[bennysonething]

"For the past several years, Stanford has required students to adhere to a Student Party Policy, which includes a highly detailed “Harm Reduction Plan” mandating multiple sober monitors and designated alcohol service areas, and prohibiting the serving of any hard liquor.

Party hosts must also provide “EANABs,” or Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverages, to “contribute to an inclusive and inviting experience” for all partygoers. Hosts are also required to take an online “Party Planning Course” before submitting their applications. "

Is this normal!?! I feel sorry for this generation. Attempts to make their world risk free has turned it into "fuck up once and we'll destroy you".

[tqi]

> Attempts to make their world risk free has turned it into "fuck up once and we'll destroy you".

TBH I think it is a much bigger problem that low-stakes hyper-local issues have been elevated into proxy battles for national politics. Truly, the fact that anyone who is not either attending or administering this university cares about their party policy at all (let alone enough to write about it professionally) is completely absurd.

[testfoobar]

Stanford is an elite institution that others watch carefully. Administrators go to conferences & workshops to discuss their practices. They get promoted into positions at other universities.

Stanford is a leading indicator of campus life elsewhere.

[fortuna86]

> Stanford is a leading indicator of campus life elsewhere.

It very much is not. Last party I went to at Stanford had corporate sponsorship.

[ZephyrBlu]

Do house parties not exist at Stanford?

[randycupertino]

They certainly exist and are fun (as well as playing beer pong in the fountain) but it's nothing as wild as say ... Arizona State.

source: went to big state university undergrad then 4 years at Stanford. Miles of difference in the party scenes.

Stanford social scene: Beige Toyota Prius

Big State U: Lime green Ferrari 250 GTO

[red-iron-pine]

U Texas football had tailgate parties that got sponsorship from several big named beer brands, hot dog companies.

[tqi]

Do you attend college parties, or administer a university?

[lapinot]

No one cares about their party policy. This article is about how administration in universities are regularly harassing students. I france our uni look very much different, policy and structure-wise, and yet i can relate big time to this. I knew a lot of students who got harassed badly for tons of random reasons.

[kryogen1c]

> low-stakes hyper-local

What a terrible take. The entire purpose of college is to influence the minds that attend them before sending them out to further propagate those ideals into the world.

Furthermore, this is an elite institution that ostensibly is training future leaders - the type of people most poised to spread influence.

[tqi]

Your argument is basically the domino effect meme with Stanford Party Policy on one end and Global Culture on the other? I dunno about others but I definitely don't buy it - I think some people just like minding other people's business.

To your point about training future leaders, there is a reason people don't start out training with live ammo. If every element of campus life could randomly and capriciously be escalated to the national stage, how could anyone possibly expect kids to learn how to take risks or make mistakes? (I believe this is true across the political spectrum)

20 years ago this would have been a heated discussion limited to the campus community, which to me at least held the possibility of the sides having empathy for each other. Now, with the polarized, dehumanized nature of our national discourse, I have no doubt that everyone will simply dig in.

[kryogen1c]

> Your argument is basically the domino effect meme with Stanford Party Policy on one end and Global Culture on the other?

this is an exaggerated straw-man version of my argument, but yes. colleges are a training ground for young people during their formative years, a place we send them to intentionally change their personalities and come into their own being away from their parents. One college isnt going to topple the global culture, but calling bad things that happen at college "hyperlocal" is obviously wrong.

> If every element of campus life could randomly and capriciously be escalated to the national stage, how could anyone possibly expect kids to learn how to take risks or make mistakes?

i dont understand this argument. the article we're commenting on is about exactly this type of oppressive, no-mistakes, no-learning regime the college administration is creating. the media coverage isnt about highlighting mistakes students made; the media coverage is escalating to the national stage the exact thing youre complaining about. a girl got a conduct violation for intentionally spilling coffee and then killed herself.

[ModernMech]

> oppressive, no-mistakes, no-learning regime the college administration is creating.

