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Wow, I don't always agree with Cochrane, but I found myself nodding in agreement to everything in this OP. The passage about Stanford asking students to apply t

by cs702 4y ago

Wow, I don't always agree with Cochrane, but I found myself nodding in agreement to everything in this OP. The passage about Stanford asking students to apply two weeks in advance to host parties (WTF?), with an advance list of attendees (WTF?), is shocking to me. The university's response is surreal. Quoting from the WSJ: > Samuel Santos Jr., associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning within the Division of Student Affairs, says the school is working to address students’ concerns about Stanford’s social atmosphere. “The party-planning process will be streamlined and more administrators will be hired to help facilitate student social life.” “We want events to be fun, inclusive and safe and those things can happen,” Mr. Santos says. “They just require collaboration and honesty.” I couldn't agree more with Cochrane that the real problem lies in the fact that Stanford's bureaucracy has gotten so bloated that it now has an apparatchik with the title of "associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning" (not a provost, not a vice provost, but an associate vice provost... WTF?), who promises that "the party-planning process will be streamlined" (WTF?) and that "more administrators will be hired" to do so (WTF?).

pstuart 4y ago
Think of the children!
- wilg 4y ago
  Or, in this case, adults.
  - analog31 4y ago
    A special kind of "adults." I went to college and grad school in two different towns. Each college had its own culture of fun. The kind of "fun" that the colleges condoned occurred in a sheltered atmosphere, and would have been utterly off limits to the adult residents of the surrounding towns.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      > The kind of "fun" that the colleges condoned occurred in a sheltered atmosphere, and would have been utterly off limits to the adult residents of the surrounding towns. ... What kind of "fun" is that? The only thing that I can think of that would be off limits to non-students is literally illegal activities that students shouldn't be doing either.
jwond 4y ago
> who promises that "the party-planning process will be streamlined" (WTF?) and that "more administrators will be hired" to do so (WTF?). The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy
amluto 4y ago
> and more administrators will be hired to help facilitate student social life. Pre-registration of large (“level 3”) parties has been a thing for a long time. But when I was there, one pre-registered a party, one did so online, and I imagine a single administrator could keep up with the entire workload. This made sense for a few reasons, including: Parties can be dangerous affairs, and campus security needs to know where to direct its attention. (There is no need for campus security to be hostile to parties, but a good campus police force should help ensure everyone’s safety.) Student groups throwing parties generally want good attendance, and pre-registration allows them to coordinate dates. Pre-registration helps avoid facepalms like throwing a party during finals. For what it’s worth, the actual policy: https://vaden.stanford.edu/super/education/parties/party-planning-guide/student-party-policy-guidelines https://vaden.stanford.edu/super/education/parties/party-pla... Isn’t that crazy.
- shpongled 4y ago
  How is throwing a party during finals a facepalm? I recall that being one of the best times to party...
- cs702 4y ago
  Thank you. I can see how, say, asking students to notify campus police in advance with a simple online form would make sense for large parties. But here we're talking about asking students to submit an application with a known list of attendants two weeks in advance. That doesn't seem right. Something feels really off when I read that for 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrators.[a] [a] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stanford-guide-to-acceptable-words-elimination-of-harmful-language-initiative-11671489552 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stanford-guide-to-acceptabl...
  - rainbowzootsuit 4y ago
    The administrators are there as approximately 1:1 hand servants to carry your bags, attend to preparation of meals, and so forth such that you not expend yourself unduly.
andy9775 4y ago
Even more administrators? And we wonder why education keeps getting more expensive.
- devmunchies 4y ago
  > Even more administrators? Yes, they will hire a planned parenthood admin who you contact 2 weeks before any “on-campus intimacy”.
icambron 4y ago
The erosion of campus liberties at elite schools makes them worse places for everyone. And it's been happening at least since I went to school, from 2000-2004. It not only removes all the fun, it also infantilizes the students. College is where modern kids grow up, and growing up requires, for many of us, doing some unwise or at least unwise-looking things. The growth of the nanny-bureaucratic complex at these schools will make them dull, lifeless, and even more expensive, and then after college, people will finally start the growing up process at age 22. As that happens, they'll hire ever more administrators to try to fix it, with predictable results.
- pers0n 4y ago
  Do people really need college to grow up?
