Chelsey Sveinsson – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Fri, 16 Jan 2015 06:22:13 +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 Chelsey Sveinsson – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Students engage in protests over winter break https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/15/students-engage-in-protests-over-winter-break/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/15/students-engage-in-protests-over-winter-break/#comments Fri, 16 Jan 2015 06:21:31 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1093939 Winter break did not put a freeze on #BlackLivesMatter protests for Stanford students who returned home for the holidays.

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Stanford students participated in protests in their hometowns over the break. (NICK SALAZAR/The Stanford Daily)
Stanford students participated in protests in their hometowns over the break. (NICK SALAZAR/The Stanford Daily)

Winter break did not put a freeze on #BlackLivesMatter protests for Stanford students who returned home for the holidays. In fact several students across the nation, from Brooklyn, New York, to Denver, Colorado, joined protests that honored the local victims of police killings and called for justice and the valuing of black lives.

On New Year’s Day, Colin Kincaid ’17 attended a peaceful die-in at Wheaton Mall in Silver Springs, Maryland. Organized by a high school student and college student, the protest put a twist on the #BlackLivesMatter slogan by changing it to #BlackLivesStillMatter to mark the new year and that “the movement against systemic racism is not going away,” according to Kincaid.

“The protest as a whole impressed me, as the organizers put it together in less than a week [which is] a testament to the power of grassroots organizing and the effectiveness of the young, black women leading this movement,” Kincaid said..

Further north in the Big Apple, one Stanford student was impressed by the solidarity shown by the pan-Asian community for the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Nisrin Abdelrahman, an anthropology PhD candidate, participated in a protest in East New York organized by the family of a black father killed by a policeman.

The protest, led by the 2-year-old daughter and family of the victim, highlighted the killing of a local father who was shot in the staircase of his building by an NYPD officer and concluded with the reading of an open letter by the victim’s family member to the precinct.

From feelings of solidarity to discomfort, many students had lingering emotions after participating in their local peaceful protests.

After hearing a speech by Erika Totten, an activist from Ferguson, Missouri, speak on police brutality and her personal experience as a mother and activist, Kincaid was “moved [to tears]” by her words.

Abdelrahman had a slightly different emotional response while protesting due to her own personal experience with police brutality. After seeing members of the pan-Asian community come out in support of the protest, she experienced a new-found sense of comfort from this sign of solidarity.

“I felt a sense of strength and hope for the first time since my own partner had been framed by a police officer earlier this year,” Abdelrahman said. “Our own experience with the court system and the injustice and violence it inflicts on countless families was isolating and paralyzing. Marching for justice for Akai Gurley and countless others that day was therefore a powerful experience for me.”

For ASSU Senator Rachel Samuels ’17, the shift in setting from Stanford to Denver caused her to feel less connected to the protest as she found herself among unfamiliar faces.

“It was a much different experience to be surrounded by those I did not know, and whose views and reasons seemed much less discernible than those of my peers on campus,” Samuels said. “While Stanford students also hold a spectrum of views, I felt more empowered saying ‘This is what democracy looks like’ [on campus] in contrast to marching behind an upside-down American flag like I did in Denver.”

To Samuels, the difference between the protests at home and those at the Farm was the perspective offered by the protesters.

“I want to respect perspectives against unjust systems and I would also like a perspective of empowerment for changing systems to be represented, which I felt was more prevalent at Stanford,” Samuels added.

Despite the biting cold and her white identity, Sarah Gleberman ’15 was not deterred from attending a protest centered around the black community.

“It was a powerful experience to see so many people from different backgrounds together supporting one cause,” Gleberman said. “As a white person, I was mostly trying to just be there and be a part of the protest…so I didn’t start any chants or anything, just followed along with the ones around me.”

Natasha Patel ’16 felt like the protest she attended in the Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., was more of a publicity event than a protest.

“It was a strange experience to be a part of,” Patel said. “It was supposed to be an organized public protest with reverend Al Sharpton at the front, but it felt more like an event because of the series of speakers and the VIP section.”

While some students joined in chants shouting “No racist…police!,” one student who has familial ties to the NYPD felt uneasy at the protest she attended.

Gleberman believes that changes within law enforcement need to happen but that police officers should not bear the brunt of the protestors’ ire.

“Some of the chants made me deeply uncomfortable, particularly the ones that targeted police officers in [Silver Springs, Maryland],” Gleberman said. “Anger toward the legislators who allow and encourage military-style weapons and training for police officers is certainly warranted; however, I felt that there was a strong and even violent current of anger towards all police officers as people.”

“I believe that police officers can and should be valuable community members who help keep their towns and cities safe,” Gleberman added. “I believe ‘these racist cops have got to go’ is over-simplifying a complex issue and projecting the problems with police training into the personal ideology of every police officer.”

While students involvement in the protest invoked their criticism of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, some expressed optimism in the movement’s effectiveness and success.

“My hope is that as this movement for justice grows, it will continue to be led by those most affected by police and court violence because they know best how these systemic forms of violence affect people’s day to day lives in ways that police cameras and other quick fix solutions can never address,” Abdelrahman said.

 

Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Senate meets to promote funding reform bill on special elections ballot https://stanforddaily.com/2014/12/03/senate-meets-to-promote-funding-reform-bill-on-special-elections-ballot/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/12/03/senate-meets-to-promote-funding-reform-bill-on-special-elections-ballot/#respond Thu, 04 Dec 2014 03:02:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1093016 With special elections a day away, Senators and ASSU executives stressed the need for sustained advocacy for the funding reform bill on the ballot at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Undergraduate Senate.

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With special elections a day away, Senators and ASSU executives stressed the need for sustained advocacy for the funding reform bill on the ballot at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Undergraduate Senate.

In her executive report, ASSU President Elizabeth Woodson ’15 encouraged Senators to take advantage of the remaining time left leading up to the election to engage with students in conversation about the bill and funding reform.

“I think so many people have spent so many hours spending time into authoring that beautiful bill,” Woodson said. “I think that it’s important that we take the next few days and put in the energy that we need to.”

According to Sajjan Sri-Kumar ’16, SAL peer advisor, the bill must receive at least 1,094 yes-votes and must pass with at least two-thirds of the votes cast being in favor of the bill.

The minimum number of yes votes required is 15 percent of the undergraduate population (1,094 votes).

All students who are currently enrolled in classes and who have not conferred their undergraduate degree are eligible to vote. An email with the results of the election is tentatively scheduled to be sent to the entire student body at 4 p.m. on Saturday.

In addition to the special elections pep talk, the senators discussed at length a resolution authored by Deputy Chair Victoria Kalumbi ’15, called “Resolution Regarding Diverse Representation in Senate.” The resolution was created in recognition of “voiced concerns about faculty diversity, racial and gender representation on various university committees.”

Although the resolution advocates for increased diversity, it did identify aspects of the Senate body that are lacking in that aspect. The resolution states that “[t]he definition of diversity within Senate will be left open. Outlining what types of identities are going to be targeted on will not be specifically enumerated to avoid limiting what counts as diversity.”

The resolution, which passed 10 to one with four abstentions, will establish several educational and outreach initiatives. One such initiative is the formation of a group consisting of “elected members of Senate, GSC, Executive and SSE, various members of the Administration” that will meet monthly to “discuss issues of privilege, race, gender and other over or underrepresentation and how to work towards ameliorating this in the long term.”

Additionally, the Senate passed a resolution that expressed opposition to the University of California Board of Regents’ decision to increase UC tuition by 5 percent each year over the next five years.

“Victoria, Anna, and I reached out to members of the UC student government over Thanksgiving break and they have expressed support of this resolution and welcome it,” Senator Luka Fatuesi ‘17 said. “They would really like us to pass this bill.”

Although a majority of senators were supportive of the resolution, there were some reservations about passing a resolution that concerned another university.

Referencing a meeting with the Executive Committee, Senate Chair Ben Holsten ’15 reported that the ASSU Executives said they would not veto the resolution but that “they don’t think it’s [ASSU’s] place to pass a resolution about UC schools.”

Lastly, the Senate elected Rachel Samuels to serve as Deputy Chair for the remainder of the year, replacing Kalumbi who will be abroad next quarter.

Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Senate continues discussion of funding reform https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/19/senate-continues-discussion-of-funding-reform/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/19/senate-continues-discussion-of-funding-reform/#respond Thu, 20 Nov 2014 04:29:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1092457 With the Undergraduate Senate preparing for the December Special Elections, funding reform was the main topic of discussion at the Senate meeting Tuesday night.

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With the Undergraduate Senate preparing for the December Special Elections, funding reform was the main topic of discussion at the Senate meeting Tuesday night.

A bill authored by Senator John-Lancaster Finley ’16 that proposes a new funding system was on previous notice. If approved during their special Friday meeting and if passed with two-thirds vote from the student body, the Senate would distribute funds to student groups under a new system.

The proposed funding reform bill resembles the SAFE Reform that failed to pass last year but with several notable changes.

In his executive summary of the bill, Finley writes that the proposal “uses SAFE Reform as a skeleton, with the contentious points of the previous proposal removed.” Those contentious points removed from the bill included a Funding Board, a cap on the Undergraduate Fee and the application to hold reserves.

According to Finley, the bill “was created specifically through collaboration with, outreach to and feedback from multiple student groups.”

Despite the Senate’s hope to pass funding reform in two weeks, issues with student group funding have not abated during the interim leading up to the special elections.

Sigma Nu and Kappa Kappa Gamma appeared before the Senate to defend their $12,000 funding application for the annual Snowchella concert benefiting Support for International Change.

Senate Treasurer Eric Theis ’16 brought up the concern that the Senate has already significantly overspent this quarter, blowing past the soft cap of about $90,000.

“After tonight, [Senator] Jackson [Beard]  just informed me that we will be $9,000 over the cap for the quarter. [Snowchella] would now put us up to $21,000,” Theis said.

According to Andrew Margrave ’16, the lead organizer of the benefit concert, the event costs significantly less this year than it did last year and therefore the amount of money requested has proportionally decreased as well. Margrave argued that the concert meets the ASSU’s general funding guidelines.

“[The event is] an amazing tradition I think everyone on campus enjoys,” Margrave said.

