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Comment by humanistbot | Hacker News Reader

I read the whole article, and it seems to be entirely about the push to remove Greek / Frat / Sorority life from campus and convert these houses to more traditional dorms.

I know that some people who got a lot out of Greek Life equate it with Social Life, but most college students don't pledge/rush and it doesn't get in the way of social life. There are plenty of ways to socialize without frats.

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The point being made is not that the Greek system is being pushed out and that worsens the social atmosphere. It's that Stanford is losing its atypical social community (which includes not only the Greek system but also co-ops), and that will hurt the uniqueness and advantage of Stanford as a breeding ground for interesting thinkers.

Not to mention these are just symptoms, there are more problematic things that are not ostensible.

Wait, people see Stanford as a hotbed of interesting thinkers? I didn't think that was their brand.

In the 2000s you constantly saw the Google connection talked about. NBC even made a TV show, Chuck, centered around a guy who got kicked out of Stanford unfairly so Stanford itself is a huge part of the show.

No - but it once was.

I can't speak for Stanford, but Santa Clara University has gone through a similar transition. It started while I was there ('11-15), where the "party street" was full of frats, sororities, and just loosely themed houses. The school and the police really started to shut down parties on that street hard my second year there. What used to be just every house open to anyone became closed doors, you had to know someone who actually lived there.

I think the school has started to buy the actual property on that street now to control it more.

I won't apologize for the behavior of the frats, some of them did some truly awful stuff, and I never was a part of any of them, but I watched the university expand from educational to trying to manage the entire student experience.

Most of the houses affected weren't Greek. Many were themed houses oriented around a particular experience: an Italian dorm, a Slavic dorm, a... druggie co-op, for lack of a better phrasing.

Sounds like it used to be more... hmm... diverse?

One thing that wasn't clear to me was whether most students can still choose who they live with in their sophomore, junior and senior years.

It sounded like perhaps the answer was "no." The author describes all his friends living in different bureaucratic "neighborhoods," neighbors not knowing each other, and seniors wondering whether anyone would find their bodies.

To me this, as much as the loss of Greek and co-op housing, would have completely destroyed my university experience. Yes, it would absolutely have turned into a soulless triangle of dorm -> lecture -> dining hall.

It isn't, but even if it were, the fact that alternatives exist isn't an argument for getting rid of something.

This seems to be like "they're removing greek/frat/sororities, so they're coming for co-ops".

That said, you know, you're going to a rich private university with other rich kids, what do you expect the administration to do?

It was a rich private school for over a hundred years without the administration acting this way. You might expect the status quo, not that they would suddenly get a massive case of bureaucratitis.

The article well documents that they have come for the coops. It’s not speculation.

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