Jackie O’Neil – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Sun, 13 Jun 2021 07:03:40 +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 Jackie O’Neil – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 O’Neil: Blink and you’ll miss it https://stanforddaily.com/2021/06/12/oneil-blink-and-youll-miss-it/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/06/12/oneil-blink-and-youll-miss-it/#respond Sun, 13 Jun 2021 01:28:06 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1183340 The lessons, the changes, the tiny everyday transformations, at The Daily and also at Stanford — they sneak up on you, writes Jackie O'Neil.

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There were 83 Oxford commas in my honors thesis. I know because I took them all out.

Anyone who has spent time in The Daily’s production rooms (the Panama Mall-adjacent original or the virtual variant) will tell you that our AP Style compliance vis-à-vis Oxford commas (read: we don’t use them) is as hotly contested a newsroom debate topic as they come. But our copy editors rule with an iron fist, and so out they come, every last one, every night. 

For several years this troubled me. The first time I stepped foot in the Daily building — rollout announcement in one hand, mimosa swiftly placed in the other by an anonymous upperclassman — I did so an Oxford comma loyalist. This was a principled devotion, reflected not only in my written work but also in social media bios and the like, where “Oxford comma enthusiast” took the third spot in a triad of self-descriptors, always partitioned by two commas plus a conjunction. 

My first editors painstakingly removed each one (in suggestion mode, despite not being mere suggestion at all) on my Google Doc article submissions. (It was an intensive task — by now you may have picked up on the fact that brevity and concision are not my strong suits, to the chagrin of every single person I’ve worked with in my four years at the paper.)

A year and a half ago, when I began the work that would become my thesis project, I littered it with Oxford commas. My inability to write sentences that don’t meander incessantly and my attachment to parallel structure conspired to make the paper something of an Oxford comma breeding ground. And with no copy editors or Daily higher-ups to check me, they endured the revision process.

And then The Daily’s newly-elected editor-in-chief Charlie Curnin, misguided as he was, asked me to run the show with him in Vol. 258. And suddenly The Daily’s zealous Oxford comma removal was under my purview. Night after night, for seven months, we reviewed and approved coverage of a truly mind-boggling year. We replaced words, reframed context, restructured narratives. We ended each day proud of our staff’s tireless drive to serve our community and their relentless pursuit of the truth. Along the way, we scrapped the commas.

By April, when it came time to submit the thesis to which I’d become so attached, sentences I’d agonized over and revised a dozen times suddenly felt clunky and disjointed. So I made a choice.

I won’t say I didn’t wince a bit as I found-and-replaced my way to an Oxford comma-free project. But it felt clean. Crisp. Neat. I could see where the powers that be were coming from. (Turns out the guys at the AP know a thing or two about clean writing.) 

I couldn’t tell you when or how it happened. Somewhere along the way — between drooling on myself at the kitchen table while the tech team debugged the magazine in the middle of the night, churning out p-sets while waiting for ever-past-deadline ASSU coverage, brainstorming terrible icebreakers and stealing Treehouse tortilla chips out of a greasy paper bag at production — at some point, The Daily seeped into the rest of my life. (And not just because I’ve lived with both of this year’s editors-in-chief.) This place, these people, this part of my life — they took hold, put down roots. And I didn’t notice until I was pulling commas out of 130 pages of political theory at two in the morning. 

That’s how it works. The lessons, the changes, the tiny everyday transformations, at The Daily and also at Stanford — they sneak up on you. You think you know where you’re headed in life until that one WAYS requirement changes your whole trajectory. You think your achievements define your worth until the best friends you’ve ever had show you what really matters. You think your sadness and angst and grief are yours alone to bear until the people you’d do anything for show up again and again to prove they’d do the same. Blink and it’s over: Somewhere along the way you became the person you never thought you’d be. Maybe that person has let go of the Oxford comma, and maybe (probably) the changes are far more profound. Maybe you’re still working through what they all mean, and maybe that process never ends.

***

Back in the fall of 2019, when I clawed my way into (marginal) relevance as The Daily’s lifestyle editor for the second time, I warned incoming frosh that their first year here would later play back like a “blur of undifferentiated chaos.” I pitched The Grind, and The Daily at large, as a place where we could make sense of it all, documenting and keeping scores and running analyses on our respective Stanford Experiences™ as they progressed. Nearly two years later, I stand by the “blur of chaos” assessment, but I want to use my goodbye column to amend my tenor. Your Stanford experience will be chaotic, messy, overwhelming in the best and worst ways. Let it.

Let yourself blink. Let yourself breathe and take in what’s in front of you without wondering how it fits into the bigger picture. Let things go undocumented, and know that the value that you take away from here won’t be something you can quantify or put into words or meta-analyze in a Grind article.

Let yourself be changed, and change others, and change this place, without keeping a running tally. 

You might fail — and bounce back. You might fall in love — and out of it. You might stumble upon opportunities you never knew existed and discover dreams you never knew you had. You might be surprised by what you learn about yourself.

And someday, after everything — the late nights and early mornings, the weekends you can barely remember and exams you’d prefer not to, the tears of relief and joy and anger and righteous indignation — if you’re really, really lucky, you might look back and realize that you miss it.

I already do.

Contact Jackie O’Neil at joneil ‘at’ stanforddaily.com.

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Muted campus hums as students settle in: Week 2 in photos https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/27/muted-campus-hums-as-students-settle-in-week-2-in-photos/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/27/muted-campus-hums-as-students-settle-in-week-2-in-photos/#respond Mon, 28 Sep 2020 05:51:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172932 In an environment where inviting another student into an elevator can be as much an act of rebellion as of kindness, students split on how to adapt.

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Quarters can go by so quickly that even when contorted into a college experience almost totally new, you feel like you’re in the swing of things barely two weeks in. Again classes convened over Zoom. Again students made the weekly journey to the alumni center for COVID-19 tests. Again sunlight burnished a campus almost overtaken by “STAY SAFE” signage.

In an environment where inviting another student into an elevator can be as much an act of rebellion as of kindness, students split on how to adapt. Many settle into choreographed new rhythms in earnest, rarely deviating from the trajectory from dorm to dining hall. Others let masks slip on occasion or tuck into pockets of students on grass fields at night.

Muted campus hums as students settle in: Week 2 in photos

Contact Charlie Curnin at ccurnin ‘at’ stanford.edu and Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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]]> https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/27/muted-campus-hums-as-students-settle-in-week-2-in-photos/feed/ 0 1172932 Students start classes on stilled, smokeless campus: Week 1 in photos https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/20/students-start-classes-on-stilled-smokeless-campus-week-1-in-photos/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/20/students-start-classes-on-stilled-smokeless-campus-week-1-in-photos/#respond Mon, 21 Sep 2020 06:02:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172650 What was missing, of course, was the students. The East Campus sector where residents are concentrated ticked up in liveliness as classes kicked off. But even Stanford hotspots like Meyer Green and White Plaza were largely deserted.