Finley brought up yet another financial concern about the event, one relating to alcohol. Pointing out that the Office of Alcohol Policy and Education (OAPE) denied Snowchella funding this year, Finley expressed concern of funding a dry concert that did not receive support from OAPE.

In an email sent during the Senate meeting from Ralph Castro, Associate Dean of Student Affairs & Director of OAPE, to Finley, the OAPE explained that they withdrew financial support of the event because of complaints last year that “it wasn’t a true alcohol-free event.”

By the end of the discussion, the Senate decided to postpone voting on the request until their next meeting this Friday.

Additionally, the Senate held officer elections and chose Ana Ordoñez ’17 to serve as Senate Chair for the remainder of the year, winning out over Finley and Anthony Ghosn ’16. With current Chair Ben Holston ’15 and current Deputy Chair Victoria Kalumbi ’15  going abroad winter quarter, the Senate must elect new senators to fill those vacancies.

The Senate’s next meeting will be held this Friday at 7 p.m. in Old Union room 104.

 

Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Senate denies bill to hold funding election https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/05/nov-4-assu-senate-recap/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/05/nov-4-assu-senate-recap/#respond Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:17:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1091475 After successfully overriding the ASSU executives’ veto over the weekend, the Undergraduate Senate met Tuesday night to discuss, among other things, the possibility of holding a special election to address funding issues.

Despite ratifying the bill allowing the Senate to use up to $150,000 from Special Fees reserves to supplement the General Fee, a few of the senators felt the need to loosen the belt on their tight budget.

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After successfully overriding the ASSU Executives’ veto over the weekend, the Undergraduate Senate met Tuesday night to discuss, among other things, the possibility of holding a special election to address funding issues.

Despite ratifying the bill allowing the Senate to use up to $150,000 from Special Fees reserves to supplement the General Fees, some of the Senators felt uncomfortable immediately increasing allocations to General Fees groups.

Among the eight bills up for vote Tuesday night, two were authored by the Financial Manager Frederik Groce and his assistants Olivia Moore ’16 and Justine Moore ’16. Their “Bill to Call for a Special Election,” which calls for a special election in December “for the purpose of voting on a comprehensive funding reform bill,” was the subject of much debate.

If a funding reform bill on a special elections ballot garners enough student votes to pass, then a new funding system would be implemented starting winter quarter, potentially replacing the General Fees-Special Fees system.

However, if a funding reform bill passes in the regular spring elections, it would not go into effect for a full academic year, due to the Special Fees budgets on the ballot.

After considerable discussion, the bill failed to pass, garnering only six “yes” votes from the 15 Senators.

Senator Anthony Ghosn ’16 expressed disapproval of the bill, saying that the Senate is getting ahead of itself by not even having a funding reform bill yet to put on the ballot.

“I feel like we are putting the cart before the horse. We don’t have a reform created,” Ghosn said. “I think that doing this at the end of the quarter where we have a Thanksgiving break, doing it the week right before finals…It might be better to do it winter quarter.”

Senator Jackson Beard, chair of the Appropriations committee, echoed Ghosn’s thoughts.

“I don’t know why we are calling an election on something that doesn’t exist,” Beard said, pointing out that the Senate has yet to draft a funding reform bill. “I think it’s irresponsible.”

However, there was considerable support for the bill coming from other senators and a student in attendance at the Senate meeting.

Parliamentarian John-Lancaster Finley ’16 expressed support for having a fall election.

“Timeline shouldn’t be a worry,” Finley said. “ The ASSU is more than prepared to have an election.”

Alizabeth McGowan ’16, a student and a regular attendee of Senate meetings, also encouraged the Senate to have an election this quarter.

“We need to look longer term,” McGowan said. “ [A special election] pushes us to get reform on the table. If it fails, we work on it again, we vote on it again…The world is not going to end if we have an election this quarter.”

The Financial’s Manager second bill invoked less of a debate but, too, failed to pass.

According to Olivia Moore, one of the bill authors, the bill was “somewhat motivated by the bill that passed on Saturday” and would require that the “Financial Manager be notified of any legislation that substantially changes the current understanding of our funding system” or other funding related matters.

Eric Theis ’16, author of the bill that passed over the weekend, responded to Moore saying that that this new bill is unnecessary.

“Having [a bill] on previous notice is the purpose for that,” Theis said. He added that the Financial Manager is able to make a motion to postpone the bill if he needs more time for consideration.

The Senate voted on several other bills that night, one of which would create an equipment rental system for student groups.

“Bill to Create ASSU Senate Equipment Rental System” passed with 14 votes in support and one abstention. The bill allows for the Senate to create an equipment renting system available to student groups free of charge. The purpose of the bill is so that “all student organizations can allocate less of their budget to equipment purchases with the establishment of a free rental service.”

Finally, without any discussion on the bill, the Senate voted in Viraj Bindra ’15 and Brianna Brown ’16 as proxies for the Senators going abroad winter quarter. Bindra will serve as the proxy for Senate Chair Ben Holsten ’15 and Brown will serve on behalf of Senate Deputy Chair Victoria Kalumbi ’15.

ASSU Vice President Logan Richard ’15 announced in his Executive report that the Executives have been working with Angela Exson, director of the SARA office, to organize a training session for all branches of the ASSU.

The training session will be held this Thursday from 6-7 p.m. in Old Union 215. Additionally, Richard mentioned that an online module educating users about sexual assault is possibly in the works.

“It is very much in the planning phase,” Richard said.

Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The body issue: Why athletes feel the squeeze https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/30/student-athletes-struggle-with-eating-disorders-resources-available/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/30/student-athletes-struggle-with-eating-disorders-resources-available/#respond Fri, 31 Oct 2014 06:56:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1091006 Within a campus culture that emphasizes physical fitness and activity, one subset of the campus population faces added pressures to maintain a physical form at a higher level: student-athletes.

With demands to perform for the most successful athletic program in the country, some Stanford student-athletes find themselves concerned with body image issues. And some of these student athletes raise concerns about the culture of eating disorders and the resources and support provided by the University and athletic department to deal with them.

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Within a campus culture that emphasizes physical fitness and activity, one subset of the campus population faces added pressures to maintain a physical form at a higher level: student-athletes.

With demands to perform for the most successful athletic program in the country, some Stanford student-athletes find themselves struggling with body image issues. And some of these student-athletes raise concerns about the culture of eating disorders and the resources and support provided by the University and athletic department to deal with them.

According to data collected by the National Eating Disorder Association, 25.5 percent of varsity collegiate athletes exhibited symptoms of eating disorders. Further, a study conducted by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD) found that elite female athletes were more than twice as likely to have an eating disorder compared to their non-athlete counterparts.

Part of the problem lies in the lack of discussion about the culture of eating excessively to gain weight or limiting food to lose weight.

“Unfortunately that culture is condoned by my sport … When you get to the point where you’re so starved, as soon as you can eat again you can’t stop – you turn into the cookie monster, and it’s this really scary moment where [you] can’t stop,” said Athlete A, a former female varsity athlete that dealt with an eating disorder.

Like many The Daily spoke with for this article, Athlete A was granted anonymity due to the sensitive subject matter.

 

Performance eating vs. disordered eating

For student-athletes, the eating habits necessary to make them successful in their sport can become unhealthy. While many athletes are able to separate their physical needs from their emotional needs, that line can become blurred when sports demand a certain body type.

Football player Denzel Franklin ’18 said that many football players have to change their eating habits in order to gain or lose weight. According to Franklin, the football team is able to develop these habits in healthy ways, curbing the possibility of unhealthy mindsets emerging.

Franklin said the healthy approach to eating and nutrition on the football team is largely driven by programs and education put in place by the coaching and training staff, such as a detailed checklist given to players to help track their nutritional intake for the day.

“[The football program] does a great job of encouraging healthy living habits,” Franklin said. “There’s nothing in our whole system where it’s like, ‘You’re too fat’ or ‘You’re too skinny’. It’s, ‘You need to do this to your body so you will perform better.'”

Certain sports put more pressure on weight and appearance than others. Sports such as women’s lightweight rowing and men’s wrestling have specific weight cutoffs.

In diving and gymnastics, an athlete’s scores may be affected by the judge’s impression of their appearance.

Sloane Brazina ’15, a member of the varsity diving team, said that divers must be aware of their body composition because it can affect their scores in competition.

“You’re being judged on your poise, and how your body looks in the air and your entry looks going in the water,” Brazina said. “There is always a pressure to be lean, and definitely keep up with appearances.”

The ANAD study found that female athletes in judged sports (e.g. gymnastics, ballet, figure skating, etc) were at the highest risk of developing an eating disorder.

While some athletes, such as Brazina, successfully balance the physical demands of their sport with a positive and healthy mindset, the high stress environment of athletics can cause other athletes to internalize their eating habits until they become dangerous.

Athlete A had to focus on her eating habits after gaining weight during her freshman year.

“Every time I slipped (in my diet) I felt so ashamed of myself. I felt like such a sorry excuse for an athlete,” she said. “I think that shame I felt towards my coach turned into shame I felt about my body, and that’s when it became more of a personal than a sports related issue.”

After gaining weight her freshman year, Athlete A worked with a private trainer over the summer who helped her develop a strict diet and track factors in her athletic performance such as body fat percentage.

While working with the trainer did help her stay at the weight and level of fitness she needed to be for her sport, she said that writing down everything she ate and having her body fat measured felt invasive and ultimately harmed her mental approach to food.

 

Control over injuries

For injured athletes, their relationship with food often becomes a wrestle for control, spurred on by attempts to defy the unwanted physical effects of “time off.”

Molly McNamara ’15, a varsity cross country and track and field athlete and Head of Athletic Mental Health for the ASSU Executive Cabinet, experienced this struggle with disordered eating while injured her freshman year. Her relationship with food began as one that initially had her feeling in control but that gradually spun out of control as illness, injury and depression struck her, seemingly all at once.

“When I came in as a freshman I was very strict about everything I ate. I wasn’t anorexic but I had an A-plus diet,” McNamara said. “Then, I got mono right before nationals in cross country.”

After taking a month off from running in order to recover from mononucleosis, McNamara was eager to rejoin her teammates at practice but misfortune struck again, this time taking the form of an ominous, dark line shown in an MRI of her sacrum.

“When I was coming back after that month off, I got a sacral stress fracture and I was off again for four months of no running,” McNamara said

Those four months would prove to be challenging times for McNamara, as the stress from issues on the Farm and back home began to weigh on her and to affect her relationship with food.

