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Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - stupac2 - 04-30-2013

A link to the original article (or whatever) would be nice.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - stupac2 - 04-30-2013

Ah, okay, I assumed this was some reaction to Collins.

I can't offer that perspective, but I know I never heard anything about how many people in my class (2009) were gay, I assume mostly because no one really cared. I can't actually remember ever knowing that was someone was gay, but it's such a non-event now that it probably just never stuck out to me.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - washingtonismoney - 04-30-2013

Just as a guess, the AIDS crisis may have played a role here in explaining the difference between garvin and Maddow's observations.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - Bruce Wang - 04-30-2013

I was in Rachel Maddow's class.  There was one person in my freshman dorm (and the only one that I was aware of in the entire class) who was already out at orientation.  He was very public about it, so his sexual orientation was well known among my classmates.  Maddow may be excluding him because at the time he said he was bisexual, and has since then said he is, in fact, gay.  I don't think this person was Maddow's friend as he was already out before Stanford.  My conclusion is that Maddow's claim is  incorrect. I also find it unlikely that she didn't know about this person.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - stanfan - 04-30-2013

There is a lot she doesn't know.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - fullmetal - 04-30-2013

Quote:I was heady with the self-importance of a 17-year-old who knows everything and is smarter than everybody—a trait that is great at the moment and really hard to live with in retrospect.

Uh-huh.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - 97fan - 04-30-2013

Whether there were zero or 1 or 2 people who were out in her class at orientation is not particularly important. Presumably the Daily wouldn't have considered her story newsworthy if there were a bunch.

Also, it's pretty terrible to publish an article in which someone outs herself, and to fail to honor the terms of the interview. Maybe there's another side of the story, though.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - Farm93 - 04-30-2013

An odd concept, I suspect it is true only if you define "out" in a very specific manner.

Back in those days it would have been rather hard to get an accurate census style count on anything from that class.  The Froshbook definitely did not have that kind of detail, and that would have been the go to source for most things.

In theory, perhaps 2 members of the class noted their sexual orientation in their application and/or dorm roommate guides.  Hard to imagine anyone that had access to either of those sources would then go around and claim numbers.

However, I think there is another place where you could get a tally.  When I was on campus I believe there was some type of LGBT club, similar to the HAPA club and other groups.  Perhaps there were only two freshmen in that club at the start of the year?  THAT is something I could believe.

I could also imagine that the Daily requested that Freshman call members that were part of the LGBT community contact the Stanford Daily for a piece on living as LGBT on campus.  And then "2" corresponds to the number that actually contacted the Daily.

I would imagine that many more people in the class were "out", but were not eager to run around to the Stanford Daily to talk about their sexual orientation.

As a member of the class of 1993, my sophomore roommate was gay.  I don't believe he was "out" they way Maddow describes, but I also don't think many of us thought much about it.  However, most in the dorms we lived in would not have had any problem guessing he was gay.  I doubt he was 1 of 2 in my class.  That's for sure.

My guess is that she will send out a clarification on her count methodology soon enough, as I suspect more than 2 people from that class will tell her she is incorrect.  If you think about it, any openly gay couple would drive that number to 3, so my guess is many could refute that estimation immediately.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - fullmetal - 04-30-2013

It just seems to me that she marginalized the struggles of any other "outed" freshman in her class (doesn't matter to what degree "out" means as long as potential for persecution was perceived).  And it seems that her reference to her 17-yr old self-important ways might not be as far removed from now as she thinks.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - Bruce Wang - 04-30-2013

(04-30-2013, 03:07 PM)97fan link Wrote:Whether there were zero or 1 or 2 people who were out in her class at orientation is not particularly important. Presumably the Daily wouldn't have considered her story newsworthy if there were a bunch.

Also, it's pretty terrible to publish an article in which someone outs herself, and to fail to honor the terms of the interview. Maybe there's another side of the story, though.

So many friends and aquaintances came out before graduation that it doesn't seem newsworthy. And I find it hard to believe the immediate classes preceding mine were that different.  Coming out was something that was a big deal within a social circle, but certainly not campus news.

In fact, one way to make the article interesting was to out the person to their family.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - 82 Card - 04-30-2013

Maddow's accounts of her time at Stanford have sometimes been positive and sometimes less so. She has previously said that the environment at Stanford was not friendly for gay students when she was a student. It took her 19 years to make it back to campus.

Using Gallup's figure of 3.5% of the population identifying as gay, one would expect about 60 gay students in a class. From the comments in this thread, it sounds like very few were open about it.  Seems like a gay student would feel very isolated. Her memories were probably not helped by an incident involving Stanford athletes that occured near the end of her time there. (She may have already left when the incident occured. She is listed as '94 but says she left campus early.) See links in following story:
http://www.outsports.com/2012/6/11/4053226/stanford-associate-athletic-director-accepts-campus-pride-award

I don't see how giving an account of how she see's her experiences serves to marginalize anyone else's. She has a bigger soap box than most. I don't think that's a reason for her to clam up.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - Bruce Wang - 04-30-2013

(04-30-2013, 05:17 PM)82 Card link Wrote:Maddow's accounts of her time at Stanford have sometimes been positive and sometimes less so. She has previously said that the environment at Stanford was not friendly for gay students when she was a student. It took her 19 years to make it back to campus.