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It was the Stanford of brochures. The smoke lifted. Temperatures hovered in the 70s. Sunlight sharpened the edges of campus’s cast of Mission Revival buildings. 

What was missing, of course, was the students. The East Campus sector where residents are concentrated ticked up in liveliness as classes kicked off. But even Stanford hotspots like Meyer Green and White Plaza were largely deserted.

Faint trappings of a college campus remain, with masked students shuttling to dining halls, rare pockets of residents settling around picnic tables and bursts of laughter breaking out in the mostly soundless night.

Students start classes on stilled, smokeless campus: Week 1 in photos

Contact Charlie Curnin at ccurnin ‘at’ stanford.edu and Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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]]> https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/20/students-start-classes-on-stilled-smokeless-campus-week-1-in-photos/feed/ 0 1172650 Letter from the editors: Introducing Vol. 258 at The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/13/letter-from-the-editors-introducing-vol-258-at-the-stanford-daily/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/13/letter-from-the-editors-introducing-vol-258-at-the-stanford-daily/#respond Mon, 14 Sep 2020 06:51:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172189 This volume, many things are changing — not just in the world we cover, but within The Daily.

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We’re Charlie and Jackie, the editor-in-chief and executive editor of The Stanford Daily’s 258th volume. 

We’re humbled, honored and thrilled to carry on The Daily’s work of keeping our community informed and engaged, while providing opportunities for learning and growth to students. We’re lucky to have a fantastic staff of hundreds of students working on myriad projects meant to serve our audience.

This volume, many things are changing — not just in the world we cover, but within The Daily. A focus of our collective efforts is in making The Daily a more inclusive and accessible organization. In addition, with campus still largely shut down, we won’t return to printing a hard-copy newspaper until January, assuming the plan for frosh and sophomores to return to campus then holds. 

But even with our staff strewn about the world and facing the impacts of such a difficult era themselves, we’ll keep working to bring you thorough reporting, thoughtful commentary and much more. 

Along the way, we want to hear from you. Submit personal narratives here, op-eds to opinions ‘at’ stanforddaily.com or letters to the editor to eic ‘at’ stanforddaily.com. Or consider submitting a tip or joining our team

And here’s a bit more about us. Charlie is a junior from the suburbs of New York City studying computer science and linguistics, and passionate about journalism and technology. A member of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, he was one of two heads of The Daily’s news section last school year, and edited the section’s academics beat before that.

Jackie is a senior from Richmond, Virginia, studying political science and psychology with a particular interest in the social-psychological underpinnings of citizenship and political exclusion. She is the former editor of The Grind and has also enjoyed working in The Daily’s social media, satire and news sections.

We’re looking forward to being in touch with you all and we hope to hear from you.

Charlie Curnin, Editor-in-Chief, and Jackie O’Neil, Executive Editor

Contact Charlie Curnin at ccurnin ‘at’ stanford.edu and Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Students trickle back in to hollowed-out campus: Move-in in photos https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/13/students-trickle-back-in-to-hollowed-out-campus-move-in-in-photos/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/13/students-trickle-back-in-to-hollowed-out-campus-move-in-in-photos/#respond Mon, 14 Sep 2020 06:19:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172203 Under skies that shifted from gray to orange and back again, undergraduates acclimated to the transformed campus and settled into new rhythms — involving many hours spent in apartment-style new digs, with rare excursions to dining halls or the student testing facility.

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A sampling of undergraduates returned this week to a campus deadened by pandemic-related restrictions. With almost none of the traditional move-in day fanfare, arriving students — encouraged to pack light and not allowed outside help — moved themselves into the brand-new EVGR Building A. 

Social-distancing rules and the deflated on-campus population make for a bleak ambience. As if in place of students, signage has sprung up throughout campus. Big rectangular notices urge “STAY SAFE” and mark zone boundaries or forbid visitor parking. Smaller ones insist that members of only one household can use a bench or elevator. Chalk-scrawled notes guide students toward “HOME!”

Under skies that shifted from gray to orange and back again, undergraduates acclimated to the transformed campus and settled into new rhythms — involving many hours spent in apartment-style new digs, with rare excursions to dining halls or the student testing facility.

Students trickle back in to hollowed-out campus: Move-in in photos

Contact Charlie Curnin at ccurnin ‘at’ stanford.edu and Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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]]> https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/13/students-trickle-back-in-to-hollowed-out-campus-move-in-in-photos/feed/ 0 1172203 Letter from the editors: Promoting equity at The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/09/letter-from-the-editors-promoting-equity-at-the-stanford-daily/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/09/letter-from-the-editors-promoting-equity-at-the-stanford-daily/#respond Wed, 09 Sep 2020 17:37:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172054 The Daily has fallen short. But we love journalism because we believe in its power to share yet-unheard stories, and to hold the powerful to account. We are committed to realizing that mission. And we are committed to building an inclusive organization where all Stanford students can find a home.

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In the last few months, the disparate harms caused by the pandemic and police brutality have brought into focus the breadth, depth and depravity of racism in American institutions.

The Stanford Daily has participated in systems of racism in America. We have overlooked considerations of equity in our coverage and in our organization. We have failed to cover properly topics important to underrepresented communities at Stanford. We have failed to recruit and retain a diverse staff and support students from backgrounds historically excluded from journalism. 

We want to renew previous editors’ expression of solidarity with the Black community, reaffirm that Black lives matter and express our commitment to improving. After a series of conversations with Daily staff members over the last few months, our team is taking the following steps toward becoming a more equitable organization and publication. 

  • In our content, we’ll implement a focus on equity coverage, aiming to produce reporting and personal essays on marginalized communities on campus and the experiences of students with diverse identities. And to ensure ethical and conscientious reporting, we’ll emphasize considerations of equity and journalistic ethics in staff training.
  • To build a diverse staff and inclusive community, we’ll redouble our efforts to recruit new staff members thoughtfully and intentionally. To ensure recruits have a warm welcome into The Daily’s large team, we’ll organize new staff members into orientation groups, with older Daily staffers acting as mentors. And to track our progress in diversifying our staff, we’ll continue conducting demographics surveys, reporting key takeaways from the results. 
  • To help our staffers engage with identity-centered communities through journalism, we are fully covering the cost of membership for Daily staff members to join journalism affinity organizations.
  • To give back to our community and share our expertise widely and in a way as financially accessible as possible, we’ll host a series of free educational workshops open to the public. And to promote financial accessibility internally, in winter we’ll launch the pilot of a new scholarship program, planned by past Daily leadership, that compensates a small number of staff members who may face financial barriers to devoting large amounts of time to our organization.
  • Within The Daily, we’ll continue discussions about considerations of equity so we remain mindful of them throughout the volume. And beyond The Daily, we’ll work to strengthen relationships with campus stakeholders. 