“In all this time, I was dealing with a family situation at home where my mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Just with the stress of that and not being able to run and trying to adjust to a new school, I started struggling with depression a bit,” McNamara said, “I would just be like, ‘I can’t run anyway, so why would it matter?’ and I would start stress eating.”

Thoughts about food and how she ate began to consume her.

“I would be like, ‘What does it matter?’ or ‘I didn’t eat well earlier so I already messed up the day at this point’ and would just binge,” she said.

“It went from the first part of my freshman year where I felt like if I veered off that perfect diet I was going to lose control to all the time I had no control ever,” McNamara said, “I just felt stressed all the time.”

McNamara conducted a study as part of the Stanford Sports Medicine Physical Therapy Clinic that looked at athletes’ responses to injuries. Of the 70 varsity athletes surveyed, 49 percent of female student-athletes reported that their eating habits had changed since becoming injured. 54 percent worried about their weight while injured or coming back from an injury.

 

Control over life

Athlete A’s experience exemplifies another common issue that athletes face that can lead to an eating disorder – using food to gain a feeling of control.

“[I thought], I can do this, because I have complete control over my life,” she said, speaking about the strict diet she followed after a freshman year defined by bingeing and purging cycles. “I was holding myself at this and felt so good about my level of control.”

Looking to eating habits for a sense of control is a common reaction to stress and to deal with anxiety, according to Carley Hauck. Hauck, who has a master’s degree in health psychology, teaches several classes at Stanford, including a course called Intuitive Eating that focuses on how mindfulness can encourage healthy eating habits.

“In the case of athletics, there’s anxiety [because] you’re being told, we need you to be a certain way to be able to perform well,” Hauck said. “So the reason that there’s this controlling aspect around food is to manage the anxiety … around what their coach is telling them or what performance they are hoping to achieve if they are at a certain weight.”

According to Hauck, the anxiety of college causes many students to develop unhealthy mindsets towards eating, whether or not they are athletes. Athletics place an additional source of pressure and anxiety on students already dealing with the stress of academics and social life.

For Athlete B, a female senior varsity athlete, this control can stem from a sense of pressure from various sources.

“When you see eating disorders in female athletes, often it’s not so much what their coach is doing but them just feeling pressure from a lot of different directions and not feeling like they have control over their bodies,” she said.

 

Athlete/female dichotomy

For some female athletes at Stanford, issues with having a “feminine” figure – one which might be curvy or look good in feminine clothing – while also maintaining an athletic physique that needs to be stronger and could seem bulky to some, can come into conflict.

According to varsity golfer Mariah Stackhouse ’16, athletes in certain sports, such as golf, feel the need to conform to an image of athleticism.

“I think a lot of people can be concerned about how they appear because they feel like they don’t look a certain way or how people perceive an athlete to be,” Stackhouse said. “How people stereotype athletes to look is not always realistic because there’s body makeup, there’s positions.”

For some female student-athletes, not looking athletic enough is not the concern – it’s not looking feminine enough.

“For female athletes, there’s body image issues,” said Amber Farrell ’15, a former hurdler on the varsity track and field team.

“[Body image issues] are exacerbated by the fact that you’re an athlete and you’re putting all of this stress on your body. You’re already pressured to look a certain way and you also have to perform a certain way,” Farrell continued. “And those things might not match up, the way you look and the way you’re supposed to look, the way you need to look for a certain event.”

Simone Manuel ’18, a member of the varsity swim team and an American record holder, is familiar with this frustration of her athletic body literally not fitting the ideal image of femininity.

“With swimmers, we have really wide shoulders. When I go dress shopping, I have a really hard time because I can’t fit into a certain type of clothing,” Manuel said. “It becomes frustrating because you look at other girls and they have a perfect body image, straight up and down, and we’re kind of like a triangle.”

A common challenge that female athletes face in their attempt to maintain a feminine body is becoming too “bulky” from weight training.

“When I came to Stanford I was very confident in that I always liked the way my body looked, and I like that I was athletic and slim,” Athlete A said. “But putting on all that muscle bulk – in some ways it feels very unfeminine, it’s very bulky.”

Farrell, too, has seen teammates “being in the weight room and not wanting to lift too much because [they] don’t want to look a certain way” and worries that the stress of conforming to feminine ideals is hindering their performance in their sport.

“But you need to do those things to perform well in a sport,” she says, “You’re not getting strong enough, not eating enough or lifting enough.”

“I think for female athletes in general, there’s so much pressure. Female athletes tend to feel like they earned their spot here, they can’t just be a good athlete, they also have to be a good student and really pretty and really nice,” she added.

 

The team dynamics of disorders

Sometimes these disorders can affect team dynamics as well. Resentment may arise when athletes are struggling with their self-image, and they see their teammates easily able to maintain a certain physique.

“It honestly became a bit of a divided thing, where it was like, the girls with the [ideal] body type and the girls without [it],” Athlete A said. “It’s not like they were making us feel bad or anything like that, but the girls without the [ideal] body type – the things we had to put ourselves through – they had no idea.

“I think that the culture at Stanford is to internalize your problems, and this is a general trend, so with my team, with other athletes I’ve talked to, you don’t really want to admit you’re struggling with something here,” she added.

So how can athletes feel secure? For some, their teammates were a source of support.

“There’s definitely been a really healthy attitude towards diet on the team. Nobody ever has anything to say about anyone else’s food choices or their physical appearance,” Stackhouse said.

The attitudes definitely differ between teams, and teams with a stronger sense of “groupthink” are more susceptible to disordered thinking, according to Hauck.

“It’s the reason eating disorders are so rampant in sororities. It’s a way of being a part of the group. ‘If this person’s doing it and this person’s doing it, maybe I need to be doing it too,’” Hauck said.

Coming to Stanford and the increased expectations that go along with being a student at Stanford can be adjustments that proves overwhelming for many.

Retired Olympic figure skater Rachael Flatt ’15 stressed the importance of finding a support system, even in a new environment.

“Knowing that other people are going through that with you, you think, ‘Oh, okay, I’m not the only one who’s going through this.’ I thought that was really what helped me a lot,” Flatt said.

While Flatt never dealt with an eating disorder, she did experience the pressures that come with competing in a sport with judges.

“People like me, and some of the other skaters, who aren’t fat by any means – we just have a more athletic build rather than a very thin, sinewy type – we got criticized for that constantly,” Flatt said. “It wasn’t just coming from officials in private, it was commentary on national television and people in the media.”

Some coaches do try to create a team environment which does not put unnecessary stress on the athletes.

One varsity coach talked about his efforts to create a team in which every member had an important role, rather than giving too much focus to a few students.

“I try to individualize my attention, from the all-Americans to the walk-ons, so it’s not a competition for our attention,” he said. “It’s basically just relationship building, with a simple level to begin with, which is just to talk to them about things more than just [the sport], like school, family, how things are going.”

 

Resources and their availability

The athletic department has an official procedure for dealing with eating disorders. It involves both the Athletic Department and Vaden Health Center working with the student to offer support, wrote Scott Anderson, director of Athletic Training, in an email to The Daily.

Some athletes, however, aren’t aware that these types of resources are available to support them if they need it.

“I didn’t seek out the help I should’ve gotten … at the same time, I wasn’t sure what my resources were,” Athlete A said.

According to Anderson, if the coaches and the Athletic Department are aware of the situation and it becomes severe enough, more drastic measures are taken.

“We often remove athletes with poor vitals from participation and have admitted many who are in danger of developing a life threatening condition,” Anderson wrote.

That measure, intended to protect students’ health and safety, can work as a detriment. Even if athletes do know where to go, the fear of being taken off the team or prevented from participating in their sport can discourage students from reporting an eating disorder that they or a teammate are hiding.

“The culture on the track team did not make us feel like we could go to the coach … because we felt like the girl might be punished,” Farrell said. “Especially for varsity scholarship athletes, we don’t want [the coaches] saying, ‘Okay, well, you’re off the team, or you’re not running in the next few meets.’ ”

Not all students have negative experiences with the University’s resources, and Stanford is making a concerted effort to improve the support system for athletes. This year, Stanford hired a sports psychologist and a nutritionist, intending to help students and coaches alike learn how to better address eating disorders.

“I think moving forward, there’s going to be a healthier coach culture emerging around this topic,” Brazina said. “I think there’s definitely a demand from student-athletes in past years about getting people like this [trained professionals] on our staff.”

Even if the Athletic Department provides more staff, students still have to feel comfortable approaching those professionals. Athlete A said she found some support from the resources of the sports fitness center, but it ultimately wasn’t enough.

“It was … a matter of going and speaking to them, but there was only so much they could do because at the end of the day it’s your body,” she said.

Farrell still feels like she wouldn’t know how to help a friend whose behavior concerned her.

“If a friend came to me or if I felt like a friend might have some kind of eating disorder or something, I still wouldn’t exactly know what to do,” Farrell said. “I think it’s a big enough problem that there should be a resource for that directly.”

Brazina has some ideas on how to make accessing those resources more comfortable and acceptable for athletes, like involving Cardinal Council.

“Student-athletes might feel more comfortable approaching a designated team member…to talk about issues surrounding weight and body image,” Brazina explained.

 

Student-athletes and Stanford

With a continued push for athletic excellence, Stanford might continue to see athletes with eating disorders.

“We’ve been in this situation [of dealing with eating disorders] quite a bit,” the varsity coach admitted.

The problem, the coach suggested, was the short term benefits of eating disorders. “In our sport, eating disorders temporarily work.”

The answer lies perhaps in not only making resources known but also in understanding that athletic performance is not the most important thing.

“[We] make sure the [student-athlete] knows you’re involved in whole process [and] not just punting them to someone else,” the coach said. “They need to know you care about them – if they think you only care about their performances, then that’s bad.”

 

Contact Katie Zingheim at zingheim ‘at’ stanford.edu, Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘at’ stanford.edu,  Sarah Wishingrad at swishing ‘at’ stanford.edu and Leela Srinivasan at leelas ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Student groups debate funding issues at town hall https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/22/student-groups-debate-funding-issues-at-town-hall/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/22/student-groups-debate-funding-issues-at-town-hall/#respond Thu, 23 Oct 2014 04:18:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1090356 The discussion question posed to the attendees were the following: How should Senate prioritize events to fund? Is it fair for groups to be able to build up reserves? Should Stanford try to lower activities fees?