Let's first acknowledge there are many competing interests in these stories. For every student who is mad about being accused of cheating, there is a student (or maybe dozens) who are worried about people cheating who cheapen the degree and educational experience for everyone. So yes, it's sad we live in a society where grades and educational records are so important, that a single black mark will limit opportunities. On the other hand, we want to make sure that the institutions of higher education are fair and rigorous in their standards. That means when students violate those standards, consequences are served. When students violate standards and consequences are not served, that's a signal the standards are not as such.

Mistakes are okay. That doesn't mean mistakes should go unpunished, and that doesn't mean punishment is oppression.

Let's consider the evidence in the article. I assume this is the strongest evidence available, because if stronger evidence is out there, I question why the author didn't include it to support her piece.

There's not much substance to this article, but I think we don't have to look at the whole thing. There are really only a few key points that cut through the noise:

  “I had young kids that were 18, 19 years old who are international asking me [Paulmeier], ‘Hey, can I talk to this attorney and tell them I drank a beer, or am I going to get my visa revoked?’ ” 

Note, the piece never claims that there was no underage or unsafe drinking. The only claim actually made in the whole piece about the frat's expulsion was that it was overly harsh. Let's also remember that this isn't just any student. This is a student who took it upon himself to become the president of an organization, a position that comes with trust and responsibility, a position which has control and access to Stanford funds. This student admits "he worked closely with OCS to follow all its rules", so he knew or should have known better.

So he's guilty.

  “Any place that sets a bar so high that you have to be literally perfect to get there; and when you get here, if you don’t stay perfect, [Stanford] will punish you with every administrative resource they have for embarrassing them,” 

This is where Paulmeier basically admits his guilt. His position is not "I did everything right and yet I am unfairly being held accountable for something I didn't do." Instead, it's "I made mistakes, and being held account to those mistakes is unfair." Paulmeier is framing his guilt at throwing ragers that harmed other students as he failed to be "literally perfect" because the bar is set so high. Do you get that? He feels the bar is set so high, he can't live up to the expectations of not throwing campus-sanctioned blowouts which land other students in the hospital. Paulmeier I guess just can't meet the high bar Stanford has set. It's not that he's guilty of egregiously violating campus standards. It's that the standards are so high, how could anyone reasonably be expected to adhere to them?

So if I'm going to read between the lines, my inference is that Paulmeier is the kind of person who feels that he shouldn't be held responsible for his actions, and he's trying to make it seem like Stanford is oppressing him rather than the truth: he's being held accountable for bad decisions.

In my opinion, the worst thing Stanford could do for society is to treat such people that they are above reproach. We have too many of such people at the top echelons of our society, people for whom any semblance of accountability is treated as a grave affront to all of society. We see it in politics, where just this morning in the wee hours, the former POTUS threatened "death and destruction" for being held accountable for fraud he definitely committed. We nip that behavior in the bud by punishing it when it starts in college, not by coddling it until it metastasizes into a national cancer.

--

So what do we do about this? Is it really a problem? Well, the lawyers have ideas:

  implementing some of Ottilie’s ideas, such as opening up a student’s ability to reach out to witnesses, could have adverse side effects, such as a greater risk of witness intimidation. 

Of course the Stanford educated lawyer's plan was to implement the US judicial system inside of Stanford. That's what would be best for his clients. But what would that mean for students? Does that mean every time a student is accused of cheating, the whole class is subpoenaed to testify in front of a Stanford grand jury? Where does it end? Do students then reserve the right to appeal their cheating case to SCOTUS?

Which brings me to this whole "due process" claim. Due process doesn't mean all the process. This is the calling card of the guilty criminal; right next to "I didn't do it" is "due process wasn't followed, therefore I get away with my crimes" It's such a potent tactic because in the case where someone's rights really are being violated, you want to make sure that is corrected.

But very often it's the case that someone who is guilty will claim that if only some other process had been followed, which is the appropriate process, that the outcome would have been different. And that the outcome was negative is a reflection on the fact the process wasn't followed, and not the fact that the process found guilt. If you can delay the result by demanding more "due process", all you have to do to delay any result is to continually demand more process.

