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I suppose cheating to get housing benefits is less of a dumpster fuck vs cheating to get ahead of other people in education.
by lostmsu 11mo ago
I suppose cheating to get housing benefits is less of a dumpster fuck vs cheating to get ahead of other people in education.
- margalabargala 11mo agoThe word "cheating" is loaded with a lot of values and judgement that I think makes it inappropriate to use the way you did. There's a point where it's not immoral to leverage systems available to you to land yourself in a better situation. Avoiding increasingly-overcrowded housing situations is I think one of them. If Stanford's standards for these housing waivers are sufficiently broad that 38% of their students quality, isn't that a problem with Stanford's definitions, not with "cheating"?
- ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo agoIn the culture I grew up in, this was considered cheating.
- delichon 11mo agoA culture that honored truth telling and integrity. Was that long ago or far away?
- shermantanktop 11mo ago"culture i grew up in" could easily mean "what my parents/older relatives told me they did, when they told me to be like them." Once you grow up, you realize your parents were human, made self-interested decisions, and then told themselves stories that made their actions sound principled. Some more than others, of course.
- IAmBroom 11mo agoI'll skip the "my parents" part, because I'm an old, but ... NO ONE had independent housing their Freshman year in college at my hometown uni, unless they had prior residency in the area (were commuting from home). So, yeah: that morality did exist, and not just in fables.
- BeetleB 11mo agoI went to a mediocre undergrad, and a top 5 school for grad. The difference in morals was quite notable, and cheating was much more prevalent in the latter (not just in classes, but for things like this as well).
- shermantanktop 11mo agoSounds entirely consistent with the original story…everyone claims a mental health need because so many others are doing it. Maybe the difference isn’t morality but accepted norms? Or maybe it’s that single room accommodation is possible now and it wasn’t then?
- deaux 11mo agoNo, just one of the 99% of universities in this world where people aren't en masse claiming to have disabilities for selfish gain. Neither long ago - this is as of 2025 - nor particularly far away.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Cpoll 11mo agoThis is tragedy of the commons exactly. Whether it's moral depends entirely on the ethical theory you subscribe to. > a problem with Stanford's definitions Only if students aren't lying on their application.
- iwontberude 11mo ago[flagged]
- donbox 11mo agoplease... enough with the lazy stereotypes
- Supermancho 11mo agoGoogle: China Cheating. Stereotype or not, it's a well documented characteristic of some social systems. This isn't to imply a moralist view. This cultural phenomena is a recognized pattern of behavior across industries, as well as the education system. It's viciously pragmatic. A key part of their rapid industrialization and digital transition. It's not surprising, given the success, nor is it necessary to pretend otherwise.
- deaux 11mo agoIt's just irrelevant and ignorant to bring up in the context of this article. These things aren't correlated. I can name countries where academic fraud (fake papers, fake data) is much more rampant than the US, yet faking a disability to get a single dorm room is unthinkable. You're oversimplifying things and making connections that aren't there.
- Supermancho 11mo agoAs per the following discussions, I would say pointing this out is relevant. China has been a leader in this respect. The cultural trends have shifted, regardless of the specific mechanisms. I suspect the cause to be multidimensional. The erosion in confidence of both institutions and process, across the US and world, have contributed to an ends-justify-the-means philosophy. There's almost palpable economic strata that are increasingly difficult to ascend, causing a great deal of stress and pressure. Granted, foreign influence is probably far down the list. I was pointing out how the "stereotype" fits, not that it has somehow corrupted higher education by exposure. I think there's a good comparison here, which is why it was initially mentioned.
- swatcoder 11mo ago> There's a point where it's not immoral to leverage systems available to you to land yourself in a better situation. That sounds loaded with a lot of value judgment. I don't think it's inappropriate for you to suggest it, but I think you'll find that a lot of people who value equitability, collaboration, communalism, modesty, earnestness, or conservation of resources might not share that perspective with you. It turns out that people just disagree about values and are going to weigh judgment on others based on what they believe. You don't have to share their values, but you do kind of just need to be able to accept that judgment as theirs when you do things they malign.
- guelo 11mo agoWhat is the honorable value that leads to "I'll get mine screw everybody else"?
- socalgal2 11mo agoI live in liberal cities. Nearly every car drive and bicycle rider has the attitude "F everyone else, I'm going to break every law if I find it inconvenient to myself. Who cares if it affects others" This is not in alignment with "equitability, collaboration, communalism, modesty, earnestness, or conservation of resources" People claim those values but rarely actually follow them.
- decremental 11mo ago[dead]
- margalabargala 11mo agoI worded it in a way flexible to meet everyone's morals. Absent someone trying to performatively live a truly philosophically deontological life every person has some line where they will avail themselves of some available lever to remove some awful situation even if someone else might call it "cheating". Some recent examples where large segments of the population did this are 1) with medical marijuana cards, which make weed legal to anyone willing to claim to have anxiety or difficulty sleeping, or 2) emotional support animals on airlines, where similarly one can claim anything to get a prescription that, if travelling with a pet, opts them out of the sometimes-fatal always-unpleasant cargo hold travel. Plenty of people would call either of these cheating, but kind of like how "language is usage", so are morals in a society. If everyone is doing something that is available but "cheating", that society deems the result for people sufficiently valuable.
