May 24, 2007
Faux Cardinal
This story is awesome. Stanford University has caught a girl who's been pretending to be a student at the school for the last eight months.
The girl, named Azia Kim, showed up on campus the day before freshman orientation this school year, and told two freshmen she was a freshman having temporary housing problems due to some kind of administrative snafu and that she didn't like the roommate she'd been assigned, and could she crash in their room or in the dorm lounge for two quarters. They said yes.
The next quarter, Kim moved into the Asian-themed dorm Okada (.pdf) when someone else's roommate went abroad. Since Kim never had a key to the room or a valid Stanford ID, she would always leave the window to her room open, and climb in over the dumpster. Her roommate never noticed because she'd basically moved into her boyfriend's room that semester, but just figured Kim liked fresh air. That is so college.
After the jump: faking classes, breaking into people's email accounts, and the hilarious Stanford comment boards!
Kim told everyone she was a sophomore majoring in human biology, to the extent of pretending to study for exams with others in her dorm. Based on our perusal of the comments to the Stanford Daily piece, it sounded like she had a number of friends, and kept Xanga and MySpace sites (which have since been taken down) about how awesome life at Stanford was.
The whole thing came to a head last week, when a suspicious RA finally figured out that Kim wasn't supposed to be in the dorm. It turns out that when questions had previously been raised, Kim had broken into her roommate's email account, deleted emails from the Housing Office asking for an explanation, and sent fake emails in response saying everything was cool.
The school confronted Kim about this, who then pretended to move out of the room, but school officials later found all her clothes stuffed in the roommate's closet. They finally ended up putting Kim in a cab heading to her uncle's house in San Jose a few days ago, at 2 a.m..
No one's talked to Kim, but people are, of course, speculating that maybe she felt a lot of pressure to get into Stanford when she was in school and it kind of escalated out of control. She apparently went to a pretty competitive high school in Southern California.
There's some excellent commentary about this article in the Stanford Daily -- one commenter's like, "I think Stanford should admit her. She is obviously smarter than the people who she convinced to board her for 8 months," "She didn't go to Cal because it blows," I'm a current student in Kimball, and what pisses me off the most is that she got free food. That stuff is money!", and our personal favorite: "I think she should apply to Brown."
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People were doing the same thing when I was at Stanford 8 years ago. This is nothing new. I don't know why this particular incident is receiving so much attention. Maybe because she got away with it for so long. I personally knew of three people living in not just the dorms but in various buildings around campus who passed themselves off as students.
Very interesting. I wonder if the girl prefers San Diego style burritos...
Everything seems "awesome" to certain ones who are shut out and fail to get into the most prestigous schools. When you can't get something it can turn into an unholy obsession. There's too much elitism and exclusiveness in our society. People take these things far too seriously.
Maybe the family was not supportive and so she was afraid to tell them she didn't get in. and it snowballed.
The quality of your education depends more upon how much effort you put into it, NOT so much where you go to. Plenty of people are not happy at the Ivy League schools and plenty quit or flunk out. People are misled. It's not the most important thing and it's not the cure of all ills.
In a way I do admire her because she refused to accept their rejection of her. She was determined to get in. And she did. But it was stupid because THEY run the game and THEY decide, not us. What was she thinking would happen at graduation time? Without a degree in hand what does it mean? It's just the thrill of pulling off a scam. She is probably bipolar or manic.
maybe this is The Bumble Bee in disguise.
She could still get a degree at graduation time. If she could hack email accounts of other students, then I'm sure she could use their accounts to contact the registrar and ask for a name change to the degree & transcript. So, at the end, everything will read "Azia Kim".
But, who the hell cares about the degree! Companies don't even bother checking this stuff anymore.
I was once married to a girl from Stanford and I can tell you by her actions and the actions of her friends that went there, that this girl's odd behavior would fit right in( see previous poster's reference for manic/bipolar). In other words they were all a little "off" ok maybe more than a little. yes I know what does that say about me since I married her but all I can say is that there were a lot of drugs involved. They should let the girl in unless of course she prefers San Diego style burritos then the S should press charges....
I agree with jen. If she hadn't been caught she could have even used profs as references. Nobody checks degrees when applying for a job, unless it's a very serious one. Although, it might have come out in about 20 years or so like the MIT woman.
Yeah, betcha she not only prefers SD-style burritos, but is in cahoots with Mayor Newsom and this Ed Jew character.
The only "awesome" thing about this story is that it exposes a lot of people other than the girl - her "roommates" and the university (for being asleep at the wheel), and our society at large (for being so elitism-obsessed that people are pushed to do this). Other than that, it's just sad. I hope she gets help. And I say this as a Cal grad who loves cracking on Stanfurd as much as the next guy...
I don’t think you can blame the university too much. If you wanna blame someone else, blame the roommates & dormmates. The school year is almost over and only now do they find out? You would think that after two months of using the window that someone who have gotten suspicious.
You do have to admire the girl for getting away with this for so long. By keeping that secret for so long, she definitely could find work as some sort of Syndey Bristow-type spy. Or sell her story to Hollywood as a college version of Catch Me If You Can:
What amazes me is the tone of the Daily article and some of the commenters that see this as some sort of moral outrage with current and would-be Stanford students as victims. It isn't as if this girl deprived anyone "more deserving" of anything (save for maybe some cafeteria food, but that's stretching it).
Only one of the commenters raised what I see as the most "important" question: if her family was paying tuition where did the money go?
and our personal favorite: "I think she should apply to Brown."
Ha ha ha. I'd like to think that my fellow Brown alumni would be less "shocked and offended" by the incident. Those Stanfordians seem to lack perspective and senses of humor.
here's my favorite comment from the Stanfurd Daily:
"WHERE ARE THE PICS? IS SHE HOT?"