Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students

Decker Paulmeier grew up working nights and weekends in his family’s barbecue restaurant in South Carolina. He took his first double shift when he was eight years old, and eventually hustled his way up from bussing tables to mixing drinks behind the bar. 

Like a lot of people who went to Bluffton High School, the medium-sized public school in his South Carolina Lowcountry town, Paulmeier was a working-class kid and the grandchild of immigrants (his mother’s parents immigrated to America from the Philippines).