Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 achievement, 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.

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-national-crisis-of-generation-z-jonathan-haidt-social-media-performance-anxiety-fragility-gap-childhood-11672401345

This goes hand in hand with the Stanford article. Sadly, these kids don't even know what they're missing.

Getting groped and assaulted and raped by drunk bros...good times.

That can happen at any college and still does, especially when both parties are blackout drunk.

Frat rats are way over represented in the sexual predator category. They have themselves to blame if something needs to be done about it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-national-crisis-of-generation-z-jonathan-haidt-social-media-performance-anxiety-fragility-gap-childhood-11672401345

This goes hand in hand with the Stanford article. Sadly, these kids don't even know what they're missing.

Getting groped and assaulted and raped by drunk bros...good times.

That can happen at any college and still does, especially when both parties are blackout drunk.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-national-crisis-of-generation-z-jonathan-haidt-social-media-performance-anxiety-fragility-gap-childhood-11672401345

This goes hand in hand with the Stanford article. Sadly, these kids don't even know what they're missing.

Getting groped and assaulted and raped by drunk bros...good times.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 achievement, 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.

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 achievement, 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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-national-crisis-of-generation-z-jonathan-haidt-social-media-performance-anxiety-fragility-gap-childhood-11672401345

This goes hand in hand with the Stanford article. Sadly, these kids don't even know what they're missing.

Getting groped and assaulted and raped by drunk bros...good times.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-national-crisis-of-generation-z-jonathan-haidt-social-media-performance-anxiety-fragility-gap-childhood-11672401345

This goes hand in hand with the Stanford article. Sadly, these kids don't even know what they're missing.

Getting groped and assaulted and raped by drunk bros...good times.

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-national-crisis-of-generation-z-jonathan-haidt-social-media-performance-anxiety-fragility-gap-childhood-11672401345

This goes hand in hand with the Stanford article. Sadly, these kids don't even know what they're missing.

Anonymous wrote: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 achievement, 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.

Anonymous wrote: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 achievement, 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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, that article really was depressing. Interesting that there's been quite a bit about Stanford in the news lately - including their idiotic "harmful language/forbidden words" nonsense. Too bad. I always thought Stanford would remain independent of all the liberal nuttery, but I guess not.

The forbidden language thing was for the IT people who wrote official content for their website. Stop letting clickbait get you worked up!

PP here and I’m well aware of that. That doesn’t change the fact that the “official content” was indeed, officially for Stanford. How about you stop being an apologist for idiocy?

In other words, even a minimal amount of clickbait will cause me to set my hair on fire.

C’mon. Calling students “frosh” instead of freshmen is stupid. Women have been part of freshman classes for decades and no one was confused about it. Freshmen includes women. It’s insulting to think women can’t handle that or realize it’s being used generically.