Danny Crichton

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

The incredible jubilation felt by the students sitting in the CoHo on Election Night 2008 was almost overpowering for those of us warily watching from the chocolate-colored sofas. There was a palpable sense in the air, unwarranted as it would turn out, that the world had suddenly become brighter, that America was going to rid itself of the damage of the Bush era and bring back liberalism into politics.

Fast-forward to today, and those halcyon images seem only fleeting against the backdrop of the current political environment. President Obama's approval rating rating has plummeted across the country (and among students here as well), and it appears that the upcoming midterm elections, regardless of their outcome, will undermine the mandate he has used to push his agenda.

That is unfortunate, for while Obama's plans are certainly variable in their quality, all of them are part of a needed big vision for this country. As someone in the middle of the spectrum, it pains me to see a country like America with such a grand view of our mission on Earth to be thwarted repeatedly by special interest groups and intense partisan politics.

Thinking big is what made America the country it is today. Franklin Delano Roosevelt built the modern social safety net from scratch despite intense opposition in Congress while also defeating some of the most fearsome regimes in human history. Truman initiated the Marshall Plan to rebuild an entire continent - a plan that is still paying dividends today. At home, Eisenhower built the interstate highway system which remains the bedrock of transportation in America.

Today, we need that kind of

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

In this space, I generally focus my energies on education policy, with brief forays into mental health and personal reflection. However, there are times when my complaint box overflows and I have to clear out the backlog. Here are four everyday life issues I feel need most addressing right now at Stanford.

Issue 1: Banning drinking games at Stanford

There has been a movement in recent weeks to ban drinking games in Stanford housing (either in just public lounges or in all rooms in student dorms). I have been informed that the development of this policy comes from the actions of a handful of residents who may imbibe a wee bit much in the early Saturday hours. That situation is a cause for concern, but banning drinking games on campus is a fundamentally incorrect approach to solve the problem.

Stanford's current policy on alcohol can be described as an educational model that focuses on personal responsibility and social norming. The goal is to increase the number of moderate drinkers so that the drinking culture on campus stays reasonably tame. This policy has had great success compared to the prohibition policies of other campuses.

It is deeply disappointing that a policy that has worked reasonably well for many years would be affected by just a handful of irresponsible people. We are adults at this school with personal responsibility to handle ourselves with dignity. Those members who violate that trust should be punished, but their actions should not affect those who are responsible. As a non-drinker, I hope that we can maintain our moderate drinking culture by stopping this poorly conceived policy.

Issue 2:

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

In a class as large in scope as the thirty unit HumBio Core, there is bound to be some concepts that students remember better than others. For me, some elements of proteins come back in a flash, while immunology seems to be a just a fleeting memory. Why the difference, and more importantly, is there a pattern in the material that students remember and the material that they do not?

This question is at the heart of a on-going area of controversy in higher education research. Student learning outcomes vary widely across classes and even universities, yet there are few accountability measures taken by schools to ensure that graduates are learning at the appropriate level. Even if such data is collected, it is rarely distributed, preventing comparative research between institutions that might lead to better education programs.

As colleges across the country face increased scrutiny in state budgets and in front of Congress, it is imperative that we carefully evaluate proposals designed to increase accountability of academia to ensure that they do not harm the strengths of our university system.

One of the last major reforms proposed came from Former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who proposed a new system of accreditation of higher education to address the student outcomes issue.

For those unfamiliar with higher education governance, accreditation is the primary means of regulating universities in the United States, and organizations like the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (Stanford's accrediting association) perform reviews of campus academics to ensure that universities are meeting basic standards to offer degrees.

Unfortunately, accreditation often ignores student learning outcomes. In response, Spellings and her Commission on

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

University Discounters - the source for all things higher education is a tremendous shopping experience for the student at heart. As you walk in, the first department, degrees, is teeming with choices. Although all roughly the same cost, each choice belongs to a different food group. There are the degrees in engineering, which are sort of like a salad - healthy and long-lasting, but rather unexciting. Then there are the degrees in the liberal arts - chocolates that taste great, but are less filling in the long-term. Degrees in social science are like a sandwich - a happy medium.

After that department, we head on over to the "experiences" department. Many destinations await in the study abroad aisle, and there are plenty of volunteering opportunities in the service aisle. After this is the extracurriculars department, which spans multiple aisles from sports to pre-professional clubs. Put all of these into a nice shopping basket and go to the cashier to check out - warning, there are no returns and no exchanges.

It is important to note though that customers should not expect any help in selection. University Discounters does not provide personal shopping assistants to its clientele - that would be a costly attack on the store's bottom line. Every person who walks into the front door should know what they want, of course, and the store conveniently places expensive items at eye level.

