By Dave Price
Daily Post Editor
What’s the impact of the constant scandals at Stanford?
Recently:
· President Marc Tessier-Lavigne has been accused of academic dishonesty, an allegation he is fighting.
· A husband-and-wife team of Stanford law professors allegedly provided legal advice to their son, disgraced crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried, who is awaiting trial.
· Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes was convicted in criminal court of bilking investors, including many associated with the university, with a blood-testing scheme. She’s been sentenced to 11 years in prison.
· The university is fighting lawsuits over the deaths of two students – soccer star Katie Meyer, who took her life apparently after learning she would be the focus of school discipline, and Eitan Michael Weiner, who died from a drug overdose in a bathroom stall at the Theta Delta Chi fraternity house.
· And, favoritism in the admissions process was laid bare when a now-former sailing coach, John Vandemoer, pleaded guilty to arranging $270,000 in bribes to the Stanford sailing program on behalf of two students.
Stanford is said to be one of the most selective schools in the nation, with an acceptance rate of 4%. But that will surely change. Why would an intelligent student pick Stanford with what’s been going on in the past few years?
Given the video that’s gone viral of the judge being heckled inside a Stanford Law School classroom, how many major law firms will even consider a Stanford law school grad?
With the constant scandals, would a future Bill Hewlett, David Packard, Jerry Yang, Larry Page, Sergey Brin or James Clark pick Stanford?
And without this caliber of graduates, who will start the future local tech and life-sciences companies that will bring about the “next big thing”? Or the next IPO? The innovation once associated with Stanford will move on to another university, while the Palo Alto area loses its tech focus — and the billions of dollars in commerce that goes with it. The money from all that innovation raises the standard of living for all of us in the Mid-Peninsula.
Hopefully, Stanford’s board of trustees will wake up and get the university back on track.
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays. His email address is [email protected].
What goes on at Stanford doesn’t seem to affect people outside of the area. The negative comments I hear/read are usually Palo Altans. Unless you’re planning on attending Stanford or you graduated, most people probably don’t care. Stanford will still attract bright students from all over. With the exception of Mid-Peninsula folks, I doubt too many people are tuning into these scandals. Lack of interest. I hope Stanford gets back on track too.
Yes, you’re absolutely right. Not a word about the FTX scandal left our city limits. The national media didn’t even mention the Elizabeth Holmes trial. And the video of the heckling of the judge never got on national TV.
I’ll bet Casandra doesn’t get out very often.
One more fraud to mention, David Shaw. Thanks for being a statue of a football coach…
Sadly, the Board can’t come back. It started in the early 1970’s. I was there, the focus stopped being on individual thought and moved to group think. It was more important not to have spirited and open debate and “not offend” anyone.
Stanford was one of the first places to adopt “affirmative action” where someone who was completely unqualified was hired into certain positions because they checked a box. People who had worked there for years found out new hires were being paid significant more an hour than they were and those folks didn’t even bother to show up for work multiple times a week until they were finally let go after not showing up at all.
Refusing to provide information for national rankings organizations will accelerate the demise of a once mighty institution
Of course these stories make national news. My point was other communities aren’t affected by Stanford scandals, nor does it stop someone from applying to Stanford. Stanford will always be one of the most selective schools.
“Stanford was one of the first places to adopt “affirmative action” where someone who was completely unqualified was hired into certain positions because they checked a box.”
Funny how those who rage about the perils of ‘affirmative action’ re mute when the same ‘affirmative action’ benefited those that shared their traits: skin color, race, religion, etc. What was for long and still the prevailing norm: white entitlement. Those not white had to work or produce N times as much to be acknowledged, given their due. Yet the likes of Hawkeye rant about Stanford purportedly changing with its ‘affirmative action’ program, saying nothing about the legacy admissions and such that allow the Elizabeth Holmes to be accepted and supported by the Drapers and Robertsons (a VC and a Stanford Prof, respectively).
“Stanford was one of the first places to adopt “affirmative action” where someone who was completely unqualified was hired into certain positions because they checked a box.”
Funny how those who rage about the perils of ‘affirmative action’ re mute when the same ‘affirmative action’ benefited those that shared their traits: skin color, race, religion, etc. What was for long and still the prevailing norm: white entitlement. Those not white had to work or produce N times as much to be acknowledged, given their due. Yet the likes of Hawkeye rant about Stanford purportedly changing with its ‘affirmative action’ program, saying nothing about the legacy admissions and such that allow the Elizabeth Holmes to be accepted and supported by the Drapers and Robertsons (a VC and a Stanford Prof, respectively).
Often those legacy admissions are of parents/grandparents who donate a ton of money to Stanford that pays for scholarships and programs to benefit lower income students, and the legacies are not based on immutable characteristics like race.
Though I do not have the data on me, my guess is that the legacy students also have significantly higher credentials for admission – like SAT scores and extracurriculars – than the affirmative action students.
