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

There's a point where it's not immoral to leverage systems available to you to land yourself in a better situation. Avoiding increasingly-overcrowded housing situations is I think one of them.

If Stanford's standards for these housing waivers are sufficiently broad that 38% of their students quality, isn't that a problem with Stanford's definitions, not with "cheating"?

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".