--

This brings me to the Meyers case. This is a tragedy. If I had to read between the lines here, it would seem that a boy was accused of assaulting/raping a girl, and he went through a process, and he was cleared. Meyers seems to have had a problem with that, and assaulted him. This is disingenuously minimized as "spilling coffee" by those looking to push an angle, but it was alleged assault and injury which was alleged. Regardless of the circumstances, at minimum an investigation must be opened when such allegations are made, and the student under investigation should be notified. I believe that would be in following with due process afforded to Meyers, and not informing her that she was under investigation would have violated her due process.

The tragedy here is that Meyers ended her life when subjected to that process. The easy thing to do is to blame Stanford as the proximal cause, but that doesn't really explain the whole situation. Frankly, being less harsh here doesn't necessarily mean Meyers doesn't end up killing herself. The situation is so complex. I could just as easily say that Meyers would be alive if her friend hadn't been raped and assaulted and the rapist let off the hook, so the blame rests with the rapist. But that's unfair too, because again, it's more complex than that.

--

Finally, Paulmeier wraps it up better than I could:

  Paulmeier and other students and alumni told me they’re not asking for Stanford to make it easier for students to cheat, or worse, cause harm to others. All they want is for students to have the chance to make mistakes and learn from them—and sure, allow them to let loose a bit in the process. 

Actually, Paulmeier and others, especially the lawyer that was hired, is asking for exactly that. Because what they want to do is to turn routine academic issues like misbehavior and cheating into huge legal battles.

  The class coordinator’s allegation, based not on her own observation but that of an anonymous student, was the only evidence against them, Ottilie said. But all three students were charged by OCS with cheating under the university’s honor code. 

  The students knew Ottilie ran his own law practice and reached out for his counsel. Ottilie agreed to take the students’ case pro bono and worked with two other alumni lawyers on their defense—recreating seating charts and finding over a dozen witnesses who were willing to testify to their innocence. 

A student sees another student cheating and tells the teacher. The teacher tries to get to the bottom of it. All of a sudden, we've got lawyers descending on the classroom doing what they do best: they want to issue subpoenas for testimony, they want to start a war room with a murder board and crack team of specialists to comb the neighborhood for witnesses, etc. None of this will make cheating less likely. All it will do is insulate cheaters. The standard of proof for cheating shouldn't be "beyond a reasonable doubt". There should be due process, but we can't turn every cheating case into a capital crime and empanel a jury for it. The entire educational system would cease to function.

Or go with the harm angle? Is Paulmeier asking for Stanford to make it easier for students to cause harm to others? Yes, emphatically he is. Because Paulmeier actually caused harm to other students. He abused his position of power and trust and authority to do that, even after he worked closely with Stanford to ensure that he wouldn't. He still did, and when he was caught, his response was not to accept responsibility, but to intone that it's the system itself that's the problem, not his behavior (although he admits his behavior has been problematic). It's not that he's wrong for his actions, it's that the system is oppressive for holding him accountable. What he wants to do is change the system so that people like him aren't held responsible when they use their position to harm others.

--

My opinion of this piece is that it's very one sided. At a higher level though, it's very concerning to me that some people are trying so hard to make this into a culture war controversy. These situations are very complicated, and it's a sad that they go poorly for some students. On the other hand, other students are being protected by these processes. Could they be better? Yes. Emphatically. Is the subject of this piece salty because he got called out for being an irresponsible jerk who's decisions hurt people? Yes. Does this mean Stanford is at "war" with the student? No. And that's really the bottom line.

[st00]

Could you say more about why you think that this is a terrible take? It's not clear to me from your comment. If you're being sarcastic: forgive me; bravo, well-played. Otherwise...

My attempt at a generous reading would summarize your point as "kids go to Stanford to finish their inculcation before we let them start taking responsibility for things. The idea of controlling potentiality destructive behavior is crucial for social control and stability."

The position I described strikes me as mechanistic in the extreme. I'll skip over my disagreement with "the enture purpose..." and focus on the big issue. Wouldn't it be better for everyone concerned to allow kids to make mistakes that affect just a few people, and be forced to learn how to navigate and resolve those errors-- that is, to build practical wisdom--before putting them in a position where their mistakes (due to a lack of perspective and emotional immaturity borne by living in tightly controlled conditions), affect many people?

[qikInNdOutReply]

And that will find it acceptable in all future endavours to micro-meddle in the lifes of citizens with policy. After all, it was okay for them..

