Angelique Dakkak – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Fri, 20 Oct 2017 17:13:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Angelique Dakkak – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 ‘Stanford, I Screwed Up’ returns to campus https://stanforddaily.com/2016/03/31/stanford-i-screwed-up-returns-to-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/03/31/stanford-i-screwed-up-returns-to-campus/#respond Thu, 31 Mar 2016 07:34:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1112736 The Stanford Daily sits down with organizers of the popular "Stanford I Screwed Up" event.

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The Stanford Resilience Project will hold its second annual “Stanford, I Screwed Up” event, which celebrates the failures and adversity Stanford students have faced in the past, tonight at 7:30 p.m on Meyer Green. The event will feature 12 performers who will share the challenges they have faced using different forms of artistic expression.

The Daily sat down with Event Manager Aaron Grayson ’11, Academic Skills Coach and Volunteer Coordinator Alana Kim Garcia ’08, and Director of the Resilience Project Adina Glickman  to discuss the event in greater depth and the experiences they have had in its preparation.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): What are each of your roles in preparing for this event?

Aaron Grayson (AAG): I am the event manager for “Stanford, I Screwed Up.” That includes being the point person for each of the administrative offices on campus that we have to work with in terms of securing the venue and working with the vendors. I also work with the performers in helping them develop their stories that they will be sharing on stage. We have dancers, singers, storytellers, spoken word artists — the full gamut of artistic expression.

Alana Garcia (AKG): I’m Alana Garcia, and I work as an academic skills coach and also support The Resilience Project. Part of that is helping with this event and helping with a lot of different things including making and posting videos, working with the performers to get them ready for the stage and others odds and ends. I am also organizing the volunteer corps for the day of.

Adina Glickman (ARG): I’m Adina Glickman and I am the Director of the Resilience Project, of which “Stanford, I Screwed Up” is our signature event, and I oversee the whole process.

TSD: In what ways has “Stanford, I Screwed Up” accomplished its goals as part of Stanford’s Resilience Project?

ARG: The purpose of the event is to bring a combination of celebratory tone and authentic voice to the concept of failure, setback and learning from failures. We did it for the first time last year and we had over 800 people in attendance, which to us says that that’s a meaningful experience for people on campus.

It speaks to something that students feel is important. We got good feedback afterwards, and someone posted on the Facebook page that “this is the best thing that Stanford has ever done.” Just the quality of the feedback that we’ve gotten is that it’s a great event. It brings the conversation of failure out in the open; it’s not hushed or dark or regretful.

TSD: What has planning for this event involved and in what ways will its execution this year be different from last year’s?

AAG: If there’s one word that encapsulates this whole process, it’s partnership. It’s funny that it’s called “Stanford, I Screwed Up” because the magnitude of this event requires that you don’t screw anything up. That includes thinking about bike safety and points of ingress and egress and fire marshals and the whole safety aspect.

On top of that, I think it requires you to think on your feet. I work with students who have their own sets of mistakes and failures that they’re going through, and I need to be accommodating and supportive at the same time to ensure that they do everything that they need to do for them to do the best performance that they can of their stories.

ARG: These are the primary elements of the event that are not on the poster and each of them has a huge amount of backstory and complexity to it, not the least of which is the performances and getting the students ready for their performances.

It’s different this year because we have larger ensembles on stage that are moving. That’s a really different element. Just in terms of getting students to the point that they know what they want to say and are prepared to say that to a group of potentially a thousand strangers is a really important part of developing resilience…

What went best last year was that there was so much warmth, respect and love in that crowd. The event had the right tone and the audience had an experience that, for a big crowd, really was encouraging and not like anything else. When you get 800 students together for Discover Stanford, it’s a great energy, but it’s totally different from this. This was a mixed crowd of graduates, undergraduates, staff and community members. We want that part to remain the same.

TSD: Ideally, what impact would you like to see “Stanford, I Screwed Up” have on the Stanford community?

ARG: I would love for this to become something that students can own more. There are a couple of students who approached us and are hoping to develop a student group that’s in support of and carries forward the mission of The Resilience Project. I would love to see this be a much more student-driven event.

TSD: What makes you most believe in “Stanford, I Screwed Up”’s purpose and how would you encourage others to attend?

AAG: When I give a synopsis of what I do as event manager of an event called “Stanford, I Screwed Up,” people laugh when they hear the title of the event. I tell them it’s a celebration of failure, and students tell their stories about the times that they’ve messed up and how they become resilient.

I tell them that we have some students sharing their experiences of being on academic probation and how they’ve had to figure out some things personally in their lives for them to be that much more ready to handle Stanford at the speed that it goes all the time.

One of the people I described this event to outside of the Stanford community said he wanted to bring his high school daughter because he understood that it’s something that doesn’t affect only college students but high school students as well. There’s not a lot of persuading that needs to happen. When people see other people being brave enough to share their personal experiences, it’s automatic.

TSD: What will students have to look forward to at this year’s “Stanford, I Screwed Up” and what are you most eager for?

AAG: Audience members can look forward to incredibly brave and creative people telling their stories in a variety of ways. You have poets, you have dancers, you have dynamic storytellers, and you have people who are sharing videos and presentations about experiences they’ve had in different parts of the world that have helped shaped their experiences at Stanford.

I think a lot of people need to hear that because a lot of people come from outside of California and get to this California sunshine, where everyone is so chill and they all look like they have it together when they don’t. I think they’ll get that sense that it’s okay to be me where I am and I’m just going to keep moving forward.

For the performers, this is equally as powerful, if not more. I think it’ll be like releasing a huge weight on their shoulders. Seriously, I think that just watching them grow and making connections about their experiences in the past and how that is shaping their presents and futures; it’s super cool to see. You can see these lightbulb moments where they never noticed how that experience makes them who they are today.

AKG: I’m most looking forward to students getting up there and finalizing their performances. Some of them have never performed in front of anyone before in any capacity. I feel very much like a mentoring mom type. I am really proud of them.

Celebrating failures is like the other side of the coin, the essence of humanity. As Stanford students, everyone had some type of achievement that propelled them to be here. Understanding that with every Ying there’s a Yang is what’s unifying. There are so many opportunities to celebrate the awards you get and the tests you ace. This is the one time where you can celebrate that to get there, it may take a lot of rejections.

This interview has been edited and consolidated for length and clarity.

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak  at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly said that Glickman, not Garcia, was the Stanford alumnus who graduated in 2008. The Daily regrets this error.

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Q&A with Shiri Sadeh-Sharvit, visiting instructor with the Eating Disorders Research Program https://stanforddaily.com/2015/09/21/qa-with-shiri-sadeh-sharvit-recipient-of-doctoral-fellowship-from-bar-ilan-university/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/09/21/qa-with-shiri-sadeh-sharvit-recipient-of-doctoral-fellowship-from-bar-ilan-university/#respond Tue, 22 Sep 2015 06:33:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1103586 Shiri Sadeh-Sharvit is a clinical psychologist from Israel and visiting instructor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Eating Disorders Research Program in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. For her most recently published paper, which focuses on mothers with eating disorders, she received the President's Doctoral Fellowship of Excellence from Bar Ilan University.

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Shiri Sadeh-Sharvit. (Courtesy of Shiri Sadeh-Sharvit)
(Courtesy of Shiri Sadeh-Sharvit)

Shiri Sadeh-Sharvit is a clinical psychologist from Israel and visiting instructor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Eating Disorders Research Program in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Her most recently published paper focuses on mothers with eating disorders, and she has received the President’s Doctoral Fellowship of Excellence from Bar Ilan University for her work.

The Daily spoke to Sadeh-Sharvit about the research she is working on now at Stanford and what she hopes to accomplish.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): Can you describe the President’s Doctoral Fellowship of Excellence award you recently received and what your motivations were for beginning your project?

Shiri Sadeh-Sharvit (SSS): As a young psychologist, I worked in an eating disorders inpatient unit, and while I expected that most of the patients with whom I would interact would be adolescents between 14 and 19 years old, I was surprised to realize how many adult women were suffering from eating disorders or coping while at the same time coping with the additional responsibilities of child rearing. The fact this this phenomenon exists and the number of patients that have those characteristic demographics surprised me. I was interested in learning what are the specific characteristics and needs that these parents may have.

I received the award from Bar Ilan University and started this program with a topic of mothers with eating disorders. I studied 68 mothers who have eating disorders and toddlers. I conducted interviews with the mothers, and the results of those interviews have been published. We were not surprised to find out that many of those mothers felt that there were similarities between the way that they eat, their relationships with food in regards to their own eating and the way they treat their children’s eating.

The findings of this study triggered us to design the parent-based intervention program which is what I’m working on here at Stanford with Dr. James Locke. A year ago we received the Child Health Research Institute Award from Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital to study parenting programs for mothers with eating disorders that [are] designed to help them in their efforts to feed their children better.

TSD: How do you believe your findings from this study have contributed to the greater literature?

SSS: I think that that the biggest studies have already demonstrated that mothers with eating disorders have greater feeding problems with their children. Some other studies demonstrate that such feeding problems do exist among children of mothers with eating disorders.

However, this is one of the first studies to really ask the mothers and give room to the way they describe their concerns and dilemmas and in general. Most treatments in eating disorders rely heavily on language and words and on exchanges between the patient and the therapeutic team. That’s why it was especially important for us to learn from the mothers the way that they describe their own perception of the problem in order to give them a voice and to design tailored intervention programs that fit their needs and not what us clinicians think that they need.

TSD: Could you talk a little bit more about your primary interests in psychology research?

SSS: My research focus is about preventive interventions and programs for people in high risk of developing a full-blown disorder. One of my main interests is how to work with families to make sure that the developmental trajectories of their children emotionally, socially and psychologically [are] healthy. That is why I love my work and my research with mothers and parents with eating and weight disorders.

Psychological research is so important [because] it helps us really describe and adapt our understanding to the characteristics and needs of logical explanations.

TSD: Are you currently working on any studies or programs that involve mothers with a history of or current eating disorders?

SSS: Now at Stanford University, we are doing a parent-based prevention program for mothers with eating disorders who have children between ages 1 to 5 years old. We’re testing a model that we have for a short-term focus that is done with each family separately in which we work with parents feeding related concerns and dilemmas and additional questions about their parenting that they would like to receive support in.

This program is delivered as part of the study and is given at no cost. A child psychologist meets with parents in two locations, either at Stanford University or in Berkeley, and we hope that the model that we have for this tailored intervention can support parents and families in their decision-making around feeding.

In my vision, I would like at the end to see how we ultimately develop a program for parents with a history of eating disorders that will support them before conceiving children, throughout the pregnancy and along their children’s development to support specific developmental milestones that can be challenging for parents.

TSD: What would you ideally like to see come out of the research you are doing, and what effects do you hope it will have on the community of mothers with eating disorders?

SSS: One of the most common experiences that I have with my patients is that they are really surprised to hear that they are not the first people to tell me those kinds of dilemmas and concerns. I have worked with dozens of families so far with children in the same age range, and it really allows me to understand them better and also tell them to be more forgiving and accepting to their difficulties.

I hope that when parents read the final paper, at least some of them will feel like they’re reading about themselves, and since the paper was written in a very accepting state of mind, I hope that they will also be able to accept those difficulties and have less self-judgment and self-blame because many parents in general feel that way.

I hope that this will affect policymakers and public health professionals and medical teams to understand better what could be the difficulties and the challenges of parents with histories of eating disorders.

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Value your dreams: A Q+A with Dr. Hans Steiner https://stanforddaily.com/2015/06/04/value-your-dreams-a-qa-with-dr-hans-steiner/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/06/04/value-your-dreams-a-qa-with-dr-hans-steiner/#comments Fri, 05 Jun 2015 04:39:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1102042 The Stanford Daily sits down with dream expert Dr. Hans Steiner.

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Dr. Hans Steiner (Courtesy of Hans Steiner)
Dr. Hans Steiner (Courtesy of Hans Steiner)

Dr. Hans Steiner is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Stanford and continues to practice psychiatry, mainly with adolescents. Much of his career has focused on this age group and he has written several books, including one on becoming and being a doctor. Most recently, he wrote two articles published in The Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine this spring. One is titled “Talking in Toys” and the other is titled “The Cat Doctor.” He is a founding member of Pegasus Physicians at Stanford, where he works with other physicians and students to explore the intersection of the humanities, the arts and the sciences. He is originally from Vienna and was exposed to psychoanalysis and dream interpretation early on in his career, both of which he is passionate about discussing in lectures around the world.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): In what ways have your background in psychiatry and past life experiences driven your interest and research in psychoanalysis and dream interpretation?

Dr. Hans Steiner: I had an English professor when I was in high school who spent a lot of time in England during World War II, and he would just basically give us Freud to read and said, “Get going.” And then we spent a lot of time reading about dream analysis, and from then on, I thought it was fun to do and someone pays you money for doing this.

See, when I was a young doctor, psychoanalysis used to be the new thing and then faded away into the background. When I was training, you basically had to deal with analysis in one way or another.

TSD: How do these two areas contribute to your own clinical practice and do you have any personal stories that have shown how effective these two methods are for treating patients?

Steiner: This is one of the things that really pisses me off about the field these days is that they always criticize Freud. They rarely give him credit and yet when you look at some of the studies that spun off from him, about half of them are showing that what he thought was correct.

There was a professor in Colorado named Jonathan Shedler who did a meta-analysis of a bunch of studies and that showed a couple of things: Number one was that the most effective intervention in psychiatry for things like anxiety disorder, substance abuse and eating disorders is based on psychodynamic thinking. The effect size is huge compared to remedial and behavioral treatments.

Second of all, when you then take the endpoint of treatment and follow the patients out, drugs and behavioral treatments deteriorate over time. The effects essentially disappear, whereas with psychoanalysis, they keep growing because what you’ve done is reset the filter. And now, they make better decisions whether they are aware of it or not. CBT [Cognitive Behavioral Therapy] and all of those other types of treatments require you only to figure out how to change behavior, which is cookbook type of stuff.

TSD: Do you practice dream interpretation in your own life and if so, has it been influential? How would you advocate for dream analysis in the general population and how do you believe this could be influential in the lives of others?

Steiner: I don’t do it as much as I used to. It’s only when I really have some sort of current, disturbing thing where I will sit down and write it down in my diary and look at it and then think what the heck is this all about.

All of us have these recurring dreams that we’ll have for years sometimes. For instance, whenever I give a big lecture, I inevitably have this dream where there is some obstacle and I cannot get to the place where the lecture is held and it’s usually stupid stuff like the plane is late and then I catch a train and the train has an accident. The net effect is I never get to the lecture. To deal with this kind of dream, I just remind myself that maybe I haven’t gone through my slides in the way I should’ve and pay more attention to it.

All this dream is is a little tap on the shoulder. For instance, it helps me decide if I want to put a little more work in or if I just sort of want to cruise through the lecture. I still get to make the decision. It depends on my audience, how much I have to prepare for how well to know my stuff.

You have to validate dream interpretation and it’s difficult to do so because you’re still relying on narratives. There’s no way to project dreams onto a wall and in the process of narrating, you realize that stories are not facts and that can be problematic.

I think that if you’re in the middle of a lot of issues with setting life up like in high school or university, I would pay a lot attention to your dreams. When you are making big time decisions that will affect the years to come, the importance of the dreams you may have is massive.