Alvin’s comment, in response to the inherent but unaddressed bias, is replete with hypotheticals, speculations, and assumptions. It suggests the extent to which some go to defend the indefensible and blame “affirmative action” for ills of their own making.
The recent saga of ‘athletes’ paying $$$ to get into colleges, in sports they never came close to in their real lives, tells us enough. Every single one of them white; not one other than white. Sure, their SAT scores were “higher” than affirmative action students and how can it not be when you have others taking the tests for them? And so on…
As for the donations of “a ton of money”: they got the tax deductions for that. There is no need for guaranteed admissions too. As for legacies not based on race: sure, 90%+ of legacy admissions are none other than white.
What do you think about Asian students having to score higher to get into Stanford than even white students?
You do realize that diversity and equity is just a talking point, right? How many Hispanics and Asians are on the Stanford sports teams?
“What do you think about Asian students having to score higher to get into Stanford than even white students?”
Precisely my point. The fact Asians have to score higher-much higher–than whites underscores the bias inherent in the system favoring whites. Alvin of course would predictably argue whites score “higher” on immeasurable factors–“extracurricular activities, personality, etc.”–further confirming what we are agreeing on: the bias in favor of the whites that nobody is talking about.
Put another way, let’s say there are 100 seats, 75 get allocated to whites, 15 to asians, 10 to blacks/latinos. The 15 should be say 30. Am I going to focus on the 10 (many of whom are first generation in college, etc.) or the 75, a large number of whom got in although their scores are less than those of the 15 (but were granted admission because they are legacy, engaged in “extracurricular activities” that were predictably valued higher than those of the 15 asians)?
I see. I read the comments, I don’t think Alvin mentioned anything about personalities. He mentioned that extracurricular activities can add points for a student.
The jist I got from his comments is that he is arguing that legacy students bring value to the university, because their parents donate money to the school. I think this is a controversial and perhaps problematic. But he also mentions these legacy students are also required to score high on their exams and SATs to be accepted in, but probably less than students who cannot offer the school millions of dollars in revenue.
My point being is if you care about diversity and equity, take a look at the Stanford sports team. Majority of the student athletes are Black and White, with Black students being disproportionately represented in some sports, especially compared to the percentage of Black students at Stanford who aren’t there to play sports. If we were to be fair and inclusive to everyone, shouldn’t we try to get a certain percentage of people from all ethnic backgrounds to the sport teams..? Asians, Latinos, and other non White and Black minorities?
“their parents donate money to the school. I think this is a controversial and perhaps problematic.”
Perhaps problematic? Not very problematic to the arguments you and Alvin are advancing? In my opinion they kill your argument and the fact you are evasive about that and merely acknowledge they are “controversial” establishes your bias.
“But he also mentions these legacy students are also required to score high on their exams and SATs to be accepted in, but probably less than students who cannot offer the school millions of dollars in revenue. ”
What evidence is being produced to support the argument legacy students are “required to score high”? and what discount are they granted that is the “probably less”? There are verified records and instances of adult proxies taking the tests for these white kids, fake athletic credentials paired with $$$ to squeeze them in. You still want to focus on the 15, distract from the 75, and hedge your argument with words like “probably”, “perhaps”, and such?
Let’s not kid ourselves, schools are a business. Otherwise why would universities charge out of state students as well as foreign exchange students much more than California residents?
Yes, the legacy admits are perhaps problematic. Why should they get in a school easier than others who work just as hard if not harder, just because their parents went to Stanford and have some ties to it? It’s no different why should a kid get into Stanford with a 80th percentile SAT and GPA (I’m being very generous here…) just because he’s good at throwing abs catching balls, while most kids in the 99th percentile of academics and testing can’t even sniff Stanford’s front gate? For legacy admits I think If their parents are donating millions of dollars to the university, that money likely is used to benefit all students (I would like to think that) and therefore based on economics, I would be surprised if anyone in our capitalistic society doesn’t see that as a reason to give their kids admittance/easier admittance to the university than other students, which brings me to my other point…
You do understand that students that get into Stanford on athletic scholarship do not need to score nearly as high on standardized testing and keep the same level of gpa as students who get accepted purely based on academic merit? And you can do your research, majority of NCAA athletic programs run at a deficit… there are losing money. Especially for Stanford which isn’t a traditional powerhouse in the more profitable sports, football, mens basketball.
You completely ignored my question regarding diversity and inclusivity. Should Stanford follow the same diversity protocols for their athletic programs as they do for their regular student body? After all, I think it’s more important for society to have qualified engineers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc, skilled professionals of all fields, rather than athletes.
I just got a look at next fall’s class catalog and you can see that Stanford Law is preparing for the future. They have classes on how to improve your shouting and face painting — both of which will be necessary in court one day. Instead of questioning witnesses, Stanford lawyers will scream at them unfounded accusations. This is the new future.