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I can see why there's a push to eliminate Greek life given all the unfortunate events associated with it. But I'm extremely confused this example: > One such c

I can see why there's a push to eliminate Greek life given all the unfortunate events associated with it. But I'm extremely confused this example: > One such case was the end of Outdoor House, an innocuous haven on the far side of campus for students who liked hiking. The official explanation from Stanford for eliminating the house was that the Outdoor theme “fell short of diversity, equity and inclusion expectations.” They can't even organize around a common interest unless it passes some bureaucrat's standard of diversity?

sandworm101 4y ago
>unless it passes some bureaucrat's standard of diversity? That is what was said, but not why the school is attacking student organizations. Any student organization presents a liability to the school. An outdoor club, something with the schools name on it where student go out and teach each other how to ski on glaciers or climb rocks? The schools are listening to their lawyers, their insurance schemes. They are against any and all groups that operate without direct school management. I was a member of the VOC, UBC's outdoor club and an organization that predates the school itself. Every year I am surprised that the school hasn't moved to to shut them down. https://www.ubc-voc.com/tripagenda/upcoming.php https://www.ubc-voc.com/tripagenda/upcoming.php
- majormajor 4y ago
  Go a layer deeper. Liability to whom? Blame the lawyers and blame the parents both. The lawyers part... that's a broader issue with how the American legal system is intentionally adversarial. The parents part... that could be changed more easily, but reducing risk is absolutely what they're pushing for currently. So, short of not depending on parents' money... which is of course tough at an expensive private school, but also even tough at public schools that are no longer even close to as affordable as they used to be too... what ya gonna do?
- hooloovoo_zoo 4y ago
  I don’t think so. Stanford has several suicides a year. Any theoretical liability from and outdoor accident is a rounding error on their total liability for student deaths, morbid though it is.
  - ehvatum 4y ago
    The consequences to the university of being labeled a white supremacist institution would be far greater than a few student deaths per year. Stanford’s reputation would never recover, if that label adhered. The university would shrink to nothing and vanish. Not one whiff of a hint of liability to being labeled racist in favor of white people can be tolerated. If that means a total ban on supporting outdoorsmanship, so be it. The university survives. For that reason, fighting white supremacy is the keys to the kingdom for despot administrators, and the definition of white supremacy is undergoing an accelerating expansion that will soon extend past the edges of the universe.
zdragnar 4y ago
I've seen a quiet but persistent thought pattern that outdoor / nature activities- hiking, camping, etc- are endemically white and that any attempt to organize around it without making overt, aggressive attempts to include minorities is a sign of white supremacy. This is the main thrust of the "anti-racist" movement. If you aren't talking about being inclusive in every aspect of any social interaction you partake in, you are automatically racist. Just wanting to be around other people who like hiking and camping makes you a white supremacist.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Nature activities are "endemically white"? Is this a serious comment? Even if we buy into the ridiculous naturalistic fallacy here, it's completely ahistorical: our modern history is primarily the history of white countries colonizing and industrializing nonwhite countries and alienating them from nature in the process. Suburban white America is arguably even more alienated from nature than city dwellers, in its redefinition of "nature" to be curated dogwalking trails and monoculture lawns.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    Leaving aside the inanity of zdragnar's broad-bush painting of "anti-racism," it's worth noting here that this is somewhat falling victim to some historical propaganda of other races being "inferior" - e.g. "we're bringing civilization to the savages." There were pretty substantial urban civilizations in Central America and around the Indian Ocean that Europeans (Portugal, first, I believe) waged war on early in the colonial era for reasons like religion, prior to industrialization, and this had a lot to do with shifting the economic center of gravity of the world to Europe from Asia in the first place. (At a meta-level, this is the sort of thing - pointing out bits of history that often get left out of Euro-centric history lessons in the US - that my understanding of "anti-racist" would include; not stopping attendance in a hiking club... any school administrator who believes a hiking club couldn't be compatible with diversity is wrong... but the existence of wrong people who think they're fighting racism is not the same thing as it being wrong to fight racism.)
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>They can't even organize around a common interest unless it passes some bureaucrat's standard of diversity? At what point do we admit that the people who cried slippery slope and said this power would just be used as a cudgel for their bureaucrats to enforce whims they could not otherwise justify were right?
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Does it matter? We’re at least a generation away from the pendulum swinging back.
  - xbar 4y ago
    Have the narratives that would permit swinging back completely paralyzed the students who would want to swing back, along with those who are in control? If so, we are probably 2 generations away. Long-gone graduates mourn the loss, but I think the student body is cloaked in the righteousness of their culture-less confinement.
II2II 4y ago
> They can't even organize around a common interest unless it passes some bureaucrat's standard of diversity? It depends upon how the members behave, rather than the common interest they are supposedly organized around. I remember student organizations from my days on campus that sensible students wouldn't associate themselves with. The stated interest may have been some form of outdoor activity, but they were better known for their hard partying. Hard partying being an euphemism in this case. They would fall short of diversity, equity, and inclusion since their riskier activities (activities that had nothing to do with their stated purpose) would drive away those who weren't interested, couldn't afford to take the risk, or were the target of the risk. For those who think it is worse today than it was 25 years ago, I somehow doubt it. Though, perhaps, that doubt is borne from a hope that it isn't any worse. Crimes as extreme as sexual assault were real, and that was at a time when something that should be taken seriously was taken less seriously. Then there was the common stuff such as vandalism and other property crimes. It happened then and it happens now. The article makes it sound like the university is being far too heavy handed in its treatment of these student organizations. Perhaps they are. On the other hand, the author is ignoring some of the darker aspects of student life. (I also cringe at the use of student life in this discussion since a good portion of students, if not the vast majority, avoided it because they knew it was wrong.)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

