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Yale has incredibly shitty support infrastructure for it students, and only takes action to the extent it buffs the public image of the university. Most of oth

Yale has incredibly shitty support infrastructure for it students, and only takes action to the extent it buffs the public image of the university. Most of other Tier 1 universities where I've known students (Columbia, Mit, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, etc), have much much more proactive support infrastructure to prophylactically protect and suport their students (or at least the undergrads). (whenever a student at one of these schools complains about bureaucracy, I smile at how much more their university cares about/protect students). Perhaps just at importantly, students at these other schools find it more permissible to openly communicate that they're unhappy to their peer group. At Yale (as of 3-6 years ago), being unhappy was considered socially unacceptable, ie "why are you here then" would be a typical response. Being able to talk about problems amongst your social peer group is very important! (and being unable to is toxic and dangerous) I've some very very good friends who had terrible mental health issues go unmanaged for years because of Yale's shitty lack of proactive support of students. And thats even ignoring some of the sexual harrassment issues some undergrad women I know there suffered (from their research lab advisors!). tl;dr, yale is one of the more toxic environments in the ivy league, though to an outsider it looks like one of the warmer communities. The first step to having a healthy community is making it ok for people to talk about problems and matters. I speak from the experience of having been a student at yale, a graduate student at another ivy, and having spent A LOT of time visiting friends at many universities. Every school has its faults, but trust least the ones that hide those faults.

Nimi 13y ago
Non-US resident here. I found the treatment of the OP appalling, but I have to ask: what's the deal with schools doing this stuff? I'm a PhD student at Tel-Aviv University, the medical services we have on campus are limited to a couple of nurses and maybe a doctor or two, for urgent cases or when you just need a band-aid. Last time I went to the medical "facility" (which is really a couple of rooms), I was told to schedule an appointment with a doctor outside the university, and that was it. So no one at the university even knows about any health issues I may have, and certainly not treats them or evaluates their severity. Sexual harassment is indeed a problem, here as well, but again I wonder why not go to the police? At least here, it's a criminal offense. Not that students go to the police, but why don't they?
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  I'm Non-US and I'm not a university student, but Universities look after thousands of students at once, so it makes sense that they try to care about the well-being of their students. A lot, even if they don't have entire hospitals, will have some medical facilities on campus and will have some support infrastructure. And if sexual harassment occurs on-campus, or involving staff or students, surely that is a University matter?
  - 6d0debc071 13y ago
    > And if sexual harassment occurs on-campus, or involving staff or students, surely that is a University matter? ------------------ No, I think that's a police matter. The contrary view strikes me as saying that if a member of my company sexually assaults another that's a company matter rather than a police matter. The flaw being that the company is going to look out for itself, just as the university will. The third party, ideally, shouldn't have that conflict of interest.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
      Jurisdiction is not mutually exclusive.
      - 6d0debc071 13y ago
        Frequently it is. Interfering with a police investigation is illegal, taking action against someone who the courts have found innocent can be grounds for a lawsuit. Frankly it strikes me that things would be significantly better if jurisdiction was always exclusive.
        Nimi 13y ago
        Interesting point. I've recently read about a case in my university where the student, who was disaffected with the university's response to a sexual harassment complaint, filed a complaint with the police, then was told the police can't do anything while the university hasn't issued a final ruling. That is opposite to what the law here says, but if the law simply said that criminal offenses are police matters, period, the police's response would likely have been very different.
wting 13y ago
One of my professors did his graduate work at Yale, and echoes your sentiments about it being a toxic environment. He stated that Yale's prestige allows the university to garner top researchers and their associated egos. As a result there was significant academic politicking and very little collaboration, at least in the CS department.
- carterschonwald 13y ago
  ZOMG YES. so little collab, such fiefdoms. Some faculty in math and cs there were pretty cool though. That said, theres definitely a lot of subfields in computer science that just have toxic research cultures period. One time in grad school (at another such uni), a professor or two chewed for sharing a research problem I was working on and stumped by! I wanted to collab with folks to come up with a solution sooner, thusly advancing science faster and moving on to new research, but NOOOO, apparently the moment you share problems, in some research communities its kosher to just wander off with this newly learned problem and scoop your potential collaborator?! (Of course the solution is to accept that risk and if they do scoop rather than collab after you disclose the problem, never collab with them again!)
ghc 13y ago
I had a similar experience as a CS researcher at Yale. It was by far the most toxic environment university environment I've ever worked in. I really felt sorry for the poor students who weren't getting paid (or getting paid very little) to deal with the bullshit.
- carterschonwald 13y ago
  yeah... I kinda consider my undergrad + the year thereafter a "lost half decade of mind fucking unhappiness from social toxicity". I can say with a straight face that based on the level of work I'm doing now (and was doing in high school), science slowed down some teensy but nonzero fraction for the planet because of how unhappy undergrad was for me. eg: things i'm up to currently include: • helping make the engineering techniques / tricks that come up in HPC grade numerical computation easier to learn and use! (I've had a lot of success making the ideas more pedagogically accessible, which is really really cool) • contributing to at least one open source compiler thats pretty well known • other interesting things for fun and profit which while wonderful and positive, I won't go into on this thread because mental health is a serious matter worth focusing on discussing properly :)