[seanhunter]

Exactly. This article is just culture war pearl-clutching at its very worst. Having students adhere to a campus policy when having parties on campus seems perfectly reasonable, and considered without the hyperbolic tone of the article, the policy itself seems fine in substance.

If you didn't take into account that it is written for undergrads etc you might think it was strangely specific but then you realise these are people who in some cases have just left home. In an ideal world you could just have your policy be "don't be an idiot" but sadly the people who need that policy in the first place also need it spelled out for them in a little more detail.

[908B64B197]

>> Attempts to make their world risk free has turned it into "fuck up once and we'll destroy you".

>> TBH I think it is a much bigger problem that low-stakes hyper-local issues have been elevated into proxy battles for national politics.

Ironically, another hyper-local problem that's been elevated at the national level is the shoplifting epidemics that's happening not far from Stanford.

I can't help but to be amazed at the completely different treatment a shoplifting thug will receive (absolutely no repercussion) vs a model Stanford student who has one (victimless) mishap (bullied to suicide by bureaucrats).

Truly mind boggling.

[aidenn0]

This looks to apply to on-campus parties only? If so, it's more liberal, if also more complicated, than the university I went to where the policy for alcohol on-campus was "No."

Granted you could find dozens of parties within a mile of campus there; I don't know the geography of Stanford.

[woodruffw]

Right. The article bends over backwards to make this sound like a repressive policy, but it's significantly more permissive than most campuses' alcohol rules.

My campus didn't allow alcohol at campus parties, full stop[1]. It was nominally allowed at individually approved events, of which I never observed any (besides perhaps a football game?).

[1]: https://health.umd.edu/wellness-advocacy-alcohol-and-other-d...

[Symbiote]

In my first week of university in London there was an official Maths Department party for new students. There was so much wine the head of department asked me and several others to take a box of 6 bottles home (each!) so it would be less obvious that she's ordered too much.

There are at least 4 bars on the main campus, and several pubs just outside it.

They do have a policy:

> The licensed premises in the College are normally open at lunchtime and in the evening, with regular extensions during term-time for the Union bar until midnight on Wednesdays and 1.00 am on Saturdays (i.e. extended from Friday evening). It is College policy that sales of alcohol must not be promoted at lunchtime

[mjh2539]

You have to understand, the UK got to keep all of its normal Protestants. All of the nuts (see: Puritans and other non-conformist unmentionables) came here.

[fsckboy]

sounds good, but not true at all.

Massachusetts was a Puritan colony and blue-laws state, but there was plenty of drinking for all undergrads using university money till the whole MADD (and related groups) national campaigns against drunk driving. (and in reaction you could get Tshirts that said DAMM, drunks against mad mothers)

The 17 and 18yo drinking ages around the country all got raised when the federal govt cut off highway funds if the state age wasn't 21. The insanity is all within my lifetime.

(but yes, various jurisdictions around the country before that were, for religi-political reasons but not puritan, "dry" with no sale of alcohol.)

[fencepost]

I'm going to guess that you're in your 30s or younger (looked, yep). Part of what you're seeing in the comments is a reflection of age ranges on HN and of pretty massive change over the last 30-35 years around alcohol on campuses.

As relevant history, it's less than 40 years since the October 1986 deadline for states to raise their alcohol purchase and possession ages to 21, and until sometime in the '90s a lot of schools were still pretty permissive about underage drinking on campus as long as it wasn't in the face of 'townies' and police. For a lot of HN readers who graduated in the 90s (or earlier) the kind of party and alcohol restrictions that are now commonplace are something they first encountered when their kids went to college.

[CraigRo]

My recollection was that in NY, you could have,drink,and buy alcohol as a minor. You just couldn't SELL it to a minor, and, at least in my nbhd, that wasn't really enforced. I saw a couple guys drinking a six-pack at an AP exam in the morning in full view of a proctor. Colleges didn't seem to care much as long as you drank relatively low alcohol beer. What got scary was when I visited a more hard-drinking and yet repressive college where I saw 17 year olds with enough liquor under their beds to kill an elephant. I happen to think that we lost something when adults couldn't drink with college students -- underage drinking without adults easily goes overboard.

