Stanford’s Math Tournament, the largest high school math tournament in the US and maybe the world, was abruptly cancelled within 36 hours of the event this past weekend. The 2015 competition was the largest ever with over 1000 registrants from across the US, China, Russia and India. It’s safe to say that some of the best young mathematicians in the world were planning to duke it out for the pure love of math.
What happened?
Evidently there was a White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection on Stanford campus scheduled for the same time (Obama was a speaker) and the university decided not to risk…I don’t know what exactly. Too many seriously smart kids doing their thing within 1 mile of White House personnel maybe? Are they kidding?
It seems that everyone except for the SUMO (Stanford University Math Organization) students who organized this world-famous math competition knew about the presence of the White House event on campus for months. So why did university officials notify the SMT 2015 organizers at the last possible minute? The timing couldn’t have been worse.
The Beijing teams were already on the ground when the plug got pulled and many teams were en route.
Luckily, an organization in nearby Santa Clara called A-Star, working in conjunction with Rice University and Johns Hopkins, literally created a math tournament overnight to fill the void. They ended up with a smaller 50 team event but the best players got to compete as planned.
Meanwhile, there appears to be no statement from Stanford about this.
Am I the only one who thinks of universities as sacred sites in the secular world? That education itself is sacred? Universities are there for their students, not to kiss up to any president for any reason. Obama and his team could’ve gone anywhere, but it’s clear that ego won the day and the Stanford president was all too keen to say yes to the DC Big Dogs and no to the best young mathematicians on earth.
I have no particular beef with the US President, but there was that disturbing event over the holidays when a couple had to move their wedding in Hawaii, scheduled for the next day, because the President wanted to play golf at the site on their wedding day. The Feds alerted the couple at their rehearsal the day before. Thank God they were both Army officers and were OK with that decision. And not to worry, Obama called them to apologize and congratulate them.
What, he didn’t offer to pick up their tab? Or send a gift or host them at the White House later to make it up to them? His wife Michelle didn’t say, “You did WHAT??” and then quickly act to make it right, since her own focus is military families?
I guess just a call from a busy president is all it takes to make it all better.
But be honest. If your wedding had to get moved at the last minute because somebody else wanted to play golf, wouldn’t you be angry? Or if you had been planning an A-list party for 1000 superstars for months and your landlord cancelled it the day before because somebody more special than you and yours was in the house, wouldn’t you be angry?
There’s an arrogance here that just dissed high school math stars, the kind of people universities compete for and White House administrations should want to reward. But come to think of it, when was the last time you saw a White House reception for the US Math Olympiad team instead of NCAA basketball or Superbowl winners?