We are lucky to be backed by an outstanding team of staff members, and we are grateful for their eager contributions to this plan’s formation and implementation.

The initiatives outlined here are in no way comprehensive. We will continue to evaluate, adjust and expand our efforts to make The Daily a home for all students and a resource for our entire community. 

The Daily has fallen short. But we love journalism because we believe in its power to share yet-unheard stories, and to hold the powerful to account. We are committed to realizing that mission. And we are committed to building an inclusive organization where all Stanford students can find a home. It is an imperative for us, one that will make us a stronger organization. And our community deserves the best we have to offer. 

Charlie Curnin, Editor-in-Chief, and Jackie O’Neil, Executive Editor

Contact Charlie Curnin at ccurnin ‘at’ stanford.edu and Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Amid protests of anti-Black racism, physically distant students organize virtually https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/05/physically-distant-students-organize/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/05/physically-distant-students-organize/#respond Fri, 05 Jun 2020 08:09:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1169048 While students, now scattered across the nation, take to the streets to protest anti-Black racism, student groups lacking an on-campus presence have moved organizing and programming efforts to the virtual realm.

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Students placed more than 1,000 calls to Minnesota public officials as part of activist groups’ push to demand prison abolition, defunding of police departments and an end to police violence amid ongoing brutality and anti-Black racism highlighted by the recent deaths of George Floyd and others.

While students, now scattered across the nation, take to the streets to protest anti-Black racism, student groups lacking an on-campus presence have moved organizing and programming efforts to the virtual realm. 

Floyd died on Monday after police officer Derek Chauvin of Minneapolis, Minnesota, pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes during an arrest, as Floyd was pinned down by two other officers and a third stood nearby. After Chauvin was taken into custody and charged with third-degree murder on Friday, Stanford Students for Workers’ Rights (SWR) launched a phone-banking program joining other efforts to pressure Minnesota House representatives and Minneapolis City Council members to arrest and charge the three other officers involved. On Wednesday, the three officers were charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin, whose charge was raised to second-degree murder that same day.

With those two initial demands satisfied, phone-bankers continue to ask that officials “cut the Minnesota Police Department’s budget, re-routing the funding to health care and other social services with a particular focus on assisting Black communities,” according to SWR’s call script. 

SWR’s prior activism has centered on the working conditions and compensation of Stanford’s service workers, such as pressuring the University to provide pay continuation to its subcontracted workers laid off due to COVID-19. 

SWR hopes its phone banking program will “mobilize members of the campus community who were already engaged in our campaigns for contracted staff to reflect more broadly on the various peoples most harmed by racial capitalism,” wrote SWR member Ethan Chua ’20 in a statement to The Daily.

Chua wrote that the group hopes to focus its phone banking efforts “more locally” on San Francisco and San Jose in the future, as well as to integrate its racial justice initiatives into its on-campus organizing.

“SWR hopes to radically re-envision Stanford through its movement work,” Chua wrote. “A big part of that work is foregrounding the centrality of Black, indigenous and migrant labor to Stanford as an institution, past and present.”

“Abolitionist practice is a continuous source of inspiration for us at SWR,” Chua continued. “Stanford, as it currently exists, is structurally incapable of honoring Black lives. SWR hopes to play a small part in the work to change that.”

Discussions of prison abolition recurred in this week’s virtual programming.

The Markaz announced that its “chai chat” would focus on the role of faith in reform toward abolition, with the event hosted in partnership with the pretrial justice organization Believers Bail Out.

The discussion, called “On the Road to Prison Abolition: Challenging the Bail System with Faith,” was planned before the killing of George Floyd and initially limited to Stanford affiliates. Its organizers announced on Monday that it would be open to the public “in light of recent events,” according to an email publicizing the change.

Markaz student leader Arman Kassam ’22, who has written for The Daily, said that making the event more broadly accessible reflected a desire to “support student activists and other interested community members in coming up with concrete ways that they can disestablish the police state, particularly through the framework of prison abolition.”

On Sunday, the teaching team for PSYCH 103: “Intergroup Communication” facilitated a solidarity teach-in and Q&A session for non-Black students. A publicity email described the meeting as an opportunity for non-Black students to learn “theory, skills and actions” crucial for “solidarity with frontline communities.” 

Eli Neal ’20, a PSYCH 103 teaching assistant involved in organizing the workshop, described the dual purposes of the event as “equipping non-Black students with resources to better understand and encourage people to work for abolition and the Movement for Black Lives,” as well as “being accountable to the needs of our Black student community in this moment and moving forward.”

The first half of the teach-in covered “white supremacy and abusive cycles of anti-Black violence, the stages of empire and genocide, our authoritarian political moment and abolition,” Neal said. In the latter half of the event, students learned and discussed strategies to implement the lessons in their own lives. 

The praxis-focused part of the event was designed in response to input from attendees of a Black student check-in meeting led by Mea Anderson ’21 and Celine Foster ’21, Neal said. This portion of the event, which dealt with the practical applications of theories of allyship, covered “moving from inactive to active allyship, multipartiality, bystander intervention, continuous unlearning, supporting frontlines, respecting Black mental health, emergency preparedness, wealth redistribution and community care.”

Anderson, Foster and Reagan Dunham ’20, leaders in the Xi Beta Chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., spearheaded an inter-sorority campaign called “Justice 4 Black Lives,” which raised more than $24,000 in three days.

“Members of the Xi Beta Chapter are dedicated to providing necessary service to the Stanford Black community and the Black community nationwide,” they wrote in a statement to The Daily.

“After spending days mourning the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and George Floyd, we decided to use our platform as Stanford students to mobilize our community in support for Black lives and racial justice,” they added.

In partnership with more than 60 teammates from all four of Stanford’s Greek councils, members of the Xi Beta chapter then raised $20,600, with matching, for 12 bail funds across the nation. In the second phase of the campaign, which began on Thursday, the team collects and matches funds for the Bay Area Community Law Foundation, The Bail Project, People’s Breakfast Oakland and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. 

The team hopes to leverage the financial resources of students in Greek life and their networks to support causes central to the mission of the Xi Beta chapter.

“We are working on mobilizing more Greek organizations to reach out to their own communities as well as their alumni and parent networks,” they wrote. 