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  >” then after college, people will finally start the growing up process at age 22.” I used to think like this, but then I realize that a good portion of the students who are used to this kind of institutionalized infantilizing internalize that it is proper and necessary. Then they go on to agitate for similar structures “in the real world”. Something to be especially mindful of is the fact that these students are going to “elite” schools and are therefore likely to end up in management or decision making positions.
  - pram 4y ago
    Ah, so this is how we ended up with SBF and his “oopsie I made a fucky wucky” act.
    - chrisco255 4y ago
      He's almost 30 though.
      - elcritch 4y ago
        Exactly, they’re saying that SBF and cadre expect to be treated as “kids” with the government/institutions playing nanny. It’s become their worldview coming from elite universities.
iconhacker 4y ago
A big party to celebrate the cofounder of FTX!
Barrin92 4y ago
as someone not hailing from the US the entire setup sounds bizarre to me and I wonder why students even still participate in this. Over here in Germany on-campus living is uncommon. People just rent flats in the city, go to uni and the limit to how much they can party is usually determined by how much they can piss off their landlord or neighbors, which is how it ought to be given that everyone's an adult. Why are people over the age of 18 voluntarily putting themselves into an environment where they have to ask if they can have a party? Why is this nonsense not simply dying on its own? The real problem is that people don't simply leave. Easiest way to not be annoyed by some bureaucrat gone mad with power is to separate school life from private life.
- kpozin 4y ago
  My understanding is that universities in the U.S. often own much of the real estate around their campuses. (This is particularly true at Stanford; even faculty members who want to live nearby end up renting from Stanford or "buying" land leases.)
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Yup. University and hospital affiliates are often the biggest slumlords in their area. Having a buffer to make room for future expansion that produces income is a winning strategy.
- jdminhbg 4y ago
  > People just rent flats in the city, go to uni Stanford is an edge case because, as a sibling commenter says, it owns a lot of real estate, but also it's in an insanely high cost-of-living area, so students can't necessarily afford to live just anywhere. At most "normal" universities in the US, you can just live off-campus and do what you want (or at least, follow the city and landlord's rules, not the university's).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Animats 4y ago
> "associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning within the Division of Student Affairs" OK, Stanford alums on here, no more donations until Stanford gets the administrator/faculty ratio back to 1990 levels.[1] [1] https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-administrative-bloat-is-out-of-control/ https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-administrative-bloat-is...
andrepd 4y ago
> The party-planning process will be streamlined and more administrators will be hired to help facilitate student social life. This could be a line straight out of "Brazil" or some similar work, I laughed out loud.
- polynomial 4y ago
  Too bad the ending of Brazil isn't funny.
- Gibbon1 4y ago
  The more administrators will be hired part reminds me of a poster at my dads work back in the 1970's. It read. 'Adding more engineers to a project that's in trouble is like using gasoline to put out a fire' Off hand it feels like the issue here is the universities idea is the committees jobs is to ensure the students party responsibly without taking on any actual responsibility themselves.
mc32 4y ago
I almost doubt Christian universities could be more straight-laced than this. It's just weird. I mean, I don't expect all campuses to be line Oneonta or Santa Cruz, but WOW! To be honest when I went to Uni., I never really understood the hazing aspect and the overboard frat parties, but some partying as long as you don't have extraordinary excess or condone danger (ala hazing) it's part of growing up. Stanford is overcorrecting.
- parpfish 4y ago
  Is SUNY Oneonta really considered a top tier party school exemplar?
  - mc32 4y ago
    Do you need to be at top tier Uni to get properly drunk, drugged and rowdy? If the uni is in a big city you have other places to discover and party.
    - parpfish 4y ago
      I was curious because I knew some Oneonta alums and had no idea that it was a party school. Whereas the go-to party school examples that come to mind for me are places like Az state, Colorado, Wisconsin, etc
slowmovintarget 4y ago
Governance of private life. There must be a committee to oversee your party planning, and it must be done for you. That's so far down the planned-economy planned-society political line (control is required) that it's sad they can't see this for a the outright sickness that it is.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  Communists gonna communist.
polishdude20 4y ago
It seems like this is a symptom of a crazy boatload of money that has come in over many years via having close ties to silicon Valley. The property and wealth of the school is so high that these jobs and bureaucracy are created just to have a reason to spend this money. Like, once all your basic needs of a university are met, the next thing you spend your money on gets more and more disconnected from reality.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  [dead]