So, I would definitely say that it’s important for mental hygiene, just keeping house and making sure that things are ok. I always say that when people are having recurring dreams, they really need to pay attention to them, especially if they’re dreams that are powerful enough to wake them up. There’s something not right.

TSD: Why have you chosen to work with children and adolescents throughout your career and has this shaped your choice to apply psychoanalysis and dream interpretation?

Steiner: It’s the most fun, it’s like being an obstetrician for the mind. They’ve got all the tools but they don’t quite know yet how to put them together, so you just help them and they’re off and running. They respond quickly and the real fun part is that you can start seeing these patients when they are 16 and then you see them for a few more years and then they leave for college and then they’ll come back.

Adolescents are very open to dream interpretation and psychoanalysis. From a certain age on, it’s tough though.

TSD: How has Freud’s work had an effect on your application of dream interpretation and psychoanalysis?

Steiner: Freud is a good start and did a lot but when I go back and read his book on dream interpretation, there is so much wrong in it. It’s interesting but he forced it into this model that just doesn’t work. Every dream is not sexual but that’s not the point. Sometimes it’s sexual and sometimes it’s not.

As soon as I caught onto the structured model of psychoanalysis, I couldn’t possibly practice that. That model of bringing analysis to people is just wrong.

TSD: What do you want people to take from the information you share about dream interpretation and psychoanalysis?

Steiner: “In most medicine” means that in order for you to be successful, you better know, number one, what cards mother nature dealt you, what are you stuck with.

Then there are certain constitutional variables that you have and you don’t have, otherwise you’re going to be looking to all of the wrong places for problems that you’re running into.

Then there are some things that you are not aware of that you have. You also need to take into account what you can and can’t get — can we actually analyze what we think you want and implant a different idea in your head to challenge what you think you can get versus what you actually can do?

TSD: For those of us who have experienced recurring dreams, either positive or negative, how do you suggest that we interpret them? Should we look at them as things that may happen in the future or as things indicating how we are thinking and feeling about something?

Steiner: It’s usually the latter. We need to help the person get on with it and not get stuck in thinking that it will actually make it happen.

A sleep journal is useful in helping people cope with recurrent bad dreams. It’s called expressive writing and you can learn it easily. It’s one of the health maintenance things that all of us should do. It’s writing where you mimic what’s going on in therapy and get into the stream and just write and let it flow. You don’t want to spend any time thinking about it.

With someone with PTSD, it’s tougher. You need to show them that their story is probably not the only one. I had a man who was in the Vietnam War and was on a patrol boat in the Mekong Delta and he was a loader for ammunition. To load it, he turned the switch in the back to make sure the gun was charged, and this all needed to be done very quickly.

He was on this boat and he was just coming back up and getting ready to round up and some boy yelled “Incoming fire,” and he saw the stuff coming and knew it was going to hit the boat and was terrified. The boat went out and everybody died except him.

We dug into that narrative a bit and it turned out that at the very bottom of it, he thought because he dropped the ammunition that he was carrying up, because he was so afraid, that it was the explosion from [the ammunition] that killed them. I just needed to listen to him and start bringing up alternate scenarios, other things that could’ve caused it. Then I redefined the narrative as one where he was not so culpable and made it more realistic and that usually helps.

Psychoanalysis was more useful in this situation because it restored his agency. The therapist or psychiatrist should be responsible for showing the patient what his options are and allow them to make the decisions. Most people when they’re done with therapy, the really interesting thing is that they really think that they’ve made all of those decisions themselves.

TSD: Do you think that medication affects whether or not you dream?

Steiner: It depends on what the dream problems are. If it’s a PTSD-like dream, you usually give something like Clonodine. It tends to suppress PTSD dreams and is a blood pressure medication, whereas things like Clonazepam work through inhibition and suppress dreams in a funny way. Your dreams will just go away sometimes which is also not what you want. There is a certain amount of housekeeping that goes on at night that will not happen if dreams are affected for any length of time.

TSD: What can you do to help people dream more?

Steiner: It always helps for people to keep a dream diary. There’s also something called seeding where as you lie down and either think or read very intensively about whatever problem you may be dealing with and want to solve and very often you will dream about it. Through this way, you can find your solution.

One historic example of seeding was when Crick saw the two snakes dancing and all of the sudden realized that that’s how the DNA hooks together. He had been thinking about it constantly, and finally saw the solution in this dream.

This interview has been condensed and edited. 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Q+A: ‘Twitch’ documentarian talks film’s overseas reception https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/02/qa-twitch-documentarian-talks-films-overseas-reception/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/02/qa-twitch-documentarian-talks-films-overseas-reception/#respond Fri, 03 Apr 2015 06:23:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1098212 Kristen Powers ’16 first screened Twitch: The Documentary at Parents’ Weekend in 2014. She has now taken it on tour to four different continents and is planning to screen it in Australia in the fall. Her documentary tells the story of the loss of her mother to Huntington’s disease and her decision later on to get genetic testing. She is a leader for the Huntington’s Outreach Project for Education and is deeply involved in promoting awareness for Huntington’s disease.

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Kristen Powers (left) made a film about her decision to test herself for Huntington's Disease (Courtesy of Marc Birnbach).
Kristen Powers (left) made a film about her decision to test herself for Huntington’s Disease (Courtesy of Marc Birnbach).

Kristen Powers ’16 first screened “Twitch: The Documentary” at Parents’ Weekend in 2014. She has now taken it on tour to four different continents and is planning to screen it in Australia in the fall. Her documentary tells the story of the loss of her mother to Huntington’s disease and her decision later on to get genetic testing. She is a leader for the Huntington’s Outreach Project for Education and is deeply involved in promoting awareness for Huntington’s disease.

 

The Stanford Daily (TSD): In spring of 2014, The Daily interviewed you prior to your first screening at Stanford. What accomplishments have you made since then? Describe the expansions you have made with your project and how it has influenced your personal development.

Kristen Powers (KP): Stanford has kind of defined the development of the documentary, which has really been fun to watch. Freshman year, I was in the editing process, sophomore year I was finishing and starting to screen and junior year I’ve been on a screening tour, which is really cool.

I think it’s kind of like watching a child grow up with “Twitch.” Since finishing the documentary in 2014 and showing it at Parents’ Weekend, I’ve since been able to screen it on four different continents to over 2,500 people and to so many different types of people that include people in genetic counseling programs, medical schools and universities and Huntington’s Disease support groups. It’s been a really amazing experience getting it out there to the world.

As for as how it’s changed me personally, I think just the increased number of connections I’ve been able to make and the opportunity to travel has been phenomenal. I’m actually trying to get to my fifth continent and am fundraising for that right now to get to Australia. I just feel so lucky because I have this seven-continent bucket list and am already on track to go to five. It’s truly been amazing.

 

TSD: In which countries have you succeeded in doing screenings and how have audiences reacted? Did audiences in different countries have different reactions and how do you believe that influencing a broader audience has contributed to the impact of your film?

KP: Of course I’ve screened in the U.S., and I also screened in Santiago, Chile while I was studying abroad there. That was to a group of high school students that didn’t have a personal connection to Huntington’s disease, but they knew someone who might have it or was at risk. Then I went to Barcelona and screened at the European Huntington’s Disease Network, which was attended by Europeans from all over, even some outside of Europe. Finally, I did a screening while I was studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa.

The reaction has been very universal, very positive, very receptive and very interesting. In terms of impact, it’s amazing to screen to people who don’t have any connection at all to Huntington’s disease and to see the impact it has on them.

They’ll say, “I never heard of Huntington’s disease before this but now I understand why it’s important to be empathetic towards people with neurological diseases or even mental illness.” They may not try to cure or research Huntington’s disease, but the fact that they’re aware of what it is is what’s important.

People have also appreciated the message of trying to live life as best as you can, regardless of whether or not you are at risk for something and because we don’t know what’s going to kill us. A lot of people have actually honed in on that impact of the film more than I thought.

 

TSD: In 2014, you described how you would be funding your film through an Indiegogo campaign. How has the funding process gone for you thus far and what was required for you to accomplish your goals for the production of this film?

KP: Indiegogo has been a huge part of “Twitch”‘s development in fundraising. Indiegogo is responsible for funding the filming and the editing as well. It took about $50,000 to fund this film and Indiegogo funded $35,000 of that. It’s been an integral part of the fundraising process.

Since the screening last year, as a result of The Stanford Daily’s article, I received a lot of corporate sponsors from raising awareness about the film. Corporate sponsors but mostly individuals have been really supportive in making sure the film is successful.

 

TSD: What are some of the most interesting reactions that you received from audience members and how do you believe that your film may be changing the perspectives of others towards genetic testing and Huntington’s Disease?

KP: I think one of the most interesting reactions that comes up is the debates and conversations about genetic testing. I’ll have friends who have never ever considered genetic testing who are sitting there after the film and questioning if they would ever do that. Sometimes there have been debates at these screenings, which is really interesting to watch because I’m a little bit detached from it.

It’s really interesting what types of people say they would never undergo genetic testing because they think it’s unethical. So, there’s a really interesting mix of opinions and it’s interesting to see how it plays out demographically.

I think it’s really important to have those conversations and I’m glad the film is sparking them. It’s important that we talk about it since businesses like 23andMe make it possible for us to sequence parts of our genome, but we don’t necessarily think about the consequences from the economic and emotional standpoint. I think it’s nice that “Twitch” provides this opportunity, where people can think about this for the first time before they undergo those types of processes.

 

TSD: Recently, you received a nomination and award for Stanford students who have made a considerable impact in the Stanford community in Business Insider magazine. What was your reaction like to this honor and do you believe it contributed in some way to your success?

KP: I was chosen for Business Insider’s top 15 Stanford Students, and it was an absolute surprise. Fall quarter, I received this phone call from someone saying that they were from Business Insider and that they wanted to interview me for something related to Stanford. They didn’t really tell me what but it was a short, informal interview.

A few weeks later, they sent me the article and it was titled “Top 15 Stanford Students” and I was like how did I get on this list? I think it’s a tendency to feel like you’re an imposter at Stanford and believe that you didn’t deserve to be on that list but I was really thankful for it.

It just legitimizes my work and shows that even though Huntington’s disease is a rare disease that people do care about it and can extend empathy to that cause even if it’s just via my story.

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Town hall offers forum for Title IX discussion https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/17/town-hall-offer-forum-for-title-ix-discussion/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/17/town-hall-offer-forum-for-title-ix-discussion/#comments Fri, 17 Oct 2014 07:50:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1089970 Thursday evening at Paul Brest Hall, members of the Stanford community gathered for an open discussion addressing University organization and bureaucracy around sexual assault cases and student awareness of their rights.

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Thursday evening at Paul Brest Hall, members of the Stanford community gathered for an open discussion addressing University organization and bureaucracy around sexual assault cases and student awareness of their rights. (KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)
Thursday evening at Paul Brest Hall, members of the Stanford community gathered for an open discussion addressing University organization and bureaucracy around sexual assault cases and student awareness of their rights.
(KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)

Thursday evening at Paul Brest Hall, members of the Stanford community gathered for an open discussion addressing University organization and bureaucracy concerning sexual assault cases and student awareness of their rights. There were more than 50 attendees, including administrators, faculty, undergraduates, graduate students and other individuals in the community.

This event, titled “Stanford Students: Know Your Rights on Sexual Assault,” discussed federal legislation such as the Clery Act, the Federal Campus Sexual Assault Victims’ Bill of Rights and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. The controversy over whether or not sexual assault should be cause for mandatory expulsion was also addressed.

Through the Clery Act, schools are required to collect, classify and count crime reports and crime statistics, issue timely warnings and emergency notifications, submit all crime statistics to the U.S. Department of Education and publish an annual security report, according to Annie Clark, co-founder of End Rape on Campus, who was at the event.

“The issue with Clery is that it considers reportable geography on campus and in specific areas off campus,” Clark said. “This means that depending on where the crime occurs, universities don’t have to report it. So, you may have a lower Clery number that doesn’t accurately represent what the student population is actually facing.”

Alexandra Brodsky, co-founder of KnowYourIX, said at the event there were issues on campus in terms of how to organize sexual assault bureaus. In the case of the Federal Campus Sexual Assault Victims’ Bill of Rights, the main question raised was how universities can provide better information on on-campus resources, centralize their departments or offices that handle sexual assault and clearly document their policies for sexual assault in written form.

Clark said that it is important for students to know their rights so that sexual assault cases can be dealt with correctly and so that they can make the best decisions they can with the information available to them. However, Clark noted that even with this knowledge, the 180-day statute of limitations for a survivor to file a federal complaint can be daunting.

Katherine Quiles ’16 understood that Title IX was complicated but was surprised by the bureaucratic challenges it entailed.

“I had more of a nebulous idea,” Quiles said.  “I knew what Title IX was, but just how bureaucratic it is and how complicated the reporting system is right now is very unfortunate.”

With Title IX specifically, each university is supposed to have a Title IX coordinator, but some coordinators may not be well-trained enough to provide enough accurate and timely information to students, Brodsky said. It is also the expectation that faculty receive training so that they can become a part of the ideal centralized resource process.

At the event, members of administration and faculty debated with Brodsky and Clerk whether or not expulsion should be mandatory over cases of sexual assault. Law school professor Michelle Dauber and others questioned why mandatory expulsion would not be the readily expected solution.

“I would just have the person grab their toothbrush, pack up their things and call mom, and that would be the end of it,” Dauber said.

Brodsky noted that giving the survivor a say in the assailant’s punishments could have its own problems.

“We don’t want to put the burden of picking what happens to the rapist on the survivor,” Brodsky said. “In an ideal world, there would be a mandatory sanction, but given where we are now and how much distress survivors have, we need to allow flexibility to allow people to come forward to get the services they need.”

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

Update: an earlier version of this article attributed a quote to Michelle Voigt instead of Michelle Dauber. It has since been corrected.

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Student documentary explores genetic testing and Huntington’s Disease https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/06/student-documentary-explores-genetic-testing-and-huntingtons-disease/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/06/student-documentary-explores-genetic-testing-and-huntingtons-disease/#respond Mon, 06 Oct 2014 12:38:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088965 Powers’ film, Twitch: The Documentary, came to completion last year and focuses on her decision to get genetic testing for Huntington’s Disease for herself and the long-term consequences that come with receiving a positive or negative result.

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Filmmake Kristen Powers.
Filmmaker Kristen Powers. (Courtesy of Kristen Powers)

Kristen Powers ’16 was 3 years old when her mom began showing signs of Huntington’s Disease, an inherited illness that is eventually fatal to the carrier. Powers’ film, Twitch: The Documentary, came to completion last year and focuses on her decision to get genetic testing for Huntington’s Disease for herself and the long-term consequences that come with receiving a positive or negative result. She is a leader for the Huntington’s Outreach Project for Education, at Stanford (HOPES) and is deeply involved in promoting awareness for Huntington’s Disease.

 

The Stanford Daily (TSD): Since the first showing of Twitch, how have you seen the impact of the documentary grow? And describe different audience reactions that you have received so far.