To partner with the campaign, Greek organizations are required to implement educational programming focused on racial justice. For example, “Alpha Phi led a two-hour teach-in, Kappa [Kappa Gamma] and [Kappa Alpha] Theta are having a book club for the book “Just Mercy” by Marcus Stevenson, and more plans are to come,” the leaders of Justice 4 Black Lives wrote.

“It is our job to help [the women of Xi Beta] through this process and minimize the load that our Black sisters must bear while supporting their communities at this time,” wrote representatives of Stanford’s Kappa Alpha Theta and Delta Delta Delta chapters in a statement to The Daily. “We invite other non-Black, class-privileged people — Greek or not — to get involved with fundraising for Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Xi Beta Chapter’s efforts.” 

Separately from the Justice 4 Black Lives campaign, the Xi Beta chapter joined forces with Clara Spars ’21, who has written for The Daily and owns KITA Products, to sell “Silence Is Violence” stickers through Instagram, with proceeds benefiting We Love Lake Street. Sticker sales have netted more than $14,350 for the organization, Spars said.

As students collectively organize for policy and structural change across the nation, one student group has focused its energy on Stanford-specific demands in response to current events.

Who’s Teaching Us (WTU), a student organization dedicated to the advancement of ethnic studies and faculty and leadership diversity at Stanford, organized an email campaign to encourage professors to provide academic accommodations to students impacted by recent Black deaths.

WTU’s current organizing is an outgrowth of Black student labor invested in the organization’s mission for decades, according to WTU member Eva Reyes ’20. 

“The fight for Ethnic Studies at Stanford, and across the nation, has been led by Black students,” Reyes wrote in a statement to The Daily. 

Reyes points to the 1968 “Taking the Mic” protest, staged by members of Stanford’s Black Student Union, as catalyzing the campus movement to “boost Black student admissions, curriculum, hiring and broader representation at Stanford.” 

In response to the Black Student Union’s demands, the University administration pledged to double “the number of minority-group students enrolled at Stanford” and the “proportion of minority-group employment,” The Daily reported in 1968.

That “more than 50 years later we are still fighting for administrators and professors to support Black students is reprehensible,” Reyes wrote.

“Asking students, especially Black students, to continue as if it is simply ‘business as usual’ while many of them are in the streets, protesting for their lives, is tone-deaf, unjust and anti-Black,” she added.

In addition to publicizing email templates for asking faculty and administrators to support academic accommodations, WTU has compiled a spreadsheet tracking each respondent’s response to student outreach, level of support for WTU’s proposals and accommodations for their students.

Reyes said that WTU ultimately hopes that faculty and staff will enact accommodations throughout the final exam period and that department heads and deans will step in to mandate accommodations if necessary. 

“Words are doing nothing for the students who are grieving, on the streets, or experiencing police brutality right now and are still somehow expected to complete schoolwork,” reads a public WTU statement incorporated into a Daily opinions piece. “If Stanford claims to truly be a university that seeks change and progress, it is the time to prove it.”

Contacted for comment, the University referred The Daily to Provost Persis Drell’s comments at Monday’s town hall, where she said that the University is “encouraging its instructors to be as flexible as possible and extend empathy and understanding to students who are finding this moment difficult,” as well as to the University’s recent letter offering support to graduate students.

“The challenge each of you faces to carry on with your courses, research, and teaching responsibilities during this emotional and frightening time, in the midst of a pandemic, is daunting,” wrote Vice Provost for Graduate Education Stacey Bent and the chair of the Committee on Graduate Studies, Gary Shaw. They also thanked graduate students for “the care you are providing to others” through teaching assistantships, lab leadership and community center involvement.

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Police abolition ‘looks like Palo Alto,’ says professor Hakeem Jefferson at race, criminal justice panel https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/04/police-abolition-looks-like-palo-alto/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/04/police-abolition-looks-like-palo-alto/#respond Fri, 05 Jun 2020 06:11:03 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1169047 “Is the system too broken to fix?” political science professor Hakeem Jefferson asked nine leading scholars of race and criminal justice at a virtual webinar that drew more than 1,600 attendees on Thursday.

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“Is the system too broken to fix?” political science professor Hakeem Jefferson asked nine leading scholars of race and criminal justice at a virtual webinar that drew more than 1,600 attendees on Thursday.

Jenn Jackson, a political science professor at Syracuse University who described herself as an abolitionist “uninvested in reform,” gave a clear answer: “Yes.”

“The idea of reforming the police is almost like hustling backward,” Jackson said. The institution of police “is created on a foundation of anti-Blackness, racism, inequality and systemic structural differences.” 

“To me, we should not be thinking about ways to puzzle together” over reforms, she continued.

On Twitter after the panel, Jackson elaborated, “Divesting and investing is work that will have to be done iteratively, starting with removing funding for police. Specifically, rather than funding more police, taking those monies and investing them directly in life-sustaining processes for vulnerable communities.”

Several panelists endorsed the two-pronged strategy of smaller, short-term reforms with an eye toward the ultimate goal of abolishing the police and dismantling the American carceral system.

“Before we get [to abolition],” key actors can “meaningfully intervene in policing,” said Vesla Weaver, a professor of political science and sociology at Johns Hopkins. “The first place we need to intervene is to radically scale back police contact with American youth,” Weaver contended. “Why aren’t we making policing of young children an absolute last resort?”

Megan Ming Francis, a political science professor at the University of Washington, expressed less optimism about the potential for meaningful reform, but agreed that incremental reform to policing in America must include the “end goals” of abolition and “the end of the system.” 

“If this system has never worked for Black people, why is there any point in reforming it?” Francis asked, pointing to the “utter failure of reform” to fundamentally change a system that “has never worked for Black people,” nor “treated Black people as full citizens.”

Allison Harris, a political science professor at Yale University, concurred. “The police system in the United States is working exactly the way it’s supposed to work, the way it’s always worked,” she said. 

Until — if ever — abolition is achieved, “We focus on the end of cash bail [and] expanding mental health; we disarm police; we stop funding any more jails and prisons,” Francis said.

In contrast, Jonathan Mummolo, Princeton University professor of politics and public affairs, expressed concern about abolitionist sentiment discouraging incremental, “near-term changes [that] can help people.” 

“I try very hard to understand the inclination to toss the system and start over,” said Mummolo, whose research involves the efficacy of police reform.

Ayobami Laniyonu, a professor of criminology and socio-legal studies at the University of Toronto, expressed the opposite concern: that pursuing reform might harm the longer-term movement for abolition. 

“I’m personally increasingly concerned about the ways in which the language of reform legitimizes a system that we know will adapt in the tools that it uses to harm, exploit and ultimately kill people of color, poor people, homeless people, people with mental illnesses,” Laniyonu said.