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Last Sunday, the ASSU Senate, along with Executive Cabinet members from the Funding Committee, held a town hall in Old Union to discuss student group funding. The town hall was open to the student body and drew an audience of 19 students representing 10 different student groups.

The student groups represented at the town hall were Stanford Golf League, Stanford in Government (SIG), Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MECha), Axe Committee, Stanford American Indian Organization (SAIO), First-Generation Low-Income Partnership (FLIP), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Alliance Streetdance, Avicenna Journal and Dance Marathon.

Thirteen members of the ASSU Senate and executive branch were also in attendance.

After providing brief contextual information, the town hall broke off into small discussion groups, each led by an ASSU representative.

The discussion questions posed to the attendees were the following: How should Senate prioritize events to fund? Is it fair for groups to be able to build up reserves? Should Stanford try to lower activities fees?

After more than 30 minutes of group discussion, the town hall reconvened to share ideas and suggestions generated in the discussion groups. Here are a few of the suggestions and opinions shared during the town hall:

  • “Has anyone actually asked the campus if they think the student activities fee is too high? That I think is the most important question. Maybe the reason why people think the ASSU Senate careens from spending crisis to spending crisis is because there is no clearly articulated strategy for funding and so you become the target of The Stanford Daily, which I will tell you as a fifth year co-term, every single year has gone after this topic. If you are able to come back at them and say, ‘Look no one cares what the activities fee is and we are trying to change it from this articulated solution,’ then they’ll stop writing about it and they’ll stop having inane op-eds that are poorly reasoned.” – Matt Anderson ’14, SIG
  • “I think there is an over emphasis on raising the student activities fee. You can opt out. It is higher than all other universities’ but at the same time Stanford has an unparalleled diversity that is important to student life. That is worth it.” -Destiny Lopez ’15, FLIP
  • “The two options if we don’t have any sort of reform is that we choose which groups are more valuable to us, which is going to be a huge debate, or you can have a first-come-first-serve [basis] per quarter and, once we run out of money, you stop [funding].” -Eric Theis ’16, Senate Treasurer
  • “With this general fee problem, more and more student groups are going to want to become special fee groups because they don’t want to deal with the mess of having our budget limited. But when more groups apply to special fees that drives the student activities fee way and way up.” – John-Lancaster Finely ’16, Senate Parliamentarian
  • “For organizations that are larger and have reserves, it’s hard for us to figure out a budget for the year ahead of time if we are trying to spend down our reserves. If we come into a year and all of a sudden you might be taking out of those reserves, it becomes difficult for us to be a responsible fiscal organization to figure out what we have and what we should spend for the year… Reserves as a general idea exist for a reason. For large organizations there can be unforeseen expenditure.” – Zach Ellison ’16, Financial Officer for Dance Marathon

The senate will continue discussion of funding reform at the next senate meeting on Tuesday, where Theis hopes to pass his bill allowing the senate to use up to $150,000 from special fees reserve accounts to supplement general fee groups, given that specific conditions are met.

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Oct. 21 ASSU Senate recap https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/22/oct-21-assu-senate-recap/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/22/oct-21-assu-senate-recap/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2014 03:14:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1090354 The Senate discussed rules about going abroad, funding for students groups and updates to myGroups during its Oct. 21 meeting.

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  • Senators discussed a bill that would amend the study abroad restrictions on first-year senators. Senator Victoria Kalumbi ’15 has plans to go abroad winter quarter but is currently prohibited from doing so according to by-laws as they are written now. Senator John-Lancaster Finley ’16, the author of the original bill allowing senators to go abroad during their term, explained that “the intent of the [original] bill is to motivate upperclassmen to join senate” and to retain the “institutional knowledge” that is lost when senators do not run for re-election because of the requirement to serve all three quarters of their term.
  • The Senate postponed discussion of “Bill to Assign Reserve Accounts to Student Groups” and “Resolution on General Fees Funding for Housed and Greek Organizations” until next week’s Senate meeting. Prior to the vote, Eric Theis ’16, Senate Treasurer and author of the first bill, made explicitly clear that “this bill is not to be a final solution but something that incentivizes [reform].” He also explained that the bill, if passed, would not be in effect until the next fiscal year starting in July, allowing time for the bill’s constitutionality to be challenged during the time leading to its effective date. Senate Chair Ben Holston ’15 was disappointed that the bills were not going to be discussed that night. “If you want to postpone this bill, I understand but you have a responsibility as a senator to get yourself in the position where you are ready to vote. It’s not okay for us to keep kicking this can down the road, assuming that it’s going to fix itself.” The bill permits the Senate to supplement the general fee with up to $150,000 from special fee reserves under the conditions that the Senate has to have made “a significant effort to pass comprehensive funding reform on an election ballot” and that the general fee funds are depleted. Theis also detailed that an equal percentage will be withdrawn from each special fees group’s reserve accounts and that special fee groups will receive “at least a one month notice” that the Senate is making withdrawals from their reserves.
  • Olivia Bryant ’15, president of the Stanford branch of Seneca International, a woman volunteer student organization (WVSO), defended her retroactive funding request in front of the Senate, asking that she and a Stanford professor be reimbursed for $1,000 and $2,500 respectively. The money was used on a micro-finance event organized by the WVSO. Appropriations Chair Jackson Beard ’17 felt strongly that the request was not the “Senate’s issue,” but rather something for the Women’s Coalition, a special fees group that supports WVSOs on campus. “The unwillingness of the Women’s Coalition to fulfill their duties as an umbrella organization is separate from our duty to fund student groups. Because they are not willing to reimburse you and the professor that contributed, it has nothing to do with our decision as a senate. At the end of the day what they want to do with their money has nothing to do with us… This is not a request that we need to be revisiting for the third or fourth time.” Seneca’s request for funding was approved by the Appropriations Committee last year but did not receive Senate approval. After a lengthy discussion about possibly setting a precedence for retroactive funding or leaving a student $1,000 “out-of-pocket,” the Senate voted and denied Seneca’s funding request.
  • In his executive report, ASSU Vice President Logan Richards ’15 announced a mental health town hall this Thursday from 7 to 8 p.m. at a location that is to be announced and “[gave] a nod” to all of the senators who hosted the ASSU Senate’s town hall discussion about funding student groups.
  • Financial Manager Assistants Justine and Olivia Moore ’16 reported that the myGroups website is receiving a “facelift” to make it easier to use for students and student groups. Additionally, they announced plans for a press release that will provide numbers for student group’s discretionary line items, how much money is in graduate and undergraduate general fees and other financial figures regarding student group funding.
  • Constitutional Council case Finley v. Undergraduate Senate was heard October 22 at 9 p.m. The Parliamentarian made good on his threat to sue the Senate after the Senate passed a bill allowing ex-officio members of the senate to vote in committee meetings. Senate Chair Ben Holston described the case as a “throwdown of epic proportions between Senate titans.” The case was heard by the ASSU Constitutional Council, chaired by Geo Saba ’15.
  • The Senate approved a bill to appropriate $6,000 from the Traditions Fund to fund Mausoleum, organized by the Class of 2017 this year. The Traditions Fund is a $13,000 fund.
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    Oct. 14 ASSU Senate Recap https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/15/oct-14-assu-senate-recap/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/15/oct-14-assu-senate-recap/#respond Thu, 16 Oct 2014 06:38:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1089844 ASSU Financial Manager Frederik Groce ’14 reported that there has been an increase in the number of students requesting of waivers to opt-out of student activities fees, with 8.4 percent of undergraduates opting out compared to the 6.2 percent who opted out last year. Groce attributed this increase to the growing awareness of this option on campus.

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  • ASSU Financial Manager Frederik Groce ’14 reported that there has been an increase in the number of students requesting waivers to opt-out of student activities fees, with 8.4 percent of undergraduates opting out compared to the 6.2 percent who opted out last year. Groce attributed this increase to the growing awareness of this option on campus.

    (VICTOR XU/The Stanford Daily)
    (VICTOR XU/The Stanford Daily)
    • Advocacy Committee Chair Rachel Samuels ’17 announced several initiatives that her committee has been working on this quarter. These initiatives included creating a survey about keeping dining halls open during Spring Break and establishing a student space for First-Generation, Low-Income Partnership (FLIP).
    • The majority of the Senate meeting was devoted to discussing the UGS-A2014-11 Bill to Assign Reserve Accounts to Student Groups, which would appropriate $150,000 from special fee reserves to fund general fees groups. General fees groups can request up to $6,000 per year (or $7,000 per year if the group is community-service oriented) from the ASSU senate. Special fees groups are groups whose budget exceeds $6,000 per year – with the exception of service groups requesting up to $7,000 from the ASSU – and apply for funding via vote of the student body. The bill was authored by Senate Treasurer Eric Theis ’16 and co-sponsored by Parliamentarian John-Lancaster Finley ’16. “For a lot of people this sounds like something that the ASSU tried to do a couple of months ago,” Finley said, referring to the SAFE Reform bill that failed to pass last year. “We are at a point right now in this fiscal year where either we do this or seriously cut the budget.” The bill allows the Financial Manager to take an equal percentage from all special fees reserve accounts and pool them into a reserve. The Senate could then allocate the funds to general fees student groups. Groce expressed his disapproval of the bill, calling it a “band-aid” and “unconstitutional.” Discussion about this bill will continue at the next Senate meeting on Tuesday.

      The Senate is set to propose new guidelines for the buffer fund by the end of the year. (RAGHAV MEHROTRA/The Stanford Daily)
      The Senate is set to propose new guidelines for the buffer fund by the end of the year.
      (RAGHAV MEHROTRA/The Stanford Daily)
    • The Resolution on General Fees Funding for Housed and Greek Organizations was discussed last night, continuing the debate about the ASSU approach to funding Greek and housed events.The resolution states, “The 16th Undergraduate Senate will not fund Greek or Housed organizations with the following exceptions: Philanthropy events, which will be funded on a case by case basis considering both the amount of money expected to be raised and the number of students attending the event and community service events involving direct participation by organization members.” This resolution was, too, met with disapproval by Greek-affiliated students in attendance who implored the Senate to meet with Greek organizations, including the African-American Fraternal and Sororal Association and Multicultural Greek Council, to better understand the financial situation.

