Writes Elsa Johnson, a Stanford student, quoted in "Nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates claim they’re disabled. I’m one of them/One of the most prestigious universities in the US offers perks to those who say they have ADHD, night terrors, even gluten intolerance. You’d be stupid not to game the system" (London Times).
2 ఫిబ్రవరి, 2026
"And some 'disabilities' are just downright silly. Students claim 'night terrors'; others say they 'get easily distracted' or they 'can’t live with others.'"
"I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant.
That’s why I felt justified in claiming endometriosis as a disability.... The application process was very easy.... The system is staffed largely by empathetic women who want to help students.... In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes.... Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for. While I feel entitled to my single room, I would feel guilty about some of the perks I have — except that so many of my fellow students have gamed the system...."
పోస్ట్లు
30 కామెంట్లు:
Utterly pathetic. Anyone who would make these sorts of claims is lacking in all self-respect, though I imagine they have wildly elevated self-esteem.
Needless to say, these students have no sense of honor or honesty. One wonders whether Stanford even has a code of conduct for students. These people are scum.
cost of a year at Stanford, 67000, then 22000 for room and board.
Even with financial aid, and the future payments, it seems insanely expensive.
but then, America is two completely separate countries now. Those who have and the rest of us, who don't. Oh, and most of the people involved f**king hate us.
corruption in America is so normal now, we have become a third world country.
a further note. UC Berkeley costs almost 18000 a year, just for tuition. When I went there, it was 1500.00 for the year. An unlike when I went there, UC Berkeley does not have free speech. it is all indoctrination
Regarding the corruption of American ideals:
Just checkboxes on a form.
In the future everyone will act Somali for 15 minutes.
I am Laslo.
They need to work for Dylan Larson at his restaurant for a day. That will cure them of their maladies.
"Even with financial aid, and the future payments, it seems insanely expensive."
Not if you're connected with all that sweet fraud money sloshing around.
Maybe their messengers from the future. Maybe in an age of abundance everyone will be coddled to they curdle......I'm an old man. I remember hard times. You used to have to walk around in uncomfortable shoes for two weeks before you broke them in. There were unspeakable terrors behind the door of every dentist. Life changes and, more often than not, changes for the better. Some exceptions, but as life goes on we get more and more coddled.......I wasn't particularly ennobled by hard times. Maybe it's all for the better.
Incentives matter, and there is no price to pay. They don’t put an asterisk on your Non Profit Management degree gpa if you got to skip class due to night terrors.
Full disclosure, I actually did have night terrors, not fun at all. But my Engineering profs would have told me I was unworthy of being an engineer if I had used it as an excuse for missing a problem set.
They didn't set the rules. They are playing the game. It is the worthless scum that have run Education for the last 50 to 60 years that are the problem. No offense intended to our hostess since she was involved but I don't think she ran it.
I've told my wife again and again that i'm disabled. I have vacuumophobia - the fear of vacuuming. All due to an unfortunate childhood accident. Its quite sad in a way. But i've struggled through it. Bravely.
Wow, they're just snowflakes. why in my day....
Look past the one inch. Boomers.
My grandparents went to Stanford early last century. When I applied there for grad school I chose not to list them on my application, because I wanted to get in on my own merits. People thought I was crazy for doing that. It turns out I didn't get in, so maybe I should have done that after all. I guess you play by the rules that are in place.
As it turns out I got into the University of Chicago instead, so things worked out pretty well.
If Stanford tolerates this foolishness you would have to be a stupid to attend Stanford.
Gaming a given system is an understandable human reaction when the system has no particular moral or even common sense authority to shame them. Is the gamer more to be condemned than the system's creators? Was it shameful to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War? The approximately half-million who did, and were pardoned by Jimmy Carter, out-lived the war. Whose shame is that?
The incentives of all schooling is to get good grades, not real learning. And college/university is for clearing the "membership" hurdle and carousing with the right group for future fortune. And you get good grades by learning to hack the system, this is just a next level hacking.
“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”
― Frank Zappa
Paul Graham wrote an excellent essay in December 2019 'The Lesson to Unlearn'. https://paulgraham.com/lesson.html
It is difficult to excerpt so I suggest a read.
"Getting a good grade in a class on x is so different from learning a lot about x that you have to choose one or the other, and you can't blame students if they choose grades. Everyone judges them by their grades — graduate programs, employers, scholarships, even their own parents."---Paul Graham
"The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose. Occasionally some students do arrive for an education but rote and mechanical nature of the institution soon converts them to a less idealic attitude."
Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
As an aside, medical education is broken. I heard of a lecturer who stated that people with type 1 diabetes and treated with restricted caloric intake before insulin was available looked like “concentration camp survivors” received an admonition for triggering some members of a med school class.
“ Getting a good grade in a class on x is so different from learning a lot about x”
Except in stem. Getting a good grade in calculus or organic chemistry or real analysis is the same as learning a lot about those subjects, believe me.
“ The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a hypocrisy everyone is happier not to exposed”
All students pay good money to be educated in things that get them good jobs including MDs. We have few rich folks who want to learn to write in Ancient Greek or study Plato so they can sit around and ponder it all day.
I usually notice when the Althouse Leftists choose to avoid certain posts.
I guess some things directly resultant from Democrat policies are indefensible even to them.
Although in fairness, the ADA was a Bob Dole special. A man who railed aginst Big Government but too often wallowed in it.
I wonder how that scam affects grades.
I recall the article recently blogged here about boys who were in their 20s and still living at home being cared for by Mommy.
A few years ago I worked with a large group of high schoolers from a wealthy suburb. This story does not surprise me, the amount of helicopter parenting was ridiculous. The amount of kids who get extra time on the ACT and SAT now makes the result meaningless, mostly due to invented issues.
No wonder many boys get out of college unprepared for a reality where they dont get time and a half to get their work done.
Oooh-kay. Some may recall that I was friends IRL with commenter Gahrie, whose brother Thom checked in with us the other day, to my great pleasure (Thom, if you read this, my husband and I would love to get together when we're in SoCal this April or so! I'll get in touch via FB).
Gahrie, Thom, and I went to high school in England., at a Department of Defense Dependents' School (DoDDS).
ANOTHER classmate of Gahrie's became first my friend, then my pen pal when his dad was transferred to northern CA midway through his senior year, and when my dad was transferred nearby upon my graduation, my boyfriend and then briefly first husband. He had graduated from a nothing high school in Vacaville, but was admitted to Stanford along with another classmate and, coincidentally, me - apparently Stanford, back then (the mid-1980s), at least recognized the value of admitting students from diverse backgrounds, though that guy also had what we now recognize as the advantage of being a person of color. (He was definitely worth admitting on his academic and intellectual merits, but he could never be sure that he hadn't been admitted because of his skin color and father's national origin.)
And now to the punchline! That guy was so convinced that Stanford had admitted him because of his ethnicity that he deliberately tried to fail his classes - and couldn't. His lowest grade, if memory serves, was an A-. He dropped out (he was really smart, but also really dumb) to be with me (I didn't go to Stanford because I was far too ignorant to work the student aid system and ended up at Sac State). I assume he was on a scholarship, because as I said, I married him, and I don't recall having big student loans to pay off during our brief youthful marriage.
The point is, Stanford was already corrupted - this guy TRIED to fail and was not allowed to. Students were already encouraged to identify as victims. In 1983,.
Defund the universities and prosecute them under RICO.
Wouldn't the most common reaction to night terrors be to get up and find a distraction - like your homework? CC, JSM
Night terrors occur when you are asleep. You wake up and have a paralysis and then see or experience a menacing presence approaching you. You end up screaming stay away from me, dont kill me and such at the top of your lungs because you can’t move, and then you refuse to go to sleep because you are afraid it will happen again. So it is pretty disruptive, especially if you have someone in bed with you, you feel pretty stupid.
Homework makes me sad, and tests give me panic attacks, so just give me that degree now, and I can save us both a lot of headaches.
Damn... how did I make it through college then... and work 35 years solid programming computers.. building up a IRA, two defined benefit retirements, Social Security, married once and still married 34 years later, put two kids through college and now helping with grandkids... I mean why didn't I melt down and just go disability... LIKE THIS PUSSY WIMPS TODAY!!!!!
I got a masters in mechanical engineering at Stanford, mid-1980s. Very rigorous one year program -- my hardest single academic year ever. IIRC, we had to agree to the "honor code" (basically, no cheating!).
My undergrad was at UCSD. Back then, somebody would call in a bomb threat during test time from time to time. That was about it. No special dispensation for any students at test time. What's changed since then? Hmm.
A Prof I met 15 years had a PhD in Psychology from Stanford. I’m my generation, that was the top doctoral program in the field.
I asked him what it was like to survive the program that had some of the best and most rigorous social scientists. He said “It was a whole lot harder to get in than to graduate.”
Basically the top schools, once they admit you, almost always graduate you because to fail you means they failed by admitting you in the first place.
Maybe that is why the average grade at Harvard in an A-.
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.