Using Gallup's figure of 3.5% of the population identifying as gay, one would expect about 60 gay students in a class. From the comments in this thread, it sounds like very few were open about it.  Seems like a gay student would feel very isolated.

I didn't know her so was not connected to her social circle at all.  So I really have no idea what her experience was.  Every person I knew that came out, found a supportive and nurturing circle of friends in either my immediate circle or those that I knew.  Of course, my perspective may be skewed.  I was one of the few straight guys on campus that had a poster of a gay person on their dorm room wall. 

Absolutely there was a homophobic element on campus.  But I'm sure Stanford was a more accepting environment than 99% of college campuses in the country.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - 82 Card - 04-30-2013

(04-30-2013, 05:44 PM)Publius link Wrote:.... Absolutely there was a homophobic element on campus.  But I'm sure Stanford was a more accepting environment than 99% of college campuses in the country.

I have no data but suspect you are right. It was a different time.  Can't say I would have been mutch help then either.  Around that time, I had two co-workers that were about as activist as Maddow describes herself. We did not get along at all.  From my perspective, they made a lot of assumptions about me as the only person in the office with a small child. I'm sure my view is totally objective and unbiassed.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - jacketree - 04-30-2013

It doesn't ring true at all to me. Of my circle of friends at Stanford, five were openly gay/bi. I say "were" in the past tense, because it was 27 years ago. I imagine they still are openly gay, other than T. who died from AIDS in about 1989. Two apartments after leaving school. I roomed with a Stanford grad student who was openly bisexual. She was pretty good about leaving boiling water on the stove and going to bed, just to test the smoke alarm I guess. Cheap pots melted to electric stove coils; what fun!  I moved out into my present house before she had to deal with the deposit refund. She was also a maniac A's fan and I went with her to Oakland all the time just to avoid boredom.  Bash Bro years, so they were decent and Davis hadn't ruined the Coliseum yet. I do remember that she was so open about it that her parents had disowned her. For being gay; not for going to A's games. She was from The Bronx. Loved her accent.

Wasn't there a big LGBT alliance or something in the fire house c. '85-'86?  I think more than two freshmen were probably involved.

P.S. Homophobic element: Some athletes bashed in a bench sculpture, but I don't remember the year. Bill Walsh was the coach and he was pretty hacked off about it.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - washingtonismoney - 04-30-2013

(04-30-2013, 08:19 PM)jacketree link Wrote:P.S. Homophobic element: Some athletes bashed in a bench sculpture, but a don't remember the year. Bill Walsh was the coach and he was pretty hacked off about it.

Wasn't there that famous incident with Keith Rabois around then, too?

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - stupac2 - 04-30-2013

(04-30-2013, 03:33 PM)Farm93 link Wrote:My guess is that she will send out a clarification on her count methodology soon enough, as I suspect more than 2 people from that class will tell her she is incorrect.

I doubt that, the article is from March 2012. If any correction/clarification were going to come, it already would have (although I suppose that she could have said something about it already and Garvin didn't find that one).

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - PrinceLightfoot - 04-30-2013

(04-30-2013, 08:19 PM)jacketree link Wrote:Wasn't there a big LGBT alliance or something in the fire house c. '85-'86?  I think more than two freshmen were probably involved.

P.S. Homophobic element: Some athletes bashed in a bench sculpture, but I don't remember the year. Bill Walsh was the coach and he was pretty hacked off about it.

The LGBT building was still there at the old fire house when I arrived in 1993. The vandalism of the "Gay Liberation" bench statue happened in May 1994.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - StanFan88 - 04-30-2013

Here's my answer:  WHO CARES HOW MANY WERE OUT OR HOW MANY WERE STILL IN THE CLOSET?

They were all highly successful, great students or they never would have been admitted.  That's all that matters.  Period.

Re: Rachel Maddow and the Stanford Daily - Roberton3 - 05-01-2013

(04-30-2013, 09:40 PM)StanFan88 link Wrote:Here's my answer:  WHO CARES HOW MANY WERE OUT OR HOW MANY WERE STILL IN THE CLOSET?

They were all highly successful, great students or they never would have been admitted.  That's all that matters.  Period.

It will be a great day when everyone feels that way.  Unfortunately, we're not there yet.  And as long as there's still a lot of prejudice against gay people (which is still very true today, and was certainly true in the 90s, even at Stanford), how many are out matters enormously. 

Hmmmm. That was different than I first thought - Redrum - 05-01-2013

Read the headline and the first post thinking  "This should be interesting."  By the end of the thread I was thinking  "Wonder what's for lunch".    Maybe because I have one out  glbt member of my immediate/in laws family and one not-very-effectively "in" bisexual and one sort of on the fence.  It's just not very interesting any more.  And I live in a very conservative state.  In Bay Area, a large part of California and at Stanford the cultural "battle" is pretty much over.  What's left is the battle up in the stratosphere,  in the Supreme Court and the high altitude clashes of identity-based politics.