Stanford's War on Social Life | Hacker News Reader

Stanford's War on Social Life

palladiummag.com

19 pointsJasonFruit13 comments

Great article. Thanks.

This article seems focused mainly on Stanford's apparent efforts to reduce the importance of the the fraternity and sorority system. It casts this as an effort by "bureaucrats" to stymie "natural social expression" but that seems disingenuous.

Is the Greek system really a natural form of social expression? I can't speak to Stanford, but many universities provide lots of official support to fraternity and sorority chapters as well, including governance and valuable real estate. Additionally, national chapters and wealthy alumni provide political power, liability insurance and capital contributions.

Maybe the university is taking a hard look at the pros and cons of continuing to support that system, and pulling back.

When I went to school, I did plenty of "creative" things without the need for the Greek system.

If normal students were getting into juvenile, weird shit, the frat houses and sororities were turning those activities up to 11 and sprinkling in group coercion dynamics.

As I mentioned in my other comment, the author of the article didn't really stop to consider whether any of this stuff that was squeezed out by the bureaucracy was actually beneficial. Do most students even prefer a campus where frat boys set their houses on fire? What about the person living next door?

When I was in school, Greek life seemed weird and excessive. I bet a lot of students on campus feel that way.

It's pretty much all independent housing. For instance, Stanford's also taking aim at on-campus co-ops with this policy; collective vegetarian meals and nude parties are, presumably, also evils that must be extinguished.

At no point did this article address the elephant in the room: that all the example activities that it yearns for are potentially disruptive and damaging to other students on campus who might not want to deal with frat houses doing things like fucking around with bulldozers on campus or setting their house on fire.

This article yearns for the days of the casual alcoholism of playing "beer die" at all hours of the day, but to me it fails to answer the question of "Why?" Why are all these activities considered to be an integral part of developing creativity?

It's equating creativity and free thought to a bunch of really juvenile activities, but because it's Stanford that means it was actually really classy and intellectual, unlike those state schools where setting a couch on fire is just what you do after a football win.

The other vibe I get from this article is that it's written by a former frat boy upset that the next generation of frat boys can't get girls to hang around naked by slapping a "co-op community" label on a frat house.

Why does the fun of others send you into rage?

"Liberty ends where the next person's liberty begins," as the saying goes.

If you think I am "in a rage," you are mistaken.

These are all good things. School isn’t about social life it’s about learning and work.

So tell us more! Work Life balance? Do you want to keep work separate to life as well? Keep work at work and socialise with all your friends you made in.... summer camp?

oh cmon, eliminating social spaces that help you endure the difficulties of an engineering degree is just another nail in the coffin

Kids these days. When I was in engineering school we didn’t have fancy “social spaces.” We had the computer lab. Maybe a dorm lounge room. This is actually renovated since I went there: https://housing.gatech.edu/building/caldwell.

Heavy drinking and day-long parties are famously restful.

Your college experience sounds pretty terrible. Some of us were able to have a great social life while learning

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