It’s the Death Star!

The Editorial Board, who routinely makes such hard-hitting claims as: “We don’t understand the admissions process,” discussed the hot-button topic of housing’s master plan last week. Are they for or against it? Their answer: Yes. Thank you for your candor Editorial Board, now go back to advising us on what we should do with our summer.

As the Draw is wrapping up, let’s talk about Emperor Bravman’s latest schemes to build an empire of academic theme houses. Recently the University has unveiled two new academic theme initiatives. Bravman announced them to The Daily last month, saying: “We’re adding new themes to two houses; we’ll put together some catch phrases and more ways to make the Draw difficult later.” This has come as no surprise to some, for the University has been spearheading dynamic and well-defined projects like this for years.

Devised by the resident fellows of dorms who think that what students really crave is more priority hassle and academic work in addition to their own course loads, the themes will aim to attract upper-class students who further want to isolate themselves from real people to spend more “quality time” with their books and Myspace.com accounts. The freshmen who draw into these houses, I’m certain, will be really excited about such a community.

The fact is: The University needs more academic theme houses.

Without seminars, lectures, approachable faculty and hundreds of clubs, Stanford students are in danger of not having enough academic focus. Thus, academic theme houses are essential to this campus. Students absolutely love perusing the housing list looking for which dynamic words and majors are housed where. Many students have stated they are “excited to learn” and “can’t wait” to have that smelly guy down the hall lecture them about his Peruvian stamp collection. For a theme point.

Some Daily staff members have questioned why the University has not instituted an English theme house, as English is one of the most popular majors on campus and because the people who generally major in the subject are friendly, clean and social.

The University will likely decline the offer because the “English theme” is not convoluted or forgettable enough a name to meet the strict criteria for selection of a theme house. The University is firmly committed to its policy of combining buzz words into a catch phrase to make a name that is about as pleasing to the ear as a gopher getting stuck in a vacuum cleaner. This formula has worked for the “Community Advocacy in a Global Environment” themed house, as well as the “Mind and Intelligence” house and the “Community Educational Community” dorm. Bravman believes these names “roll off the tongue.”

Arroyo, one of the new theme houses, has academic programming that looks pretty interesting. As The Daily previously reported, the seminar topics include “AI in the movies, computer game interfaces... how to solve puzzles.” Yes, the resident can look forward to watching the movie Artificial Intelligence, talking about it on World of Warcraft and having very fulfilling conversations about Sudoku.

The University currently offers four ethnic theme houses, and some have wondered why Stanford has not elected to have an Irish, Portuguese or Middle-Eastern theme house. A number of students have wondered why we have selected four groups as worthy of a theme and others as not. Others have theorized we may be isolating some students by placing incoming students in all-freshmen housing except for those placed in four class ethnic theme communities.

I’m personally a big fan of a Scottish house. For theme points, people drink a lot and go disrupt soccer games. At the dinner language tables, we’ll have signs that say “no comprehensible English spoken.”

Others have rallied for religiously-oriented theme houses. If Stanford believes that ethnic communities create diverse cultural experiences ripe for dialogue, many would argue religious groups do as well. Therefore, perhaps Stanford should have religious themed houses. The scientology house must be located by an area with lots of fields for UFO landings, however.

Some believe the University should create more houses around specific ideals or discussion topics. So far Stanford has only felt community service worthy of a house, and thus the administration has rejected plans for an “Evolution vs. Creationism” house, as well as an “Israel-Palestine” themed house. Still no word yet on its “Yankees vs. Red Sox” themed house.

Some sources have questioned the need for another theme house, as it just creates more hassle for priority in the already difficult Draw. Others wonder why we even have theme houses because (with the exception of the language theme houses) the theme is never integrated into the house. A few have even declared that theme houses further isolate, label and separate this campus, rather than bringing it together. Some fringe members of this campus believe that college is about getting to know different people and cultures, and living among peoples of all interests, cultures and beliefs could only further our education.

To these people I say, our university is a place to learn and we must force this down the throats of our students at every hour of the day. Further, themes need not be integrated into the dorm to be effective. They merely must appear to exist so students seem to be engaging in discourse on the subject. And last, isolating, labeling and separating students is a recent trend in American politics, and the patriotic thing to do. Allowing students of all backgrounds and interests to mix is a residential program of treason. Hooray for the new Housing Master plan. Hail to the emperor.

Chris thinks Stanford without theme houses is a bad idea, but having too many is ridiculous. So where’s the middle ground? Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu.