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You mean an American accent?</p>
<p>1) The pro-life group on campus held a protest last week by placing roses in front of the bookstore to symbolize the deaths that have occurred from Roe vs. Wade. Most people were rolling their eyes at them and taking pictures of their ridiculous protest. </p>
<p>2) There’s a pretty strong opposition to bringing ROTC back on campus for political reasons. </p>
<p>Those are the two most recent types of “political” activism on this campus–it isn’t really a political campus, though liberalism clearly wins.</p>
<h2>"Most people were rolling their eyes at them and taking pictures of their ridiculous protest. "</h2>
<p>Again…I think the crux of the OP’s question is whether minority points of view are tolerated and respected. Seems like wahoomb is stating Stanford has the ‘tolerate’ part down, but not necessarily the ‘respect’ part.</p>
<p>Do you think that anyone–not just at Stanford–who’s pro-life will do anything more than tolerate pro-choice opinions? And vice versa? I don’t “respect” the idea; I will tolerate that others have it and not treat them any differently for it. I think that’s all you can expect of people in general on controversial issues like this.</p>
<p>NJDS said: “you either have the name of Stanford or HYP or you don’t. it isn’t always important, but it means a lot in many circles/professions”</p>
<p>Actually, those names mean more to the general public and less in the academic world, which concentrates more on excellence in schools for particular disciplines. For example, the following schools are among the best in the countrty for their disciplines, and carry more cachet in those disciplines than generic HYPed schools: Harvey Mudd and Cal Poly SLO for engineering; U Rochester for Game Design; UCSC for Astrophysics and Marine Science; Kenyon for Literature; USC for Film Studies; The OSU for Turf Management; Babson for Business; Olin for Engineering.</p>
<p>In other words, if what you’re after is a “best” school that generic humans recognize, HYPed definitely works. But if you are interested in a particular discipline, the “best” schools are usually NOT the HYPed ones that “everybody” knows; instead, they are the schools that people in those disciplines respect and admire for reasons that have much more to do with academic excellence than any national brand name.</p>
<p>Which is why when people on CC make a case that the HYPed schools alone will give you a leg up for your academic field, I know that their opinion is shaped in large part by what they do not know.</p>
<p>NJDS said: “you either have the name of Stanford or HYP or you don’t. it isn’t always important, but it means a lot in many circles/professions”</p>
<p>Kei-o-lei said: “If you are interested in a particular discipline, the “best” schools are usually NOT the HYPed ones that “everybody” knows”</p>
<p>I would submit that each of these statements is a bit hyperbolic. Kei-o-lei is right that, within academia, a broader swath of schools are recognized for their superb departments in certain disciplines. But NJDS is also correct that in many circles and professions, HYPSM degrees confer greater advantages. Moreover, these advantages aren’t solely, or even primarily, because of “hyping”, marketing, cronyism, etc., but because these schools do in fact house some of the very best departments in many fields. That’s why they became the leading institutions that they are. So for those fortunate enough to attend HYPSM and to study within their respective outstanding departments, it’s possible to have both genuinely top academics and the advantages of worldwide recognition. We don’t have to explain to people that our college really does have a top department in X field, or remind ourselves that “those who know” or “those who count” are familiar with our programs.</p>
<p>^^ good post.</p>
<p>While I agree with you, Kei-o-lei, you didn’t disprove the statement you quoted. You went on to talk about academic circles, but the other person was saying “certain circles/professions,” not the general public. I think we can all agree that in academia, the prestige of a program has a greater effect than the prestige of the school. This statement is equally fallacious:</p>
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<p>The opposite true: the ‘best’ schools in particular disciplines are usually the ‘hyped’ ones. Look at the NRC rankings, old and new, and you’ll see that the schools that most commonly come out in the top 10 are Stanford, Harvard, etc. Look at the Gorman undergraduate discipline rankings. Look at the US News discipline rankings. Yes, there’s a lot of hype about these universities, which in many cases can become exaggerated. But as in every case, there is some truth to the hype. Of course other lesser-known schools will make it into the top 10 for particular disciplines, but you’ll usually see the ‘hyped’ universities are right up there too. </p>
<p>(Cal Poly SLO, also, is ranked among the best in engineering for schools that don’t grant PhDs, but if you were to look solely at undergraduate engineering, there are many much better places to go. I have a lot of friends from high school who are at Cal Poly engineering, and from what they say, there is much to be desired. It definitely doesn’t carry nearly the cachet that more hyped schools do for undergrad engineering.)</p>
<h2>“I will tolerate that others have it and not treat them any differently for it.” </h2>
<p>Oh sorry. The “eye rolling” and “ridiculous” part of the post led me to believe otherwise…unless you are stating Stanford students also roll their eyes and take pictures of “ridiculous protests” with which they agree.</p>
<p>I think it was the ostentation of the demonstration that caused the eye-rolling. I’ve seen demonstrations for other causes that I agree with and still roll my eyes if it’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>Sadly many people will just be pro-choice because it’s the acceptable thing to believe in at Stanford. I get so much s*** here when I say that I’m pro-life, but when I ask people why they’re pro-choice I generally get lame responses that show little intellectual depth. Ignorance and political-correctness are the name of the game at Stanford. </p>
