<p>I like calmom's version of the story. Whether it applies to Ms. Kim or not, it's appealing. I'd actually forgotten about Jobs's address to Stanford (I'd accessed it through the Reed site), but of course that makes perfect sense.</p>
<p>Yes, kids have been living on campuses where they weren't enrolled for various lengths of time ever since colleges started, I would think. In the back of my mind I remembered a TV show from my youth:
" In 1965 there was a charming sitcom called Hank starring Dick Kallman - about the first college drop-in. College drop-outs were a common theme in the culture in '65 but this show was about a clean cut guy who disguised himself as a student he knew was going to be absent that day. In this way, he could get a college education and continue to take care of his orphaned sister. Aaaaaaaw!"
<a href="http://www.tvparty.com/1blog6.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.tvparty.com/1blog6.html</a>
I remember one of my sib's kids being told in no uncertain terms to get a high school friend out of the dorm room Mom and Dad were paying for NOW!.... the young lady in question hadn't been admitted to her dream school so was drifting among friends rooms. Told parents she was researching schools.</p>
<p>The difference between Ms.Kim and Mr. Jobs is that she wasn't just a laid-back kid crashing with friends until she found what interested her most and/or got more money for tuition. She lied to everyone: family, high school frineds, room-mates, class-mates (although it's not clear - did she attend any classes?). To live a total lie like that moves it into the "clearly not normal" realm to me.</p>
<p>On the local news, it's been reported that she got into UCB and UCLA. Maybe she heard so many people speak ill of UCs and decided not to go?
OT, perhaps these kids never heard of a serial killer Richard Ramirez, who broke into to people houses through opened windows, even on second floor and terrorized a lot of people, in the early 80's. Since then, I never leave my window open when I'm not in the same room to watch it.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>(Now I'm starting to wonder how many Harvard squatters there may be....it would be very, very easy to pose as an extension student while informally auditing the larger classes and it probably would be a very long time before people would ask too many questions).<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>I asked D about this, and she said it would be very easy for any college-age kid to get away with attending any class at Harvard that has above ~40 kids in it. She said that living and eating in the dorms and Houses would be a lot harder than going to class. She said it could be done easier in the upperclassman Houses rather than in the Freshman dorms. Access to the freshman dining hall is pretty tightly controlled by "a strict and vigilant Greek woman." But with the aid of friends or other inside accomplices you could get meals in the various House dining commons by sitting down at a table for few minutes and then taking a used plate up for an apparent "refill."</p>
<p>She said that other students in the imposter's House or dorm would eventually figure it out when they couldn't find the "student" on Harvard's internal on-line facebook (not Facebook.com).</p>
<p>This happened at Rice in 2002:
[quote]
Houston — Rice University students and officials wondered about campus security after realizing that an impostor had posed as a student, attending classes, working out with the track team and persuading two women to let him live in their dormitory room. Police say Rodrigo Montano cajoled Rice officers to issue him a university ID card and began masquerading as a Rice student as early as Sept. 3. His ruse was caught last week and he was charged with misdemeanor theft for eating free meals in a campus cafeteria. An internal campus investigation is being conducted to see whether any security lapses need to be addressed, according to The Houston Chronicle.
[/quote]
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<p>D also said that when the Stanford story broke some people were talking about it at Harvard, and there was a flurry of joke e-mails between friends confronting each other about not being real students: "I thought so! This explains a lot!"</p>
<p>The comparison to Steve Jobs at Reed College doesn't wash. Did Steve Jobs ever climb through a window like a burglar to attend classes? I doubt it.</p>
<p>Thank you, LW.</p>
<p>I'm surprised at the number of posters who seem willing to shrug the Stanford incident off or rationalize it.</p>
<p>I continue to be focused on the motivation for such a thing for a person who is most likely not a career criminal. It is indicative of a familial or a psychological need, or both, to embroider such deception.</p>
<p>This story keeps getting weirder and weirder! From today's Stanford Daily:</p>
<p>Headline - "Azia used Stanford to get ROTC spot
Kim forged transcript, accepted $1,350 worth of military equipment and received dozens of hours of military training"</p>
<p>I kind of feel sorry for this girl.</p>
<p>Looks to me she's very comfortable at lying, there are people just born that way, the fact of life.</p>
<p>She will probably lay low for a while then go out to the real world with new name and a fake Stanford diploma. Or, she can hire an agent right now and start preaching why, how, and "I'm sorry, I'm reformed" speaking gig.</p>
<p>^^I'm not so sure she was lying in the ordinary sense so much as she was living out a fantasy -- kinda like Cinderella at the ball. And like Cinderella, time ran out on her and it all fell apart. Unfortunately for her, I don't think there is going to be any glass slipper and prince in this story.</p>
<p>Could she be, 'GASP,' a sleeper agent? A "Yuri' or an Adullah hiding in the ROTC? LOL.</p>
<p>To mootmom in post #31:</p>
<p>You wrote: "As a wake-up call, this incident may have its silver lining. She has introduced an element of fear and distrust which was not present before."</p>
<p>My that <em>is</em> a silver lining. If only we could introduce more fear and distrust the world would be a much better place.</p>
<p>I interpreted mootmom's post as referring to vigilance.</p>
<p>Good interpretation, epiphany.</p>
<p>You know, other than the dorm residence issue, I don't even think there is anything unusual about this. I'll bet urban campuses and public university campuses are full of "students" who are simply auditing and hanging around campus, pretending to fit in. Heck, from a statistical standpoint, I think my daughter has too many friends at Columbia who identify as GS students -- she just seems to be meeting them in disproportionate number to enrollment figures. </p>
<p>I think it's really idiotic for a kid to allow their roommate to leave a ground floor window open all the time, but in my college days we had regularly propped open doors and all kinds of people coming and going. I spent an entire spring break living in a dorm that was officially "closed" for the period, because I didn't want to fly home - I just used wadded up paper to jam the locks on the doors so I could come and go. </p>
<p>It's too bad for her -- if she had targeted a campus that allows some of its students to live off campus--- I doubt anyone would ever have noticed.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>It's too bad for her -- if she had targeted a campus that allows some of its students to live off campus--- I doubt anyone would ever have noticed.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Stanford allows students to live off campus. It guarantees on-campus housing for undergrads but does not require it. But off-campus housing is often not convenient to the campus and wouldn't provide as much of the "college experience" that Azia might have been seeking. But for those who want it, Stanford provides an office to help them find off-campus housing:</p>
<p>yes, but word choice is somewhat revealing, don't you think? This may be less about mootmom's intent than the way it appears. I believe that in thes post-911 world we (particularly in the U.S.) make waaay too much of an issue about "security" to the detriment of openness, empathy, tolerance, human concern, and willingness to try new things.</p>
<p>Yes, she was a squatter and it was wrong. But I'm not totally freaked out by it (and my son is an entering freshman at Stanford, so I have <em>some</em> skin in the game).</p>