[fleetwoodsnack]

Not an alum so I can’t speak to the first person experience, and the quirks of Stanford are not interesting. My comment’s purpose is limited to that of a discriminating reader seeking to become more informed.

I think these observations would have been fine independently but the context is important, if only for the sake of refuting it. The failure to acknowledge it, and the license taken with respect to other facts is what is unsettling.

[m-ee]

I agree that context is important, but context here is that they were put on probation four years later for something completely unrelated. Criticizing its omission without pointing that out might mislead people.

The quirks of Stanford may not be interesting to you but it is literally an article about Stanford social quirks. If there's any criticism to be made of the article it's not acknowledging why SAE or Sigma Chi were removed from campus as their behavior was far more abhorrent (a targeted harassment campaign against a sorority member and a roofie incident by a non student friend of the fraternity members.

[fleetwoodsnack]

I think that’s a worthwhile discussion, and readers would have definitely appreciated a discussion of, “Does reputational damage precipitate organizational dissolution in the context of college associations?”

It would have been enlightening and gotten to the heart of the nominal issue with respect to both the theme houses and the fraternity houses, I think.

That was not what the article was, however, and I think we can acknowledge Stanford’s failures and the failure of authorship in the article-publication in the same breath.