<p>What’s so “ridiculous” about a pro-life protest? I’m confused. I don’t think pro-choice protests are ridiculous. I don’t agree with them, but I can see why one might have that viewpoint. </p>
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A liberalism that doesn’t consider the right of an unborn baby to live? A liberalism that makes Stanford a relatively unfriendly place for free speech? A liberalism where the $$ wins out at the end of the day? You call them liberals. I call them hypocrites.</p>
<p>Unfriendly place for free speech? The Pro-Life religious freaks (yes, I actually spoke with some of them) put on a show last week–free speech is most definitely respected on this campus. A few days ago there was that crazy guy who often comes to campus (near Tressider) to goes off on how homosexuals are sinful beings. </p>
<p>PS: In front of the Pro-Life demonstration, there was the Pro-Choice demonstration. They didn’t need pictures of dead pregnant mothers to make a point. They were just standing there with a sign having a good time. They weren’t proselytizing.</p>
<p>^^ not all pro-life protests are ridiculous, but when you see pro-life people holding up large images of aborted fetuses when you pass by, it’s ridiculous. When you see them putting roses on the front steps of the bookstore, it’s ostentatious and ridiculous. Also pointless, because they’re not going to win anyone over with those tactics. Not to mention they’re preaching to the wrong choir. It’s a bit far, though, to say that everyone else is ignorant just because they don’t have the same political view as you. That goes for every person who thinks others are ignorant for their different views.</p>
<p>wahoomb- there’s a difference between being theoretically allowed to have free speech versus having a free speech culture permeate throughout campus. It’s the difference between positive and negative liberty. Stanford offers the latter but not the former in my opinion. </p>
<p>phantasmagoric- why is it ostentatious and ridiculous to offer some semblance of a funeral to those who had none? How is it ostentatious and ridiculous to show those souls some respect when they were previously afforded none? </p>
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I never said “everyone else.” I said “many people.” Big difference. And I don’t think all those who are pro-choice are ignorant. I think those who can’t give me a reasonable support of it, on the other hand, are.</p>
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<p>Actually, I was referring to your statement that “Ignorance and political-correctness are the name of the game at Stanford.”</p>
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<p>Come on now, you can’t honestly be making that argument? If you want to hold a funeral for them (actually, a lot of people do hold a funeral for them), does it make any sense to do so on the front steps of a bookstore on a college campus? No. What does Stanford have to do with it? What does the bookstore have to do with it? What does a rose have to do with it? It makes about as much sense as putting a bunch of tulips on the roof of Synergy to commemorate the loss of pets who never got a proper funeral.</p>
<p>It’s obviously a political statement. It’s over the top. It makes no sense to do it the way they did, except perhaps in the pragmatic sense that its purpose was to gather attention, seem dramatic, etc. Even people who organized it realize this! It’s simply ostentatious. And there are much better ways to spend your time promoting pro-life than the way they did. So it’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>okay even if you were referring to that, just because I said it’s the “name of the game” doesn’t mean that I think everyone is ignorant. That just seems to be the prevalent condition here. </p>
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Because students at Stanford are decidedly pro-choice. </p>
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Um let’s see I think it’s traditional to honor the dead with flowers. </p>
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Obviously! What protests are not a political statement?</p>
<p>…you’re the one trying to make it seem like a funeral, not me. It’s a political protest, nothing more, and a ridiculous one at that.</p>
<p>Have any of you taken a poll of Stanford students asking them whether they’re pro-life or pro-choice? It just makes me laugh that a bunch of privileged teenagers are so passionate about a cause they are not mature enough to understand. This goes especially for the guys who were protesting–as if boys knew what a woman goes through when she decides to have an abortion. Ridiculous.</p>
<p>To the OP- some of the most “liberal campuses” are indeed the most intellectually serious and most rigorous schools (and perhaps other than Vasser, Oberlin and Wesleyan, there are significant populations of conservative students at these institutions as well). If you want conservative/parochial, Dartmouth is certainly moreso than Yale or Columbia. Stanford has the Hoover Institute (a bit to the right of Louis XIV), but this doesn’t necessarily reflect the rest of the school.</p>
<p>Wahoomb is wise.</p>
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I’ll disregard your maturity comment because there’s immaturity on both sides of the debate, with many people just believing in one side or the other because the church, or the liberal establishment, told them to do so. </p>
<p>Anyways, because I’m a guy I can’t have any say in whether or not women should have the right to abort? That’s bulls***. That’s like saying the anti-slavery advocates in the north shouldn’t have been allowed to support abolition because they didn’t own slaves and were not slaves themselves. Those northerners had nothing to lose by outlawing slavery! </p>
<p>Yes you’re right I will never know what it feels like for the woman getting an abortion. I also don’t know what it feels like for a mentally ill person to kill some stranger, for instance. So, since we don’t know what was going through the mentally ill person’s mind, let’s just let him off the hook! Yeah great logic.</p>