While this extended metaphor was perhaps hyperbole (and also allowed me to compare the social sciences to sandwiches), it raises an important question: what relationship do we, as students attending universities in the twenty-first century, hold with our institutions?

Thirty

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

How happy are Stanford students? It is a tough question to answer, masked by the compulsion of students here to appear happier than they actually are. I never really thought that mental health was a problem before, but then again, I had never asked any of my friends and fellow students what they thought about it.

As I talk to more students though, I realize that mental health is something that affects all of us, even from people I least expected. Whether academic or relationship stress, the trials and tribulations of a Stanford education do not seem to miss many members of the student body. Nonetheless, the discussion of these problems is absent, save for the handful of student groups on campus that work to solve these problems.

Just why are so many Stanford students unhappy? The first thing that came to my mind was intensity. We are surrounded by the most intense people in the world, and there are few outlets for release. Leaving for the city is difficult, and Palo Alto is certainly not a bastion of tranquility.

Unfortunately, our culture here glorifies the bravado of students, and rarely offers a peek into their weaknesses. We do not admit when we are stressed out, even when the signs are clearly visible (hint: if you see a vein popping, it probably is pretty bad). We all have weaknesses and times when we are physically and mentally stressed beyond a level healthy for young adults. Yet, we often refuse to recognize these signs.

I believe that a large part of that failure is a lack of a strong community of support. We are not

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

Three years ago, a young and wide-eyed high school senior (which happened to be me) first visited the campus of a gorgeous university nestled in the foothills of the Silicon Valley. Stanford was an imposing institution with that Palm Drive view, and the students seemed to be uniformly smart - smarter than me.

I made the decision to attend this school, despite the storied rains of Admit Weekend 2007. I am grateful for that decision and for my time here so far. Reflecting back, I want to share some thoughts on that decision, and in the process, help all the ProFros here this weekend prepare for one of the most formative stages of their lives.

First, this decision is not the most important one you will ever make. All the top colleges of America are strong schools, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. To an enormous degree, your fit in a university will greatly determine your final performance. If you enjoy the school you attend, your next four years will be interesting and memorable - and I would argue more successful.

But what is "fit"? For me, it is being surrounded by energetic, ambitious, entrepreneurial and interesting people who want to change the world and throw out the old paradigms. Stanford has been a perfect match for me in this regard.

There is also the need to fit into an academic community at Stanford. Since the vast majority of students change their major during their freshman year as they explore new fields, it is incredibly important that there are a wide variety of strong departments to provide options for majoring. Stanford was

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

Higher education, the very source of American prosperity over the last fifty years, is now very much at risk in the United States. All one has to do is look at California, which offers perhaps one of the best vantage points to see this destruction of education in action. The state was once the shining beacon of higher education, building the vast University of California system that would make the state one of the most dynamic economies in the world.

The state, once merely mired in perennial budget wars, has now waged an aggressive war against higher education, furloughing professor and cutting large swaths of students out of the system.

I wish it were only the budget cuts that were harming the system. An upturn in the economy and more flush revenues could easily lead to a reversal of the higher education downturn. Alas, budget cuts are only the most recent attack on America's economic crown jewels.

As the number of laws regulating universities increase with each successive year, the administration of the modern university grows ever more complex. Universities in the 1960s had significantly smaller staffs compared to our universities today, where the typical research university now requires thousands of personnel to handle dense regulations while also providing an ever-expanding portfolio of services. For instance, the UC system last year had almost seven staff members for every faculty member.

Another source of stress is the grand ambitions of government and university officials who see their job as increasing the prestige of their institutions instead of improving the core missions of their universities - educating students. Most recently, that has meant a focus

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

I recently had an enlightening conversation with my residence fellow about community building and the difficulty of creating communities at schools like Stanford. After the conversation, I began thinking: of all the leading issues here at Stanford like relationship abuse and mental health, the root of all of them appears to be a lack of social cohesion and trust - a lack of community.

For an almost entirely residential school, Stanford lacks the close connections between students that are the basis of a strong community. There are of course small pockets of community, but as a whole, there are few things we all share together besides a simple identification with the school itself.

Perhaps we should not be surprised considering the sources of this social fragmentation. It begins with the high degree of connectivity of our generation, and especially among Stanford students. I and others have gone through entire meals without saying a word because we have pressing business to attend to on our mobile phones. Even social networking does not build a true community, instead providing students a wider but weaker virtual community unconnected with their everyday lives.

Connectivity, though, can only partially explain our social fragmentation. The other half is the lack of shared experiences that underpins the development of any community. At one point, there was a limited set of majors available, with a common curriculum for all students. The buzzword in education today though is individualization - from building our own majors to choosing one of the eighty possible combinations of IHUM courses. We simply cannot form any kind of intellectual community when the shared basis of that community does not exist.