Kristen Powers (KP): It’s been pretty overwhelming, all of the support I’ve received. All of the audiences have been pretty big on using film as an educational tool. Especially at community screenings, I’ve had widely engaged and excited audiences. Some of first events where people can open up to the rest of community have been provided through Twitch. At screenings, audiences have had very positive and very excited feedback, and the screenings were great for encouraging dialogue.

 

TSD: How has your experience with Twitch molded your life in the documentary industry, and do you have any other upcoming projects in mind?

KP: At the moment, I have no upcoming projects in mind. My experience with Twitch has reaffirmed the need for a type of film about genetic testing. People are interested in talking about genetics, and they realize how critical this conversation is to have, especially in discovering medical information involved in their own medical fate. What I always try to do is have a genetic counselor on site to provide local resources.

 

TSD: How would you like to see Twitchs influence expand, and where are important places that you would like to take it to next?

KP: Exposing as many people as possible to this is the most important to me at this point. It’s hard to see which groups are most impacted. The idea is promoting awareness by reaching as many people as possible.

What I would like to aim for is to go to bigger cities like Miami, Boston and New York City. I’m trying to take all requests from the Huntington’s Disease (HD) community that I can. I’m trying to get to Australia and Asia. The HD community in Asia has a much more stigmatized population. It’s harder to gain support there where people are more nervous about talking about it.

 

TSD: What was it like hosting screenings of Twitch in places outside of the United States, like Santiago and Barcelona? 

KP: The reaction was very similar to other places I’ve gone, not more so. To start with Barcelona, there were people from all over the world there. People with HD attended from throughout Europe. A lot of them didn’t have the same resources to get the safe, genetic testing process done as we do in the United States.

It is still very stigmatized in Santiago, but we were able to screen it at a high school. They mistook me as a celebrity with the way they reacted because they were shocked that someone my age could make a film like this. It was fun to talk to a South American audience about this disease they had never heard of; that made it a very interesting experience as well.

 

TSD: How else would you like to see Stanford students become involved in awareness for Huntingtons Disease and have you seen a concrete impact from your documentary on some of the Stanford community?

KP: With Stanford students, we have a group called Huntington’s Outreach Project for Education, at Stanford (HOPES) that I am the project leader for. We are trying to advertise more for the local community through events like the HDSA (Huntington’s Disease Society of America) Team Hope Walk on Oct. 25 at Golden Gate Park. In terms of Stanford students, it would be great to see Stanford students attend these kinds of events.

I’ve had a lot of people talk to me about considering what they would do in my situation – when I was deciding whether or not to get tested for Huntington’s – since we have companies down the street like 23andme. It’s good for Stanford students to question the risks that could predispose them to other biological conditions.

 

TSD: What have been some of your most fascinating, emotionally salient experiences with people after showing your film? Do you have any personal stories you would like to share?

KP: A lot of people got more invested in the film than I thought they would originally.

I went to Birmingham, Alabama, where the University of Alabama organized the biggest screening event yet – 400 people. People were clapping and cheering like crazy, and I heard waves of energy and noise from the 400 people behind me. That was probably the highlight of the tour for me. I don’t even think that there was one person with HD in the audience. The fact that they were so invested in this story even though they weren’t affected was really inspiring.

For more information about Kristen’s documentary, you can visit twitchdocumentary.com.

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

 

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Glass Walls exhibit in White Plaza exposes animal abuse on farms https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/21/glass-walls-exhibit-in-white-plaza-exposes-animal-abuse-on-farms/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/21/glass-walls-exhibit-in-white-plaza-exposes-animal-abuse-on-farms/#respond Wed, 21 May 2014 20:32:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085815 Passersby in White Plaza early this week were greeted with vegan cookies and approached with the opportunity to learn more about factory farms through the Glass Walls exhibit.

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Passersby in White Plaza early this week were greeted with vegan cookies and approached with the opportunity to learn more about factory farms through the Glass Walls exhibit, which featured video of animal slaughters, facts about animal abuse in farms and even a life-sized battery cage filled with fake chickens.

People for Animal Welfare (PAW), a student organization founded during winter quarter, brought the Glass Walls exhibit to campus in collaboration with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) with the goal of promoting awareness on campus of animal rights issues and further expanding the group’s presence.

SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily
SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily

According to Kenneth Montville, college campaign coordinator for PETA, the Glass Walls exhibit has already made its way to over 70 colleges in the United States, including Yale, UC-San Diego, UCLA, Georgetown and Texas. Stanford was the second-to-last stop of this specific exhibit, before a new rendition will be released next fall.

The mission of Glass Walls closely aligns with that of PAW, which is why David Kay  ’16, president of PAW, and first-year law student Eitan Fischer, a member of the group, worked to bring the Glass Walls to Stanford.

“We grow up with this fairytale of a happy red barn on beautiful green pastures, but that isn’t the reality,” said Sacha Sweet, administrator of the touring exhibit. “We want this exhibit to show that, and to show people the amount and propensity of abuse these animals go through every day. People need to see these real images and know the truth for themselves.”

Fischer, who experienced Glass Walls while an undergraduate at Yale, initially suggested the idea.

“We had an overwhelmingly positive response when we hosted [The] Glass Walls at Yale,” he said. “We had hundreds of students go through, and many of them expressed that they had never known this information before. Given PAW’s new role on campus, this exhibit was a great way to increase its presence while educating the Stanford community on an important issue.”

Currently, PAW is the only undergraduate group on campus that is focused exclusively on animal welfare. So far, PAW’s two main strategies for accomplishing its mission to reduce animal suffering are lobbying institutions on campus to be more humane and raising awareness, Kay explained. The goal is to expose the suffering endured by animals and to provide people with easy ways that they can make an impact.

Although PAW only officially became a club last quarter, it has made a considerable impact despite their limited resources and size.

“We hand out leaflets with tips on how to go vegan,” Kay said. “We’ve cosponsored events that raise awareness of the dog meat festival in China or about the ag-gag laws in the United States. We met with Challah for Hunger and urged them to offer a vegan flavor.”

With funding granted a few days ago, PAW plans to expand its presence in various ways.

“We’re planning on volunteering at an animal shelter, having some sort of activism [or] awareness event on the orcas at SeaWorld and maybe even campaigning for animal-friendly politicians,” Kay said.

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Nobel laureates talk about their research, energy availability https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/13/nobel-laureates-talk-about-their-research-energy-availability/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/13/nobel-laureates-talk-about-their-research-energy-availability/#respond Tue, 13 May 2014 09:03:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085539 Professor Emeritus of Physics Douglas Osheroff and Professor in the School of Medicine Thomas Südhof were invited to speak for the third and final installment of the Class of 2015’s Junior Speaker Series, “Intelligence for Impact: A Nobel Laureate Panel,” in Cemex Auditorium on Monday night.

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SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily
SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily

Professor Emeritus of Physics Douglas Osheroff and Professor in the School of Medicine Thomas Südhof were invited to speak for the third and final installment of the Class of 2015’s Junior Speaker Series, “Intelligence for Impact: A Nobel Laureate Panel,” in Cemex Auditorium on Monday night.

Osheroff, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Südhof, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, were asked a series of questions by Professor of Computer Science Mehran Sahami ’92 M.S. ’93 Ph.D. ’99, who moderated the event.

Main themes of the talk included the passion and determination behind research, the need for innate curiosity for great discoveries and changes and challenges in the world that have yet to be fully addressed.

Both professors agreed that energy production and the transition away from fossil fuels are among the greatest of challenges society faces today. Südhof recognized the significance of reducing pollution and finding alternative energy resources.

“Life certainly is filled with huge challenges, like trying to understand diseases of the brain,” Südhof said. “However, those challenges pale in importance, I believe, compared to this overall change in the world and our planet that seem to be quite overwhelming. It’s a major technological challenge that doesn’t only revolve around energy; it revolves around societies.”

Taking action to accomplish major goals by first clearly defining their motivations is key to progress, Südhof said.

“The essence of science is that you study something because you want to find what the truth about that something is,” Südhof said. “As a scientist you are trying to find out what is the truth about a certain subject…in order to deliberate on what needs to be done in the future, you need to get the best assessment possible of the actual facts.”

Osheroff’s definition of research complements Südhof’s definition of science as a process of intrigue. Osheroff shared that his high school chemistry teacher’s metaphor for research has stayed with him to this day.

“He came to class one day and he had milk cartons,” Osheroff said. “Research is like trying to figure out what’s inside the milk cartons. Every time you do an experiment, you’re asking a question of nature. Nature has to answer your questions. Nature’s answers aren’t like what’s inside the milk carton, but something about what’s inside the milk carton.”

In response to what it takes to become a successful scientist or researcher, Südhof put curiosity before intellect.

“Intelligence is often overrated,” he said. “The best predictor of success is how innately curious the person is. That has been a better predictor than anything else I have seen for actually doing something interesting.”

Junior Class President Jordan Shapiro ’15 planned for the event to focus more on the life of the laureates than on academia.

“The purpose of the panel is not to convince our student body to pursue academia or to aspire for a Nobel Prize,” Shapiro said. “Rather, we want to focus on where these leaders were during their undergraduate years and the unpredictable path that lay ahead of them before they really achieved this excellence.”

Rohit Talreja ’15, a junior class cabinet member and one of the main organizers for the event, noted a discrepancy between how much Stanford speaks about its Nobel laureates and how much students get to actually interact with them.

“I hope students will get inspiration from this and use their education for solving real-world problems,” Talreja said. “I hope the laureates will give us inspiration for tackling problems of our generation by sharing their experiences with accomplishing things on a larger scale.”

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Doonesbury cartoonist speaks as Rathbun Visiting Fellow https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/29/doonesbury-cartoonist-speaks-as-rathbun-visiting-fellow/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/29/doonesbury-cartoonist-speaks-as-rathbun-visiting-fellow/#respond Tue, 29 Apr 2014 08:54:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085010 On April 28, the Stanford Office for Religious Life hosted cartoonist Garry Trudeau as the fifth Rathbun Visiting Fellow as he delivered a “Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life.”

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CHARLOTTE SAGAN/The Stanford Daily

On April 28, the Stanford Office for Religious Life hosted cartoonist Garry Trudeau as the fifth Rathbun Visiting Fellow as he delivered a “Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life.”

Trudeau is the creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip Doonesbury. Past Rathbun Fellows have included Sandra Day O’Connor ‘50 J.D. ‘52 and the Dalai Lama.

Trudeau spoke before a full crowd in Memorial Auditorium, using his comedic wit to speak about pivotal events in his life as well as his personal growth.

At just eight years of age, Trudeau recalled, he became enamored with the energy of theater and took it upon himself to pursue his dream.

“We rounded up the kids and we put them in plays,” he said. “Initially they were plays that I wrote, and eventually, I found out about Samuel French, a publisher of plays. I sent my plays to him because I wanted to do adult work. I didn’t want to do little kid work.”

Trudeau described his generation as disinclined to remain young and eager to reach the excitement of adulthood. However, Trudeau said he never set out with the intent of adhering strictly to a predefined plan, and recalled that he did not have expectations for what was and was not possible.

“I didn’t feel ready for the creative opportunities that came my way for one minute,” Trudeau said. “I didn’t feel that I could possibly have done those musicals as a younger man. I wrote for a column for the op-ed page of The New York Times, which was offered to me in my early forties. I wasn’t ready to do that kind of work, and I think it took me a while to think I could write a show like [Amazon political sitcom] Alpha House.”

Asked how he continues to live a life of undying passion with such self-confidence, Trudeau emphasized “endless curiosity.” Audience members were taken aback when he shared his creative process as an artist.

“There’s been a nice alignment of the opportunities and my capabilities, but I don’t look too hard at the creative process — like the way a mountaineer never looks down,” Trudeau said. “You think maybe that if you hold it up to too much scrutiny, it would somehow compromise the process.”

In addition to emphasizing his curiosity, Trudeau discussed the importance of being an observer in a meaningful life and focused on the quality of empathy. He confessed that the one thing he wished he had done more was to look less at the horizon and more at his surroundings.

More than anything else, Trudeau emphasized the importance of life in the present and the expression of care for those around you. Trudeau also explained his perspective on his own legacy.

“I think that’s really taking your eye off the ball to worry about legacy,” Trudeau said. “When I think of legacy, I think of boxes of things in my back room that my kids are going to sort through and throw out.”

Jerry Kuang ‘17 said Trudeau’s talk provided a refreshing contrast to previous talks he has attended at Stanford this year.

“The last one I came to was with John Hennessy and Mark Zuckerberg, and there’s such a humongous contrast,” Kuang said. “That was something so techie, so current, and so young and relevant, and this is something completely different, much more on the philosophical side.”

Audience members noted that Trudeau’s talk often took unpredictable turns and deviated from the original theme of a meaningful life.

“You’re expecting ‘this is what a meaningful life looks like,’ and it was interesting that he never explicitly answered that,” said audience member Christine Chen ‘17.

One of Trudeau’s tangents included a joke about a man who went in to see a general physician. When asked why he was visiting, the man said that he thought he was a moth. To this, the physician responded that he should go see a psychiatrist and asked why the man had visited to begin with. The man explained that he saw the light on.

Trudeau framed the anecdote as illustrative of a foundational concept for a meaningful life, arguing that each of us will have moments when we see those lights, and we’ll be immediately drawn to them. The key, he emphasized, is to not hold back.

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ Stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Professor of Medicine Spiegel talks about medical hypnosis, receiving the Joan and Stanford Alexander Award https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/27/professor-of-medicine-spiegel-talks-about-medical-hypnosis-receiving-the-joan-and-stanford-alexander-award/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/27/professor-of-medicine-spiegel-talks-about-medical-hypnosis-receiving-the-joan-and-stanford-alexander-award/#respond Mon, 28 Apr 2014 06:03:07 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1084947 Professor of Medicine David Spiegel was recently named as the 2014 recipient of the Joan and Stanford Alexander Award in recognition of his research on stress and health. The Daily sat down with Spiegel, who will accept the award and give a lecture on his work on April 30 at the Baylor College of Medicine, to discuss his interest in hypnosis, changes he has witnessed in his field over time and the award itself.

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Courtesy of David Spiegel
Courtesy of David Spiegel

Professor of Medicine David Spiegel was recently named as the 2014 recipient of the Joan and Stanford Alexander Award in recognition of his research on stress and health. The Daily sat down with Spiegel, who will accept the award and give a lecture on his work on April 30 at the Baylor College of Medicine, to discuss his interest in hypnosis, changes he has witnessed in his field over time and the award itself.

 

The Stanford Daily (TSD): What have been some of the most influential changes you have seen in your field [psychiatry and behavioral sciences] throughout your professional career?

David Spiegel (DS): I think the field has moved from being bottom-up, as far as the body-mind relationship goes, to being more open to the idea of some top-down control … The field has also started to recognize that the way you use your mind can have an effect on your body. We can control pain and anxiety, and we can help people better, even with serious illnesses.

I think we have taken a less mechanistic view of what the mind-body relationship is like and are beginning to open up to the idea that how you live your life, how you manage your anxiety, stress and symptoms can have an effect on not just how you live with the disease but how long you live with the disease.

 

TSD: What drew your interest to hypnosis as a form of pain management and healing?

