It means that the action we should take in response to this article is "building more dorms with singles" rather than "we need to rethink the way that we are making accommodations for disabilities in educational contexts".

That seems like an important distinction, and makes the rest of the article (which focuses on educational accommodations) look mistaken.

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IgorPartola an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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shetaye an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I agree in that freshmen should get the "experience" at least once. However, the way Stanford has arranged housing has meant that a good number of students will not live in a single for any of their 4 years.

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michaelt 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Before you went to college, did you have a bedroom to yourself in your parents' home?

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iso1631 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yet here in the UK it's perfectly normal. When I went to uni in 2000 in our halls there were 15 rooms per floor ber block, 2 of which were twins and 13 were single.

The people in the twins were not happy - they hadn't asked for them.

I knew one person who dropped out in the first 3 months (for mental purposes), and that was someone who shared a room.

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tomrod an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Meh. I think you're overstating it. To meet your anecdata, I had both the first college year, and single > double by a large margin.

	▲	Onawa 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It depends on the person. I lived alone in my last year of undergrad and it sent me into a deep depression. I figured out that living alone was too much isolation for me and moved back in with a roommate. That helped to pull me out of my depression and be able to finish my degree.

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shetaye 40 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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.