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    ASSU Senate awards Theta Breakers funding after further discussion https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/13/assu-senate-awards-theta-breakers-funding-after-further-discussion/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/13/assu-senate-awards-theta-breakers-funding-after-further-discussion/#respond Tue, 14 Oct 2014 05:59:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1089644 The ASSU Senate voted last Tuesday to reconsider a funding request by Kappa Alpha Theta (Theta) for Theta Breakers, giving the sorority two days' notice to prepare their defense.

    Theta Breakers is Theta’s annual 5k and 10k walk/run, which raises money for Child Advocates of Silicon Valley. On Sept. 30, the Senate approved Theta’s funding for $5,566.74 after inquiring about the nature of the philanthropy event, its fundraising efforts and its Stanford-affiliated attendance. However, the Appropriations Committee, chaired by Jackson Beard ’17, felt that the discussion during the Senate meeting was not “sufficient,” and requested the vote for reconsideration at the Oct. 7 meeting.

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    2012 Theta Breakers
    (Courtesy of Kappa Alpha Theta)

    The ASSU Senate voted last Tuesday to reconsider a funding request by Kappa Alpha Theta (Theta) for Theta Breakers, giving the sorority two days’ notice to prepare their defense.

    Theta Breakers is Theta’s annual 5k and 10k walk/run, which raises money for Child Advocates of Silicon Valley. On Sept. 30, the Senate approved Theta’s funding for $5,566.74 after inquiring about the nature of the philanthropy event, its fundraising efforts and its Stanford-affiliated attendance. However, the Appropriations Committee, chaired by Jackson Beard ’17, felt that the discussion during the Senate meeting was not “sufficient,” and requested the vote for reconsideration at the Oct. 7 meeting.

    More than 600 of Stanford’s Voluntary Student Organizations (VSOs) can apply for a share of the $351,116.70 of general fees funding this year. Special fees funding, voted on by the student body in spring elections, provides more than $2.1 million to approximately 60 VSOs.

    According to Senate Chair Ben Holston ’15, $1.1 million in general fees was applied for by VSOs — far more than the Senate can approve.

    The discussion

    After Beard related the Appropriations Committee’s concern about funding IFS/ISC events, the conversation opened to the public.

    Kimberly Bacon ’15, current Executive Vice President of ISC and former ASSU Senator and Appropriations Committee member, was the first to express her concerns about the vote reconsideration and Beard’s focus on IFC/ISC organizations as opposed to Greek organizations as a whole.

    “I do think there should be changes for these policies and to the funding system hopefully one day but what I don’t think is fair is going back on a vote,” she added, appealing to the Senate to consider the impact on the “integrity of [their] vote and to the integrity of the Senate body by changing [their] vote.”

    In addition to discussion on proportionality of funding allocation to student organizations, there was further discussion about which types of events the ASSU should fund and which funding requests they will put on the chopping block.

    “What I was mostly worried about is that we were setting a precedent that we would fund every philanthropy event that came in because we didn’t really have a good discussion on what kind of criteria we would like to use to do philanthropy events,” Holston said. He went on to refer to his proposed resolution entitled “Resolution on General Fees Funding for IFC/ISC Organizations.”

    The resolution states: “The controversial nature of IFC/ISC funding coupled with the burden on the Program & Community Service Fund prompts the Senate to set specific guidelines on this type of funding for this fiscal year.”

    The resolution calls for the Senate to consider funding philanthropy events, parties and concerts “by IFC/ISC on a case by case basis using specific benchmarks.” What those “specific benchmarks” will be have not been determined yet.

    As for whether or not Theta’s funding should be held up by this discussion and until the establishment of benchmarks, the majority of those who voiced their concern to the Senate felt that Theta should be made the exception, not the precedent.

    “I think that it’s fair that after this vote, to say to the Greek and non-Greek members of the room that that is merely our previous vote but the larger conversation about future intentions and precedence setting would be the next vote,” said an ISC-member in attendance at the Senate meeting, in regards to making Theta the exception and voting again at the next meeting about the larger group.

    However, Holston and Senator Victoria Kalumbi expressed some reservations on making Theta the exception to the not-yet-established rule.

    “I think it would be unfair to make the decision on Theta without having a better understanding of how we want to approach philanthropy,” Holston said.

    “How will other sororities and fraternities feel if they can’t get the same level of funding $5,500 because if we do pass this bill, I don’t see [that] happening again,” Kalumbi posed to the other Greek members of the audience. “Are you going to be okay if other events aren’t going to be funded the same way?”

    “IFC/ISC” vs. “Greek”

    At one point, Bacon directed her attention to the Senate, asking them to explain why the current debate was being framed as an IFC/ISC item rather than as a Greek item.

    In response to her question both Beard and Holston quoted figures to support their qualification of IFC/ISC and their initial exclusion of the African-American Fraternal and Sororal Association (AAFSA) and the Multicultural Greek Council (MGC) from the debate.

    “Beard mentioned that we spend $86,000 just on IFC/ISC organizations last year alone and if we do that again this year that would be 25 percent of all general fees funding,” Holston said, “And my personal opinion on that is that that’s too high. That’s not a number we believe is sustainable.”

    According to Douglas Calhoun, Program Associate of Fraternity and Sorority Life at Stanford, “Roughly 20 percent of the undergraduate student population is Greek. IFC-ISC make up 87 percent of Stanford’s Greek population,whereas AAFSA and MGC consist of only three percent and 10 percent of the community respectively. This means that last year 25 percent of general fees went to a particular Greek community that makes up only 17.4 percent of the student population.”

    After hearing from several ISC members and members of Kappa Alpha Theta, the Senate re-voted and unanimously passed Theta’s funding request.

    Discussions post-Senate meeting

    Senator Eric Theis ’16 broached the concept of giving the ASSU access to the financial books of sororities, fraternities and other organizations with alternative budgets. With a broader perspective of each organization’s budget, Theis believes the ASSU would be able to assess the organization’s allocation of money from other sources and would thus be in a better position to award or reject additional funding.

    Although the current debate surrounding funding criteria is limited to IFC/ISC affiliated groups, members of the Senate hope to expand the issue to cover the entire Greek community including AAFSA and MGC, and ultimately to other student groups as the year progresses.

    “We have these huge [financial] constraints,” Beard said. “The fact of the matter is just mathematically, it’s unsustainable. There’s just not enough money for too many requests. We’re trying to make as many people happy as possible with just not enough money.”

    Tuesday, Oct. 14, at 7 p.m., the Senate will continue this debate with the hopes of establishing a criteria for allocating funds to events and what benchmarks the ASSU will require for philanthropy events, parties, concerts and for those events that fall in between.

    Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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    Oct. 7 ASSU Senate Recap https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/08/oct-7-assu-senate-recap/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/08/oct-7-assu-senate-recap/#comments Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:54:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1089302 As part of The Daily's ASSU coverage, we will be posting highlights from each week’s Senate meeting.

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    As part of The Daily’s ASSU coverage, we will be posting highlights from each week’s Senate meeting.

    • In his ASSU Executives update, Vice President Logan Richard ’15 reported that the Social Impact Recruitment and Networking Fair was well attended and the executives are looking forward to more opportunities in partnership with the Haas Center. “We had 278 students registered and 60 people in attendance representing 50 social impact organizations,” said postgraduate public service assistant director at the Haas Center for Public Service Leslie Garvin. “It was hugely successful – standing room only!”
    • ASSU Senate Chair Ben Holston ’15 announced that he is going abroad this winter quarter. He will announce a proxy to serve in his place during his absence who must be “approved by a majority vote of the Senate.” The proxy will not hold the position as Senate Chair. Victoria Kalumbi ’15 will also be going abroad next quarter, but as the current by-laws stand, she is prohibited from doing so. According to ASSU by-laws, first-year senators can only go abroad during the spring quarter. A bill will be proposed to amend this by-law.
    • Communications Committee Chair Luka Fatuesi ’17 announced that applications for the Senate Associates Program are due this Friday. Students from all class years are encouraged to apply. The application to apply can be found at tinyurl.com/senateassociate.
    • Student Life Committee Chair Anthony Ghosn ’16 announced that his committee is exploring the possibility of surveying the student body via email to ask them questions centering around sexual assault. He also reported that his committee is working to expand financial aid services for international students.
    • Senate Treasurer Eric Theis ’16 warned the Senate that current rate of allocating funds will cause them to exceed their soft cap $90,000 by week six. “We need to dramatically slow down the rate that we are spending,” Theis said. Parliamentarian John-Lancaster Finley ’15 reassured the Senate that each quarter is usually “front-loaded and back-loaded” with funding requests.
    • The majority of the Senate meeting was devoted to the reconsideration of Kappa Alpha Theta’s funding request, which had been voted on and approved by the Senate last week. Jackson Beard ’17, Appropriations Committee Chair, who had voted in favor of the request at the appropriations’ initial vote, moved to reconsider that vote. The motion passed 4-3, sending the request to Senate for a re-vote and giving Kappa Alpha Theta two days notice to prepare a defense of its funding request. “We felt that the discussion that happened last week wasn’t sufficient,” Beard said. “We wanted to expand the issue to a broader Greek life. I don’t think anyone on appropriations intended for Theta to have their funding revoked. We just wanted the Greek community to be aware that this is a discussion we are having.” After much debate and input from Greek student members, the Senate voted unanimously to approve Theta’s funding for its philanthropy event Theta Breakers. Discussion about developing a set of criteria or guidelines for allocating funds to Greek organizations will continue next Tuesday at the Senate’s next meeting.

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    Sept. 30 ASSU Senate Recap https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/01/assu-senate-recap-930/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/01/assu-senate-recap-930/#respond Thu, 02 Oct 2014 05:10:26 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088745 As part of the Daily's coverage of the ASSU, we will be posting highlights from the week's Senate meeting.

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    As part of coverage of the ASSU, The Daily will be posting highlights from the week’s Senate meeting.

