefore worthy of . . . something. Also, sexual assault is probable a very broad term for them, and may mean getting an unwanted kiss, or a cat-call, or a pinch on the bum, or morning-after regret for a consensual romp. Not really a big deal. I'd rather deal with any of those than an emailed accusation from an administrator . . .
I heard that 40% figure recently, as well. I think it was Jordon Peterson's podcast, during which he made the great point that if the percentage was that high, no one would apply to that school out of fear of either being raped (females) or being accused of rape (males).
This sort of thing has happened so many times in the last couple of years, when I read a story like this, I Assume it's a Hoax. Because very often it is.
It's important insight that the Ivy League leaders don't believe in constitutional rights in their own domain.
“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.”
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Decker’s main mistake was not being a transvestite. All of this could have been avoided if he had just dressed more sexy.
Nah. No need to dress sexy. He already got long hair. Just badly apply some makeup and join the women's lacrosse team will do.
You’re on a roll, Kevin.
Brought to you by the creators of the much more disturbing Virality Project. It's shocking how gleefully the youth of the world narc on one another and themselves. We're mere months away from creating the "Stasi class" and the Ivies seem to be the ones on the assembly line building their best version of the T-54 - the perfect machine to combat discourse and dissent.
Yep. The Virality Project is covered at length in the Twitter Files. ...
https://reason.com/2023/03/17/researchers-pressured-twitter-to-treat-covid-19-facts-as-misinformation/
In essence, Stanford joined forces with the government's surveillance state to censor free speech on Social Media. Couple that with Stanford's IT department and its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) last year. I took a satirical look at the EHLI in December.
https://jimgeschke.substack.com/p/satire-stanfords-list-of-no-nos
Stanford IT eventually disbanded the initiative.
The story (above) doesn't even address the DEI impact at Stanford. Modern day Torquemadas.
Hmmm. Virality Project, when what we really need right now is a Virility Project
The virility project is desperately overdue.
Virality Project - where academics and government join forces to censor speech they deem unacceptable. Chilling.
"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"
Stanford's mission is indoctrination not teaching and other elite colleges and universities are following suit. .
It seems like Stanford has a math problem...a 1:1 ratio of bureaucrats to students. It sounds as though they have even turned the students on each other. This has true totalitarian overtones. No wonder the culture of these Ivy type institutions in in the proverbial toilet. My top of the top student is thriving in the honors college at an SEC school where she is learning AND living her best life. This article fills me with gratitude that she had the common sense to put the experience of her college years over the prestige of a piece of paper. It is time to clean house, Stanford! Your “harm reduction” isn’t working. Shame on you.
Much of the admin burden at universities has nothing to do with students, especially at schools that do a lot of research. That said, the bloat is real.
It is in the SEC too. Not as bad maybe but it is there.
Fraternities and sororities are ridiculous and terrible institutions, and have no place in education. Alcohol and’ drinking culture’ could / should (but won’t) be rethought. Same thing with pot, legalized gambling (and illegal gambling too).
Mixed into the ridiculous charade that is education / ‘higher education’ - it doesn’t matter what the proportions are, no matter what, current education is a farce. And yeah, no fooling -
“It’s unethical to base your kid’s life on getting into places like this because at the end of the day, they don’t really care about your kid,” he said. “They never did.”
That’s right, ‘they never did’
My kid is using his time at [the flagship of one of the top 3 state university systems] to use judo within the administrative department of motor vehicles which is his university - to study with the few great teachers not yet canceled there, or replaced with grunt level labor, ie adjuncts who are rightly angry about having to be strippers at the same time as teachers to pay their loans down. But he’s ready, and we, his parents are too, the MOMENT he gets any kind of sanction, to tell them to f*ck off, and for him to just leave. He already is a strong worker who can pull down a grown *ss salary, as his former boss puts it, and he’s at the university to try to get some more background in the disgraced fields within humanities: classics, econ, literature, etc; to so, he has to wade through classes that say they are one thing, eg Russian literature but end up being gender studies/trauma only (and i have the course descriptions to back it up). And when he does exit, prob w/out a degree, he’s ready to freelance, to start his own thing, to NEVER be the wage slave that the indentured education industry puts them on the meat conveyor belt for.
Higher ed is busted, and has been for a long time.
It was never there to do anything but give that credential.
That credential is no longer useful, ie as a certificate to ‘get money’, ie ‘if u cn do this, u cn get a gd job’ like the NYC subway ad used to say.
But i’m glad higher ed and all this fakery around drinking & etc still exists, because it lowers lowers lowers the bar for my kids and others like them.
Stanford/Harvard got us some great stuff, but it also got us worshipping psychopaths like Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg, whose revolutionary tech companies, solved what problems again? Stack those against Edison, Ford, HP, etc. (and yeah Edison and Ford, they too not the greatest of humans, but that’s why i ain’t a columnist)