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This looks to apply to on-campus parties only? If so, it's more liberal, if also more complicated, than the university I went to where the policy for alcohol o

This looks to apply to on-campus parties only? If so, it's more liberal, if also more complicated, than the university I went to where the policy for alcohol on-campus was "No." Granted you could find dozens of parties within a mile of campus there; I don't know the geography of Stanford.

gnicholas 4y ago
The vast majority of undergrads live on campus. Off-campus housing is quite expensive (it's in Palo Alto), since you're competing with Googlers and the like for real estate.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  This is not a problem or experience unique to Stanford: NYC has 600,000 university students living in it, and they manage to tear it up just fine without relying on the campus to host their parties.
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    Have you been to Palo Alto? It's rather different from New York. Even SF is more boring and significantly smaller than NY.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Boring and smaller aren't the concern: I went to a large state school in an extremely boring suburb of DC. We still managed to cram people into overpriced off-campus housing and to drink ourselves stupid.
      - gnicholas 4y ago
        Sure, there are just very few Stanford undergrads who live off-campus. And most Stanford undergrads would not choose to live off-campus in order to be able to party more.
        woodruffw 4y ago
        Which is fine! But that's a "them" problem, not a culture-way-proxy-how-dare-they-not-allow-students-to-booze-in-a-college-dorm problem.
        Nevermark 4y ago
        That's a bit black and white. And impractical. They are adults, and if there are no reasonable venues for being able to do regular adult things, for intentional reasons or not, they will create venues somehow, someway. If there is anything to be learned from Prohibition, it is if you make rules too strict for the context, either you have to enforce them with unreasonable measures, or people break the rules in ways that cause more harm than you were trying to prevent. Usually both.
        woodruffw 4y ago
        > They are adults, and if there are no reasonable venues for being able to do regular adult things, for intentional reasons or not, they will create venues somehow, someway. Yes, it's called an off-campus apartment. Students have been drinking in them for centuries. America's pathologies around student drinking are ridiculous. But let's not pretend like the path of least resistance doesn't already exist, and isn't in wide application by just about every other college in this country. The only reason we're talking about Stanford is because it hits all of the culture war hot-topic buttons (elite college, bureaucracy, "coddling," &c.). Nothing about the actual state of affairs is remotely unusual or controversial.
        Nevermark 4y ago
        > Yes, it's called an off-campus apartment. Students have been drinking in them for centuries. Agreed as a generality. But we are discussing Stanford in particular and you were replying to this: > Sure, there are just very few Stanford undergrads who live off-campus. And most Stanford undergrads would not choose to live off-campus in order to be able to party more. The local effectiveness and externalities of rules, no matter how widespread or time honored, still depend on their local context.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    The point is that the vast majority of Stanford undergrads live on-campus. That is presumably not true for universities in NYC. Given that Stanford undergrads live almost entirely on-campus, it is not surprising that on-campus parties form the backbone of the party scene. And given that most undergrads in NYC do not live on-campus, it is not surprising that their party scenes are not as impacted by campus rules.
woodruffw 4y ago
Right. The article bends over backwards to make this sound like a repressive policy, but it's significantly more permissive than most campuses' alcohol rules. My campus didn't allow alcohol at campus parties, full stop[1]. It was nominally allowed at individually approved events, of which I never observed any (besides perhaps a football game?). [1]: https://health.umd.edu/wellness-advocacy-alcohol-and-other-drug-education/alcohol-and-other-drug-policies https://health.umd.edu/wellness-advocacy-alcohol-and-other-d...
- Symbiote 4y ago
  In my first week of university in London there was an official Maths Department party for new students. There was so much wine the head of department asked me and several others to take a box of 6 bottles home (each!) so it would be less obvious that she's ordered too much. There are at least 4 bars on the main campus, and several pubs just outside it. They do have a policy: > The licensed premises in the College are normally open at lunchtime and in the evening, with regular extensions during term-time for the Union bar until midnight on Wednesdays and 1.00 am on Saturdays (i.e. extended from Friday evening). It is College policy that sales of alcohol must not be promoted at lunchtime
  - mjh2539 4y ago
    You have to understand, the UK got to keep all of its normal Protestants. All of the nuts (see: Puritans and other non-conformist unmentionables) came here.
    - fsckboy 4y ago
      sounds good, but not true at all. Massachusetts was a Puritan colony and blue-laws state, but there was plenty of drinking for all undergrads using university money till the whole MADD (and related groups) national campaigns against drunk driving. (and in reaction you could get Tshirts that said DAMM, drunks against mad mothers) The 17 and 18yo drinking ages around the country all got raised when the federal govt cut off highway funds if the state age wasn't 21. The insanity is all within my lifetime. (but yes, various jurisdictions around the country before that were, for religi-political reasons but not puritan, "dry" with no sale of alcohol.)
tedunangst 4y ago
Stanford campus is somewhat inconveniently distant from any off campus housing. As in two miles is more than a quarter mile when you're running late to class.
Manuel_D 4y ago
Stanford university campus is fairly isolated if you don't drive. You can walk to Palo Alto, but that's not exactly somewhere for undergrads to party.
- Per_Bothner 4y ago
  Most of Palo Alto and Menlo Park are within an easy bike ride from campus. You can mostly stay on pleasant tree-filled residential streets as you admire the multi-million-dollar cottages. Though as others have commented: few undergraduates live or party off-campus.
idontwantthis 4y ago
Exactly. The main reason these rules are great is that it makes students comfortable with calling an ambulance when someone has alcohol poisoning. If drinking is illegal on campus, then you criminalize alcohol poisoning too and students die as a result. My university had a similar, but not as regimented policy as Stanford. It allows the administration and the students to understand each other. Edit: Besides alcohol poisoning, you also decriminalize injuries and re-criminalize sexual assault.
iosono88 4y ago
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gnicholas 4y ago