    • ASSU executive vice president Logan Richard ’15 began his executive report with a review of the sexual assault task force town hall, saying that the Execs “found [themselves] at odds with being able to create a safe space” and that the Execs will no longer hold town halls of that structure. Richard also announced that the executive cabinet is going through training around sexual assault with Angela Exson from the Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse (SARA) office. He also announced a new initiative called “Middle Med.” “The idea around Middle Med is to provide resources for mental health and well-being in the time (at night and in the place [dorms] where students will be most likely to access them,” said ASSU president Elizabeth Woodson. On a note related to the campus-wide discourse about sexual assault, the Middle Med staff would not be a confidential resource and therefore would be required to report sexual crimes to the Title IX Office.
    • The Senate passed a bill authored by Senate treasurer Eric Theis that prohibits the Senate from allocating funds from the Programming and Community Service Fund to cover an expenditure that has already occurred. The bill will come into effect Oct. 23.
    • Finally, the Senate unanimously passed a bill to “implement a soft cap allocation scheme for general fee funding.” The bill was authored by Jackson Beard, chair of appropriations. The bill places a soft cap for ASSU funding allocation per quarter for the 2014-2015 year. The caps, which are percentages of the general fee, are 25.5 percent, 36.0 percent and 38.5 percent for fall, winter and spring quarters, respectively. A 25.5 percent soft cap translates as a $90,000 soft limit for allocating funds. The soft cap bill is in response to the last year’s financial mishap in which the general fee funds were depleted early into spring quarter.

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    Jump Rope Club gets off the ground https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/29/jump-rope-club-gets-off-the-groundmonday8pm/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/29/jump-rope-club-gets-off-the-groundmonday8pm/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2014 04:03:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088573 For the members of Stanford Jump Rope, jumping rope is not about skipping their feet to the beat of a schoolyard rhyme. Jumping rope is their art, their sport.

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    Steward Isaacs ’17 foreground, and  Josh Siegel ’14 helped found the Jump Rope Club. (ERIC THONG/Stanford Daily)
    Steward Isaacs ’17 foreground, and Josh Siegel ’14 helped found the Jump Rope Club. (ERIC THONG/Stanford Daily)

    For the members of Stanford Jump Rope, jumping rope is not about skipping their feet to the beat of a schoolyard rhyme. Jumping rope is their art, their sport.

    Stanford Jump Rope is one of the newer student groups on campus, offering an unconventional take on student performance groups. The group choreographs and performs shows centered entirely around jumping rope.

    Their first performance as a group was last year at Dance Marathon and since then, the group has had steady requests for performances, showcasing their group at last year’s Admit Week, a freshman dorm and a talent show.

    Although Stanford Jump Rope was founded just last year, the idea for forming a student jump rope club had previously been lingering in the minds of Agatha Bacelar ’14 and Josh Siegel ’14.

    “Agatha and Josh met each other during admit weekend freshman year and realized that they both like jump rope, but it didn’t take off from there,” said Stanford Jump Rope President Stewart Isaacs ’17. “A couple years later, Justin came to campus, then last year I came.”

    With the four students on campus bonded by a mutual passion for jump rope, the idea for starting the club became more tangible and the students embarked on the process of forming a jump rope voluntary student organization (VSO).

    “Josh, Agatha and I would meet and throw around the idea of starting the club but we didn’t have the time. Then Stewart came along and got things rolling and pushed the paperwork through,” said Vice President Justin Meier ’16.

    Currently, the group has five members representing class years from 2014 to 2018, and each member has at least 10 years experience of competitive jump-roping. Some members started their career in elementary school.

    Meier picked up jump-roping after being turned on to the sport by his P.E. teacher.

    “It was in second grade and my elementary P.E. teacher was the jump rope team coach,” Meier said. “I would see the team all the time, so I joined a jump rope club and later tried out for the team.”

    Stanford Jump Rope’s members have similar stories but with slightly different settings. Bacelar originally began her competitive jump-roping career with the Miami Super Sonics after her family moved to Florida. Siegel jumped with his local club the Iowa Skippers, a performance team that performs shows for non-profits and during half-time shows at basketball games. The club’s president, Isaacs, began his career in the first grade–from there, he went on to compete in international competitions. The club’s newest member, Mason Rogers ’18, “got sucked into the sport” after seeing his 6-year-old sister join a jump rope team.

    Despite their humble beginnings during the younger years, most of the members have years of competitive experience with several regional, national and world titles among them, including speed jump-roping records.

    Given their competitive accolades and that the world of competitive jump rope is quite small, many of the groups members actually crossed paths before they ever stepped on the Farm.

    “We had been competing against each other for 10 year[s],” Rogers said. “In jump rope, it’s everybody-knows-everybody kind of sport.”

    Despite their impressive competitive history, Stanford Jump Rope is currently a performance group with its efforts being focused on increasing membership to sustain the group rather than entering competitions just yet.

    “If people want to jump for fitness, for fun or for competition, we want to provide opportunities for students to jump rope,” Rogers said.

     

    A previous edition of this article spelled Justin Meier’s name as Justin Meir. We have corrected the spelling of his last name. The Daily regrets this error.

     

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    Understanding the ASSU’s Structure: The Daily’s brief guide to Stanford’s student government https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/24/understanding-the-assus-structure-the-dailys-brief-guide-to-stanfords-student-government/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/24/understanding-the-assus-structure-the-dailys-brief-guide-to-stanfords-student-government/#respond Thu, 25 Sep 2014 01:46:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088260 Many a Stanford student goes through their time on campus, perceiving the ASSU as some enigmatic, mystical organization doing important things and making important decisions on behalf of the student body.

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    Many Stanford students go through their time on campus perceiving the ASSU as some enigmatic, mystical organization doing important things and making important decisions on behalf of the student body.

    What exactly those decisions and actions are remain a mystery to some students, particularly freshmen.

    As the first step in improving our coverage of the ASSU, The Daily decided to provide our readers with a clear understanding of this three-headed beast’s anatomy.

    The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) — which held its first student body election on Oct. 9, 1891 — includes all registered students, undergraduate and graduate. While the ASSU plays several roles on campus, it is most known to provide funding to hundreds of volunteer student organizations (VSO) and “[representing] the interests, needs and perspectives of the Stanford students at every level of decision making within the university.”

    In short, the ASSU is the banker and advocate for student communities and organizations. Students pay a student activities fee as part of their tuition, from which the ASSU derives much of their funds.

    The ASSU has three branches: the executive, the legislative and the enterprise component.

     

    The Executive

    The executive branch is headed by a student body elected president and vice president. Both positions can be filled by either an undergraduate or graduate student. The executives branch focuses on “the improvement of student life and welfare.” Typically, the executive has attempted to achieve this mission through the creation of programs and initiatives.

    The structure of the executive branch changes from year to year but the positions of the president and vice president remain constant. Each year, the president and vice president decide how to structure their cabinet. This year’s cabinet originally consisted of 20 members but the organization of the cabinet is currently in flux as the executive branch seeks to maximize efficiency.

    “We were on campus all summer to work on ASSU and to reevaluate our first strategy and to see where we had made decisions that would not have lead to the most effective outcome,” said ASSU President Elizabeth Woodson ’15. “We consolidated our 20 issue areas down to five, which is much more manageable.”

    The executive branch has outlined five focus areas for the year: sexual assault, mental health and wellbeing, impact, imperatives and community. The executive branch has made the most headway on addressing sexual assault.

    The executive has taken several steps, including co-creating the NSO program “Facing Reality: Creating a Culture of Consent and Respect” and co-creating a resource guide with the offices of Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse Education and Response (SARA) and Title IX.

    Much of the work to address sexual assault will come from the cabinet.

    “We have a cabinet that leads on different areas and the [cabinet departments] are in turn leading teams of students that are making the work happen,” Woodson said. “So it is three-tiered.”

     

    The Legislative

    The legislative branch of the ASSU has two parts: the Undergraduate Senate, representing undergraduates, and the Graduate Student Council (GSC), representing graduate students.

    The groups “facilitate the operation of student groups and manage the funding process for almost any event on campus.”

    Unlike the executive branch, the structure of both the Undergraduate Senate and the GSC is outlined in the ASSU bylaws. Each body consists of 15 student body elected senators including one senate chair.

    Each of the senators from the Undergraduate Senate serves on one of six committees: Advocacy Committee, Academic Affairs Committee, Appropriations Committee, Student Life Committee, Administration and Rules Committee, and the Communications Committee. The GSC has three: Funding, Programming and Advocacy.

    The main purpose of the ASSU Senate as described by Undergraduate Senate Chair Ben Holston ’15 is to provide funding to student organizations.

    “We have the ability to collect fees from students independently from the University. That is the biggest thing,” Holston said. “That we as the student body are responsible for our student groups, not the University.”

    The other main responsibility of the ASSU Senate is outlining policies relating to the ASSU’s budget, finances, investments, business and operations. In addition to the ASSU execs, the Senate acts as a representative of its student constituency in its dealings and negotiations with the University.

     

    The Enterprise Component

    The enterprise component is the third and least well known part of the ASSU and is led by the financial manager. The financial manager, a full-time job, is usually a recent Stanford graduate.

    The financial manager wears many hats within the ASSU, including overseeing the ASSU’s spending and handling of the funds.

    “The role of the financial manager of the ASSU is to govern and make sure money is being spent wisely by all of the branches,” said Frederik Groce ’14, this year’s financial manager.

    Another responsibility of the financial manager comes with a completely different title: CEO of Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE).

    As CEO of SSE, the financial manager serves as a “controller of the Student’s Organizations Fund,” the account in which ASSU and student organization funds are deposited into accounts managed by Capital Group, a banking enterprise of SSE. Using this account, the financial manager manages and invests the money in several of the SSE’s other enterprises.

    These enterprises include advertising (selling ad space in SSE publications such as the Unofficial Stanford Guide), managing the student store (located in Tresidder and not to be confused with the Bookstore) which employs only students and financial investments. These are handled by a committee within the Stanford Management Company that also handles the investments of the University’s endowment and financial assets.

    “There is an entrepreneurial spirit at Stanford, and the ASSU really embodies that,” Groce said.

    Although the SSE is described as part of the ASSU on the Association’s website, the SSE is slightly independent from the ASSU.

    The position of the financial manager was created in the early 1960’s, which allowed the ASSU to separate its financial accounts from those of the University. Since then the ASSU has made several steps toward financial independence, such as its decision not to receive funding from the university in 1995 and the establishment of the SSE in 1996 to “ensure the long-term financial viability an independence of the Association.”