Mummolo and Laniyonu both noted variability in police departments’ receptivity to reform and intervention.

“There is a lot of variation in the attitudes among police administrators toward adopting, say, different practices with an eye toward reducing inequity,” Mummolo said. 

While Laniyonu pointed to what he called “spectacular failure” in some departments with which he worked while performing field research, he also noted that “the best part of that experience was learning and meeting police officers and police chiefs who seemed to have more passion for reform than I did.”

Laniyonu called his experience working alongside reform-minded police “encouraging” but concluded that he does not consider it a “good use of my time” to work on “piecemeal reform that may not be effective in the long-term, given all we know about how efficiently, effectively and rapidly these agencies will adapt to deploy new techniques of violence, coercion and harm.”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of political science Ariel White identified herself as white before saying, “in a lot of ways, I personally already live in a world with local abolition of a certain kind.”

“When I walk out the door, we have very low rates of crime [and] incarceration, and we have minimal police presence,” White said. “And no one comes to my neighborhood and says … ‘How will you be safe without the police?’” she continued, referencing what Jackson had previously quoted as a popular concern about abolition. 

“We already know what at least partial abolition looks like,” White said. “It’s my lived experience and that of millions of Americans in communities not marginalized and criminalized on the basis of race and class.”

Jefferson added, “When people ask what abolition looks like — it looks like Palo Alto!”

“There are a lot of people who live in places where the police presence is more minimal than it is in places like the ones where I grew up,” he continued.

One method of reducing police presence, suggested University of Denver political science professor Laurel Eckhouse, is to separate and reassign to other authorities various problems currently delegated to the police, such as “the problems of people who don’t have housing … mental health issues … [and] even things like traffic.”

“If you start thinking about those as their own problems,” Eckhouse said, “I don’t think anyone would start from first principles and say what we should do is send in armed agents of the state.” 

“We can have all kinds of changes to these systems that actually address problems without exposing us to the risk of coercion and violence and force, and without exposing race/class-subjugated communities to the disproportionate power of those agencies,” Eckhouse said.

University of Michigan political science professor Christian Davenport suggested two frameworks for considering reform and the future of police: legacy and coercive power.

“We think, ‘Well, let’s change the purpose of the institution, let’s change the practices of the institution, let’s change the membership of the institution, let’s change the spaces within which the institution comes into contact with the population,’” Davenport said. “What about the legacy of the institution?”

“As we talk about reform of the institution … legacies need to be included in that discussion,” Davenport continued. “What kind of life would we like to have, and what kind of role — if any — do these institutions that have coercive force play into it?”

Davenport also noted the intersection of “coercion, force and power” in guiding the future of the institution: “Who wields weapons on behalf of the state and political authorities, for whom and towards what end?”

The panelists, whom Jefferson called “leading experts on issues of race and its intersection with policing and the criminal justice system,” also discussed the role of academia in guiding policy reform.

“Truth and justice are inseparable,” Mummolo said. “We seek the truth because we know that without it, we’re not going to get justice.” 

“The best scientific evidence we have shows that police exhibit substantial bias toward civilians of color, especially Black civilians,” he continued. “The more data we get and the smarter we get about analyzing it, actually, the more bias we uncover.”

Mummolo added, “historically, social science has devalued policy-relevant research, especially as it relates to marginalized communities.”

“We need to show the study of race the respect and care that it deserves,” he said. 

Weaver said that academia itself has devoted insufficient attention to artistic and activist expressions of marginalized communities’ lived experiences. She pointed to Malcolm X’s statement that “a Black man in America lives in a police state; he doesn’t live in any democracy,” as well as Amiri Baraka’s characterization of police violence as “white cop, Black death syndrome,” calling for more attention in academia and public policy to these and other speeches, art and oral histories of marginalized communities.

“Somehow, academics missed it,” Weaver contended. “Somehow, policymakers didn’t hear. And somehow, America went on living.” 

Collaboration between academics, activists and policy-makers was also featured prominently in Jefferson’s explanation of the intent of the panel.

“Though the real work of reform will likely be carried out by activists and everyday citizens who petition their government for a redress of grievances, our job as scholars is to help clarify and to provide context for the horror we are bearing witness to at this moment,” Jefferson wrote in a statement to The Daily before the event.

“I hope that our conversation will help folks better understand how deeply entrenched racism and racial violence are in this country, while giving them a sense of what is possible as we build a future that is much brighter and more just than our present,” Jefferson added.

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Faculty Senate Steering Committee to vote tomorrow on starting fall quarter 1 week early https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/01/faculty-senate-steering-committee-to-vote-tomorrow-on-starting-fall-quarter-one-week-early/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/01/faculty-senate-steering-committee-to-vote-tomorrow-on-starting-fall-quarter-one-week-early/#respond Tue, 02 Jun 2020 03:21:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1168767 Under the proposed plan, “students in residence” would be expected to leave campus after classes end on Nov. 20, and they would take exams remotely from Nov. 30 through Dec. 4.

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The Faculty Senate Steering Committee will vote on Tuesday on whether to start fall quarter on Sept. 14, one week earlier than planned, and end classes before Thanksgiving break for students outside of the Graduate School of Business, the Law School, the School of Medicine M.D. program and the Graduate School of Education.

Under the proposed plan, “students in residence” would be expected to leave campus after classes end on Nov. 20, and they would take exams remotely from Nov. 30 through Dec. 4. 

The Daily has reached out to the University to ask which students would be allowed to return to campus. 

The legislation would allow the Graduate School of Business, Law School, School of Medicine M.D. program and Graduate School of Education to “adopt different calendars at their discretion in consultation with the Provost.”

If Stanford chooses to end its fall quarter before Thanksgiving break, it will join a growing list of universities across the country that are doing the same.

On May 26, the president of the University of Notre Dame announced the university’s plan to “bring students back two weeks early, forgo a fall break and finish the semester before Thanksgiving.” On May 28, Yale announced that it would not hold October break and that its undergraduate and graduate schools would transition to online classes and exams after Thanksgiving. 

According to The New York Times, The University of South Carolina, Notre Dame, Rice and Creighton have also announced plans to shorten the fall semester in an effort to avoid a second wave. Fears that COVID-19 will reemerge in the fall after a summer lull are likely to have motivated colleges’ decisions to implement “shorter semesters to avoid late-fall infections,” according to The New York Times.

For the majority of Stanford students whose permanent residence falls outside of California, returning to campus after Thanksgiving break could also entail air travel that heightens the risk of COVID-19 infection, as well as risk bringing the infection back to campus.