by cs702 4y ago

pstuart 4y ago

Think of the children!

wilg 4y ago
Or, in this case, adults.
- analog31 4y ago
  A special kind of "adults." I went to college and grad school in two different towns. Each college had its own culture of fun. The kind of "fun" that the colleges condoned occurred in a sheltered atmosphere, and would have been utterly off limits to the adult residents of the surrounding towns.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > The kind of "fun" that the colleges condoned occurred in a sheltered atmosphere, and would have been utterly off limits to the adult residents of the surrounding towns. ... What kind of "fun" is that? The only thing that I can think of that would be off limits to non-students is literally illegal activities that students shouldn't be doing either.

jwond 4y ago

> who promises that "the party-planning process will be streamlined" (WTF?) and that "more administrators will be hired" to do so (WTF?). The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy

amluto 4y ago

> and more administrators will be hired to help facilitate student social life. Pre-registration of large (“level 3”) parties has been a thing for a long time. But when I was there, one pre-registered a party, one did so online, and I imagine a single administrator could keep up with the entire workload. This made sense for a few reasons, including: Parties can be dangerous affairs, and campus security needs to know where to direct its attention. (There is no need for campus security to be hostile to parties, but a good campus police force should help ensure everyone’s safety.) Student groups throwing parties generally want good attendance, and pre-registration allows them to coordinate dates. Pre-registration helps avoid facepalms like throwing a party during finals. For what it’s worth, the actual policy: https://vaden.stanford.edu/super/education/parties/party-planning-guide/student-party-policy-guidelines https://vaden.stanford.edu/super/education/parties/party-pla... Isn’t that crazy.

shpongled 4y ago
How is throwing a party during finals a facepalm? I recall that being one of the best times to party...
cs702 4y ago
Thank you. I can see how, say, asking students to notify campus police in advance with a simple online form would make sense for large parties. But here we're talking about asking students to submit an application with a known list of attendants two weeks in advance. That doesn't seem right. Something feels really off when I read that for 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrators.[a] [a] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stanford-guide-to-acceptable-words-elimination-of-harmful-language-initiative-11671489552 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stanford-guide-to-acceptabl...
- rainbowzootsuit 4y ago
  The administrators are there as approximately 1:1 hand servants to carry your bags, attend to preparation of meals, and so forth such that you not expend yourself unduly.

andy9775 4y ago

Even more administrators? And we wonder why education keeps getting more expensive.

devmunchies 4y ago
> Even more administrators? Yes, they will hire a planned parenthood admin who you contact 2 weeks before any “on-campus intimacy”.

icambron 4y ago

The erosion of campus liberties at elite schools makes them worse places for everyone. And it's been happening at least since I went to school, from 2000-2004. It not only removes all the fun, it also infantilizes the students. College is where modern kids grow up, and growing up requires, for many of us, doing some unwise or at least unwise-looking things. The growth of the nanny-bureaucratic complex at these schools will make them dull, lifeless, and even more expensive, and then after college, people will finally start the growing up process at age 22. As that happens, they'll hire ever more administrators to try to fix it, with predictable results.

pers0n 4y ago
Do people really need college to grow up?
BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
>” then after college, people will finally start the growing up process at age 22.” I used to think like this, but then I realize that a good portion of the students who are used to this kind of institutionalized infantilizing internalize that it is proper and necessary. Then they go on to agitate for similar structures “in the real world”. Something to be especially mindful of is the fact that these students are going to “elite” schools and are therefore likely to end up in management or decision making positions.
- pram 4y ago
  Ah, so this is how we ended up with SBF and his “oopsie I made a fucky wucky” act.
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    He's almost 30 though.
    - elcritch 4y ago
      Exactly, they’re saying that SBF and cadre expect to be treated as “kids” with the government/institutions playing nanny. It’s become their worldview coming from elite universities.

iconhacker 4y ago

A big party to celebrate the cofounder of FTX!

