<p>I don’t know if this was covered already, but can anyone comment on SLE? Is it as enriching as it sounds?</p>
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<p>I don’t think Stanford is much different. Many if not most people in Palo Alto and Menlo Park are connected to Stanford. Pretty much the same attitudes. Here are two recent stories. The story about Vicki Smothers is instructive. The behavior by the driver isn’t common but the reaction by authorities is familiar on and off campus. And the reactions by readers tells alot.</p>
<p>[Almanac</a> Online : Community activist tells of terrifying night](<a href=“http://www.almanacnews.com/news/show_story.php?id=8759]Almanac”>http://www.almanacnews.com/news/show_story.php?id=8759)</p>
<p>[Palo</a> Alto Online : Students of color overrepresented in special ed](<a href=“http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=20885]Palo”>http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=20885)</p>
<p>I’m a “person of color” and have never experienced or seen anything similar to what Doss is explaining, either on campus or in Palo Alto.</p>
<p>I think its kind of dumb that of all the great things about Stanford, some of you are choosing to focus on the possible slight racial elements. Stanford seems like a school that prides itself on diversity… more so than any other top school, and i’m sure that if one is looking for instances of discrimination in the past, it’ll be found.</p>
<p>I’m also a ‘person of color’ (though not black) but I haven’t experienced anything similar to that. Nor has my roommate of 3 years (he’s black), nor have any of my friends that I’ve had over the years ever mention anything like that and I know a lot of black people (probably ~70% of the black people of my class and a lot of others from other classes). </p>
<p>Are there a lot of white people in Palo alto? Yes. Are there a lot of Asians? Yes. Southeast Asians? Yes. Blacks? Yes (though admittedly not as much) Hispanics? Yes. Am I saying that no one here has ever experienced anything or felt anything in terms of discrimination? Of course I’m not. I’m positive that there have been incidents and if Doss says that they’ve experienced or heard about incidents I’d definitely believe them. What I am trying to say is that I don’t think that its a prevalent issue on campus. But Palo Alto is definitely not all white or all one ethnicity. It’s quite diverse. </p>
<p>Texacal sle is nice. I didn’t do it but a lot of my friends did. If you like the idea of reading lots of philosophical issues and spend most of your freshman year amongst a small group of kids that share that passion than sle is for you! They do have a stereotype on campus of being odd (and frosoco kids as being nerdy) but after freshman year that stereotype dies down. Some of my friends loved sle, others liked it. It really boils down to whether or not you really want that kind of atmosphere.</p>
<p>Oh and yeah I have to just add that I don’t know of any undergrads that live in SF nor is it always easy to schedule classes to only be 3 days a week. It really depends on your major…</p>
<p>Like I said, most of the people here are very PC and outright hostility such as the driver in Menlo Park is unusual. But frankly racism and stereotyping at Stanford and Palo Alto/Menlo park are omnipresent, just more subtle. If you want to understand life at Stanford and in Palo Alto/Menlo Park for my friends and I, read “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison. Stanford’s idea of a non-racist environment is for us to be invisible except to pull us out to sing and dance at annual events such as Admit Weekend. If you don’t believe me, check out the events this weekend. How many “events of color” are some “performing group/person of color” versus an academic or intellectual activity. Compare that ratio to that of events by “persons of whiteness.”</p>
<p>And of course any disputes that concern minorities are always couched in ways that avoid race implications. Similar to the way that all this discussion of where the President was born is discussed as if it is a legitimate issue rather than some people playing upon other people’s racist fears.</p>
<p>But I acknowledge that my perspective might be skewed. Most of my friends are African American, Chicano, or Native American, but none would describe themselves as a “person of color.” Most of my friends would describe Stanford as a pretty nice place to spend four years, but not because there is no racism. Rather because if you’re African American, Chicano, or Native American you learn to live with and ignore most racism. Otherwise you’d never get through the day. But I would also point out that the examples in my posts are only those that have made it into the press. And usually what makes it into the press is just the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>Here’s another story about how officials here handle civil rights issues.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/04/27/university-alters-nondiscrimination-policy[/url]”>http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/04/27/university-alters-nondiscrimination-policy</a></p>
<p>^I’m not here to contradict Doss12 or argue but I just want to give my perspective.</p>
<p>To start off with lets make clear what I am not saying that there isn’t any racism or stereotyping that occurs on campus. What a silly statement that would be! And I agree with Doss12 that there are some things in how race and gender are treated in places like stanford and palo alto (and really any rich area in the US) that need to be rectified. </p>