DS: My father was a psychiatrist who learned how to use hypnosis in World War II, and he was practicing it when I was a kid. I used to hear him talk about his cases, and I was fascinated by what he did. I then took a hypnosis course in medical school, and I think the turning point was this patient I had. They told me, “Spiegel, your next case is an asthma patient, she’s in room something or other down the hall.” I just followed the sound of the wheezing down the hall, and there was this fifteen-year-old in bed, knuckles white and struggling for breath.

She was in bad shape, and her mother was crying. I asked her if she wanted to learn a breathing exercise, and she nodded. I had just started the hypnosis course and managed to get her hypnotized. Within five minutes, she’s lying back in bed; she’s breathing better; and her mother stopped crying. She had been hospitalized every month for three months and had one subsequent hospitalization and now is studying to be a respiratory therapist.

I thought that anything that can help a patient that much was worth looking into. I started exploring hypnosis to see how it could help people in stressful situations dealing with mind-body problems. I started doing randomized control trials to see if [hypnosis] worked and looked at the neurophysiology to see what was going on in the brain when you use hypnosis. In 1998, I opened the Center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford, and hypnosis is one of the main treatments that we offer.

 

TSD: Did you find that your research was met with a lot of skepticism? If so, how have you continued to stand your ground?

DS: Yes, I have. There are people who think hypnosis is just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, and it isn’t. It’s the oldest western conception of psychotherapy. My main way of dealing with it is knowing that to advance medical care you need facts, not opinions. My way of standing up to it is to do the research, publish it in mainstream journals and let people read the work and decide if we have enough evidence to support our claims.

 

TSD: What can integrative medicine do that traditional cannot?

DS: I’d say one of the big problems in American healthcare is that we’re really good at acute care … You get diagnosed quickly and accurately and treated definitively, and it’s very good. [Where] we’re not so good is with chronic medical problems because we keep applying an acute care model.

The way integrative medicine helps is it provides ways for people to manage symptoms like anxiety, pain, fatigue and depression with techniques like mindfulness, acupuncture and hypnosis that are very useful in that setting. I think where we are really good is dealing with chronic symptoms that we can help people manage better.

 

TSD: How does it feel to be granted the Joan and Stanford Alexander Award?

DS: It feels very good. It’s always nice to have people recognize that what you’re doing seems to have an impact, and they’ve given it to some very prominent people. It feels nice to have your peers acknowledge that what you do seems to be important and have an impact on how people think about psychiatric conditions. I’m grateful to Stanford that I’ve had the opportunity to build the kind of career that allows me to get that kind of recognition. This is a place where the sky is the limit if you can do it, where you have an opportunity to develop ideas and test them.

 

TSD: What would you like to see in the future for the use of hypnosis and its integration?

DS: I would like to see people use it as a regular technique to help them focus better, think better and manage stressors better. I use it as a therapeutic tool, but a lot of what I teach patients virtually anybody can learn. I would love to see it used as a teaching and learning technique that most people know how to do. I think there’s a lot we learn from helping people manage pain and anxiety and focus their attention. I’d like to see it not as just some weird historical footnote but as a standard technique.

 

This interview has been condensed and edited.

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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New York Times best-selling author Janet Mock discusses transgender identity https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/21/new-york-times-best-selling-author-janet-mock-discusses-transgender-identity/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/21/new-york-times-best-selling-author-janet-mock-discusses-transgender-identity/#respond Mon, 21 Apr 2014 07:34:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1084685 On April 18, more than one hundred people gathered outside the Black Community Services Center to hear Janet Mock — The New York Times best-selling author of the memoir “Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More” — speak about what it means to be transgender.

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MILTON ACHELPOHL/The Stanford Daily
MILTON ACHELPOHL/The Stanford Daily

On April 18, more than one hundred people gathered outside the Black Community Services Center to hear Janet Mock — The New York Times best-selling author of the memoir “Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More” — speak about what it means to be transgender.

According to Mock, her book was primarily influenced by Maya Angelou’s “When the Caged Bird Sings,” which discusses issues like sexual abuse.

“This idea of realness is a sense of survival as you are already a person of color and then you add the trans part,” Mock said.

Mock explained that she did not write the memoir for herself and did not intend the book to be something as simplistic as a voice of the voiceless.

“I wanted my target audience to be younger girls — to give them language and let them know they’re not alone,” Mock said. “My goal wasn’t to educate, but by centering that young, poor trans girl of color, we centralize everyone else…Everyone else can choose to understand.”

As she was developing her female identity, one of Mock’s role models was Beyoncé Knowles. For Mock, Beyoncé was a form of validation — “the epitome of a graceful, strong, beautiful woman.” Mock’s anecdote about her mother showing support of Beyoncé by going to the grocery store and picking up magazines with Beyoncé on the cover even elicited laughter from the audience.

Mock said that she made her pivotal decision to embark on her journey to womanhood towards the start of the millennium.

“With the limited time I had left, I wanted to be fully me,” Mock said. “I had this internal angst about my body. I made a decision to engage in the sex trade full time to afford the medical things I would need.”

Mock said that she felt a sense of responsibility to become an advocate for change as a member of the transgender community. With her education, training, appearance and articulation, she was able to work closely with a publisher to use her memoir as a way to emerge from survivor’s guilt.

Mock experienced racism and classism after leaving Honolulu, her childhood home, for New York University, and Stanford students in the audience said that her stories resonated with them.

After seeing her speak at Stanford in spring of 2013 for the first time, Kevin Roberts ‘13, president of Black and Queer at Stanford, expressed enthusiasm about having Mock back as a speaker again this year.

“She’s a great person to bring because she inhabits her identity in a way that I think many queer people of color have learned to prior to Stanford but may not yet have it sutured in this very privileged, very white supremacist space,” Roberts said.

According to Violet Trachtenberg ‘16, president of SSQL, their organization invited Mock as a keynote speaker in last spring and received a strong, positive reaction from students. Trachtenberg described this year’s turnout as even more inspiring.

“For me, what’s most empowering is seeing Black House fill up with people who want to come see a poor, mixed, black indigenous trans woman who is proud about all of these things,” Trachtenberg said.

Audience member Keagan Sitompul ‘17 shared his admiration for Mock.

“Janet Mock carried the room with the grace of somebody who has come out of her journey through womanhood a strong and powerful woman,” Sitompul said. “She was accessible but subtle, cheeky but never crass. She was everything.”

Black and Queer at Stanford (BlaQs) cosponsored the event in collaboration with Stanford Students for Queer Liberation (SSQL), the First-generation Low Income Partnership (FLIP), La Familia de Stanford, QuEST and the Black Community Services Center.

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Marushevska, Ukranian activist, offers her thoughts at Encina https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/11/marushevska-ukranian-activist-offers-her-thoughts-at-encina/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/11/marushevska-ukranian-activist-offers-her-thoughts-at-encina/#comments Fri, 11 Apr 2014 11:09:41 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1084360 On April 8, Yulia Marushevska, a Ukrainian activist featured in a viral video titled “I Am a Ukrainian” that has garnered over seven million views since it was uploaded in February, spoke with students at Encina Hall about the ongoing unrest in Ukraine.

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"I am a Ukrainian" team/Wikimedia
“I am a Ukrainian” team/Wikimedia

On April 8, Yulia Marushevska, a Ukrainian activist featured in a viral video titled “I Am a Ukrainian” that has garnered over seven million views since it was uploaded in February, spoke with students at Encina Hall about the ongoing unrest in Ukraine.

Marushevska, who is currently a Ph.D. student at Taras Shevchenko National University, also sat down with The Daily to discuss topics ranging from her thoughts on corruption in Ukraine to the future of her native country and the role students will play in shaping it.

 

The Stanford Daily (TSD): Would you mind sharing your background and what it was like growing up in the Ukraine before the beginnings of Euromaidan?

Yulia Marushevska (YM):I grew up as an ordinary, Western child. I grew up in a post-Soviet Union time. Now I am a student at a good Ukrainian university. There were no physical issues, but instead, more psychological issues. My grandparents ask me “why are you there,” and I answer them “How can I not be?”

It makes me sad that in such a rich country, so many live a poor life. I think that 30 or 40 percent of Ukrainians live under the poverty line. If there isn’t enough money to cure children from cancer but always enough money to buy new furniture from the best Italian designers, it’s really sad. The problem is this disrespect – people lived on this small amount of money without having a dignified life.

In Kiev, we didn’t feel it as much, but we read about it and knew that all of our politicians were lying. It’s like somebody created another reality for you, a false reality and pushed you to live in this false reality. There were a lot of accidents where women were violated in police stations. People in the government and the police could do whatever they want. It made me really frustrated to hear about these accidents in Ukraine. It’s about personal responsibility for the whole society.

 

TSD: What do you believe would be the best, most effective form of government in the future for Ukraine?

YM: The best way is to take the principles of democracy. I like how they did that in the United States because people really feel this rule of freedom. On the other hand, I don’t like this democracy in Europe where there are too many papers. I would like to see an American democracy without a European bureaucracy. Our way is the way of a modern country that looks into the future.

We are like a newborn country in one way but on the other hand, we have a very old history. Yes, we were oppressed during all of our existence but our people always were holding it somehow together. Today we are Ukrainians besides everything else.

 

TSD: What are some of the ways that other countries can contribute to Ukraine at this time?

YM: It’s recognition, recognition at all levels. It doesn’t matter in what way. If you are a writer, you can write a book about Ukraine, you can do research about Ukrainian culture, you can go and be an observer of the elections, whatever. When I am talking to politicians, I am asking them to contribute in this recognition on the symbolic level, to support us on the moral, technical and material level. I am talking about making an open regime in Ukraine to foreign students, to journalists and to tourists. I want people to see this spirit of living in a new way and on another level. I am asking governments to be more open with their visa politics and I am asking them to make [student] exchange programs and encourage their businessmen to come to Ukraine.

Ukraine will surprise the international community. As one of my friends told me, “in Ukraine, I found myself.” I think it’s a very spiritual place and it could be a great openness for people throughout the world.

 

TSD: How can Stanford students be of service and what roles have college students and the youth in Ukraine held thus far?

YM: I think that in a global point of view, what you can do is to go out of your small world of everyday study. Study is an important thing, but in this world, bigger issues exist and you have to understand that you have a great opportunity to have an education, but this education isn’t only for you. It isn’t only for building a big career. You are a lucky one and you have to contribute to the world in general. I am not talking about helping Ukraine. In the world, there are thousands of problems and each of us knows exactly where he can be useful. I think that the best lesson would be to make your world bigger, bigger than only consumerism. You need to destroy these smaller borders and become a part of bigger issues and a bigger world. And, of course, Ukraine is open.

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Flying TreeHouse club on campus expands creative projects for children’s education https://stanforddaily.com/2014/03/12/flying-treehouse-club-on-campus-expands-creative-projects-for-childrens-education/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/03/12/flying-treehouse-club-on-campus-expands-creative-projects-for-childrens-education/#respond Wed, 12 Mar 2014 15:27:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1083268 While the Flying TreeHouse may have grown out of a simple desire to educate and entertain, members of Stanford’s combo teaching/theater/comedy club have sought to do something more in their shows—to promote creativity and imagination in an age of standardized tests and common curriculums.

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Courtesy of Shannon Mulloy
Courtesy of Shannon Mulloy

While the Flying TreeHouse may have grown out of a simple desire to educate and entertain, members of Stanford’s combo teaching/theater/comedy club have sought to do something more in their shows—to promote creativity and imagination in an age of standardized tests and common curriculums.

The club has its roots in a 2011 class taught by both Dan Klein ’91, lecturer in drama and at the Graduate School of Business, and Lisa Barker Ph.D.’12, a graduate student at the School of Education at the time. The class was based on Barker’s experiences with Northwestern University’s Griffin’s Tale club.

Flying TreeHouse offers elementary school classrooms creativity workshops, in which group members teach kids the different components to telling a story.

Director Allie Fijolek ’14 explained that members normally start by teaching different story frameworks but also instruct the students on many other topics, such as dialogue.

“[We ask the kids] what’s the setting, who are the characters and what do they say to one another,” Fijolek said.

According to co-director Will Setrakian ’15, the workshops are ultimately intended to get kids into writing groups and act out what they wrote in front of their friends.

The Flying TreeHouse program extends, however, past the workshops. After the kids write the scripts, the group members will perform them at the schools after adapting the individual scripts and weaving them together into a cohesive narrative.

“We don’t want to constrain the kids’ writings or our adaptations of the stories,” said co-director Christian Murphy ’14, explaining that sometimes they might take stories word for word and other times they might take elements of stories and write their own scripts from them.

So far, Flying TreeHouse has delivered workshops and performances at Escondido Elementary School and East Palo Alto Charter School, which offers a diverse experience for the team members, according to Murphy.

“[The schools] are different environments so I think it’s helpful for us to see that,” he said. “It offers us different material and kids can take something different out of the program. As we grow we can probably expand to more schools but I think that our connection to both of these schools is really enriching and gratifying.”

The club’s reputation has grown quickly among local elementary students. According to Fijolek, second graders badger their older siblings who have participated in the workshops for information about the program.

Fijolek also noted that one of the participants had enjoyed writing for Flying TreeHouse so much that he eventually wrote his own book.

Flying TreeHouse members take on a new challenge, however, when they perform the kids’ shows for Stanford students.

Although they often laugh at different things, according to Setrakian, Stanford students still appreciate the humor in the kids’ writing.

“They [Stanford students] reacted just as well to us and were able to connect with what we were doing and what the kids were writing,” Setrakian said. “After all, they are kids, too.”

Ultimately, it’s that ability to tap into their inner child that motivates many of the members of Flying TreeHouse, according to Oriekose Idah ’15, a member of the club.

“I think what I get out of it is realizing that there is such untapped intelligence in children that I forgot I had as a kid,” Idah said. “Even when I’m performing, I feel like a kid again. I’m doing all of these crazy things on the stage but I know that validating their imagination is such a privilege.”

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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CAPS’s new StressLess program addresses stress at Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2014/03/03/vadens-new-stressless-program-addresses-stress-at-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/03/03/vadens-new-stressless-program-addresses-stress-at-stanford/#respond Mon, 03 Mar 2014 08:59:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082895 Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) recently introduced a StressLess@Stanford initiative in an effort to complement existing clinical services and better foster mental health on campus.

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Sam Girvin/THE STANFORD DAILY
Sam Girvin/THE STANFORD DAILY

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) recently introduced a StressLess@Stanford initiative in an effort to complement existing clinical services and better foster mental health on campus.

According to CAPS director Ronald Albucher, StressLess@Stanford aims to build on existing partnerships with campus organizations by giving students the opportunity to talk informally with stress consultants at “satellite” locations around campus.

“StressLess@Stanford further promotes [CAPS’s] presence on campus,” Albucher said. “The program will have a direct benefit to students, promote well-being and might even convince some students, who otherwise would never come to Vaden, to speak with one of our therapists in this context.”

Development of the StressLess@Stanford program began last year. Since then, administrators have focused on creating more succinct and relatable materials, according to CAPS senior associate director for consultation and liaison Alejandro Martinez. Martinez noted that a campus-wide survey had shown that more than 60 percent of students expressed interest in better knowing how to manage stress in their lives.

Administrators have also worked on designing a cohesive training model for stress consultants, and have launched pilot programs in the School of Engineering and some community centers that are focused on identifying efficient delivery mechanisms.