    Overall the SSE manages $17 million, of which $8 million is student group money.

     

    Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘dot’ stanford.edu.

     

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    Finnegan, the Rinconada family cat, remembered https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/28/finnegan-the-rinconada-family-cat-remembered/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/28/finnegan-the-rinconada-family-cat-remembered/#respond Wed, 28 May 2014 08:59:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1086091 Some brief anecdotes from students whose Stanford experience has been impacted by Finnegan, the recently deceased Rinconada family cat:

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    Some brief anecdotes from students whose Stanford experience has been impacted by Finnegan, the recently deceased Rinconada family cat:

    Finnegan, the Rinconada family cat, died last Thursday morning due to trauma after a car accident. The cat was a well-known wanderer on campus. (SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily)
    Finnegan, the Rinconada family cat, died last Thursday morning due to trauma after a car accident. The cat was a well-known wanderer on campus. (SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily)

    “I met him one cold evening when he wouldn’t stop meowing outside my door, [wanting] to be let in. I figured he was lost and someone must be missing him … He made himself right at home by immediately racing upstairs and burrowing into the comforter on my bed. He was sweet … His contented purring formed the [background music] to my paper-writing and he made me realize that I missed having a loving pet waiting at home at the end of a long, hard day.” — Kiah Thorn ‘12 M.A ‘13

    “I was walking home late at night down Mayfield, feeling pretty crappy after a long day and expecting a longer night, and [Finn] was just sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, almost as if he were waiting for someone — and [he] just got up and started walking with me! At this point I thought maybe he was lost, even though cats don’t really get lost. So now I followed him, to make sure he’d be alright. And he would stop and let me pet him, then start again. And then stop and start. Until finally I realized we were all the way in Wilbur! This cat done brought me home.” — Dilia Olivo ‘15

    “Once, my friend and I were walking by the basketball court next to Kimball, and Finn approached us with something in his mouth. When my friend and I got closer, it turned out to be a rabbit. Finn dropped the rabbit at our feet, took a step back and sat down. He was looking at us, apparently very proud of himself. Perhaps this was his gift to us Kimballers to win back our love.” — Tae Shin Lee ‘15

    “I worked at Wilbur Front Desk this past summer and Finnegan used to stop in to say hello all the time, meowing outside the doors until we let him in. Some days, usually in the morning, he’d come in and sit on a swivel chair behind the desk for a couple hours at a time. We used to pretend he was our boss and would ask him what he thought we should do when we had a problem.” — Tess Dufrechou ‘16

     

    Have more memories of Finnegan to share? Feel free to email Catherine Zaw at czaw13 ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu to add your story.

     

    Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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    Richard Sherman, Melanie Kannokada to judge student photo contest https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/20/richard-sherman-melanie-kannokada-to-judge-student-photo-contest/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/20/richard-sherman-melanie-kannokada-to-judge-student-photo-contest/#respond Tue, 20 May 2014 08:09:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085756 With just one year of development under its belt, the Stanford student-founded group PCTRS (Photography Competing to Raise Support) has reached new heights with its second annual photo contest.

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    With just one year of development under its belt, the Stanford student-founded group PCTRS (Photography Competing to Raise Support) has reached new heights with its second annual photo contest. To date, PCTRS has received 53 submissions from competitors and raised $1,650 for charities that benefit women’s health, with about two weeks remaining in the contest.

    The online competition encourages college students to submit a photo and collect donations for the image, with the top five fundraisers earning spots as finalists. Among the finalists, a winner will be chosen by two guest celebrity judges — Melanie Kannokada ’06 and Richard Sherman ’10 — and awarded two tickets to the Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards in Los Angeles. This year, the group’s proceeds will be donated to two local women’s clinics: Lyon-Martin Health Services and the Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic.

     

    Anna Nit-Asare ’14 (right), Farris Blount (background-middle) and Bana Hatzey (left) observe and direct  during the filming of this year’s photo shoot, which has already received 53 submissions and raised $1,650. (Courtesy of Milton Achelpohl)
    Anna Nti-Asare ’14 (right), Farris Blount (background-middle) and Bana Hatzey (left) observe and direct
    during the filming of this year’s promo video, which has already received 53 submissions and raised $1,650. (Courtesy of Milton Achelpohl)

    Inspiration and development

    The idea for the fashion-inspired fundraiser came to Anna Nit-Asare ’14 while she was talking to her roommate Quadeera Jackson ’14 about helping out with a photo shoot for a designer. Asare, a former participant in Stanford’s Charity Fashion Show — which disbanded after 2011 —

    was inspired by the mission of the event but saw flaws in its business model, believing that some aspects of the show were inefficient for the amount of effort needed to run a charity drive.

    “I wondered what would happen if you…took away the venue and flying in designers and all that kind of stuff, and still focused on the people who wanted to be models, designers, photographers,” Nti-Asare said.

    Nervous about the viability of her idea, Nti-Asare first approached two close friends who gave her the encouragement and the confidence to pitch the idea to Jan Barker-Alexander, director of the Black Community Services Center (BCSC).

    “I remember her saying this very clearly: This project has legs,” Nti-Asare said.

    Her confidence boosted, Nti-Asare worked with both Barker-Alexander and Diontrey Thompson, associate director of the BCSC, to figure out the logistics of making the promising idea a reality. Nti-Asare assembled a team of associate directors, Robert Mata ’14 and Farris Blount III ’14, and the three have worked toward establishing PCTRS since.

     

    Expanding beyond Stanford

    For Jackson, a runner-up in last year’s PCTRS competition and a competitor again this year, the contest has developed immensely.

    “I think one of the biggest indicators of the growth of the competition is the sheer number of competitors,” Jackson said.

    This year’s efforts have been successful compared to last year’s contest, which garnered 16 submissions and raised a grand total of $1,850. The PCTRS team attributed the improvement to the decision to open the competition to colleges across the nation as opposed to keeping it within the Stanford community.

    “I think the biggest thing for this year was that we decided to go national instead of just staying with California,” Mata said. “So with that, we branched out and asked other black student unions and other women’s organizations at various campuses that we’ve already established connections with and told them about this opportunity.”

    However, by opening the submission pool, the PCTRS team faced a daunting hurdle: marketing.

    “The biggest thing with starting something is making a name for yourself and how you can legitimize that,” Nti-Asare said. She added that Michael Pickrum ’92 M.S. ’94, BET’s executive vice-president, furthered the contest’s growth by donating to the cause.

    Although BET is not an official sponsor, Nti-Asare hopes to one day secure the entertainment network as one in the future.

     

    More than just the money

    Each annual photo contest is centered around a theme, and this year’s inspiration is Maya Angelou’s poem “Phenomenal Woman.”

    “All three of us wanted to focus on women of color,” Nti-Asare said. “It became very apparent that was really what we were very interested in, in terms of showcasing women who are not usually showcased in the fashion industry, and in the way that a picture can be so inclusive of somebody.”

    This theme is not only relevant to the two women’s clinics for which PCTRS is fundraising, but also to the contestants who expressed and shared their personal connection to the theme.

    “‘Phenomenal Woman’ is something that my mom read to me as a child, and it really does resonate with the type of person I would like to be and that I am striving to be,” said Kaela Farrise ’14, a contestant.

    For D’Shai Hendricks ’14, whose picture features his mother, it was his friendship with Nti-Asare and his personal interpretation of theme — not the contest’s prize — that motivated him to enter the competition.

    “Whether I win or not, my two goals are accomplished: to raise the money for Anna and for my mother to know how much I love her,” Hendricks said.

    Given PCTRS’s ambitious business goals, many have approached Nti-Asare with questions about what the future of the group looks like, considering that the PCTRS team consists entirely of graduating seniors.

    “The beauty of it is that we can do this work wherever we are; we never thought of it as a student organization,” Nti-Asare said. “We don’t plan on giving it to anybody or passing it on to a Stanford student after us, but carrying it with us.”

     

    Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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    Award-winning author Singleton talks race on campus https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/27/courageous-conversations-gains-mixed-reviews-in-its-discussion-on-race-at-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/27/courageous-conversations-gains-mixed-reviews-in-its-discussion-on-race-at-stanford/#respond Mon, 28 Apr 2014 06:04:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1084944 On Thursday evening at CEMEX Auditorium, Glenn Singleton M.A. ‘93, an award-winning author and former admissions director of the University of Pennsylvania, discussed race at Stanford during “Courageous Conversations,” an event hosted by the Stanford National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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    Courtesy of Melvin Boone
    Courtesy of Melvin Boone

    On Thursday evening at CEMEX Auditorium, Glenn Singleton M.A. ‘93, an award-winning author and former admissions director of the University of Pennsylvania, discussed race at Stanford during “Courageous Conversations,” an event hosted by the Stanford National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

    The event received close to 250 audience members, with those in attendance expressing mixed reactions to Singleton’s talk in general and to its presentation and focus in particular.

    Singleton framed his objective as bettering the Stanford community through his work on critical race theory.

    “What I am focused on right now and what I am feeling right now is a deep commitment to Stanford,” Singleton said.

    Singleton went on to discuss examples of what he considered courageous conversations about race, including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent against the case upholding Michigan’s ban on affirmative action. He noted that he himself had waited until his graduation day at the Graduate School of Education to bring up his issues with race.

    Following his anecdotes, Singleton presented several charts of data showing that African-American, Latino and Native American high school students consistently score lower than their white counterparts on the SAT, even when controlling for household income.

    Singleton subsequently introduced four agreements — staying engaging, speaking the truth, experiencing discomfort and expecting and accepting non-closure — that he described as potentially helping to stir conversations about race in the college setting.

    The last half of the talk featured audience participation, with attendees speaking about race issues they had personally faced or encountered in their community and how they would like to see them addressed. Some audience members publicly shared their personal experiences and ideas on how Stanford can better facilitate conversations about race.

    Overall, Singleton lauded the manner in which audience members engaged with one another.

    “I am so proud of the group,” he said. “I am excited by the examples from when the folks stood up.”

    Kyle Neil ‘17, one of the event organizers and a member of the Stanford NAACP, described Singleton’s guidance as applicable to conversations not just about race but about other sensitive topics on campus.

    “I thought that these tools that Glenn gave us would be very useful in furthering the conversation about race but more importantly would give us the tools to have difficult conversations,” Neil said. “When you look at the idea of ‘Courageous Conversations,’ it is not specifically attached to race.”