Stanford’s fall quarter calendar adopted before the coronavirus pandemic runs from Sept. 21 to Dec. 11. 

Tomorrow afternoon’s administrative session of the Faculty Senate is expected to “be a very, very brief meeting of 5 minutes or less,” according to Assistant Academic Secretary Adrienne Emory, who told The Daily that she expects the resolution will be approved.

“I think there are so many moving parts and variables right now, and various plans and back up plans being discussed — but of course everyone is eager to have some certainty,” Emory wrote. “Hopefully if this calendar is approved that is one small bit of certainty for fall.”

This article has been updated to include that the Graduate School of Education would not be affected by the proposed legislation, and that the School of Medicine would also be able to adopt a different calendar.

This article has been corrected to reflect that the School of Medicine M.D. program would be able to adopt a different calendar. A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the School of Medicine as a whole would be able to.

Michael Espinosa contributed to this report.

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Pandemic ‘shows our faults’ in racial, economic justice, Sen. Brown says at GSB talk https://stanforddaily.com/2020/05/27/pandemic-shows-our-faults-in-racial-economic-justice-sen-brown-says-at-gsb-talk/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/05/27/pandemic-shows-our-faults-in-racial-economic-justice-sen-brown-says-at-gsb-talk/#respond Thu, 28 May 2020 04:58:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1168559 Brown described the pandemic as laying bare inequities across lines of race and wealth.

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Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) addressed the financial, social and political challenges posed by the novel coronavirus in a webinar hosted by the Graduate School of Business (GSB) Corporations and Society Initiative on Wednesday. The conversation, mediated by first-year GSB student Susannah Shattuck, spanned corporate and government responsibilities to essential workers, the weakening of the American public health system and voting rights protections for the upcoming presidential election.

Brown, who wears a pin of a caged canary on the Senate floor as a “reminder of how far the country has come from the days when workers could only count on each other,” described the pandemic as laying bare inequities across lines of race and wealth.

Challenges for essential workers

The challenges faced by essential workers and participants in the gig economy dominated the conversation.

The pandemic “shows our faults,” Brown said. One such fault, Brown suggested, is the plight of workers heralded as “essential” but paid and treated as expendable. “The people that are working in $12-, $14- or $15-an-hour jobs are not protected and they’re not paid well,” Brown said.

“They’re paid so little, but we call them essential.” That hypocrisy, said Brown, “in a nutshell, is who we are and what we are as a nation far too often.”

Brown said that the burdens borne by service sector workers disproportionately fall on the shoulders of communities already “most disadvantaged by this economy.”

“These hourly workers are more women than men, and they are more likely to be people of color,” Brown said, pointing to this and other racial disparities. There are now “no excuses for the whole country not recognizing these racial disparities” in income, health and housing, Brown said.

Learning from the global financial crisis

Asked about how lessons learned during the 2008 financial crisis might guide the government’s response to COVID-19, Brown pointed to the importance of direct financial support to local and state governments and individuals.

“We’re putting real dollars into real people’s hands,” Brown said, pointing to the $1,200 stimulus check for most Americans and to the adoption of $600-per-week unemployment benefits as examples of Congress’ strategy of direct aid for individuals. 

The emphasis on “putting money into local and state governments” to aid coronavirus relief efforts also represents a departure from Congress’ response to the 2008 financial crisis, according to Brown. 

“We didn’t do that in 2009,” Brown said. “I think if we had, it might have had a different political outcome. It might have launched not just 10 years of growth … but 10 years of wage growth.”

For a coronavirus response to successfully incorporate the lessons from the 2008 financial crisis, Brown said, “Our focus has to be on wages. It has to be on workers. It has to be on putting money in people’s pockets.” 

Brown also criticized what he described as the impulse of political leaders to “attach strings” to coronavirus relief aid.

“While conservatives representing their interest groups love to talk about local control, they fundamentally don’t really trust people, and they don’t trust local governments to do the right thing,” Brown said. 

Brown accused Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of endorsing aid policies that limit individuals’ ability to “make decisions about what’s best for your community and what’s best for your family.” 

“Senator McConnell doesn’t want to send [local governments] money,” Brown said. “But if he’s forced to do it, he wants to attach strings to how they spend it. And the same with poor people.”

“If we really believe in the human spirit and freedom,” Brown said, “you allow [individuals] to make the decisions — what’s best for your community, what’s best for your family.” 

Free trade and public health

Brown also criticized free trade agreements as exacerbating the current public health crisis by incentivizing American business to outsource production transcontinentally. Free trade agreements constitute “one reason we were ill-prepared for this pandemic,” Brown contended. 

American trade policy under the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies “has done immense damage to this country … because frankly, none of them put workers first,” Brown said.

In the past few decades trade policy “has essentially said … ‘You should move overseas, exploit weak environmental laws, enjoy cheap labor and then sell those products back in the United States,’” Brown alleged.

“I blame it on government … I blame it on the media, and I blame it, frankly, on schools like the Stanford Business School who all say that free trade is the greatest thing in the world,” Brown said, “but free trade is all about business. It’s never about workers.”

As coronavirus spread across the U.S., “we didn’t have enough companies in the U.S. making masks,” Brown said. “We didn’t have enough companies making cotton swabs. We didn’t have enough companies doing all the kinds of things you need to do to address a pandemic.” 

In contrast, the U.S. incentivizes domestic production “for national defense,” Brown said. “We figured out that you don’t really want foreign countries making your planes and tanks. We ought to figure out that we don’t want foreign countries … making equipment you need to combat a pandemic.”

Brown acknowledged that public health funding has stalled for a decade under both the Trump and Obama administrations but characterized as problematic a broader pattern of neglect toward the American public health system under the Trump presidency.

Brown pointed to the 2018 departure from the Trump administration of Admiral Timothy Ziemer, whose “job it was to look for epidemics and potential epidemics way before they could become pandemics,” as evidence of the deprioritization of public health in the U.S.

“We went from the world’s best, most admired, most principled public health country — I’d say — in the history of the world, to sort of back of the bus,” Brown said. 

Looking to November and beyond

Restoring the American public health system, said Brown, is one of several important issues at stake in the upcoming presidential election, which Brown also characterized as a “referendum on the president’s handling of the virus.”

“There are really big things we need to be thinking about,” Brown said. “Especially on climate, and especially … in income, wealth, race and class disparities.”

With these issues in the balance, “I am convinced that a majority of the country will vote against Donald Trump,” Brown said. “I am also convinced that this president will try to cheat” through “institutionalized voter suppression.” 

Asked how to ensure a safe and fair election under unpredictable conditions posed by the pandemic, Brown pointed to three kinds of measures: extensive vote-by-mail options, early voting opportunities and the assurance of safe conditions at in-person polling stations.