According to Lindsay Ellch, a postdoctoral fellow at CAPS who helped design the initiative and who heads the School of Engineering pilot program, StressLess@Stanford is shaped around one-on-one, 20-minute appointments with a stress consultant.

“It’s all about having an open dialogue about what the stressor currently is, what’s been hard, what’s not working any more that has worked in the past, working on their strengths that they already bring in and supplementing those with other resources and supporting them,” Ellch said.

“At Packard, we have been reflecting on what students in the 20 minutes are really finding valuable and how to best use and structure that time,” she added, referencing her pilot program.

Martinez framed StressLess@Stanford as potentially allowing students to achieve their full potential by the removal of peripheral concerns.

“We want to be part of the process that helps people sustain themselves and feel more empowered to pursue their ambitious goals in a way that is not going to cost them their health, their relationships and their self-esteem,” Martinez said. “That’s what we’re trying to reduce the risk of.”

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Student screens documentary examining Huntington’s disease https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/24/student-screens-documentary-examining-huntingtons-disease/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/24/student-screens-documentary-examining-huntingtons-disease/#respond Mon, 24 Feb 2014 08:52:18 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082607 On Friday evening, Kristen Powers '16 held a “sneak peak” screening of her documentary, “Twitch,” in Annenberg Auditorium, in an event attended by close to 100 people.

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Courtesy of Kristen Powers
Courtesy of Kristen Powers

On Friday evening, Kristen Powers ’16 held a “sneak peak” screening of her documentary, “Twitch,” in Annenberg Auditorium, in an event attended by close to 100 people.

The screening of “Twitch,” which tells the autobiographical story of Powers’ struggles with potentially having Huntington’s disease from a very young age, was followed with a brief panel of experts.

Passed down through family genetics, Huntington’s is a disorder that causes the degeneration of parts of the brain and can lead to a loss of muscle coordination and cognitive decline. Powers combined short, unedited video clips that she took of herself in high school to create a 43-minute film of her moments of emotion and expression.

When Powers was 9 years old, her mother, Nicola Jane Powers, was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. However, since her mother showed signs as early as 1999, Powers largely does not remember her mother before the effects of the disease. Powers related the discrimination they experienced as a result of her mother’s drastic mood swings and yelling, which often led people to mock her mother by calling her a drunk.

When Powers learned that she had a 50 percent chance of inheriting Huntington’s, she adamantly pursued the opportunity to get genetically tested, believing that her life would be less burdensome if she simply knew the answer.

“I wanted to know sooner rather than later if I had Huntington’s. I would have chosen to be tested at 16, but could not until I was 18,” Powers said. “The wisdom of not knowing was a lot heavier than the wisdom of knowing.”

Powers began capturing snippets of her life in high school as the time for the testing came closer. She even filmed on the anniversary of her mother’s death. She said that the documentary had a specific purpose for her.

“It gave me a lot of control over my genetic testing experience,” Powers said. “It was my way of controlling the uncontrollable. I couldn’t control what test result I was going to get, but I could control and manage my film crew.”

On the other hand, the documentary posed challenges to her family, especially her father.

“This documentary was somewhat hard on my dad especially, because he has two kids at risk for HD, so this was making something that was very abstract for years suddenly very real,” Powers said.

Three panelists — neurologist Rosalind Chuang, genetic counselor Carly Siskind and Roy Nierenberg, a lawyer and founder of a computer-assisted thinking software company — were available to answer audience questions after Power’s documentary.

Siskind explained that the turnaround between having the blood test and getting the results had been unusually short for Powers: only two weeks. Normally the waiting period is a month, if not six weeks, with the intent of making sure that knowing the result is the right decision for that patient. Siskind also discussed the counseling process.

“They come in and take a neurological exam and get the whole counseling spiel, and they learn about what [Huntington’s disease] is and about genetic discrimination and reproductive options in the future,” Siskind said. “Then they come back for the blood draw and then a month later for the results.”

Powers is among the five percent of at-risk individuals for Huntington’s who choose to go through with genetic counseling. According to Siskin, most individuals do not want to know if their results come back positive and that they will suffer from Huntington’s.

Powers’ best friend, Daniel Woldorff, was present at the moment when her test result was revealed.

“It felt like we were standing on a bridge that could give out,” Woldorff said. “Was it going to fall through? I felt like the world could be turned upside down right now or it could stay right side up.”

Nierenberg, who was diagnosed with Huntington’s at 63, explained that one can live a happy life with the disease.

“The way I think of it is that you’re dealt certain cards,” Nierenberg said. “Play them the best way you can. I wanted to have something in my life that I felt passionate about. I joined the Berkeley Community Chorus and ride my bicycle up and down the hill every day, and I try to have a couple of things that I just love.”

Powers is currently creating an educational packet that will be distributed along with the movie and is in the process of raising $5,000 more for further development of her documentary.

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Q&A: Professor Katchadourian talks hookup culture https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/13/qa-professor-katchadourian-talks-hookup-culture/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/13/qa-professor-katchadourian-talks-hookup-culture/#respond Fri, 14 Feb 2014 06:43:03 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082366 Professor Emeritus of Human Biology Herant Katchadourian first taught HUMBIO 10: Human Sexuality in 1968, eventually leading the course for more than thirty years and teaching over 20,000 students in the process. Katchadourian sat down with The Daily to discuss his love advice for Stanford students and his area of expertise: today’s hookup culture.

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Professor Emeritus of Human Biology Herant Katchadourian first taught HUMBIO 10: Human Sexuality in 1968, eventually leading the course for more than thirty years and teaching over 20,000 students in the process. Katchadourian sat down with The Daily to discuss his love advice for Stanford students and his area of expertise: today’s hookup culture.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): What was the motivation behind starting your Human Sexuality course? How did you first become interested in this topic?

Herant Katchadourian (HK): In the late 1960s, with all of the turmoil, [Stanford University administrators] were concerned about pregnancy, premarital sex and venereal diseases, as we used to call them. They wanted to cool things down…They came to me and said this guy is a psychiatrist and so many students know him, so therefore he would be a good person for this [teaching the Human Sexuality course].

I came the year after [to Stanford] and offered the course for the first year and sixty to seventy students showed up. The next year, 400 students showed up and the third year a thousand students showed up. We had to move to [Memorial Auditorium].

Courtesy Rod Searcey
Courtesy Rod Searcey

TSD: How did the course, its requirements and guidelines change with time?

HK: What changed over time is that there were certain topics that went from nonexistent to very central. Before AIDS, in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness. That meant that I started giving a separate lecture and having a panel and that got hooked up to transsexualism. The next new thing was with AIDS. Sexually-transmitted diseases became a very big deal, so that became a very important topic. The third one was that there had always been rape of some sort, but there was no idea of sexual harassment and no idea of date rape. So those became salient parts of the course.

TSD: How was your course received by the University? How would you describe the way the University looked at your course when it was first introduced in 1968 and now?

HK: There were not many complaints from parents and faculty, actually. At that time, where there were hippies all over the place, I looked like a respectable person. I looked like their other professors and their parents. I also made absolutely sure that I never showed a picture or a film that did not have academic images. For example, they would look at pornographic images only when it was part of the lecture.

TSD: What are your thoughts on today’s hookup culture? How would you describe the evolution of the hookup culture? What are its greatest dangers and is there a way for it to be replaced by something healthier?

HK: Part of me wishes that there was such a thing when I was an undergraduate. When I was an undergraduate at the American University of Beirut, I couldn’t get within shouting distance of the girls. In that sort of starvation diet, hooking up sounds like paradise if you accept fundamentally that students now can do this responsibly, which means that they protect themselves and their partner. The second protection has to do with issues, elements of coercion. There is this psychological pressure of saying what’s wrong with you and if you come here as a freshman from a very conservative background, you don’t want to be seen as stigmatized as odd or square and so on. This may be a weapon in the hands of men who tend to be more exploitative. They want to get what they want and there may be a price to pay but they are not paying the price.

This interview has been condensed and edited. For a more complete transcript of their back and forth, visit The Stanford Daily website.

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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Stanford faculty to create art installation in Caltrain tunnel https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/10/stanford-faculty-to-create-art-installation-in-caltrain-tunnel/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/10/stanford-faculty-to-create-art-installation-in-caltrain-tunnel/#respond Mon, 10 Feb 2014 08:28:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082205 The Palo Alto Public Arts Commission recently approved an interactive art installation that will display colorful gradations of LED light and ambient music in the University Avenue tunnel located under Alma St. and the Palo Alto Caltrain station.

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The Palo Alto Public Arts Commission recently approved an interactive art installation that will display colorful gradations of LED light and ambient music in the University Avenue tunnel located under Alma St. and the Palo Alto Caltrain station.

Ala Ebtekar MFA ’06, an artist and a visiting lecturer of art and art history at Stanford, and Binta Ayofemi MFA ’07, visiting artist at the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, will collaborate on the project.

In addition to serving an aesthetic purpose, the installation will also be affected by tunnel use data — the amount of traffic, weather, time of day and day of the week — collected by sensors. The peak number of commuters and pedestrians will determine the color of light and tempo of music that will play in the tunnel three times a day.

The art piece is a response to a call from the Palo Alto Public Arts Commission that sought to program temporary rotating public art displays in the tunnels of University Avenue. Ebtekar and Ayofemi’s proposal, which was selected over other proposals, will remain in the tunnels for up to a year.

Elise Demarzo, public art program manager at the City of Palo Alto, worked with the Palo Alto Public Arts commission panel, which included members ranging from Russ Cohen of the Palo Alto Downtown Business and Professional Association to artist Joey Piziali, to make the final decision.

“I loved the idea of the sound element being tied into an interactive app and possibly tying into local music generated from the Stanford campus, Palo Alto High School, Gunn High School, Cubberley Community Center or elsewhere,” Demarzo said. “This has the capacity to build community in a new and different way.”

The photo-sonorous displays will take the idea of building community to a new level, as the music of the installation will pair Ebtekar and Ayofemi’s score with songs gathered from suggestions the public can submit via Twitter.

“I thought about what it means to have sound activate an urban space and the possibility of bringing in a playlist,” Ayofemi said. “Students will be invited to shape the final experience and their input will affect how our playlists are updated via Twitter.”

The installation will respond to each day as source material, Ayofemi continued. Changes in the dynamic of everyday life, ranging from celebrations to games, have the potential to change the flow of light and sound in the tunnels.

Ayofemi, who described the current appearances of the tunnel as not representative of Palo Alto, said that she hopes the project will better reflect the city’s dynamic by linking contemporary life to urban architecture.

“The question was how we could subtly transform daily life through the simplest materials, [like] moments of light and sound?” Ayofemi said. “We were both interested in making the space [tunnel] more of a sensory experience, activating the everyday commute and everyday flow in Palo Alto.”

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu

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Westergren charts history of Pandora https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/09/westergren-charts-history-of-pandora/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/09/westergren-charts-history-of-pandora/#respond Mon, 10 Feb 2014 07:00:54 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082203 Last Thursday evening, Tim Westergren '88, founder of Pandora, spoke to the Stanford community about his story and the origins of Pandora.

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Last Thursday evening, Tim Westergren ’88, founder of Pandora, spoke to the Stanford community about his story and the origins of Pandora.

Clad in a simple hoodie and jeans, Westergren explained how he, as a young musician, had tried to create ways to find new music.

“It was a notion that by understanding somebody’s music taste and mapping musical DNA that I could build a method for discovering music,” Westergren said. “At the time, I was not intending to build a radio product. I was really just trying to solve the discovery problem that I primarily faced as a musician.”

According to Westergren, Pandora, which was founded in 2000 and which now has over 1,000 employees, hasn’t grown without hardship. The company has competed extensively with Apple and has had several controversial royalty battles.

Anjuli Felix, who manages the internship program and university recruiting efforts, said that she wanted Pandora’s internship program — which was launched last year — to have a twist.

“One thing I noticed when I was doing this competitive research [on internship programs] was that a lot of companies didn’t have a theme for their research,” Felix said.

Felix explained that Pandora interns meet with mentors in one-on-one meetings called “soundtracks” and are given badges with their photos, schools and names.

Paul Wilke, a communications director at Pandora, described the company’s structure as very fluid and flowing.

“Pandora has no offices. It’s a very open structure,” Wilke said. “You have conversations with people that you don’t normally deal with. It’s very open, and it’s great because we get to share ideas.”

Westergren also discussed the company’s “nurturing” culture, including unplanned lunches with his employees. Pandora’s most recent development involved a lighting ceremony for putting up a sign on their Oakland building.

“We have seven-foot tall letters across the top of a big building in Downtown Oakland,” Westergren said. “We had a sign-lighting ceremony and rented a deck of a parking structure across the street so everybody got out there and looked across and watched the sign light up at night. It was a moment I will not forget in a long time.”

Westergren later discussed one of Pandora’s main services: reaching out to artists and bringing them on board. He estimated that the firm has brought 5,000 previously unknown artists to the broader public.

“It’s all about artists coming to Pandora and building a set of features for them to leverage the audience and talk to the audience and help it drive their careers,” Westergren said.

Despite the firm’s multifaceted approach to expansion, Westergren said that he aims to keep Pandora and its features simple.

“Our goal is to help somebody use it more effectively without cluttering up that experience,” Westergren said.

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak  ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu

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“Cheers” sitcom writer shares her story https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/04/cheers-sitcom-writer-shares-her-story/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/04/cheers-sitcom-writer-shares-her-story/#respond Tue, 04 Feb 2014 11:00:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082022 Cheri Steinkellner, winner of four Emmys and three Golden Globes, spoke at Meyer Library on Monday evening, discussing her experiences as the writer for the sitcom “Cheers” as well as the intricacies of writing for television and her life and career as a writer.

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SAMRA ADENI/The Stanford Daily
SAMRA ADENI/The Stanford Daily

Cheri Steinkellner, winner of four Emmys and three Golden Globes, spoke at Meyer Library on Monday evening, discussing her experiences as the writer for the sitcom “Cheers” as well as the intricacies of writing for television and her life and career as a writer.

The event was put on by Tom Kealey, a lecturer in the Creative Writing Program, who framed his invitation to Steinkellner as an opportunity to students to come into contact with an enthusiastic and knowledgeable raconteur.

“Quite frankly, we want people who are good storytellers, who can entertain and who are very approachable,” Kealey said.

Steinkellner began her story by admitting that her career was not without obstacles.

“In late 1985, in the space of one week, we [she and her husband] lost our jobs, found out I was pregnant and we didn’t know how we would pay for that house or that baby,” Steinkellner said.

The couple would write “spec” scripts, meaning they wrote speculatively without an assignment or pay.

“We would write an episode of an existing show and send it out to producers,” she said. “After three years, we were invited to come in and pitch stories for ‘The Jeffersons.’ And we ended up making five of six stories in one of the seasons.”

After the show ended, Steinkellner decided to take on the position of writer for “Cheers.” She noted that “Cheers” was designed to play like a play on a single-unit set, where the dialogue was heavy and the character voices very distinct.

“It was a joy for writers to be able to work on this show,” Steinkellner said. “We could play at the top of our game and be as smart as we could be. We had to learn in order to know how to talk in the voice of our various characters. We were trying to cover all comic possibilities.”