[woodruffw]

Sure: I readily accept that this is a generational thing. But it's being presented as a culture war shift, when plenty of people in the comments here have observed that Stanford's policy has not meaningfully changed in the last 20 years.

I think banning alcohol on campus is foolish, and leads to worse overall outcomes. I also think this article's framing is dishonest and intentionally tendentious.

[aidenn0]

The University I went to was a dry (or nearly dry, maybe wine for welcoming VIP speakers) campus for a long time, but the degree to which it was enforced varied. It was also largely moot since there were 3 bars a single block away from the student union and the majority of students lived off campus.

[gnicholas]

The vast majority of undergrads live on campus. Off-campus housing is quite expensive (it's in Palo Alto), since you're competing with Googlers and the like for real estate.

[woodruffw]

This is not a problem or experience unique to Stanford: NYC has 600,000 university students living in it, and they manage to tear it up just fine without relying on the campus to host their parties.

[gnicholas]

The point is that the vast majority of Stanford undergrads live on-campus. That is presumably not true for universities in NYC. Given that Stanford undergrads live almost entirely on-campus, it is not surprising that on-campus parties form the backbone of the party scene. And given that most undergrads in NYC do not live on-campus, it is not surprising that their party scenes are not as impacted by campus rules.

[disgruntledphd2]

Have you been to Palo Alto? It's rather different from New York. Even SF is more boring and significantly smaller than NY.

[woodruffw]

Boring and smaller aren't the concern: I went to a large state school in an extremely boring suburb of DC. We still managed to cram people into overpriced off-campus housing and to drink ourselves stupid.

[gnicholas]

Sure, there are just very few Stanford undergrads who live off-campus. And most Stanford undergrads would not choose to live off-campus in order to be able to party more.

[tedunangst]

Stanford campus is somewhat inconveniently distant from any off campus housing. As in two miles is more than a quarter mile when you're running late to class.

[idontwantthis]

Exactly. The main reason these rules are great is that it makes students comfortable with calling an ambulance when someone has alcohol poisoning. If drinking is illegal on campus, then you criminalize alcohol poisoning too and students die as a result. My university had a similar, but not as regimented policy as Stanford. It allows the administration and the students to understand each other.

Edit: Besides alcohol poisoning, you also decriminalize injuries and re-criminalize sexual assault.

[Manuel_D]

Stanford university campus is fairly isolated if you don't drive. You can walk to Palo Alto, but that's not exactly somewhere for undergrads to party.

[Per_Bothner]

Most of Palo Alto and Menlo Park are within an easy bike ride from campus. You can mostly stay on pleasant tree-filled residential streets as you admire the multi-million-dollar cottages. Though as others have commented: few undergraduates live or party off-campus.

[ben_w]

The welcome event for freshers at Aberystwyth uni had the speaker (Chancellor? Don't remember) practically encouraging people to relax and drink as well as studying.

One of my acquaintances at university did an exchange year with an American university, was forced to attend an alcoholism awareness group therapy program after being caught at a party with one beer, at which (I paraphrase but by his own description) almost caused a riot by plainly describing his experiences with alcohol when the moderators of that program asked him to share.

Myself however, I was exactly the "lock yourself away in your bedroom and study (without drinking)" personality that one of the authority figures told all of us not to be.

[version_five]

Lol, from how I understand you post I feel like it could be a comedy skit about a Welsh guy going to the coastal US and acting normally, like telling drinking stories, while the sheltered people around him are horrified.

[ben_w]

*Welsh student*

"Felly beth bynnag, ar ôl i ni i gyd orffen y pumed peint, David, chwedl llwyr ei fod, penderfynodd roi un o'r defaid yr oeddem wedi'i ddwyn i sedd gefn car y deon. Beth bynnag, arweiniodd un peth at un arall, a nawr ni chaniateir o fewn hanner milltir i'r Amwythig."

*American stares back in monolingual, desperately grasping with one hand for some holy water as they believe they have witnessed Speaking In Tongues*

[red-iron-pine]

"so I was at this party and this British dude was so drunk he starts speaking, no shit, in Elvish. Like full-on Tolken, man!"

