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but you're missing a key aspect of this whole thing: you choose your peers. There IS an exceptionally intelligent set of folks at Berkeley, and you CAN choose to hang around them and engage in discussion with them. Just because there are stupid people here doesn't mean you will suddenly be talking to them in your spare time. I agree that you will inevitably get idiots in your discussion sections and have to listen to their inane ramblings from time to time, but consider you spend less time in discussion than you do in lecture even, and if you purport most of the learning goes on outside of lecture, then discussion is really a minor portion of this issue.
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<p>I believe I answered this point with my post above, and I would say that in many cases, you do NOT get to choose your peers. Like I said, your closest ties inevitably tend to be with the people in your freshman dorm, yet you don't get to choose who is in your dorm. By bad luck, your dorm floor/suite might be full of lazy idiots, so you end up bonding with a bunch of idiots. The same is true of many other instances. For example, you will find that you are randomly paired with a lab member, or placed into a random group for a group project, or numerous other instances where you have no choice about who you wind up with. Contrast that with the situation at, say, MIT, where the average student is better than that at Berkeley. You have a far greater assurance that any random mixing involved will still give you a strong selection of peers. </p>
<p>Furthermore, again, I would emphasize the point that many Berkeley students are not strong and confident mature adults. Many of them are just kids. Because they are kids, they will make bad choices. Hence, some Berkeley students will inevitably make the bad choice to hang out with a bunch of lazy irresponsible students. I know one guy who ended up falling in love with a girl who turned out to not only be an extremely lazy student, but was also deeply involved in drugs and alcohol. Because he was chasing her, he inevitably fell into the drug and alcohol lifestyle and nearly got kicked out of school because of it (in fact, I think they both ended up on probation). He was just 17 when he met her. Honestly, what do you expect out of a 17 year old guy, especially when confronted with an extremely sexy (but irresponsible) woman? Of course a guy like that is going to make bad choices. I think many of us would.</p>
<p>So I agree with you that people have choices. But what are you going to do about those people who make bad choices? I think that just tossing them onto the trash bin is unconscionable. Let's face it. People are going to make bad choices. That's why people smoke, eat too much junk food, don't exercise, get in fights, don't save enough for retirement, and buy Ashlee Simpson albums. Now, I fundamentally believe in freedom, such that if people insist on making bad choices, I will let them, but I do believe it is the proper place for an institution to reduce the scope and temptation of that bad choice. For example, supermarkets should be allowed to sell cigarettes, but only from behind a locked and sequestered counter (hey, maybe they should do the same thing for Ashlee Simpson albums). Similarly, I think it would be better for Berkeley to reduce the scope for people to make bad social choices.</p>