Nimi 13y ago

Non-US resident here. I found the treatment of the OP appalling, but I have to ask: what's the deal with schools doing this stuff? I'm a PhD student at Tel-Aviv University, the medical services we have on campus are limited to a couple of nurses and maybe a doctor or two, for urgent cases or when you just need a band-aid. Last time I went to the medical "facility" (which is really a couple of rooms), I was told to schedule an appointment with a doctor outside the university, and that was it. So no one at the university even knows about any health issues I may have, and certainly not treats them or evaluates their severity. Sexual harassment is indeed a problem, here as well, but again I wonder why not go to the police? At least here, it's a criminal offense. Not that students go to the police, but why don't they?

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
I'm Non-US and I'm not a university student, but Universities look after thousands of students at once, so it makes sense that they try to care about the well-being of their students. A lot, even if they don't have entire hospitals, will have some medical facilities on campus and will have some support infrastructure. And if sexual harassment occurs on-campus, or involving staff or students, surely that is a University matter?
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  > And if sexual harassment occurs on-campus, or involving staff or students, surely that is a University matter? ------------------ No, I think that's a police matter. The contrary view strikes me as saying that if a member of my company sexually assaults another that's a company matter rather than a police matter. The flaw being that the company is going to look out for itself, just as the university will. The third party, ideally, shouldn't have that conflict of interest.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
    Jurisdiction is not mutually exclusive.
    - 6d0debc071 13y ago
      Frequently it is. Interfering with a police investigation is illegal, taking action against someone who the courts have found innocent can be grounds for a lawsuit. Frankly it strikes me that things would be significantly better if jurisdiction was always exclusive.
      - Nimi 13y ago
        Interesting point. I've recently read about a case in my university where the student, who was disaffected with the university's response to a sexual harassment complaint, filed a complaint with the police, then was told the police can't do anything while the university hasn't issued a final ruling. That is opposite to what the law here says, but if the law simply said that criminal offenses are police matters, period, the police's response would likely have been very different.

wting 13y ago

One of my professors did his graduate work at Yale, and echoes your sentiments about it being a toxic environment. He stated that Yale's prestige allows the university to garner top researchers and their associated egos. As a result there was significant academic politicking and very little collaboration, at least in the CS department.

carterschonwald 13y ago
ZOMG YES. so little collab, such fiefdoms. Some faculty in math and cs there were pretty cool though. That said, theres definitely a lot of subfields in computer science that just have toxic research cultures period. One time in grad school (at another such uni), a professor or two chewed for sharing a research problem I was working on and stumped by! I wanted to collab with folks to come up with a solution sooner, thusly advancing science faster and moving on to new research, but NOOOO, apparently the moment you share problems, in some research communities its kosher to just wander off with this newly learned problem and scoop your potential collaborator?! (Of course the solution is to accept that risk and if they do scoop rather than collab after you disclose the problem, never collab with them again!)

ghc 13y ago

I had a similar experience as a CS researcher at Yale. It was by far the most toxic environment university environment I've ever worked in. I really felt sorry for the poor students who weren't getting paid (or getting paid very little) to deal with the bullshit.

carterschonwald 13y ago
yeah... I kinda consider my undergrad + the year thereafter a "lost half decade of mind fucking unhappiness from social toxicity". I can say with a straight face that based on the level of work I'm doing now (and was doing in high school), science slowed down some teensy but nonzero fraction for the planet because of how unhappy undergrad was for me. eg: things i'm up to currently include: • helping make the engineering techniques / tricks that come up in HPC grade numerical computation easier to learn and use! (I've had a lot of success making the ideas more pedagogically accessible, which is really really cool) • contributing to at least one open source compiler thats pretty well known • other interesting things for fun and profit which while wonderful and positive, I won't go into on this thread because mental health is a serious matter worth focusing on discussing properly :)