“We need to make sure that everybody can vote by mail,” Brown said. “Voting by mail is safe. Trump is just a liar, again, about that.”

Brown also suggested a three- or four-week early voting period as a best practice for free and accessible elections.

“We do those things, we win,” Brown predicted. “I think we’re going to win by a big enough margin [to] shine the light on any kind of shenanigans and misbehavior by people that don’t think voting rights are sacred.”

Brown also encouraged Stanford students and community members to pursue “a life of justice” beyond this election cycle.

The next generation of public leaders, Brown said, will be tasked with “making this country a better place, to help us eliminate racial disparities and class disparities and to help us deal with the climate and the great moral issues of our time.”

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Students organize for subcontracted workers, attract alumni attention https://stanforddaily.com/2020/04/06/students-organize-for-subcontracted-workers-attract-alumni-attention/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/04/06/students-organize-for-subcontracted-workers-attract-alumni-attention/#respond Tue, 07 Apr 2020 03:49:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1166073 SWR representatives expressed gratitude to individual donors and supporters but cautioned that only Stanford has the resources and power to provide a sufficient solution. “It will be nearly impossible for us to provide significant compensation for the growing number of workers being laid off,” Jong said.

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Stanford students, alumni and other donors contributed $219,357 in three weeks for subcontracted staff and workers laid off in the wake of coronavirus-related facility closures. $101,462 of the total came from an emergency fundraiser conducted by Stanford Students for Workers’ Rights (SWR) over Venmo and GoFundMe, while the rest of the money was collected by individual campus houses for their respective staff members, according to SWR.

On March 16, Stanford committed to pay continuation for regular employees — now extended through April 30 for SEIU-represented direct hires — but excluded from this protection subcontracted staff who work on Stanford’s campus. As concern spread for subcontracted workers, SWR quickly organized a fundraiser to provide emergency compensation for Row kitchen staff employed by Student Organized Services (SOS). 

After learning that more than 130 Stanford workers employed by the contracting organization UG2 will be laid off by April 30 without additional compensation, SWR suspended its first fundraiser and started a new GoFundMe and Venmo collection aimed at providing relief to workers contracted by UG2 as well as SOS.

SWR has taken to social media, op-eds and online petitions to “put as much pressure as we can on the University to start paying workers,” SWR organizer Kaitlyn Jong ’20 said. 

SWR also called on alumni with significant online platforms to pressure the University to provide pay continuation for laid-off staff. In an Instagram post, the organization tagged alumni with “the resources and following to pressure [Stanford] into paying its workers,” including Sterling K. Brown ’98, Issa Rae ’07 and Rachel Maddow ’94.

SWR also targeted Julián Castro ’96 and his brother Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX) ’96. Julián, a recent presidential candidate, tweeted the link to a Stanford Daily op-ed written by SWR members, commenting, “The custodians who clean classrooms and chefs who serve students meals are an integral part of Stanford’s campus. The university should support them, not cut their pay during a time of crisis.”

Joaquin, who represents the western half of San Antonio in Texas’ 20th district, tweeted a link to The Daily’s coverage of UG2 layoffs and wrote, “My grandmother worked as a maid, a cook, & a babysitter. Her hard work & sacrifices enabled [Julián] & I to attend Stanford.” 

“I hope my alma mater & other universities pay contract workers such as janitors & chefs during COVID-19,” he continued.

A tweet by SWR also caught the eye of Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs ’12. Tubbs retweeted the message, adding, “Stanford has the resources and the values. They shouldn’t lay off workers, especially when I assume they were budgeted for in the beginning of this fiscal year.”

SWR’s dual strategy employs grassroots fundraising and outreach efforts aimed at spreading awareness and buy-in among Stanford affiliates, as well as high-level pressure on University officials to provide meaningful relief with the institution’s financial resources. The dual strategy was borne from a lack of clarity about “how long it will take the University to respond, if they do at all,” Jong said. 

Despite increasing pressure from students, alumni and other affiliates, Provost Persis Drell is holding firm on Stanford’s stated policy for worker compensation. At a campus-wide virtual Q&A session, Drell said that the continuance policy results in part from Stanford’s decentralized decision-making structure, under which various units hire contractors at their discretion. 

Drell noted that Stanford directly employs food service workers and residential custodians in campus dorms. As a result of the University’s commitment to “minimizing the impacts to [its] regular Stanford workforce,” Drell said, Stanford is “not in a position to extend commitments to all the employees of all of our contractors.” 

SWR’s online messaging emphasizes the disparity between the University’s top salariesseveral of which reach several million dollars per year — and its refusal to compensate its non-regular staff. One Instagram post includes a bar graph illustrating the amount of money SWR says Stanford would need to compensate workers through the spring — $1.71 million — and the 2018 salary of head football coach David Shaw ’94, $4.5 million. “Stanford can afford it,” reads the text below the graph.

SWR’s outreach messaging also highlights Stanford’s apparent outlier status among peer institutions on staff compensation. In a series of tweets, SWR compared Stanford’s $27.7-billion endowment to the smaller endowments of peer institutions who have promised to provide pay continuance, such as the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT.

SWR organizer Nizhoni Begay ’20 told The Daily that such messaging is intended to show that Stanford “cannot pretend it doesn’t have the resources to support [its workers].” 

SWR representatives expressed gratitude to individual donors and supporters but cautioned that only Stanford has the resources and power to provide a sufficient solution. “It will be nearly impossible for us to provide significant compensation for the growing number of workers being laid off,” Jong said. 

The ultimate focus of the group’s efforts is to convince the administration to provide pay continuation for all workers. 

To spur action, SWR is posting testimonials from students whose Stanford experiences were shaped by relationships with staff. One student quoted on SWR’s Instagram wrote, “Being away from home without my grandma and aunties there, it was incredibly meaningful to have [a particular dining hall staff member] there as someone who cared about me and showed it in her work and in our interactions.” 

Other testimonials speak to staff members’ value to student life and the residential experience.

“We don’t do this because we feel ‘bad’ or want to ‘save’ these people,” Begay wrote. “This is what they are worth, and [our actions] are a critique of Stanford not doing enough.”

April 10, 12 p.m.: This article was updated to reflect that pay continuation for SEIU-represented direct hires has been extended through April 30.

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Ballots, burritos draw hundreds to Tresidder Union on Super Tuesday https://stanforddaily.com/2020/03/03/ballots-burritos-draw-hundreds-to-tresidder-union-on-super-tuesday/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/03/03/ballots-burritos-draw-hundreds-to-tresidder-union-on-super-tuesday/#respond Wed, 04 Mar 2020 07:53:07 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1164931 Stanford students flocked to polls and watch parties on Super Tuesday, joining voters in California and 13 other states in choosing among five remaining candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.