[fmajid]

You rebel you

[huevosabio]

A lot of people the stuff I see coming out of Stanford admin is absolutely ridiculous.

But I actually liked the EANABs policy when I was there. Granted, they mostly remained intact, but they provide something to hidrate in a party and something for those who don't drink (which is not that rare!).

[Manuel_D]

The EANABs is fine - I even do this at my parties as adults, it's good to have good non-alcoholic drinks for non-drinkers and for pacing.

That said, you're spot on about the ridiculous rules. One of the dumbest alcohol policies was to ban liquor containers over 750ml [1]. But you could still have any number of liquor bottles, as long as they were individually less than 750ml. The rationale is that since two 750ml bottles costs marginally more than a 1.5L handle of alcohol, that will reduce binge drinking. I kid you not.

1. https://bulletin.stanford.edu/pages/0Wpl6joexOePOiCBZWCB

[nocoiner]

This actually doesn’t seem that silly to me. Isn’t this a bog standard Pigouvian tax? And I think it should be fairly uncontroversial that there are definite negative externalities to handles of liquor…

[Manuel_D]

What is the real cost difference between two 750ml vodka bottles and one 1.5L handle? The Piguovian tax is probably on the order of $1-2 per liter of liquor. This is negligible.

[etrautmann]

yeah I agree, I've tried to follow that EANAB's example when throwing parties elsewhere too. I most certainly do not submit any party plan to anyone in advance

[fencepost]

Having decent NABs on hand for parties has always been a polite and common-sense thing to do. "Equally Attractive" seems like a bit of a judgement call.

[etrautmann]

haha yeah I don't care about the acronym, but I find the term somewhat ridiculous yet fun to say, which makes people think about it and not ignore it (maybe).

[havblue]

I think this was more or less normal over twenty years ago when everyone started to crack down on underage drinking. Get caught serving minors or hazing and the university might take your house away.

From the university's standpoint they of course want to pave the way for donations and protect their reputation. If they boot an occasional animal house fraternity it just lets them open a door to a more reputable organization that is more discreet about breaking campus rules.

[hgsgm]

"minors" are extremely rare in college. Most "underage" drinkers are adults.

[havblue]

People are so literal here. It's great. You are correct, I should have put "underage" and not "minors".

[InitialLastName]

All of these rules sound onerous, but they boil down to the same rules as when I was in college ~15 years ago in a very different place (and only applied to public and openly promoted parties).

They're a very low-lift means to reducing hospital trips, at the very least.

[mwcremer]

Likely a result of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner

[tomkarho]

> "fuck up once and we'll destroy you"

Welcome to the life in the internet era. every mistake, every errant post, every fuck up catalogued, stamped and preserved in perpetuity. Ready to be used in a moment's notice against you should you stray from the established narrative or the instructions of "The Party"

[Lammy]

> prohibiting the serving of any hard liquor

> Party hosts must also provide “EANABs,” or Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverages

Good time to invest in Liquid Death (water in a tallboy can) if their presence at parties is mandated.

[shagie]

As an aside, the marketplace article on them from a few weeks ago: https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/25/liquid-death-is-an-en...

[hanoz]

As a Briton, it's incomprehensible to me that American adults allow themselves to be told, like children, that they can't drink alcohol until they are an older adult! It's completely and utterly baffling. How do you guys put up with it?

[hgsgm]

Too many Americans are extremely immature and kill or rape each other with binge drinking.

[itsthejb]

One could argue that maturity can only be reached by allowing minors responsibility

[mcv]

Am I now supposed to be upset about universities tackling the problem of excessive drinking by students? Because when it comes to alcohol, fucking up once can also destroy you. I still remember how a number of years ago, a student at the university of Groningen drank himself to death under peer pressure. The article refers to a student being hospitalised due to alcohol.

The university working to reduce the dangers of alcohol sounds like a very good thing to me.

Of course the rest of the article, about harsh punishments by the university that even drove one student to suicide, is also serious. It looks like Stanford needs to be a bit more concerned with their students' mental health and not just their alcohol intake. The relationship between the university and its students comes across as far too antagonistic, and that's not good.