During her talk, Steinkellner also described the three different stages that a person goes through when writing and producing: the preproduction stage, in which stories are being written or edited; the on-the-stage show of that week; and finally post-production in which episodes are edited and prepared to go on air.

“The writing process works a number of different ways,” Steinkellner said. “Generally the writers will get together a couple of months before the actors come in. We will design an arc for the entire season and start breaking stories.”

Steinkellner also mentioned that she believed one of the greatest gifts in writing sitcom is learning to write fast and economically.

“I do like zooming through a first draft so that you can get all the way to the end because often you get to the end and it changes at the beginning,” she said. “But, you can’t know that until you get to the end. Keeping that perspective that none of this is that precious and that it can’t be changed is really helpful.”

Over 20 students attended the event, emerging largely appreciative of the experience. Lyric McHenry ’14 was one of those highly satisfied with Steinkellner’s presentation.

“She’s one of the best speakers I’ve heard in a long time,” McHenry said. “She was really engaging and really succinct, which is probably due to the fact that she’s a really good writer. She was funny, engaging and entertaining all at the same time.”

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Linked Verse merges audio and visual in debut performance https://stanforddaily.com/2013/12/24/linked-verse-merges-audio-and-visual-in-debut-performance/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/12/24/linked-verse-merges-audio-and-visual-in-debut-performance/#comments Tue, 24 Dec 2013 08:51:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1081125 Linked Verse, a collaborative effort between Stanford composer Jaroslaw Kapuscinski and New York's OpenEndedGroup, combined audio and visual components in a bizarre but captivating premiere at Bing Concert Hall on Dec. 7.

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On Dec. 7, Bing Concert Hall held the grand premiere of Linked Verse, a 3-D  multimedia concert that combined graphics and music in a strange yet compelling way.

Composed and produced by Stanford composer Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, an associate professor of composition, and the New York-based digital media collective OpenEndedGroup, Linked Verse debuted to a packed house.

The piece began with the sudden sounds of the violin and shō, an ancient mouth organ that was customarily used in the gagaku court orchestra in ancient Japan, as audience members looked onto the stage in anticipation of when the visual show would begin.

Ten or so minutes later, the multimedia images began appearing before us after an unanticipated delay. The musicians were never told directly to stop playing their instruments because of technical difficulties; rather they continued playing, unaware that the scheduled pictures were not being projected behind them.

The first graphic portrayed a dark place where things were difficult to see, and one audience member wondered if this scene was intended to make us feel like we were drowning. Paul Kaiser, a digital artist with the OpenEndedGroup, said that this first scene was actually intended to put a trance of sorts on the audience.

According to Kapuscinski, the pictures used for the visuals were taken in Tokyo and Kyoto, and San Francisco and New York, their U.S. equivalents. There was no order to the them and in some, figures actually moved  gradually from one place to another. For example, one series of graphics shows a group of children leaping from stone to stone as they cross a body of water while another shows a cat rising from its rest, hunching its back, and then looking at the audience with sharp, golden-yellow eyes.

To appreciate Linked Verse, one needed to come into the performance with an open mind and some background knowledge of the show’s purpose. I had done neither and thus was displeased. Instead of focusing on the technological expertise, I focused on the melodies that were repeated time and again for apparently no reason; personally, I felt over-stimulated by both the heavy, grabbing music and intensely detailed 3-D images.

Although I was hoping for some sort of linear plot of organization, I found none. However, after the show, Kaiser explained that Linked Verse is intended to be like renga, a form of Japanese poetry where several poets independently write lines for one poem.

Despite my criticisms, I came to admire how the team managed to synchronize the music and the pictures, a difficult task.

“The traditional timing of this piece is nonexistent. We had a very elaborate score that had our parts with some kind of a clock,” said Maya Beiser, a cellist who performed with the OpenEndedGroup.

Marc Downie, a digital artist with the group, gave a more detailed explanation:

“We developed a system where the score and timing would be delivered just in time to these iPads,” Downie said. “Those were all synchronized with video time and audio time.”

If you are among or like the many in Silicon Valley who express great interest in different applications of technology, this show is for you. The attempt to marry audio to visual is difficult enough, but to do so with a cello, shō and an unusual combination of graphics is extremely daring.

Indeed, this unique approach challenged and encouraged Besier and Ko Ishikawa, the musician who played the shō, to push themselves out of their comfort zones as artists.

“I’ve worked a lot with technology but this is really a first experience for me working in that way,” Beiser said. “It’s quite fantastic because what it does is allow the natural way to evolve during the performance.”

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Gaieties 2013 debut impresses, showcases fuzzy and techy debate https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/21/gaieties-2013-debut-impresses-showcases-fuzzy-and-techy-debate/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/21/gaieties-2013-debut-impresses-showcases-fuzzy-and-techy-debate/#respond Thu, 21 Nov 2013 10:41:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080695 The 102nd production of Gaieties—Gaietiesberg: A Campus Divided—made its debut last night and will continue to run tonight and tomorrow.

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Courtesy of Frank Chen
Courtesy of Frank Chen

The 102nd production of Gaieties—Gaietiesberg: A Campus Divided—made its debut last night and will continue to run tonight and tomorrow.

On the night of their very first dress rehearsal in Memorial Auditorium, a space they had only started tailoring the performance to four days before, the Gaieties cast and crew put on a seemingly effortless production: the choreography was fluid, the songs were well-rehearsed, the facial expressions and body language were charming and engaging, and the support and collaboration between cast members was essential to the comedy on stage and the audience’s connection with each of the characters.

While the actors got ready while the actors got ready for, in my humble opinion, the very best Gaieties show yet, attendees could already get a sense of the kind of show they would be seeing based on the overture.

Miley’s Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop” was the first to play and was closely followed by one of Pitbull’s newer songs “Timber” (ft. Kesha). Although there was—I’m sorry to say—no twerking that evening, my disappointment immediately disappeared when the curtains rose and I was introduced to a slightly different Harry Elam (Annabah Glasser ’15), Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education.

This Elam impostor thrust audience members into the show. More specifically, she wielded a black rod with a crystal figure at its point and her opening dance included thrusting her hips to the rhythm of a song, dressed in a chic black suit and sparkly black hat.

One of the best parts of this Gaieties performance is how much of its bold and witty scenes can only be understood by Stanford students. For example, at the beginning of the musical, Elam takes on the role of a pre-major advisor counseling a freshman who is completely lost in the major declaration process—as so many of us are or once were. She is screaming her worries and problems at Elam, and in return, he pours her some wine and tries and fails to make cool young college student conversation.

It only gets more eccentric and hilarious from there. Suddenly, we have Raven Symone (Megan Gage ’16), the former Cheetah Girl and psychic from “That’s So Raven,” strut onto the stage with ex-Notre Dame football player and henchman Manti Te’o (Dan Ashton ’14), a guy named Oski (Luke deWilde ’16) in an awfully tacky Cal bear costume and a lunatic drug addict named Bubbles (Katherine Bick ’16) who has an obsession for saving the planet, one blunt handle of hard liquor at a time.

This band of “intimidating” villains has one goal and one goal only: destroy Stanford so that Raven can become ruler in revenge for her admission being rescinded during Admit Weekend.

Without giving too much away, Raven’s strategy is simple: initiate a war between the techies and the fuzzies that will bring such chaos to the student body that all will bow down to her. Raven organizes a kidnapping of two of the most revered professors at Stanford, one who is a prolific author and the other who is well loved in the computer science world. I’ll leave it to you to guess who these professors could be.

Although Gaieties is known for being outrageous and at times crude, there is a deeper meaning underneath all of the rally gear and humor. Gaietiesburg: A Campus Divided does a good job of addressing one of the questions that Stanford and many other students are facing—what is the value of the humanities in a culture dominated by science and technology?

When the war between the techies and the fuzzies does finally ends, we see the two parties come together, agreeing on the importance of collaboration. This shows that Stanford can and does place importance on a liberal arts and interdisciplinary education.

With Gaieties, there is much more than meets the eye.

“For some reason Gaieties has this reputation. For some reason, everyone I talk to asks if the actors are going to be super trashed. No, no; this is very serious,” said Nora Tjossem ’15, producer of the show, in response to how much work she has put into this production.

One of the quintessential aspects of Gaieties is the community that forms over time, Assistant Stage Manager and Costume Designer Carly Lave ’15 said.

“I think people are just willing to take a leap of faith and not fear judgment,” Lave said. “The other cast members will be really receptive and say, ‘Yeah that worked,’ or, ‘No that flat out was not funny, don’t do it.’ No one is offended by it, and it’s just honest and helpful.”

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Laughs, realism propel “The Best Man Holiday” https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/17/laughs-realism-propel-the-best-man-holiday/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/17/laughs-realism-propel-the-best-man-holiday/#respond Mon, 18 Nov 2013 07:42:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080587 The AMC Metreon 16 was filled to the brim on November 11 as the final few trickled in to subtly occupy the last seats available in the theater for a prescreening of Malcolm D. Lee’s “The Best Man Holiday.” “The Best Man Holiday” was the sequel following Lee’s “The Best Man” which came out in […]

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The AMC Metreon 16 was filled to the brim on November 11 as the final few trickled in to subtly occupy the last seats available in the theater for a prescreening of Malcolm D. Lee’s “The Best Man Holiday.”

“The Best Man Holiday” was the sequel following Lee’s “The Best Man” which came out in 1999. Even though “The Best Man Holiday” is a continuation of “The Best Man,” I found that I was able to understand the film despite not having seen the prequel.

Courtesy of Michael Gibson.
Courtesy of Michael Gibson.

The movie begins with an atypical presentation of photos of the past that comes to life through dialogue between characters that gives us a better understanding of what the movie will be about, despite never having seen “The Best Man.”

One of the most significant examples was a violent, abrasive scene where a man threatens and punches another man in the face for having slept with his wife shortly after he and his wife got married. This short clip brings us to the entire premise of “The Best Man Holiday.” Former best friend and best man, Harper (Taye Diggs), slept with Lance’s (Morris Chestnut) wife, resulting in the break off of an otherwise valuable relationship.

Lee’s management of a multitude of different situations from the characters lives is excellently executed. The foreknowledge of what could come of the reunion that Lance holds at his home by request of his wife, Mia (Monica Calhoun), gives us a good idea of what to expect when these different personalities conjoin in one room to celebrate Christmas.

Jordan (Nia Long), a program executive at MSNBC, criticizes a colleague over the phone when Harper enters her office. Both of them stand awkwardly across from one another as Harper’s subtlety completely fails as he looks at Jordan. His acting in this scene is impeccable as there is a sense of forlorn desire that is communicated as he sees Jordan’s new boyfriend come enter.

The audience is left with this emptiness, forcing us to turn face the realities of fallen love and broken engagements. Robyn (Sanaa Lathan) hassles her husband to respond to Mia’s invitation, claiming that she has received more than one invitation to the gathering. Lathan’s performance is outstanding as she demonstrates the concept of opposites attract; she constantly counters Harper’s pessimism that drives him to self-imposed isolation.

It is not until Harper, once famous author, turns in a draft for a future novel and experiences brutal rejection from his boss that he is forced to come up with a new idea before his wife’s delivery. Soon after, he is fired and dumped with the sympathetic advice from his boss that he write a biography on his former best friend, Lance who is now a devoted father and famous running back for the New York Giants.

Suddenly, Harper changes his mind and insists that him and Robyn travel to Lance’s mansion for an unexpectedly hilarious yet devastatingly tragic visit. Previous to the event, Harper is busied as he intensely researches Lance’s life and surreptitiously writes notes in a small black journal. Here we begin to get Harper’s struggles in openness as he refuses to answer his wife’s questions regarding his project on Lance’s biography.

Harper’s character is heroic yet realistic at the same time. He refuses the help of others, insisting even to his billionaire friend Quentin (Terrence Howard), that he is not in need of money to help in providing for his future family. Moreover, Harper appears to be a compulsive liar, unable to fully express his needs to others.

Jordan’s character complements Harper’s beautifully, allowing us to see their personalities with more clarity while they share in dialogue that brings out their truer selves. Jordan insists on helping Harper with his project by telling Mia about his endeavor to write a biography on her husband, Lance. Jordan, further defining her ‘unstoppable woman on a mission’ personality asks Mia to discuss this matter with Lance without Harper’s full consent.

It is at this point that Mia, the woman who brings everything together, is introduced. Mia is the Benvolio of “The Best Man Holiday,” the woman who ensures that all of the guests are meaningfully reconnecting with one another.

“The Best Man Holiday” is a must-see for adults (Rated R), as it explores broken relationships that can be brought back to life, the concept that love is needed between all people and that the life we live now has real consequences and amazing possibilities.

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Another Look book club explores obscure works of literature https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/13/another-look-book-club-explores-obscure-works-of-literature/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/13/another-look-book-club-explores-obscure-works-of-literature/#respond Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:27:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080428 Formed last year, the Another Look book club is already drawing members from outside the Stanford community with its discussion of obscure works of literature.

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Formed last year, the Another Look book club is already drawing members from outside the Stanford community with its discussion of obscure works of literature.

Directed by English professor Tobias Wolff M.A. ’78, the club seeks to recreate the excitement of reading that many feel at a young age for works that are less recognized.

Courtesy of Cynthia Haven
Courtesy of Cynthia Haven

“There’s so much great work out there that inevitably, some of it falls under a kind of shadow of obscurity even though it should be in the light,” Wolff said. “Part of our mission is to bring these kinds of works into light again. Put people’s attention on them and encourage conversation about them.”

Another Look has been a fulfilling experience for Cynthia Haven, a visiting scholar at the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages, who said the mailing list for Another Look has grown to more than 600 people in the past year.

“When we started Another Look, I knew the idea of finding short, overlooked books would be a powerful one,” Haven said. “What I didn’t expect is how much I would personally gain from the series.”

“I have had a chance to explore short masterpieces that I may not have read on my own and I have also had a chance to discuss them with cutting-edge writers and scholars,” she added.

One of the writers who has served as a panelist is Vendela Vida, a Bay Area novelist, journalist and editor.

In the past year, the club has put on four events, one per quarter. The works discussed so far have been “So Long, See You Tomorrow” by William Maxwell, “The Wife of Martin Guerre” by Janet Lewis, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” by Anita Loos and “My Father and Myself,” a memoir by J.R. Ackerley.

This coming winter, Wolff will be leading a discussion on “The Ghost Writer” by Philip Roth.

The club’s discussion incorporates both panelist’s opinions and audience participation.

“It’s like a good dinner-table conversation among really smart people who have all read the same book,” Wolff said. “Then they open it up to the audience who can then pitch in and join the conversation.”

Another Look has been drawing participants from outside the Stanford community including Bryndie Beach, landscape planner and architect in Carmel, Calif., and mother of a Stanford student, who makes the drive to Stanford for the book club’s quarterly meetings.

“It’s worth it to me to make that drive up to the book forum,” Beach said. “I think that one of the things that intrigued me the most was this idea that Tobias Wolff talked about when the group first started: there were all of these wonderful pieces of literature that are just overlooked or forgotten.”

Another Look is open to the entire Stanford community, including undergraduates and graduate students.

“Part of that community certainly includes Stanford students, who offer a new generation of perspectives to these overlooked classics,” Wolff said. “We publicize the event heavily on campus, and hope to reach out in more ways in the future to ensure a strong student presence at events.”