    However, not everyone left the event feeling that they had gained newfound courage or skillset to broach conversations about race.

    Jonathan Spratley ‘15 argued that the discussion was not focused enough.

    “I had high hopes for Glenn Singleton’s ‘Courageous Conversations,’ however I left fairly disappointed,” Spratley said. “From the beginning, Singleton’s excessive arrogance left me wondering what the event was about.”

    Jackie Fielder ‘16, an organizer for the event and a member of the NAACP, claimed that attendees will continue to have conversations about race long after the conclusion of the event, despite the generally mixed reaction.

    “I hope it will give at least the people who attended the impetus to start talking about race and not just race with self but race within their student groups, their dorms and their daily lives,” she said.

    During an interview with The Daily following his presentation, Singleton framed the purpose of the Thursday talk as moving the Stanford community towards implementing tools to have conversations about race on campus.

    “Today I really wanted the campus to move toward action,” Singleton said.

     

    Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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    Ujamaa’s Place at Stanford: Reflecting on 40 Years https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/21/ujamaas-place-at-stanford-reflecting-on-40-years/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/21/ujamaas-place-at-stanford-reflecting-on-40-years/#comments Fri, 21 Feb 2014 10:36:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082588 The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4,1968 had a ricocheting effect across the world and especially at Stanford. Although tragic, his death created an impetus for Stanford’s Black Student Union (BSU) to create change on campus.

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    The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4,1968 had a ricocheting effect across the world and especially at Stanford. Although tragic, his death created an impetus for Stanford’s Black Student Union (BSU) to create change on campus.

    At the convocation on campus for King’s death, BSU took the microphone from then-University Provost Richard Lyman and issued their 10 demands in response to King’s death. On that list of demands was the establishment of a black theme dorm.

    For Grace Carroll ’71, the event, appropriately dubbed “Take the Mic,” was an important change from the undergraduate culture she had been experiencing at Stanford.

    Ujamaa, 1988. (Courtesy of Stanford News Service)
    Ujamaa, 1988. (Courtesy of Stanford News Service)

    “What led up to ‘Take the Mic’ was the feeling of being isolated, that there weren’t many black faculty and staff members,” Carroll said. “It felt like the University sprinkled us around so that white students can have a black person in the dorm, but not understanding that African American students have specific needs that weren’t being addressed.”

    In 1970, the University established its first black themed dorm in Cedro, where the percentage of black residents mirrored the University’s percentage of black students. The all-freshman dorm had an immediate impact on the class of 1974, the first class to have the option of living in black theme housing.

    With William Dement, professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, as the residential fellow, the majority of the residents were assigned to the dorm as a result of their pre-med academic interests. Joy Simmons ’74 was a proud resident of Cedro and spoke fondly about her experience living in Stanford’s first black theme dorm.

    “No one knew what to expect. It was all so new,” Simmons said. “For me, coming from a black high school, it was comforting and supportive to be with other Stanford students who were pre-med…we could hang together, grow together. Now when I look back, I see how magical that was.”

    However, with a growing black student population, there was an increasing demand for a larger residential space for the black theme dorm. The following year, the dorm moved to Roble, where the percentage of black residents reached 30 percent.

    Charles Ogletree ’75 lived in Roble for both his freshman and sophomore years as a resident and a staff member, respectively. What he appreciated most about Roble was that it provided an enriching academic, cultural and social environment for all students.

    “There were evening classes taught on a voluntary basis by people like [Professor John Gibbs] St. Clair Drake,” Ogletree said. “There would be lectures from the Black Panther Party and students from the Nation of Islam. They would celebrate their religion, politics and culture in this dorm. Everything was open and available to every Stanford student and that was very important.”

    Space continued to be an issue, however, and in 1974, the dorm made its final move to Olivo-Magnolia in the southwest corner of Lagunita Court. In 1976, the name of the dorm was changed to Ujamaa, which means “economic cooperation” in Swahili.

    With a rich history serving as the dorm’s foundation, Ujamaa built and continues to build upon its legacy at Stanford.

    In 1988, Ujamaa provided the conversation and the initial stage upon which the University implemented its “Fundamental Standard Interpretation: Free Expression and Discriminatory Harassment” policy, more commonly known as the Grey Interpretation.

    The implementation of the policy was prompted by an incident in Ujamaa, involving the posting of a black-face caricature of Beethoven on an altered Stanford Symphony flyer. This incident and a similar one occurring several weeks later in which “niggers” was scrawled across a party flyer sparked an outcry within the dorm that eventually led to a University investigation and, ultimately, to the issuance of the Grey Interpretation. The interpretation claimed that the use of racial epithets or their equivalent is a violation of the Fundamental Standard, the code of conduct for Stanford students

    Even today, Ujamaa’s presence on campus is strongly felt.

    With a required 50 percent of the dorm’s residents being black, Ujamaa is the only residence, and arguably the only space on campus, where black represents the majority.

    Within that black majority, however, there is incredible diversity. Black residents come from across the world, represent several faiths and beliefs and are spread all along the spectrum of academic disciplines.

    With such diversity among its residents, discomfort is to be expected.

    “People are coming to this space never having lived in this kind of environment,” said Jan Barker-Alexander, current Residential Fellow of Ujamaa.

    “It is not just students that are not black that might not be comfortable,” Barker-Alexander said. “Even the black students are uncomfortable, because many of them have not been in this situation to engage in race, class, gender and sexuality in this space. I think that discomfort is good because it helps you grow. It pushes you to learn.”

    As a white resident who lived in Ujamaa for three years, Milton Achelpohl ’13 has heard the criticism that white people feel uncomfortable in Ujamaa. He thinks that the discomfort is important.

    “For me as a white student, I am learning about the world through a different narrative, a different lens, which is just as important because it builds upon and challenges what I have already understood about the world and myself,” Achelpohl said.

    Today, the dorm continues to host educational programs, presented by upperclassmen, every Thursday for its residents and for the broader Stanford community. With an average attendance of 65 students from both inside and outside Ujamaa, the programs engage the Stanford community in conversation about topics and issues impacting the African diaspora.

    The Ujamaa community hopes that this dialogue will help ease discomfort and open up discussion to the Stanford community.

    “Going to these programs and having talks with [Barker-Alexander], it quickly showed to me that Ujamaa is not just a place for African Americans,” said Bryant Johnson ’17, a resident of Ujamaa. “It is a place to spread to individuals the wonders of the African diaspora.”

    Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein@stanford.edu.

    Correction: In the 14th paragraph, the article incorrectly implied that there was more than one black-face Beethoven poster. The Daily regrets this error.

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    Religious spaces provide sanctuary for students https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/31/religious-spaces-provide-sanctuary-for-students/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/31/religious-spaces-provide-sanctuary-for-students/#respond Fri, 31 Jan 2014 09:18:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1081954 Wood paneling decorates the Center for Inter-Religious Community, Learning and Experiences (CIRCLE)’s sanctuary room, which is flooded with natural sunlight spilling into the room through the sanctuary’s wide windows. While the room has an air of spirituality that is both comforting and respectful, what truly marks the space as a home for inter-religious community, learning […]

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    Wood paneling decorates the Center for Inter-Religious Community, Learning and Experiences (CIRCLE)’s sanctuary room, which is flooded with natural sunlight spilling into the room through the sanctuary’s wide windows. While the room has an air of spirituality that is both comforting and respectful, what truly marks the space as a home for inter-religious community, learning and experiences, however, are the banners hanging on the Sanctuary’s six pillars representing six popular world religions: Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Baha’i and Judaism.

    SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily
    A meeting space inside the Center for Inter-Religious Community, Learning and Experiences (CIRCLE).
    (SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily)

    CIRCLE, which opened in 2007, serves as a home and a sanctuary for 35 Stanford Associated Religions (SAR) groups. Students can relax in the spacious lounge, study in CIRCLE’s religious library and even cook in CIRCLE’s kitchen, all of which are located on the third floor of Old Union. CIRCLE also offers gender-specific wudu stations, where both Muslim men and women can wash their feet prior to entering the sanctuary for prayer.

    “It is a place where people from many different traditions can literally rub elbows and move around in the same space with each other,” said Dean of Religious Life Scotty McLennan. He noted that CIRCLE hosts both multi-faith activities as well as activities specific to certain religious traditions.

    Nausheen Mahmood ‘14, vice president of the Islamic Society of Stanford University, said she uses the CIRCLE often, mostly for its private office where Muslim students can go in and pray throughout the day and the Sanctuary where they hold Friday prayer.

    “For many years, the CIRCLE has been the home base for the Muslim community,” Mahmood said.

    Although CIRCLE aims to provide an inter-religious community, the Markaz Resource Center opened on the second floor of the Nitery in September following advocacy by the Muslim student community. The Markaz consists of two rooms — a lounge space and a computer room — and marks the culmination of a 10-year project.

    Students behind the development of the Markaz, including Muslim Student Awareness Network president Hana Al-Henaid ‘14 and vice president Sayeh Fattahi ‘14, had written a series of proposals emphasizing the need for a designated space for Stanford’s Muslim student population to engage in discussion about issues surrounding their culture and identity.

    The distinction between CIRCLE and the Markaz Resource Center is highlighted by the word “resource” within the Markaz’s name. For the Stanford Muslim community, CIRCLE is used for strictly religious programs and events such as Qu’ran study groups and prayer, whereas the Markaz Resource Center offers community events that focus on the cultural, political and social aspects of Muslim life at Stanford.

    Al-Henaid and Fattahi said they were satisfied with the form that the Markaz has taken, and added that they were excited to see how the center will grow and develop over the years, particularly in terms of steps taken to address mental health.

    “It would be great to have somebody who could address the mental health concerns within the Stanford student population who identify as Muslim, culturally or religiously,” Al-Henaid said.

    McLennan asserted that having a variety of spaces for inter-religious community-building is necessary not only for enriching the undergraduate experience, but also for preparing Stanford students for the world beyond.

    “I think the way to do religious life at Stanford is to have people in a community, in relationship to each other, in cooperative spirit,” McLennan said. “A university like Stanford should make sure students leave inter-religiously literate and inter-religiously relational.”

     

    Contact Chelsey Sveinsson at svein ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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