O Stanford, How You Find Ways To Torture Me Still

There are the occasional moments of nostalgia when I think that I can forgive Stanford for the years of torment. I even consider whether I would give to the Stanford Fund despite the fact that I swore never to after (former) President Casper personally threatened my classmates who were working to make the university's investments more socially responsible. On a related note, I also will never forget that the only time Casper spoke to me (sort of) personally the entire 4 years was in the kitchen of Columbae, where strangely, Casper was inquiring quite loudly through a megaphone whether all of us seniors had given our senior gift. All to get that alumni giving stat up, in order to claw Stanford's way up US News and World Report's Rankings.

A hint: there's something wrong beyond fundraising techniques.

This year, making it to the 5-year reunion, I bit the bullet and paid extravagantly for the events I attended despite being a relatively poor student again. I start to be at peace with the idea that perhaps I should join the Alumni Association or something. Perhaps it wasn't that bad.

Then I read something like this pro-Nike bullshit which encapsulates the Stanford experience perfectly, and I realize that the Alumni Association isn't getting my money this year or any year soon. Ready to go to bed, thinking I'll look at something light, I flip through Stanford magazine and get myself all riled up. Damn.

Ah, the memories that won't go away. The lovely student who in response to my friend's questions about whether she would sign a postcard urging farm owners to increase the price of strawberries by 5 cents in order to improve working conditions for workers, got up, ripped the postcards on her table in half and screamed "I'm tired of being told what I can and can't eat, and I don't care about the workers." Or the time my friend Sarah got into an argument with (then) Provost Condi Rice about whether the school's record of (not) tenuring women was bad enough that it should be tenuring the female janitors. The memories once triggered flow.

Ah, $tanford, where the priorities were always clear.