<p>What I am saying however is that as a minority and as someone that has been a part of SOCC (students of color coalition) for years, led an alternative spring break looking into stereotypes against a specific minority in america, been a core member of a minority student group, been a core member of a religious minority group, been a resident of an ethnic themed house I never felt that the administration was anything but supportive of the minority groups on campus and their well being. Of course my main experience has been with a specific minority but from the feedback from other people I do know that a lot of other people do feel the same way. </p>
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<p>I just don’t agree with that statement at all. The discussion of race in america is quite a thriving one at stanford and I’ve been to several (and organized quite a few) talks on the matter. Does stanford like to show its diversity by asking different student groups to perform at things like admit weekend? Of course! That does not detract from everything else. All I’m saying is that in my five years dealing with the administration and talking to them (I’ve had meetings with everyone from the president downwards in my time here) I have always felt them to be open to diversity, open to discussion of issues and receptive to any input that was given to them.</p>
<p>Again I’m not here to debate anything. I’m simply interjecting to voice my own personal experiences. Now I really need to go to sleep. Just finished another problem set.</p>
<p>I also have no intention of debating anyone here, but would just like to add my own observations. I am not a URM by any means–I’m a white male from fortunate circumstances. I come from a family that has sent many members to top East coast schools for several generations, and I can attest that at Stanford, students’ backgrounds, race, ethnicity etc. matter far less socially than they do at its peer schools. I have very easily made good friends with people of every color and creed here, and usually none of us has any idea what social strata others came from, nor do we care. I think Stanford does a lot to create an atmosphere where that’s possible. The emphasis here is on our excitement at being at such an amazing school, and on where we’re all headed!</p>
<p>Are there french people?</p>
<p>I want to know approximately how much do you donate can get you in Stanford?</p>
<p>That would be a good question for you to ask in your application essay.</p>
<p>First of all, Stanford has the highest percentage of people of color of any top school whose population data I looked at. How racist can it possibly be if 40% of the students are non-whites? </p>
<p>Secondly, Stanford is always named as one of the best schools for Hispanics by “Latino Magazine”. I read that it is also quite friendly to Native Americans, eg. Pacific Northwest tribal groups. Read through the threads on this particular forum and you will see many posts that accuse Stanford of being too URM-friendly to the point of discriminating against whites. </p>
<p>Third, being the amazing athletic school that it is, I’d imagine it offers the opportunity for minority athletes who aren’t wealthy to compete at a high level and also get a superb private school education.</p>
<p>So if there is racism on campus, I can’t imagine it is any worse than at other top schools. Heck, at Princeton there are eating clubs you can’t become a member of unless your family is connected and loaded. I doubt that system is too friendly to first generation URM’s. My S’s Chinese friend (first gen.) couldn’t get in any of the bicker ones, and he’s a very sociable guy who likes football!</p>
<p>Something very seldom discussed about Stanford on these threads is the racial communities on campus. If you talk to the community center workers or the leaders of the ethnic associations, they will tell you things are dandy and minorities stick together and they fight for awareness, most of which is true.
what they don’t tell you about is the distinct Stanford quality of races segregating themselves from each other and from non-minority students, pretending that most problems that they face are about their race, and ostracizing people who aren’t as radically involved in racial identity.
Emails like “more black people have asthma” because white people have segregated them to worse places or “other people just don’t understand that asians need straight As” are not uncommon from leaders of the ethnic communities, when the truth of the matter is that these people don’t understand that the problems have little to do with race and more to do with socio-economic background, or cultural practices, or other things.</p>
<p>If you talk to people who belong to certain ethnic associations, a large number will say that they feel disconnected from their own group or other groups because of the polarization that takes place on campus. Dialogue is almost always a good thing, but the type of dialogue that is present on campus is, to many people, so much more hurtful than productive. </p>
<p>Other people feel differently and feel very connected to their community, and I am happy that their needs are being fulfilled by their organizations, but be aware that not everyone is happy with the way students deal with race at stanford.</p>
<p>What happens at some top schools is that the administration bends over backward to attract and accommodate minority students. At my son’s Ivy, they tried to think of everything. For example, they even arranged for ethnic beauticians to come to town from a neighboring city (since apparently there wasn’t anyone decent nearby) so people of color could get their hair done. In their attempt to make URM students feel welcome, these schools provide all kinds of minority services and organizations such ethnic houses. However, I think sometimes these things have the unintended effect of segregating minorities. Apparently, though, there are students who want the comfort of knowing there’s a group of X minority kids doing Y and that makes them more likely to select that school. Or at least that’s how it was explained to us when D started getting annoyed at all the minority nonsense being sent to her from all the colleges. There was one particularly annoying minority recruitment admissions officer who kept calling her and sending her special minority info. D basically told the lady that she had managed to succeed as a minority in her diverse high school–not only academically, but extra-curricularly and socially, as evidenced by her application. She had taken a bizillion AP’s and had very high SAT scores. Why, then, would they assume she’d need all these minority services, like special tutoring, in order to succeed and feel comfortable at their school? And if they felt she needed all that support in order to feel comfortable at their school, was there some underlying racial problem there that she should know about? Oh, they were so offended by her question. </p>