[ChuckNorris89]

>drank himself to death under peer pressure

Learning to resist tribal peer pressure without becoming an outcast is by far the most valuable life lesson I've ever learned.

[jiveturkey]

> Attempts to make their world risk free

It's nothing to do with risk free for the students. Nothing.

It's to reduce liability for the university. That is the world we live in.

[fallingknife]

They didn't do this in college 20 years ago, and liability laws have not changed since then.

[jiveturkey]

Well, I didn't say anything about laws. As alcohol-related incidents increase in frequency and severity, and as payouts become bigger, the cost to insure (including self-insure) goes up.

This kind of policy existed at my alma mater 30 years ago. Even the alt beverage bit. Can't remember if we just served water or did we actually have punch of some kind. We even had (student) inspectors that went around to registered parties to verify that the rules were followed. And yes, citations were written and disciplinary hearings were held, and party privileges revoked for the semester. This was at a big 10 state school.

[fallingknife]

Alcohol incidents are increasing in frequency? Payouts are bigger? You got a source for that?

And student inspectors? I'm sure they enforced rules rather than just partying with everyone else.

[geodel]

> Hosts are also required to take an online “Party Planning Course”

Well, the way they are going, it seems Stanford admins are required to take "Party Pooper Course"

[hot_gril]

This actually seems like a permissive rule compared to the usual no alcohol, period. But private schools in general have weird rules for unrelated things, mostly to protect their own reputation, so yeah it is "screw up and we'll destroy you" for those. The funniest I can think of was how my private elementary school banned all students from personally having a MySpace account, at the threat of expulsion.

[scotty79]

As a non-drinker all of those seem to me pretty reasonable requests for any kind of gathering.

A bit organized perhaps, but not insane as some commenters suggest.

[nickff]

They're not requests, they're requirements.

[tptacek]

So don't host official fraternity parties if you're not OK with those requirements. What's complicated about this? Fraternities are "official" organizations; official organizations have to deal with official policies. Just have unofficial parties.

[stale2002]

> So don't host official fraternity parties

If only it were allows to host a party, with your friends who happen to be in the same fraternity, and it were allowed to do this unofficially, without having to follow university rules.

Unfortunately, this is often not allowed. As in literally, if you have a party, at a private residence, because the people going to it happen to be in the same fraternity, this is disallowed.

Unofficial parties are quite literally often not allowed, and are seen by universities as a way of getting around their draconian rules, and you could actually get in trouble for hosting them.

[scotty79]

Sorry, I'm not a native speaker. I think I used the word request improperly. I am aware that those conditions must be met. But then again I am not surprised that those were stated as requirements rather than requests.

From what I understand a request is just a polite suggestion easily, routinely ignored if it requires additional work or foresight and deviates from pre-estabilished culture.

[bart_spoon]

Your original comment was fine, the person responding to you was being pedantic.

[vkou]

As a drinker, these all sound like pretty reasonable requests for an official party.

I would like to raise a question here - how many of the participants at these parties are of legal drinking age?

[musicale]

Party and alcohol restrictions have been normal for years for universities that are paranoid about liability - which seems to be most of them in the US. A disconnect is that alcohol is illegal for under-21s, which includes many/most college students.

Then again this is also the school that fired its mascot (a student) for carrying a sign that said "Stanford Hates Fun" - thereby demonstrating the sign's accuracy.

But the greater issue is hostile and punitive policies which exacerbate student stress and depression. The pandemic was handled particularly poorly, and university policies compounded with isolation seem to have greatly harmed student mental health.

A possibly positive change is that universities seem more willing to acknowledge student suicides, and to allow students (and faculty and staff) time to grieve. Perhaps they are worried about potential liability.

[boc]

The concept of registering on-campus parties is nothing new at private universities, but these requirements are pretty insane.

[JumpCrisscross]

The policy looks like it's only for parties held by student organizations [1], not all parties held by its students, which makes the whole thing more silly than dystopian.

[1] https://vaden.stanford.edu/student-party-policy-guidelines

[yamtaddle]

I'm surprised they allow alcohol at student organization events, period. My boring public university no-one's heard of sure didn't, years back.

