True, but unfortunately the response from Stanford has been to introduce triple and quad rooms ;)

This is not entirely their fault. Stanford is subject to Santa Clara County building regulations, and those tend not to be friendly to large university developments (or any large developments for that matter).

I vaguely recall the recent Escondido Graduate Village Residences (EVGR) construction taking a while to get through the regulatory pipeline.

The true underlying issue here is just that there is not enough quality housing for the number of students Stanford admits.

I worked in residential life while in college and can tell you that placing freshmen in singles is a horrible idea. It leads to isolation and lets mental health issues fester. Some need it but you do not want to place anyone who doesn’t into a room alone especially in their first year.

The diploma or credentials should be marked with the conditions of admission. That would prevent abuse from those who don't or shouldn't qualify for special admission conditions.

This whole comment thread has been a crazy way to find out the ways people justify immoral behavior to themselves.

> If someone says they cheated in school, the first thing that pops into your head probably isn’t that they might have gotten a single dorm room, right?

It isn't, but if I'm on the hiring end and I know you play games like this, I'm not hiring you. I can work with less competent folks much better.

I reviewed incoming applications during one Oxbridge academic application cycle, I raised some serious concerns, nobody listened, and therefore I refuse to take part of that any longer. Basically, lots of students are pretending to be disabled to enhance the chances of applications that would not be particularly outstanding, taking spots from truly disabled students.

All it takes is lack of principles, exaggerating a bit, and getting a letter from a doctor. Imagine you have poor eyesight requiring a substantial correction, but you can still drive. That's not a disability. Now, if you create a compelling story inflating how this had an adverse impact on your education and get support letters, you might successfully cheat the system. I have seen several such cases. The admissions system is not effectively dealing with this type of fraud.

Sadly, society also optimizes for cheating. Meritocracy is a myth.

In many ways Stanford is preparing students for the real world by encouraging cheating.

I use the word "cheating" like I use the word "hacking." The connotation can be either good or bad or contextually. You are defeating a system. The intent of the cheater/hacker is where we get into moral judgements. (This is a great sub-thread.)

The direct result of this thinking is that people who need the accommodation face difficulty in getting it.

You don’t have to return your shopping cart. You don’t have to donate to the collection plate. You don’t have to give a coworker recognition.

But when everyone has an adversarial “get mine” attitude the systems have to be changed. Instead of assuming good intent they have to enforce it. Enforcement is very expensive and very unpleasant. (For example, maybe you need to rent the shopping cart.)

Unfortunately enforcement is a self fulfilling cycle. When people see others cheating they feel they need to cheat just to not be left behind.

You may be from a culture where this is the norm. Reflect on its impact and how we would really like to avoid this.

> There's a point where it's not immoral to leverage systems available to you to land yourself in a better situation.

That sounds loaded with a lot of value judgment. I don't think it's inappropriate for you to suggest it, but I think you'll find that a lot of people who value equitability, collaboration, communalism, modesty, earnestness, or conservation of resources might not share that perspective with you.

It turns out that people just disagree about values and are going to weigh judgment on others based on what they believe. You don't have to share their values, but you do kind of just need to be able to accept that judgment as theirs when you do things they malign.

In the culture I grew up in, this was considered cheating.

The problem is the promotion of values and behaviors that plague a low-trust society. I think making excuses for it is truly inappropriate and immoral.

This is tragedy of the commons exactly. Whether it's moral depends entirely on the ethical theory you subscribe to.

> a problem with Stanford's definitions

Only if students aren't lying on their application.

I agree with you that cheating is a loaded word, but the question at the end here that the rules or standards enable users to work around it therefore it's not cheating is a bad semantic argument. We can use the exact same argument to excuse every kind of rule breaking that people do. If a hacker drains a billion dollars out of a smart contract, then they literally were only able to do so because the coded rules of the smart contract itself enabled it through whatever flaw the hacker identified. That doesn't make it less illegal or not cheating for the hacker. It feels like victim blaming to point the finger at the institution being exploited or people who get hacked and say its their problem not the individuals intentionally exploiting them.

While on the one hand I get where you're coming from, on the other hand I simply say "One does not have to go to Stanford."

> a point where it's not immoral to leverage systems available to you to land yourself in a better situation

That point is probably behind someone at Stanford.

This attitude was one of the things that collapsed the former Eastern Bloc. "He who does not steal is stealing from his own family."

If you lie (or exaggerate) about a disability and claim a benefit, you could be denying somebody with more serious disabilities getting the help they need.

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> The word "cheating" is loaded with a lot of values and judgement that I think makes it inappropriate to use the way you did.

I'm glad you had no problem with "dumpster fuck".