Reply to What do people think of this essay? “Stanford Isn’t Fun Aanymore.”

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I grew up in California and still live in California, after having moved away for some years. I am in my 50s. When I was in high school, Stanford was seen as a place for the extremely bright, quirky, and creative. If you were rank-obsessed or considered an “east coaster” at heart (and that was not a positive), you would apply to the Ivies, but people here thought that was largely for the students who would eventually populate the large law firms of the world. I still remember being a kid and overhearing some of my mom’s friends talking about a kid who had (inexplicably, in their view) decided to go to Harvard and them clicking their tongues mournfully because the girl was “so creative!”

There is a real sense of loss in California over what happened to Stanford. It used to be a Californian university at heart, with a personality that rewarded creativity and daring. Now it’s largely indistinguishable from Harvard or Princeton. And this college ranking machine is now turning on USC, which also used to be a quintessentially Californian school. Even UCSC is falling into line.

I don’t disagree with the criticism of the frats — nobody should mourn the loss of Brock Turner culture — but I don’t think that’s really what is going on here. I think at heart, California schools used to have room for the quirky and creative, but the college admissions monster has weeded all of those kids out. What is left is a culture of [i]achievement[/I], box-ticking to the extreme. The students who make it it to Stanford now have one unifying characteristic: they have disproportionately high levels of executive function. But no one would describe them as “wildly creative” or “free thinkers” anymore. And that loss of freedom to explore their creative side — to allow room for mistakes — is driving a depressive culture that at the worst leads to suicide. It’s not that the university would disallow the building of an island (though of course it would). It’s that Stanford has chosen to build a student body that wouldn’t even think about trying to build an island, because that wouldn’t fit into their schedules.

I don’t know what the answer is. I feel like this homogenization of university cultures is part of a larger trend. For instance I think that’s why big Southern state schools are so popular now — they’ve managed to keep ahold of some of their unique culture in a way that California schools have not, though the machine is coming for them now too. I feel like the UCs might be able to possibly change the homogenization trend over twenty years by sharply limiting access to OOS students, which they’ve started to do here. But I don’t know that Stanford and USC will ever regain the creative student body they used to be known for.

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Very well put, PP. I am in my 50’s and was a student at Stanford during the golden age. I’m so sad at what it has become. It’s still an amazingly beautiful campus, but that’s all it is.[/quote]

This exactly. I kept thinking that the proper Stanford reaction would be some kind of fun, subversive, community-building rebellion. Instead we get this resume-builder of an essay. [/quote]

The wealthy elite have established a narrative that “woke culture” is sanitizing anything fun.

When, in fact, it is wealth itself that demands sanitization. The wealthy elite want controlled environments and speech. They want to decide who gets admission into their clubs of cultural capital (eg universities) and actual capital (eg jobs at Goldman and Google). They do not want a school of subversive nerds who occasionally drop acid; they want future executives who are singularly focused on checking the next box.

Money ruins everything and it ruined Stanford.[/quote]

This is true but not the whole story. The outsize tech money at Stanford has destroyed the creativity of the place, true. But money and power always corrupt regardless of source and that also includes the enormous amount of money and power given to diversity organizations, initiatives, and people. You cannot ignore the vast amounts of money generated by and for the diversity industry these days.

But yes, wealth and power seeks to oppress, harness, and control creativity. That is universally true. [/quote]

I guarantee that DE&I staff have a lot less influence at Stanford than those in the Development or Athletics or Finance departments. To even bring them up is a non-sequiter.

You know why there is so much focus on DEI? To minimize litigation risk, as lawsuits related to discrimination and harassment are big expenses for institutions. To increase cultural sensitivity as so much of our economy is global and the richest people in the world are not white Americans.

DE&I is about the bottom line and protecting the institution. That’s it.[/quote]

I don’t think you’ve been on a college campus in 20 years if you think the DEI offices don’t wield enormous power on campus. I’m not even saying that is wrong — I think it’s a good thing to look critically at diversity — but just that power centers on universities have shifted and DEI is a significant power holder on campuses now. [/quote]

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