[filoleg]

> I'm surprised they allow alcohol at student organization events, period

According to the link above, "student organizations" also includes fraternities/sororities and athletic teams. Never heard of fraternities/sororities not being allowed to have alcohol at their parties before, outside of schools with a religious lean (e.g., BYU) or edge cases. I didn't go to college that long ago either, been barely 6 years since I graduated.

The only relevant thing I remember we had was a "dry week", iirc during the first week of any given semester. During "dry week", fraternities/sororities weren't allowed to have alcohol at their events, period. Which made sense, because it was also the rush week, and the school didn't want fraternities/sororities to entice students with alcohol during their recruitment week.

[giraffe_lady]

Look we are trying to have a moral panic about political correctness here get in the spirit please.

[yamtaddle]

God, now I'm thinking about how much better our fundraisers would have been if we could have sold drink tickets, for the organizations I was involved in. And how much more I'd have cared about fundraising if we could have diverted some of the proceeds to buy ourselves alcohol "for official functions", LOL.

[sideshowb]

Spirit? That's a rule violation sorry

[ben_w]

I was raised Catholic[0], so I could argue that wine is a Holy Spirit.

[0] technically

[rhaway84773]

How is requiring additional options, which are legally the only options about 75% of students can legally consume, any sort of suppression? Especially when technically only about 25% of students in a 4 year college in the US can even legally drink.

[grammers]

This sounds so crazy. Can't they just leave the premises to have a good party?

[stale2002]

Not really, no.

The way that university policy often works, is that for certain groups, especially "Greek Life" related groups, if you run an event that is included any members of that group, then the group could be held liable.

That leads to absurd situations where if a bunch of friends, host a party, in a privately owned residence, because the friends happen to be in the same fraternity, if anything bad happens, the fraternity could get in trouble.

And this is regardless of if the event is hosted off campus, in a privately owned place.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Can't they just leave the premises to have a good party?

Yes. As others mention, many universities prohibit alcohol at official student organization events.

[rocket_surgeron]

>Is this normal!?! I feel sorry for this generation. Attempts to make their world risk free has turned it into "fuck up once and we'll destroy you".

If the students would simply stop raping people and dying of fentanyl overdoses which lead to their parents suing the school I'm sure Stanford would not have as many rules for what occurs on campus.

Or we can choose as a society to free Stanford of civil liability for the actions of people who aren't Stanford employees on its campus.

It is normal, typical, common, and expected for universities in the United States to completely prohibit alcohol consumption on campus.

These rules seem like an attempt to regulate on-campus activities to a degree much lower than in public institutions.

[alephnerd]

Why is this guy getting downvoted. I went to college in the mid-to-late 2010s and was in Greek life. We'd be inspected by our university all the time when we'd throw parties at our Frat's house and if photos of alcohol and stuff were seen by admin we'd def face disciplinary action.

You can agree or disagree with that all you want but at least that's how a lot of universities are handling alcohol and parties on campus. Blame overlitigious parents if you have to, it makes sense to be honest as no university wants to be on the hook liability wise. Look at what happened to Stanford after Brock Turner (which is also around the time Stanford became so overbearing about campus culture)

[ModernMech]

> It is normal, typical, common, and expected for universities in the United States to completely prohibit alcohol consumption on campus.

My question is: why does this article try so hard to make it seem like it’s not typical?

[alephnerd]

It's published by Bari Weiss, an ex-NYT reporter who leans Center-Right/Libertarian.

Not disagreeing with the content, but at the end of the day it's a blog like any other that has a slant like Vox or The Intercept or The Atlantic.

[bart_spoon]

Because outrage has proven to be a viable business model

[Panzer04]

Because no one reads "normal" news?

[nonethewiser]

The real problem is that this is presumably enforceable. How is that possible?

[henrikschroder]

The cost of tuition being ridiculously high means that students want to avoid getting expelled at any cost, because the financial hit is pretty damn big, you'd lose half a year to a year of tuition.

If tuition was less expensive, or free, students would be freer to not give a fuck about these ridiculous policies.

[trinsic2]

Sad state of affairs, man.