Chuck Bartowski is an accidental secret agent. I'll spare you the details, but he stumbled across all kinds of top-drawer intel and is now an asset to the US government. Previous to this discovery, Chuck was part of the tech support at the local Buy-More retail store. As part of Chuck's cover, he retains this job and thus his life appears to have stalled.
In a recent episode, Chuck's sister (who knows nothing of his double life) is concerned that he has abandoned his goals and pursuit of the final 12 units of his Stanford bachelor's degree, which has been on hold for some time. Chuck's "girlfriend" (who is really just a CIA agent protecting Chuck) is cornered by his sister about his apparent lack of ambition. As a cover, the agent contacts Stanford to work out something to satisfy Chuck's final 12 units with experiential credit- this credit is common for many degree-completion programs. She presents Chuck's sister with his just-mailed diploma, and Chuck, his sister, and the viewers are all surprised to find out that it's a real, legitimate diploma.
The registrar in me thought, "Ok, this show is built on totally implausible but fun scenarios... but is it even legal for a school to post a degree when the last 12 units are taken entirely off-campus? Doesn't that violate residency, and thus threaten the school's accreditation?"
So I looked it up. According to Stanford's registrar policy website, the final quarter (a minimum of 12 units) must be spent
at Stanford. "Aha," I thought, "the Chuck staff screwed up their facts!" and then I kept reading:
In special cases, students who have earned at least 90 units in resident work may petition for a waiver of the last quarter-in-residence requirement.Because a total 135 units are required for graduation from Stanford, this means Chuck had 123 credits completed. If we assume that Chuck completed at least 90 of those on campus, it is entirely plausible that the waiver was granted for Chuck's "special case".
I'm going to just ignore the part about how long the average petition takes, the necessity of student signatures and Chuck's right to privacy under FERPA, the amount of time it would take for an Academic Progress Counselor to review his record and post the degree, as well as the time it would take to order the diploma, have it printed and mailed. We'll just assume that the CIA has a certain capacity to expedite processes like this and that Stanford's registrar office is
almost as awesome as APU's.
Thank you, Chuck, for entertaining whilst making me think about work right before trying to go to bed. And then making me research. And then making me excited to figure out the truth and share it with a bunch of people who don't care and will just add it to the list of reasons why sc0tlas is so dang messed up in delightfully quirky ways.
Thank you,
Chuck versus Tom Sawyer!
Comments (8)
That's awesome. I always do the same thing. It always cracks me up on Law and Order when the cops just waltz into the Registrar's Office and get all the information they need from the front desk clerk with no trouble at all.
You are so weird. But I do the same thing, though in different subjects. :D
I do the same thing when I see things like that happen, but I really don't see it that often. What kind of shows do y'all watch??
I admit that I do count the discrepancies on the Star Tours ride at Disneyland, though. That sorta falls in the same category...
@her_plaintive_melody - I don't see that many examples either, but this was fun to figure out. I watch The Office, 30 Rock, House, Chuck, and Survivorman.
What kind of discrepancies do you spot on Star Tours???
Hm. Well, I watch some of those shows, too, but I've never seen registrar stuff on any of them. Maybe some day...
As for the discrepancies that I spot . . . they're the kinds of things that you probably wouldn't know if you only watch the movies... Really nerdy stuff, in other words.
There are two points on the ride where the ship comes out of hyperspace and basically overshoots the target, which is pretty much impossible because the gravity well of the planet would pull the ship out of hyperspace before it can overshoot... There's also that classic moment when the ship is caught in the tractor beam, and the other pilot says to "ease off on the main thrusters," and that's all it takes to break free from the tractor beam. So impossible! 
And of course the whole scenario - that a tourist ship would be going to Endor at the time that the whole Return of the Jedi battle is taking place, except that the battle itself is from A New Hope. It's all mixed up.
Those are the most obvious ones.
@her_plaintive_melody - Wow. Good stuff.
Yeah. I still love the ride, though.
@her_plaintive_melody - I fondly remember when it first opened... which was apparently in 1987. And it's still cool 21 years later! (wow)