Barrin92 4y ago

as someone not hailing from the US the entire setup sounds bizarre to me and I wonder why students even still participate in this. Over here in Germany on-campus living is uncommon. People just rent flats in the city, go to uni and the limit to how much they can party is usually determined by how much they can piss off their landlord or neighbors, which is how it ought to be given that everyone's an adult. Why are people over the age of 18 voluntarily putting themselves into an environment where they have to ask if they can have a party? Why is this nonsense not simply dying on its own? The real problem is that people don't simply leave. Easiest way to not be annoyed by some bureaucrat gone mad with power is to separate school life from private life.

kpozin 4y ago
My understanding is that universities in the U.S. often own much of the real estate around their campuses. (This is particularly true at Stanford; even faculty members who want to live nearby end up renting from Stanford or "buying" land leases.)
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Yup. University and hospital affiliates are often the biggest slumlords in their area. Having a buffer to make room for future expansion that produces income is a winning strategy.
jdminhbg 4y ago
> People just rent flats in the city, go to uni Stanford is an edge case because, as a sibling commenter says, it owns a lot of real estate, but also it's in an insanely high cost-of-living area, so students can't necessarily afford to live just anywhere. At most "normal" universities in the US, you can just live off-campus and do what you want (or at least, follow the city and landlord's rules, not the university's).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Animats 4y ago

> "associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning within the Division of Student Affairs" OK, Stanford alums on here, no more donations until Stanford gets the administrator/faculty ratio back to 1990 levels.[1] [1] https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-administrative-bloat-is-out-of-control/ https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-administrative-bloat-is...

andrepd 4y ago

> The party-planning process will be streamlined and more administrators will be hired to help facilitate student social life. This could be a line straight out of "Brazil" or some similar work, I laughed out loud.

polynomial 4y ago
Too bad the ending of Brazil isn't funny.
Gibbon1 4y ago
The more administrators will be hired part reminds me of a poster at my dads work back in the 1970's. It read. 'Adding more engineers to a project that's in trouble is like using gasoline to put out a fire' Off hand it feels like the issue here is the universities idea is the committees jobs is to ensure the students party responsibly without taking on any actual responsibility themselves.

mc32 4y ago

I almost doubt Christian universities could be more straight-laced than this. It's just weird. I mean, I don't expect all campuses to be line Oneonta or Santa Cruz, but WOW! To be honest when I went to Uni., I never really understood the hazing aspect and the overboard frat parties, but some partying as long as you don't have extraordinary excess or condone danger (ala hazing) it's part of growing up. Stanford is overcorrecting.

parpfish 4y ago
Is SUNY Oneonta really considered a top tier party school exemplar?
- mc32 4y ago
  Do you need to be at top tier Uni to get properly drunk, drugged and rowdy? If the uni is in a big city you have other places to discover and party.
  - parpfish 4y ago
    I was curious because I knew some Oneonta alums and had no idea that it was a party school. Whereas the go-to party school examples that come to mind for me are places like Az state, Colorado, Wisconsin, etc

slowmovintarget 4y ago

Governance of private life. There must be a committee to oversee your party planning, and it must be done for you. That's so far down the planned-economy planned-society political line (control is required) that it's sad they can't see this for a the outright sickness that it is.

throwawaylinux 4y ago
Communists gonna communist.

polishdude20 4y ago

It seems like this is a symptom of a crazy boatload of money that has come in over many years via having close ties to silicon Valley. The property and wealth of the school is so high that these jobs and bureaucracy are created just to have a reason to spend this money. Like, once all your basic needs of a university are met, the next thing you spend your money on gets more and more disconnected from reality.

daniel-cussen 4y ago
[dead]