sandworm101 4y ago

>unless it passes some bureaucrat's standard of diversity? That is what was said, but not why the school is attacking student organizations. Any student organization presents a liability to the school. An outdoor club, something with the schools name on it where student go out and teach each other how to ski on glaciers or climb rocks? The schools are listening to their lawyers, their insurance schemes. They are against any and all groups that operate without direct school management. I was a member of the VOC, UBC's outdoor club and an organization that predates the school itself. Every year I am surprised that the school hasn't moved to to shut them down. https://www.ubc-voc.com/tripagenda/upcoming.php https://www.ubc-voc.com/tripagenda/upcoming.php

majormajor 4y ago
Go a layer deeper. Liability to whom? Blame the lawyers and blame the parents both. The lawyers part... that's a broader issue with how the American legal system is intentionally adversarial. The parents part... that could be changed more easily, but reducing risk is absolutely what they're pushing for currently. So, short of not depending on parents' money... which is of course tough at an expensive private school, but also even tough at public schools that are no longer even close to as affordable as they used to be too... what ya gonna do?
hooloovoo_zoo 4y ago
I don’t think so. Stanford has several suicides a year. Any theoretical liability from and outdoor accident is a rounding error on their total liability for student deaths, morbid though it is.
- ehvatum 4y ago
  The consequences to the university of being labeled a white supremacist institution would be far greater than a few student deaths per year. Stanford’s reputation would never recover, if that label adhered. The university would shrink to nothing and vanish. Not one whiff of a hint of liability to being labeled racist in favor of white people can be tolerated. If that means a total ban on supporting outdoorsmanship, so be it. The university survives. For that reason, fighting white supremacy is the keys to the kingdom for despot administrators, and the definition of white supremacy is undergoing an accelerating expansion that will soon extend past the edges of the universe.

zdragnar 4y ago

I've seen a quiet but persistent thought pattern that outdoor / nature activities- hiking, camping, etc- are endemically white and that any attempt to organize around it without making overt, aggressive attempts to include minorities is a sign of white supremacy. This is the main thrust of the "anti-racist" movement. If you aren't talking about being inclusive in every aspect of any social interaction you partake in, you are automatically racist. Just wanting to be around other people who like hiking and camping makes you a white supremacist.

woodruffw 4y ago
Nature activities are "endemically white"? Is this a serious comment? Even if we buy into the ridiculous naturalistic fallacy here, it's completely ahistorical: our modern history is primarily the history of white countries colonizing and industrializing nonwhite countries and alienating them from nature in the process. Suburban white America is arguably even more alienated from nature than city dwellers, in its redefinition of "nature" to be curated dogwalking trails and monoculture lawns.
- majormajor 4y ago
  Leaving aside the inanity of zdragnar's broad-bush painting of "anti-racism," it's worth noting here that this is somewhat falling victim to some historical propaganda of other races being "inferior" - e.g. "we're bringing civilization to the savages." There were pretty substantial urban civilizations in Central America and around the Indian Ocean that Europeans (Portugal, first, I believe) waged war on early in the colonial era for reasons like religion, prior to industrialization, and this had a lot to do with shifting the economic center of gravity of the world to Europe from Asia in the first place. (At a meta-level, this is the sort of thing - pointing out bits of history that often get left out of Euro-centric history lessons in the US - that my understanding of "anti-racist" would include; not stopping attendance in a hiking club... any school administrator who believes a hiking club couldn't be compatible with diversity is wrong... but the existence of wrong people who think they're fighting racism is not the same thing as it being wrong to fight racism.)

throwaway0a5e 4y ago

>They can't even organize around a common interest unless it passes some bureaucrat's standard of diversity? At what point do we admit that the people who cried slippery slope and said this power would just be used as a cudgel for their bureaucrats to enforce whims they could not otherwise justify were right?

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Does it matter? We’re at least a generation away from the pendulum swinging back.
- xbar 4y ago
  Have the narratives that would permit swinging back completely paralyzed the students who would want to swing back, along with those who are in control? If so, we are probably 2 generations away. Long-gone graduates mourn the loss, but I think the student body is cloaked in the righteousness of their culture-less confinement.

II2II 4y ago

> They can't even organize around a common interest unless it passes some bureaucrat's standard of diversity? It depends upon how the members behave, rather than the common interest they are supposedly organized around. I remember student organizations from my days on campus that sensible students wouldn't associate themselves with. The stated interest may have been some form of outdoor activity, but they were better known for their hard partying. Hard partying being an euphemism in this case. They would fall short of diversity, equity, and inclusion since their riskier activities (activities that had nothing to do with their stated purpose) would drive away those who weren't interested, couldn't afford to take the risk, or were the target of the risk. For those who think it is worse today than it was 25 years ago, I somehow doubt it. Though, perhaps, that doubt is borne from a hope that it isn't any worse. Crimes as extreme as sexual assault were real, and that was at a time when something that should be taken seriously was taken less seriously. Then there was the common stuff such as vandalism and other property crimes. It happened then and it happens now. The article makes it sound like the university is being far too heavy handed in its treatment of these student organizations. Perhaps they are. On the other hand, the author is ignoring some of the darker aspects of student life. (I also cringe at the use of student life in this discussion since a good portion of students, if not the vast majority, avoided it because they knew it was wrong.)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]