<p>Once enrolled at the Ivy, my son still kept getting all these minority e-mails. He was uninterested in anything minority-related, and asked to be removed from their distribution list. Do you believe they REFUSED to remove him? That really ticked my son off; they didn’t even think he should decide for himself whether he wants or needs minority information! </p>
<p>My kids didn’t want to segregate themselves, in part because they don’t think of themselves as belonging to anything other than mainstream culture. For freshman year, my Stanford D listed the minority housing as her absolute last pick. Frankly, she was scared they’d give it to her anyway, because son’s school put him with a roommate of the same minority. He suspected that that school thought it would make them both feel more comfortable in the white world. Ugh.</p>
<p>The point of this rambling is to say that minorities themselves don’t agree on what they want. Some students want their black house or their Asian house or whatever, and some students think that stuff is insulting as all heck. I don’t think the colleges can win with this.</p>
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<p>Self-segregation happens everywhere, at universities or not. I would say that Stanford has less self-segregation than in general.</p>
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<p>I have never experienced or even heard of either of these being true, and expect that if such were to happen, it would be met with a lot of opposition and even controversy.</p>
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<p>I can definitely see this. That’s likely because these students don’t want to invest themselves in these communities, and that’s completely understandable (I didn’t). </p>
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<p>It’s more that those individuals are unhappy with the way society deals with race, and some of those ways manifest at Stanford.</p>
<p>The much greater problem on campus is the lack of class consciousness. People are unwilling–even afraid–to talk about their backgrounds, and show insensitivity or even malice toward other classes (often without even realizing it). Some, though very rare, will openly show snobbery toward middle- and lower-income students; others are afraid to show their upper-class background for fear of this perception. And lower-income students are often afraid of showing their background for fear of being looked down on. Some believe that they’re paying tuition to subsidize those who can’t (a patently false assumption), and some of them aren’t afraid to complain about the “injustice” of Stanford’s financial aid to students who are on financial aid. Some even believe that low-income students have no problems because they’re on full financial aid.</p>
<p>These kinds of misunderstandings about classes are probably the most prevalent problem on campus.</p>
<p>I transferred to Stanford from a large prestigious public school known for being highly pro-diversity. Stanford is infinitely more integrated. I also considered Yale, my sister is attending next year. Stanford is way better integrated. </p>
<p>Segregation results a lot from differences in culture. I think that when people assume they don’t have much in common, they don’t know how to talk to each other. Additionally, a lot of students aren’t use to being in the minority so they avoid such situations. For example, at when doing an admit weekend-like-thing at Wash U I took my white friend to a predominately black party. He felt really uncomfortable and wanted to leave pretty quickly. Similar situations have occurred when I’ve taken black friends to majority asian parties (though less often because a lot of black students at Stanford were in the extreme minority in high school). Nonetheless, there are way more people at Stanford who are comfortable with being in minority situations than any place I’ve ever been, and probably will be.</p>
<p>Have any of the Stanford kids on here been in FroSoCo? Do you mind answering a few of my questions?</p>
<p>^I’ve spent two nights there if u wanna ask me.</p>
<p>Will I need a suit? If so for what events? How often will I wear the suit?</p>
<p>I am a potential CS major.</p>
<p>If current Stanford students can offer their input here I’d be so grateful! I’ve been poring over the IHUM course catalog for days and I’m stuck deciding between these classes:
- Humans and Machines
- Technological Visions of Utopia
- Word and Image</p>
<p>Here’s my criteria:
-Quality of professors
-Reading list (I’ve already read 2 of the 5 required books for Utopia and found them really interesting. I read a bit of “Phaedrus” for Word and Image and found it interesting too. On the other hand, “Man a Machine” for Humans and Machines seems like a really tough read.)
-Practicality/Applicability (I want to study premed, maybe major in psych, english, or possibly humbio)</p>
<p>I’ve heard that the majority of students think IHUM is a waste of time. Nevertheless I really want to choose my class wisely. So if any of you’ve taken either of the three classes mentioned, can you offer me any advice?</p>