Stanford's scandal du jour is the story of Azia Kim, an 18-year-old who sucessfully pretended to be a Stanford student for nearly eight months.
This is very similar to the story of Buddy Teevens, the Florida tight ends coach who led the Stanford football team from 2002-4. Athletic Director Ted Leland was going to conduct an elaborate search for departing coach Tyrone Willingham's replacement, but when Teevens showed up in 2002, no one questioned him. Soon he was leading practices, making recruiting trips, and drawing up doomed ineffectual game plans. The athletic department tolerated this because, as one staffer said, "Buddy was so nice. No one wanted to confront him."
An anonymous SEC head football coach said, "With your assistant coaches, you know two years in advance that this guy is going to end up coaching at a Big Ten school, being regarded as being the top of the game," he said. "Buddy wasn’t one of those. I don't think anyone would say that.
Lacking a Stanford ID or key card, Teevens would enter the locker room by climbing onto a dumpster and entering through an open window. "I thought he just liked breezes," said a former player. "Breezes, and getting his ass kicked at the Big Game." Some players speculate that Teevens was homeless, and spent many nights in the trainer's room if he couldn't find an assistant coach to crash with.
Eventually, the ruse was discovered, and Teevens was relieved of his duties. Friends and colleagues speculate that it may have been peer pressure that caused Teevens to pretend to be a real football coach. He was replaced by Walt Harris, who resigned after his parents found out he'd been spending most nights at his girlfriend's house.
Nod. Very funny.
Since we Cal grads always knew that Stanford students were bullshit, it's gratifying to see this nationally exposed as the literal truth. Did you see that there's another one? Apparently this one has been passing herself off as a physics grad student -- way to make yourself cool -- and living in a campus lab and bothering real grad students with endless incomprehensible chatter that revealed that she didn't know a single thing about physics. Next, the Dean of Humanities is going to turn out to be some homeless guy who crawled in through a heating duct.