- lostmsu 11mo ago> The word "cheating" is loaded with a lot of values and judgement that I think makes it inappropriate to use the way you did. I'm glad you had no problem with "dumpster fuck".
- margalabargala 11mo agoWell, there's meaning and then there's personal style. I didn't want to cramp yours :-)
- groundzeros2015 11mo agoThe direct result of this thinking is that people who need the accommodation face difficulty in getting it. You don’t have to return your shopping cart. You don’t have to donate to the collection plate. You don’t have to give a coworker recognition. But when everyone has an adversarial “get mine” attitude the systems have to be changed. Instead of assuming good intent they have to enforce it. Enforcement is very expensive and very unpleasant. (For example, maybe you need to rent the shopping cart.) Unfortunately enforcement is a self fulfilling cycle. When people see others cheating they feel they need to cheat just to not be left behind. You may be from a culture where this is the norm. Reflect on its impact and how we would really like to avoid this.
- shadowgovt 11mo ago> You don’t have to donate to the collection plate Hey, if they stop using the money I donate to advertise that my neighbors are abominations in the eyes of God they can have my money again.
- mikkupikku 11mo agoThe "collection plate" could just as well mean a panhandler's hat. The point is charitable giving, not christian specifically.
- zeroCalories 11mo agoThe problem is that people simply have no investment in a community anymore. This is a direct consequence of globalization and capitalism. Travel to a foreign land, exploit the locals, and return home. Westerners are just now realizing that they're on the receiving end of it now.
- margalabargala 11mo agoI think you're reading more into what I said than what I intended. I'm not endorsing the specific behavior, but I am pointing out that if there's a "cheating" lever anyone can pull to improve their own situation, it will get pulled if people think it's justified. There's plenty that do get pulled and plenty that don't. In the US, SNAP fraud is sufficiently close to nonexistant that you can't tell the difference in benefits provided. But fraud surrounding lying about medical conditions to get a medical marijuana card is universal and accepted. The people we're talking about here are teenagers that are told "if you have an ADHD diagnosis you can ask for and get your own room". The sort of systems thinking you are describing is not generally done by your average fresh high school graduate. This is therefore a Stanford problem.
- jay_kyburz 11mo agoIf you lie (or exaggerate) about a disability and claim a benefit, you could be denying somebody with more serious disabilities getting the help they need.
- margalabargala 11mo agoI agree. That's not what's happening here. My understanding is that the requirement for the benefit being discussed here is "has had a diagnosis of ADHD, anxiety, etc". The problem lies in the combination of overdiagnosis and lax Stanford disability requirements. The teenagers honestly mentioning they have an ADHD diagnosis to get the benefit are not the problem, they are a symptom.
- iepathos 11mo agoI agree with you that cheating is a loaded word, but the question at the end here that the rules or standards enable users to work around it therefore it's not cheating is a bad semantic argument. We can use the exact same argument to excuse every kind of rule breaking that people do. If a hacker drains a billion dollars out of a smart contract, then they literally were only able to do so because the coded rules of the smart contract itself enabled it through whatever flaw the hacker identified. That doesn't make it less illegal or not cheating for the hacker. It feels like victim blaming to point the finger at the institution being exploited or people who get hacked and say its their problem not the individuals intentionally exploiting them.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> a point where it's not immoral to leverage systems available to you to land yourself in a better situation That point is probably behind someone at Stanford.
- inglor_cz 11mo agoThis attitude was one of the things that collapsed the former Eastern Bloc. "He who does not steal is stealing from his own family."
- nradov 11mo agoStealing from work was so normalized in the former USSR that it wasn't even considered stealing, just "carrying out". Jobs in meatpacking facilities were highly desired because even though nominal wages were low, workers could make so much more by selling on the black market. The entire system was rotten from top to bottom.
- int_19h 11mo agoAnd when everybody else does it (and all assume that everybody does), it really ends up being true. That's why it's so hard to get out of this hole - telling people to "start with yourself" won't cut it, they need to see that others are doing the same as well rather than trying to benefit from the opportunity.
- arolihas 11mo agoThe problem is the promotion of values and behaviors that plague a low-trust society. I think making excuses for it is truly inappropriate and immoral.
- BeetleB 11mo agoWhile on the one hand I get where you're coming from, on the other hand I simply say "One does not have to go to Stanford."
- MangoToupe 11mo agoI suppose stanford does optimize for cheating, but this still seems excessive
- josefritzishere 11mo agoI use the word "cheating" like I use the word "hacking." The connotation can be either good or bad or contextually. You are defeating a system. The intent of the cheater/hacker is where we get into moral judgements. (This is a great sub-thread.)
- RachelF 11mo agoSadly, society also optimizes for cheating. Meritocracy is a myth. In many ways Stanford is preparing students for the real world by encouraging cheating.
- only-one1701 11mo agoThis is what it comes down to
- trollbridge 11mo agoOr Stanford is influential enough that it creates the future new world, which now will have far more cheating.
- nextos 11mo agoI reviewed incoming applications during one Oxbridge academic application cycle. I raised some serious concerns, nobody listened, and therefore I refuse to take part on that any longer. Basically, lots of students are pretending to be disabled to enhance their chances with applications that are not particularly outstanding, taking spots from truly disabled students. All it takes is a lack of principles, exaggerating a bit, and getting a letter from a doctor. Imagine you have poor eyesight requiring a substantial correction, but you can still drive. That's not a disability. Now, if you create a compelling story inflating how this had an adverse impact on your education and get support letters, you might successfully cheat the system. I have seen several such cases. The admissions system is not effectively dealing with this type of fraud. In my opinion, a more serious audit-based system is necessary. Applicants that claim to be disabled but that are not recognized as such by the Government should go through some extra checks. Otherwise, we end up in the current situation where truly disabled students are extremely rare, but we have a large corpus of unscrupulous little Machiavelli, which is also worrying on its own sake.
- bee_rider 11mo agoIn the context of academics I’d call it manipulating, exploiting or scamming the housing system, rather than cheating. Just because academic cheating is the center-of-gravity for this type of conversation, and, IMO, a much much bigger deal. If someone says they cheated in school, the first thing that pops into your head probably isn’t that they might have gotten a single dorm room, right?
- only-one1701 11mo agoThis whole comment thread has been a crazy way to find out the ways people justify immoral behavior to themselves.
- femiagbabiaka 11mo agoThis kind of minor fraud is completely normalized within middle and upper classes. It's half the way many kids end up at these schools in the first place, thinking of the "pay-to-play" scandal at USC a while back.
- only-one1701 11mo agoSo it’s funny, I grew up upper middle class with an extremely severe morality taught to me re: this kind of thing — integrity, etc. My entire adult life has been a lesson in how that’s a maladaptive trait in America in 2025.
- afavour 11mo agoThat has been one of the underpinning lessons of Trump's America to me. That playing by the rules and doing the right thing just makes me a sucker. Once a critical mass of people start to feel that way (if they don't already) it'll have a devastating effect on society. (when I say "Trump's America" I don't directly mean Trump himself, though he's certainly a prominent example of it. It feels like it's everywhere. One of the first times I really noticed it was the Netflix show "Inventing Anna". A dramatization of the real life story of a scammer, Anna Sorokin. Netflix paid her $320,000 for her story. She led a life of crime and successfully profited from it. Now she's been on Dancing with the Stars, essentially she's been allowed to become the celebrity she pretended to be.)
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- seizethecheese 11mo agoI suppose so, but nonetheless it still likely harms the rest of the students who are honest by raising the price of housing for all students.
- echelon 11mo agoThe diploma or credentials should be marked with the conditions of admission. That would prevent abuse from those who don't or shouldn't qualify for special admission conditions.
- aaronbwebber 11mo agoIt means that the action we should take in response to this article is "building more dorms with singles" rather than "we need to rethink the way that we are making accommodations for disabilities in educational contexts". That seems like an important distinction, and makes the rest of the article (which focuses on educational accommodations) look mistaken.
- IgorPartola 11mo agoI worked in residential life while in college and can tell you that placing freshmen in singles is a horrible idea. It leads to isolation and lets mental health issues fester. Some need it but you do not want to place anyone who doesn’t into a room alone especially in their first year.
- tomrod 11mo agoMeh. I think you're overstating it. To meet your anecdata, I had both the first college year, and single > double by a large margin.
- Onawa 11mo agoIt depends on the person. I lived alone in my last year of undergrad and it sent me into a deep depression. I figured out that living alone was too much isolation for me and moved back in with a roommate. That helped to pull me out of my depression and be able to finish my degree.
- duskdozer 11mo agoI don't think people advocating for more single rooms would say that no multi-occupancy rooms should exist for people who do want them.
- IgorPartola 11mo agoI would not classify it as anecdata. This was research backed policy adopted by most US universities. Residential life and the Dean of Students office are usually doing a lot to cooperate with other universities. This part of US colleges is not competing with each other so they routinely share data, go to conferences together multiple times a year, and res. life directors move from college to college every few years so they all know each other incredibly well. The point is that everyone who gets a single is super happy about it the same way that a drug addict is always happy when they get their drug of choice for free: of course it’s great. Of course it isn’t the best thing for you in the long run. I say this as someone who hated being in a double my first year and spent the next three in a single. As far as I am concerned having apartments of 4-8 students where each has their own small room but shares a common space is ideal. But usually this is reserved for sophomore year and later.
- outside2344 11mo agoI mean, they watch our president, who got a JET for god knows what, and after seeing that, why shouldn't they grab for the bag?
- Aurornis 11mo agoCheating to get limited housing benefits starves those limited resources from truly disabled students who actually need them. Also, there are academic components to disability cheating. As the article notes, registering for a disability at some of these universities grants you additional time to take tests.