The vast majority of undergrads live on campus. Off-campus housing is quite expensive (it's in Palo Alto), since you're competing with Googlers and the like for real estate.

woodruffw 4y ago
This is not a problem or experience unique to Stanford: NYC has 600,000 university students living in it, and they manage to tear it up just fine without relying on the campus to host their parties.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  Have you been to Palo Alto? It's rather different from New York. Even SF is more boring and significantly smaller than NY.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Boring and smaller aren't the concern: I went to a large state school in an extremely boring suburb of DC. We still managed to cram people into overpriced off-campus housing and to drink ourselves stupid.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      Sure, there are just very few Stanford undergrads who live off-campus. And most Stanford undergrads would not choose to live off-campus in order to be able to party more.
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        Which is fine! But that's a "them" problem, not a culture-way-proxy-how-dare-they-not-allow-students-to-booze-in-a-college-dorm problem.
        Nevermark 4y ago
        That's a bit black and white. And impractical. They are adults, and if there are no reasonable venues for being able to do regular adult things, for intentional reasons or not, they will create venues somehow, someway. If there is anything to be learned from Prohibition, it is if you make rules too strict for the context, either you have to enforce them with unreasonable measures, or people break the rules in ways that cause more harm than you were trying to prevent. Usually both.
        woodruffw 4y ago
        > They are adults, and if there are no reasonable venues for being able to do regular adult things, for intentional reasons or not, they will create venues somehow, someway. Yes, it's called an off-campus apartment. Students have been drinking in them for centuries. America's pathologies around student drinking are ridiculous. But let's not pretend like the path of least resistance doesn't already exist, and isn't in wide application by just about every other college in this country. The only reason we're talking about Stanford is because it hits all of the culture war hot-topic buttons (elite college, bureaucracy, "coddling," &c.). Nothing about the actual state of affairs is remotely unusual or controversial.
        Nevermark 4y ago
        > Yes, it's called an off-campus apartment. Students have been drinking in them for centuries. Agreed as a generality. But we are discussing Stanford in particular and you were replying to this: > Sure, there are just very few Stanford undergrads who live off-campus. And most Stanford undergrads would not choose to live off-campus in order to be able to party more. The local effectiveness and externalities of rules, no matter how widespread or time honored, still depend on their local context.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  The point is that the vast majority of Stanford undergrads live on-campus. That is presumably not true for universities in NYC. Given that Stanford undergrads live almost entirely on-campus, it is not surprising that on-campus parties form the backbone of the party scene. And given that most undergrads in NYC do not live on-campus, it is not surprising that their party scenes are not as impacted by campus rules.

woodruffw 4y ago

Right. The article bends over backwards to make this sound like a repressive policy, but it's significantly more permissive than most campuses' alcohol rules. My campus didn't allow alcohol at campus parties, full stop[1]. It was nominally allowed at individually approved events, of which I never observed any (besides perhaps a football game?). [1]: https://health.umd.edu/wellness-advocacy-alcohol-and-other-drug-education/alcohol-and-other-drug-policies https://health.umd.edu/wellness-advocacy-alcohol-and-other-d...

Symbiote 4y ago
In my first week of university in London there was an official Maths Department party for new students. There was so much wine the head of department asked me and several others to take a box of 6 bottles home (each!) so it would be less obvious that she's ordered too much. There are at least 4 bars on the main campus, and several pubs just outside it. They do have a policy: > The licensed premises in the College are normally open at lunchtime and in the evening, with regular extensions during term-time for the Union bar until midnight on Wednesdays and 1.00 am on Saturdays (i.e. extended from Friday evening). It is College policy that sales of alcohol must not be promoted at lunchtime
- mjh2539 4y ago
  You have to understand, the UK got to keep all of its normal Protestants. All of the nuts (see: Puritans and other non-conformist unmentionables) came here.
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    sounds good, but not true at all. Massachusetts was a Puritan colony and blue-laws state, but there was plenty of drinking for all undergrads using university money till the whole MADD (and related groups) national campaigns against drunk driving. (and in reaction you could get Tshirts that said DAMM, drunks against mad mothers) The 17 and 18yo drinking ages around the country all got raised when the federal govt cut off highway funds if the state age wasn't 21. The insanity is all within my lifetime. (but yes, various jurisdictions around the country before that were, for religi-political reasons but not puritan, "dry" with no sale of alcohol.)

tedunangst 4y ago

Stanford campus is somewhat inconveniently distant from any off campus housing. As in two miles is more than a quarter mile when you're running late to class.

Manuel_D 4y ago

Stanford university campus is fairly isolated if you don't drive. You can walk to Palo Alto, but that's not exactly somewhere for undergrads to party.

Per_Bothner 4y ago
Most of Palo Alto and Menlo Park are within an easy bike ride from campus. You can mostly stay on pleasant tree-filled residential streets as you admire the multi-million-dollar cottages. Though as others have commented: few undergraduates live or party off-campus.

idontwantthis 4y ago

Exactly. The main reason these rules are great is that it makes students comfortable with calling an ambulance when someone has alcohol poisoning. If drinking is illegal on campus, then you criminalize alcohol poisoning too and students die as a result. My university had a similar, but not as regimented policy as Stanford. It allows the administration and the students to understand each other. Edit: Besides alcohol poisoning, you also decriminalize injuries and re-criminalize sexual assault.

iosono88 4y ago

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