Elena Danielson M.A.’70 Ph.D. ’75, former director of the Hoover Archives, said she first read about the Another Look book club on Haven’s blog.

“These were real Stanford faculty sitting in front of real people in an audience that would respond to your comments and answer your questions,” she said.

The club has proven to be a learning experience for Danielson.

“[“So Long, See You Tomorrow”] was so enjoyable and Maxwell had a great writing style, but I had missed the whole point,” she said. “One of the characters was totally imaginary. If I hadn’t gone to the book club, I would have never learned that.”

Now, Danielson has pioneered the discussion of “So Long, See You Tomorrow” with her personal book club.

“This friend said that she loved the book and without my explanation, she wouldn’t have gotten that the character was imaginary either,” she said. “My explanation came from the Stanford faculty, from people like Toby Wolff, who brought out the meaning for me.”

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Paulina Borsook shares thoughts on her “My Life as a Ghost” project https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/11/paulina-borsook-shares-thoughts-on-her-my-life-as-a-ghost-project/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/11/paulina-borsook-shares-thoughts-on-her-my-life-as-a-ghost-project/#respond Mon, 11 Nov 2013 09:14:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080360 For the past month, writer and journalist Paulina Borsook has been working as an artist-in-residence at Stanford on her new art installation project, “My Life as a Ghost,” which integrates video, performance, sound and other media into a built environment.

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Courtesy of Leslie Kosoff
Courtesy of Leslie Kosoff

For the past month, writer and journalist Paulina Borsook has been working as an artist-in-residence at Stanford on her new art installation project, “My Life as a Ghost,” which integrates video, performance, sound and other media into a built environment. The project is based on the traumatic brain injury (TBI) she suffered after being shot in the head at the age of 14.

Borsook is the first to join the Stanford Arts Institute’s new Research Residency program and will be on campus working on her project until Nov. 15. She recently sat down with The Daily to discuss her personal history and how this, among other factors, has inspired and shaped her project.

 

The Stanford Daily (TSD): What is a traumatic brain injury ghost, in your own words? How did your personal experiences help in defining that term?

Paulina Borsook (PB): There just happened to be a notice in [a] Santa Cruz newspaper about this group of people for TBI, and the group reporter had TBI, and she had this whole list of symptoms, and I gasped as I thought, “That looks really familiar.”

So, I went to this group, and everybody told their story. This guy stood up and talked about his TBI, and everything about it was different than mine. Then he turned and looked at the group and said, “I don’t know why I’m still here.” I gasped because that’s what I had felt ever since I was shot in the head. I saw two or three other people in this group of 20 nodding their heads.

So I had this flash. I had thought, ever since I was 14, that the fact that I always go to that place was one more thing that was wrong with me. Now, I find out that that’s neurological, and that it’s a neurological artifact for some people with traumatic brain injury. Something gets dislocated in the sense of knowing that you belong to yourself and your life, and it’s an artifact of the injury.

So you can ask yourself, “I don’t know why I’m still here.” You feel partly elsewhere, and where are you in that partly elsewhere—and what is it to have that fundamental union between self and body—is a little bit disjunctive. To me, that’s what I mean by a ghost.

 

TSD: When and how did you become inspired to begin this project, and what motivations did you have that helped you through the process?

PB: It kind of came to me in a flash. Simultaneous with that part of me that thought, “Are you insane?”

I knew that this project would be incredibly resource demanding, and I also knew that it was intrinsically collaborative. I’m a writer—I’m not a set designer, I’m not a soundscape designer. I don’t have any of the skills to make this happen, but the vision presented itself and said this is what it has to be.

If you walk through a cathedral—and I don’t care if you’re an observant Christian or not—you get this feeling. It’s just there. So I’m feeling that to evoke a sense of what I call being a ghost, we have to do something that people walk through and they experience it.

The main way that me being good at language comes into this is that I can articulate what I want the project to be. I can give other people directions, and I’ve been able to advocate my project well enough to end up at Stanford in the fall.

 

TSD: Where do you want to see this project go from here?

PB: The next step is that I have to do a ton of fundraising. Then, I need to find the right cinematographer because what I want to do is find the other TBI ghosts. What I want to do is film them and have them talk about their experience of ghostliness.

Once I have that, then what I would do ideally is find my soundscape designer and find my built environment person—I guess that’s my sculptor or visual artist or something like that. That would be my ideal sequence of things.

 

TSD: What do you want people to get from this?

PB: What I hope is that it will evoke what this very strange “what happens when the soul is blasted out of the body and is incompletely returned” is.

I’m trying to focus on that which has been lost in all of these discussions—which is the inter-life, the subjective, the sense of self—and I’m trying to evoke that for others, which is a tricky deal. I hope it will be a little spooky, a little disturbing, a little bit beautiful. If it’s those three things, then the project will have succeeded.

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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“Attempts on Her Life” showcases versatility of cast, crew https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/09/attempts-on-her-life-showcases-versatility-of-cast-crew/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/09/attempts-on-her-life-showcases-versatility-of-cast-crew/#respond Sun, 10 Nov 2013 01:39:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080339 Stanford production of Martin Crimp's "Attempts on Her Life" combines powerful performances and innovative design to pack an emotional punch.

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On Nov. 6, I quietly opened the door leading to Pigott Theater. Comments were interchanged quickly between Directors Leslie Hill and Helen Paris, two professors of Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS), and the back stage crew, while Michael St. Clair, a Ph.D. student in TAPS, worked to perfect the audibility of actors’ voices in a sometimes acoustically challenging theater.

A scene from the Stanford undergraduate production of Martin Crimps "Attempts on Her Life." (Courtesy of Stephanie Okuda)
A scene from the Stanford undergraduate production of Martin Crimps “Attempts on Her Life.” (Courtesy of Stephanie Okuda)

This was Stanford’s Advanced Acting class’s (TAPS 122P: Undergraduate Performance Project) first formal dress rehearsal of Martin Crimp’s “Attempts on Her Life.”

Before the performance began, all that could be seen on the stage were three large, rectangular wooden movable pieces placed beside one another. The middle piece had a whiteboard with several differently colored dry-erase markers.

Hill explained the complexities of directing such an exquisite yet eccentric show: “This is a particular show to direct because Martin Crimp has written 17 scenarios for which there are no stage directions, no dramatist personae, no location or time or anything like that,” Hill said.  “It’s one off the demands that he makes, one of the gifts that I think he gives the director, but also to the actors. That’s one very distinct aspect of directing a play like this.”

St. Clair, who managed the production’s sound design, wrote and composed the sets used throughout the show.

In the opening scene, the action takes place in an office with eight blabbering reporters attempting to uncover the strongest combination of words in order to create some sort of program about a younger woman and an older man coming into romantic relations. The ideas are more melodramatic than what you would find in a soap opera, yet their excitement ensues as the drama heightens.

This is just an introduction of the ways that Paris and Hill will create different images of human emotion and its corruptive nature within the framework of Crimp’s play.

In the next scene, three women in somber black dresses, including Annie, take turns at trying to be the perfect woman. One woman, stricken with looks of intertwined tragedy and terror, repeatedly called for lines, asking the lines to be dictated more loudly until her embarrassment tears her down and off of the stage. Her despair is written through every line of emotional anguish in her face, so much so that I actually believe that she had had a nervous breakdown.

Paris was greatly impressed by her cast of eight undergraduate students that managed to play 100 different characters in each of the 17 different scenes in “Attempts on Her Life”.

“Working on 16 set changes and costume changes,” Paris said. “That is quite something. That was one of my biggest challenges as a director.”

There was one scene that was particularly disturbing because of its dark, callous humor. A man and wife sit on a couch, holding one another and stumbling their words. Their conversation consists of deranged thoughts that make them both laugh eerily.

They refer to themselves in the third person until they come closer and closer to admitting to their futile denial of responsibility in their daughter’s suicide. Between their scattered thoughts of her past heroine addiction, a slithering voice is amplified, telling of how happy their daughter was, how much people loved her.

St. Clair explained that Crimp’s piece is a post-dramatic, post-modern play where twisted and at times sickening humor is not uncommon. Rather, it is one of the characteristics of this play that acts as a foundation for the show’s social critiques. For instance, racism, genocide, objectification of the female body, expectations of the perfect woman and mockery of social media and fame are themes dealt with in the performance.

However, these deeper meanings would have been impossible the efforts of Hill, Paris, St. Clair and the undergraduate cast and crew that were able to bring such a difficult play into fruition in just five short weeks.

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Q&A: Rev. Scotty McLennan, retiring dean for religious life https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/05/qa-rev-scotty-mclennan-retiring-dean-for-religious-life/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/05/qa-rev-scotty-mclennan-retiring-dean-for-religious-life/#respond Tue, 05 Nov 2013 10:16:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080186 Rev. Scotty McLennan, who has been the dean for religious life at Stanford since 2000, recently announced his retirement from the position (effective summer 2014) to take a sabbatical before he returns to Stanford to teach.

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Rev. Scotty McLennan, who has been the dean for religious life at Stanford since 2000, recently announced his retirement from the position (effective summer 2014) to take a sabbatical before he returns to Stanford to teach. Aside from being a community minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, he is also a published author and lawyer. While serving as dean at Stanford, McLennan hosted the Dalai Lama–both in 2005 and in 2010. The Daily sat down with McLennan to talk about his experiences at the Farm.

mclennan_headshot
Courtesy of the Office of Religious Life

The Stanford Daily (TSD): What is one of your most memorable experiences at Stanford?

Scotty McLennan (SM):  To open the CIRCLE, which is the Center for Inter-Religious Learning and Experiences, was a very memorable day. We had a dedication for it…We had people from all the different Stanford associated religion groups there. To get this incredible facility dedicated and up and running was really exciting.

Some of the other most memorable times have been major events in the world and in the University. So when we had, just after 9/11 of 2001, a major gathering out in the Main Quad of thousands of people responding to what happened in 9/11 from people with various perspectives [and] sounds of different traditions. We had Buddhist bells, a Muslim call to prayer and a number of other things.

 

TSD: What will you miss most about this university and the position you held as Dean for Religious Life?

SM: Luckily for me, I’m not going to miss the University because I’m going to continue teaching here. I’ll be back teaching ethics, primarily business ethics in the future.

I’ll miss the wonderful and privileged opportunity to oversee all of the religious life on campus and help nurture and encourage religious life, to work with the amazing colleagues that I have here in the Office for Religious Life and all of the people associated with those 35 religious groups.

This office serves not just students, but faculty and staff and alumni and people from the local community. To provide a sense of family and a sense of interconnection for everyone no matter where they may be situated in the University–that’s something I’ll miss very much.

 

TSD: What would you want your legacy at Stanford to include and what would you like to be remembered for?

 SM: The most important thing for me is training our students for global leadership in the 21st century. I feel that this leadership critically includes inter-religious literacy and relational agility to get to know people from different traditions because of the amount of bigotry and discrimination and violence done in the name of religion. I really feel like all of our graduates need to go out into the world and be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

So, all of the programs that we’ve started like the Center for Inter-Religious Community and Experiences, the Rathbun program for exploring what leads to a meaningful life and setting up programs like the Fellowship for Religious Encounter are what I feel is the centerpiece of what I’ve done and what I would like to be remembered for.

Creating the Rathbun Fund, funded by the Foundation for Global Community, has given us the opportunity to bring speakers like Sandra Day O’Connor, George Shultz, Marian Edelman, the Dalai Lama.

 

TSD: What are your joys and sadnesses? How are you feeling as the time for your retirement approaches?

SM: I have a lot of joy when I think about getting to spend more time with my two grandchildren and hopefully more in the future, with my friends, with a concentration on teaching and so on.

On the other hand, there is certainly a level of sadness in leaving a context in which I’ve really thrived and loved the people that I’ve been able to work with and the opportunities to look at the big picture between religion and spirituality in people’s lives, and the opportunities to be with people at these very poignant times.

I’ve been pleased with what I’ve been able to do, but I am excited to see where this may go in the future because literally at Stanford, the sky is the limit. This is the Silicon Valley, we had a gold rush, it’s California, it’s the frontier still in many ways.

As someone who grew up in the Midwest and spent most of my life on the East Coast, being out here and seeing the energy and the vision, the sky is the limit here for the Office for Religious life in the future. I really wish my successor all the best in new envisioning and new action.

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at stanford.edu.

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Mexican activist Javier Sicilia dicusses an end to drug-trafficking https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/01/mexican-activist-javier-sicilia-dicusses-an-end-to-drug-trafficking/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/01/mexican-activist-javier-sicilia-dicusses-an-end-to-drug-trafficking/#respond Fri, 01 Nov 2013 09:02:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080062 Mexican poet and activist Javier Sicilia spoke at Encina Hall on Oct. 30 about his involvement in the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity (MPJD), a program aimed at stopping drug trafficking.

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Since former Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s declaration of War on Drugs in 2006, 18,000 deaths have occurred due to drug war related violence. Among the thousands dead was the son of Javier Sicilia, a Mexican poet and activist.

On Oct. 30, Sicilia spoke at Encina Hall about his involvement in the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity (MPJD), a program aimed at stopping drug trafficking. During his lecture, Sicilia spoke about the toll such criminal activity took not only on his country but also his family: His son and his friends were assassinated while trying to retrieve a friend’s phone left behind at a night club.

Javier Sicilia, Mexican poet and activist, speaks at a recent event. (Courtesy of Caravan4Peace)
Javier Sicilia, Mexican poet and activist, speaks at a recent event. (Courtesy of Caravan4Peace)

“They were killed together, and that’s when I decided to dedicate myself to this activism,” Sicilia said. “I’m from a Catholic family with a deep sense of social justice and empathy, within that vision.”

Sicilia, who began writing poetry at a very early age, always felt that poets and poetry are deeply connected to social issues and that it is important for the two to be combined. In fact, he considers René Char, French poet and leader of the French Resistance, and Albert Camus to be two of his literary heroes due to their involvement in politics.

“To me those two are people that connect with me and make me feel that I must write poetry, I must also be political,” he said.

However, following his son’s death in 2011, Sicilia stopped writing poetry because he felt as though he could no longer utilize the art form to convey his grief.

“You never stop writing in your head; I’m just not sharing poetry,” Sicilia said. “The words don’t reach far enough to express the suffering.”

Instead of writing poetry, Sicilia writes essays and novels and works as a journalist, focusing on political analysis. He refers to these as his “natural spaces.”

Now, Sicilia devotes the majority of his time to his activism.

“The drugs are moving up here to the United States and the guns that are killing the Mexicans come from the United States. So we’ve come back to talk about these issues, to follow up,” Sicilia said.

According to Sicilia, Mexico has seen 18,000 deaths due to drugs per year since 2007. “This is not just a Mexican problem. The U.S. does not know how to look at its neighbor,” Sicilia said. “It does not know how to see that many of its internal policies affect in a brutal way the lives of citizens in other countries.”

In the past seven years, Sicilia has tried to work with different U.S. and Mexican legislators to pass laws that might affect drug trafficking, but to little avail.

“Governments are very slow and torpid,” he said. “And they are very slow to understand things and change policies, but we continue to pressure.”

Using this tenacity, Sicilia and others led a caravan from Cuernavaca to Mexico City. The journey lasted four days and gathered thousands of people in plazas throughout Mexico.

“Finally, the government of Calderon said we want to speak with you,” Sicilia said. “We said that they had to be public dialogues. We don’t only want the visibility and pain of the victims but something that is good.”

As a result of successful protests like the caravan from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, Mexican President Peña Nieto signed The Victims Law on Jan. 9, 2013. According to Sicilia, the new piece of legislation aims to provide reparations for the victims of drug trafficking crime.

“Victims had been abandoned and we had to return their dignity,” he said. “This was harsh for the state but good for victims. This shows the weaknesses of the state by accusing the state of violating human and civil rights of human citizenry.”

Even with this new policy, the war continues and the country has become balkanized, Sicilia said, now that there is a flow of 100s to 1000s of weapons through the US-Mexico border.

“Weapons can be purchased easily, and they are going to my country,” he said. “When you try to control drug trafficking and fight the army and leaders of cartels, the groups of criminals and assassins who are organized by drug leaders start to do human trafficking, kidnappings when they cannot have access to drugs.”

Looking forward, Sicilia wants the United States to take responsibility for its actions in the past.

“The U.S. needs to consider drugs as a matter of public health and liberties, not of national security,” he said. “The same policies for drugs should be the same as those for anti-smoking and anti-tobacco.”

Although Sicilia does not consider himself an idealist, he notes with humility that he and his group will do all it can to put a stop to this war.

“Do you know the Sisyphus myth? People are carrying the rock up; I know I’m not going to reach the top, but it’s important that I keep trying to get there,” he said. “You do it because it’s good, because it’s beautiful, even if we don’t get there.”

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Cardinal Nights expands alcohol-free programming https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/29/cardinal-nights-expands-alcohol-free-programming/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/29/cardinal-nights-expands-alcohol-free-programming/#respond Tue, 29 Oct 2013 08:51:44 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079902 Cardinal Nights, an organization run by the Office of Alcohol Policy & Education (OAPE) that offers alcohol-free events, has developed a growing presence on campus in its third year, with more events offered and a new student staff.

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SEAN CHRISTOFFERSON/The Stanford Daily
SEAN CHRISTOFFERSON/The Stanford Daily

Cardinal Nights, an organization run by the Office of Alcohol Policy & Education (OAPE) that offers alcohol-free events, has developed a growing presence on campus in its third year, with more events offered and a new student staff.

So far this quarter, the organization has sponsored several student activities on and off campus, including a Silent Disco dance and the midnight premiere of the horror film remake “Carrie.”

“I think from last year to this year we are trying to have more of a presence and bigger-scale events,” said Ralph Castro, OAPE Director. “We’re trying to focus more on things that students really want to do.”

Castro said that, according to a recent survey, OAPE is seeing 33 percent of nondrinking students and 65 percent of drinking students attending Cardinal Nights events. The program’s initial focus was on nondrinkers and light drinkers.

“There was a lot of skepticism of something like this happening but over two years now, we’ve been able to push through that and now we have solid data that shows that this is a very effective program at a place like Stanford and it is now being replicated at other peer institutions,” Castro said.

According to Castro, Cardinal Nights is becoming a nationally respected program at private institutions, and Stanford has been conducting consultations with peer universities that are trying to build similar programs.

“We had a hypothesis that if we professionally planned these events that people would still come,” Castro said. “There was a lot of skepticism, but I had a lot of confidence and said if we build this and we do it right and we offer premium programs, students still come.”

The program’s most successful event since the group debuted two years ago was the Welcome Back Carnival.

“Our first event, the carnival, drew out well over 1,000 people. And that included different games,” said Trista Shideler, assistant director of OAPE. “We had a DJ, we had tons of food, gave away T-shirts and had a photo booth.”

Over the past two years, Cardinal Nights has put on 140 events and collaborates with other student groups to host events that align with the organization’s goals, according to Castro.

In its first year, Cardinal Nights initially planned to put on one event per weekend, but instead put on two every weekend. Last year, the program planned to host two events per weekend, but instead put on three.

“If we can provide multiple things on a weekend, then we are able to provide alternatives because when you have options to do things then students are more likely to engage,” Castro said.

According to Shideler, Cardinal Nights hired a group of students to assist with event planning this year, which she said has been an effective strategy.

“I hired a small group of student staff and that’s really going to add to what we are providing for the campus because then I’m having people in the community who can mention ideas from their peers and generate ideas as a group,” Shideler said.

Maddie Hawkinson ’17 is a member of the student team and said she has enjoyed Cardinal Nights programming so far.

“One of my favorite memories to this day was cramming too many people onto a small blanket and curling up with a huge group of my new friends,” said Hawkinson, of a Screen on the Green event.

Melissa Gordon ’15 attended her first Cardinal Nights event, the Build-A-Bear Workshop activity, this year. The Build-A-Bear event sold out its 500 teddy bears in just a matter of a few days, according to Shideler.

“What I liked about the event is that I was able to go with a group of friends,” Gordon said. “We all bonded over making stuffed animals.”

Events being planned for this year include gelato tastings, a trip to Sky High and an opportunity to see “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” on Broadway in San Jose this Friday.

 

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Q&A with jazz musician Jon Batiste https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/27/qa-with-jazz-musician-jon-batiste/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/27/qa-with-jazz-musician-jon-batiste/#respond Mon, 28 Oct 2013 05:26:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079839 On October 27, jazz pianist and vocalist Jon Batiste performed at Big Concert Hall, bringing his sultry voice and musical magic to the Farm. Batiste, who has worked with such artists as Cassandra Wilson, Prin ce, Quest Love and Lenny Kravitz, is currently touring with his latest band, Stay Human. Daily columnist Angelique Dakkak sat […]

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On October 27, jazz pianist and vocalist Jon Batiste performed at Big Concert Hall, bringing his sultry voice and musical magic to the Farm. Batiste, who has worked with such artists as Cassandra Wilson, Prin

Photo Credit: Peter Lueders
Photo Credit: Peter Lueders

ce, Quest Love and Lenny Kravitz, is currently touring with his latest band, Stay Human. Daily columnist Angelique Dakkak sat down with Batiste earlier this week to chat about his New Orleans roots, the inspiration behind his band’s name and his musical vision.

The Stanford Daily (SD): How do you feel about performing at Stanford and what will you be playing for the concert?

Jon Batiste (JB): I love performing at colleges because there is a special bond between members of my generation and the kind of performance I am putting on. For me, music is going to be social music. There is this beautiful interactive environment that music creates can create that leads to open experiences. My group makes sure that there are moments where the audience can participate, moments where people can come on stage, even non-musicians – the goal being to bring everyone together.

In terms of Stanford as a performance space, every space has something that I can exploit for vibration; there is always something to learn and to figure out about a new concert venue. It all comes down to the power of a live music experience that comes in the form of a universal language of music that everyone can admire and use for their own self-expression.

SD: How did the name of your group, Stay Human, come about?

JB: The name came in a special moment during a performance in New York City. I reflected on how we would perform in subways and I realized that this title is what my group is all about. This era is interesting because of the involvement of technology, but the negative aspect is that technology is overshadowing everything else.

One day I was asked by a man if Stay Human was against technology. I said that we needed technology for recording one of our albums in the subway. Technology is inevitable and has been so useful for integration, inclusiveness, and improved ways to communicate with one another. The person asking me this was forgetting the power of human exchange with technology.

Photo Credit: Peter Lueders
Photo Credit: Peter Lueders

SD: What genre(s) do you play in and what made you gravitate toward them?

JB: Growing up in New Orleans, I was always surrounded by this distinct sound and rhythm. I was part of a musical family growing up and played in some shows with them, and the focus was on Jazz.

SD: Who have you played with in the past and what are some unique experiences that come to mind?

JB: I have played different genres and have played with Cassandra Wilson, an artist I admire, and other great musicians. In my work, I learned different lessons from different artists, and outside of jazz I have performed with Prince, Quest Love, and Lenny Kravitz

SD: How does the idea of ‘social music’ define your new album, and what do you hope that this new album will achieve for your career and today’s music?

JB: Today is more connected and integrated than ever before. Internet and technology with things like Spotify and iTunes are being used for genre hopping, whether you are or are not aware of it. As everything is becoming more united, social music grows as the complete connectivity and openness that destroys generation gap boundaries. Social music promotes inclusiveness and openness to all.

SD: One of your songs, St. James Infirmary, touches on a very sensitive topic and brings back memories for me of Hurricane Katrina. Why did you include this jazz standard on the album and what is your perspective on it?

JB: St. James Infirmary has become a NOLA standard. 1778 in London is the year of its origin. It is so old that no one knows who wrote it. Using elements of blues, folk music, and jazz, my purpose was to use this standard as a continuum. Even with this much time passing, we are coming as humans but come all as one human soul.

SD: Which piece on your album was most challenging to compose? Which piece affected you the most emotionally and which piece provided the greatest challenge for performing live?

JB: “Express Yourself” provides great performing live challenge because it was routed in the idea of programming. All of the other tracks were as simple as only one take in the studio. “Express Yourself” was so focused in programming that it was hard to lay down all of the parts.

SD: Do you have an ideal target population for your music, as in a group you think would benefit most from hearing it? Why or why not?

JB: Everyone is important because the tradition of music is so broad. Recognizing the old things and the new is important because, for example, we are able to trace back modern music to folk and blues. Music is about anyone who feels the energy in a song or songs. Ultimately, we are targeting people in the 18-25 year age range and 2-30 year age range because I don’t think that our generation has any alternatives to modern pop culture

SD: Since you began your music career playing with your family, how did they inspire you to go into the direction you are choosing to go today? Are there any mentors in your past, specifically, to whom you would extend your thanks?

JB: My family was my first exposure to music and being a musician. I started playing the drums with my family when I was eight. When I was 11, my mom insisted that I switch from the drums to piano because there was a greater need for pianists. The most rewarding event was developing the first installment of social music with the goal to show people what we have in our heads and how we can put those things into a form of expression.

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CAPS adjusts ADHD assessment protocol https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/24/caps-adjusts-adhd-assessment-protocol/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/24/caps-adjusts-adhd-assessment-protocol/#respond Thu, 24 Oct 2013 08:42:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079743 This year, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) changed how they would conduct assessments on students for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

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This year, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) changed how they would conduct assessments on students for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The new protocol’s primary goal is to make the assessment process more efficient and to ensure improved accuracy of diagnosis and treatment, said Julie Tinklenberg B.S. ’90 M.S. ’90, a staff psychiatrist at CAPS involved in changing the guidelines.

SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily
SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily

In recent years, the number of students seeking an ADHD diagnosis has increased, Tinklenberg said. According to CAPS data, 1.8 percent of Stanford undergraduates were diagnosed and/or treated for ADHD in the last twelve months.

The new assessment protocol requires that a student, a close friend or family member and someone who knew them as a child fill out an assessment form.

“What we’re doing through having these forms is getting rating numbers and free text to give specific examples of what did they look like as a child, how exactly are they impaired now,” Tinklenberg said. “We collect all of that information and then when they come in, we have what we need. We don’t have to spend time tracking down the different pieces.”

CAPS Director Ronald Albucher said that the changes in the ADHD assessment were independent of other recent changes at CAPS—including expanding hours and increased staff—caused by increased student demand.

“We’ve spent several years researching this [issue],” Albucher said.

He explained that this research included conversations with staff psychiatrists, looking at the issues of proper stimulant use on college campuses and determining the role of neuropsychological testing as well as CAPS’ relationship with the Office of Accessible Education.

In addition to simplifying the assessment protocol, Tinklenberg explained how the forms would improve the accuracy of diagnoses made by CAPS clinicians by allowing for a more consistent method of gathering information needed for a diagnosis.

“The protocol makes me more comfortable as a clinician because I know that I’m doing a thoughtful, thorough assessment,” Tinklenberg said.

In previous years, clinicians at CAPS would have to gather several pieces of information, including a medical history of the patient from the patient’s parents. The final diagnosis would require three or more visits until clinicians could determine if the information they received was consistent or inconsistent with ADHD criteria found in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).

According to Tinklenberg, there is no clinical test that can give a definitive answer regarding whether a student has ADHD, but the new system of assessment can help clinicians improve the accuracy of an ADHD diagnosis.

“In assessing someone, you have to know who they were as an elementary school student and if they were having a hard time at school, at home and in social circumstances,” Tinklenberg said. “In two of those areas, there has to be impairment due to these symptoms.”

Tinklenberg described that there must be lifelong symptoms in inattention and hyperactivity to qualify for a diagnosis. This criterion helps rule out other diagnoses, including bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder and substance abuse where individuals may show similar symptoms to that of ADHD.

She also said the new assessment will help clinicians be more careful when prescribing medication.

“In a lot of cases students are interested in starting stimulant treatment, and I am uncomfortable starting on that path for someone unless it makes sense,” Tinklenberg said. “Taking the time to make sure that it makes sense, I think that it’s going to be much better.”

Contact Angelique Dakkak at angeldak ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Bryan Adams “bares” all at the Warfield https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/18/bryan-adams-bares-all-at-the-warfield/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/18/bryan-adams-bares-all-at-the-warfield/#respond Fri, 18 Oct 2013 08:15:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079546 The Warfield Theater stood tall with a large illuminated white sign and alphabet letters spelling out Bryan Adams’ name to the city. Night came, and mobs of people clad in leather jackets, studded black belts and stiletto-heeled boots lined up with tickets in hand to see one of the biggest heartthrobs of the 1980s — […]

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The Warfield Theater stood tall with a large illuminated white sign and alphabet letters spelling out Bryan Adams’ name to the city. Night came, and mobs of people clad in leather jackets, studded black belts and stiletto-heeled boots lined up with tickets in hand to see one of the biggest heartthrobs of the 1980s — Bryan Adams.

(Courtesy Bruce Allen Talent)
(Courtesy of Bruce Allen Talent)

Bryan Adams’ reputation as an artist grew quickly with the release of his third album, “Cuts Like a Knife,” in 1983. Soon after, he received his first Grammy nomination, establishing an international presence in the music world. Adams is actually Canadian, and this was made clear when, during the concert, a fan screamed “Happy Thanksgiving” to him as he was walking on stage.

Adam’s concert was far from ordinary: He played with only a pianist, not his typical grand band of percussion, bass and the like. It is exactly for this reason that he decided to name his latest tour “The Bare Bones Tour.” Adams explained that he wanted to break his music down to the “bare bones” in which the music being played is the entire focus: no backup dancers, no techno beats, no auto-tuning and no digitization — nothing that would take away from a real presence on stage.

In between songs, Adams told stories about both his music and life. At one point, he invited a woman in a flashy black dress and bleach-blonde hair to dance to one of his most famous songs, “If You Wanna Be Bad — Ya Gotta Be Good.” She shamelessly danced in a burlesque manner and threw her cup of beer aside to an audience member for her full performance.

The stage lights created a white, celestial outline of Adams’ figure, transforming him into a something of an ’80s music god. Furthermore, the passion visible in his strums on the guitar and the depth of emotion in his voice touched the audience in a way that can hardly be put into words. In Adams’ case, age is just a number. As the 53-year-old Adams sang “Heaven,” the crowd effortlessly — and hypnotically — swooned over his sonorous sounds.

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