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Stanford students flocked to polls and watch parties on Super Tuesday, joining voters in California and 13 other states in choosing among five remaining candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. 

Many Stanford students and community members did not have to travel far to do so: Voters registered or intending to register in Santa Clara County could cast a ballot on the second floor of Tresidder Union.

“Not a lot of people here are gonna go for Uncle Joe

Students waiting to vote in Tresidder Union’s Oak Room on Tuesday afternoon predicted a strong showing for Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) among Stanford students voting on campus.

“Not a lot of people here are gonna go for Uncle Joe [Biden],” said a student from Virginia, who added that he was waiting to register as a California voter after his Virginia absentee ballot failed to arrive in the mail.

Pat Hughes, a third-year philosophy graduate student who spent Tuesday afternoon tabling for Sanders in White Plaza with Stanford Students for Bernie, also predicted a Sanders win in Santa Clara. 

“This is a college campus, so I think it is deeply progressive here,” Hughes said. “Most people are Warren or Bernie supporters, and in my experience canvassing on campus, there are a ton of Bernie supporters here.”

Some Sanders supporters on campus hoped to cash in on last-minute defections by would-be Warren voters seeking a “more electable” candidate.

Gabe Boyd ’23 said he had been deciding between Sanders and Warren, but ultimately chose Sanders due to electability concerns.

“It’s almost certain that Warren will not win the nomination,” Boyd said. “I think it’s important for the more liberal wing of the party to unify behind Bernie and present arguments as to why a more progressive candidate would be better for America and more electable than more moderate candidates.” 

Still, despite the best efforts of the Stanford Students for Bernie tablers, Warren loyalists abounded in the queue outside the vote center Tuesday afternoon. 

While he waited to enter the voting room, a Warren supporter in the class of 2020 said that he would vote for Warren despite her lackluster performance in early primary states. 

“California splits up [its delegate allowance], and in terms of the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination, it’s not that far off at this point,” he said, pointing out that the differences in current delegate counts between the top three candidates are a mere fraction of the total number needed to secure the nomination. “I understand that she’s kind of behind, but I think the primary is a time when you can vote for the candidate you really prefer.”

Cardinal for Warren Chapter Lead Chloe Stoddard ’21 wrote in a statement to The Daily that she encouraged voters to vote based on their convictions, not perceived electability.

“If we continue to worry about electability in the primaries, we will continue the status quo of people who look the same and have the same ideas that perpetuate systems of oppression,” Stoddard wrote.

Stoddard wrote that the Warren campaign would serve as an inspiration for future women.

“Although Warren is not projected to receive the nomination, I am incredibly proud of the effect that this campaign has undoubtedly had, not only on progressive politics but also for what it means for women who would like to run for elected office,” Stoddard wrote.

Voters considering more moderate candidates had fewer choices on Tuesday than they had only a week ago. Recent campaign suspensions by Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar forced some voters to make a game-day selection among the five remaining candidates. 

A junior who self-identified as a committed Buttigieg supporter said he planned to leave his decision to the last minute, although he would not vote for Sanders.

“I was planning to vote for Pete, but when he dropped out I decided to vote for the most viable candidate that is not Bernie Sanders, since I’m really concerned about how a Sanders nomination would affect down-ballot races,” he said, adding that he would make a decision as he crossed the threshold into the voting booth, based primarily on which non-Sanders alternative was polling most strongly at that moment.

No second chance for absentee voters

Some supporters of Buttigieg, Klobuchar and other candidates who announced campaign suspensions within the last several weeks found themselves unable to throw their support behind another candidate, having cast absentee ballots days or weeks in advance of election day.

Patrick Monreal ’22, a California resident and Daily staffer who voted absentee for a candidate that recently dropped out of the nomination contest, said he was disappointed to have cast “a wasted ballot.”

“This whole primary cycle has been disappointing,” Monreal said. “If I had my way, Governor [Jay] Inslee would still be on the ballot, and now the candidate I settled on dropped out after I mailed in.”

A senior who voted absentee for Buttigieg in Massachusetts said she considered the sunk vote in a different light.

“I don’t feel frustrated now that Pete’s dropped out, because for me it felt good to concretely show my support all the way through the end,” she said. “Voting for him, in a way, was an act of hope, and I think you can say the same for many of the other candidates.” 

Results roll in at The Arbor

As in-person voters made their selections at the Tresidder Union Vote Center in its final hours of activity, an Associated Students of Stanford University-sponsored (ASSU) watch party was just heating up downstairs.

The watch party, which was co-sponsored by the Office of the President, drew more than 100 students to Treehouse and The Arbor with the promise of free burritos, beer, a large screen displaying color-coded exit poll maps and a steady stream of pundit commentary. Watch party-goers crowded into picnic table benches to watch live tallies of incoming results punctuated by candidate speeches.

Despite a fragmented primary process that Rossella Cerulli ’20 characterized as “pretty toxic” and as having “brought out a lot of bad feelings within the Democratic Party,” a consensus prevailed across candidate camps at the watch party: Tuesday’s outcomes are important, but not determinative. Democratic primary voting is over in California, but for Democrats committed to taking back the White House in November, the most important work is yet to come, regardless of who eventually secures the nomination.

Boyd emphasized that though he ultimately settled on Sanders, he “will vote for whoever the Democrat is come November.”

“I think a victory over Trump is contingent not on whether Bernie or Biden gets the nomination, but rather how well Democrats can unify after a nominee is put forth,” Boyd said.

Cerulli, who was a freshman during the 2016 presidential election cycle, said she was heartened by the increased political engagement on campus this election cycle.

“I remember the atmosphere on campus surrounding the 2016 election,” Cerulli said. “I’m gratified to see a much different sense of engagement this time, as well as a real increase in the substantive political discussions going on.”

“I voted for the candidate who excited me most,” she added. “I hear other students saying the same thing about their choices. This sense of personal excitement and investment in the process really matters and makes me optimistic.”

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Voting accessibility, engagement increase under new StanfordVotes initiatives https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/27/voting-accessibility-engagement-increase-under-new-stanfordvotes-initiatives/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/27/voting-accessibility-engagement-increase-under-new-stanfordvotes-initiatives/#respond Fri, 28 Feb 2020 06:34:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1164698 Stanford is now a national leader in the number of students registered on TurboVote, a platform that facilitates voter registration.

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Eligible voters will now have the option to register and vote in the presidential primary election at the new Santa Clara County Vote Center at Tressider Union between this Friday and Mar. 3, otherwise known as Super Tuesday. 

The new vote center, which is hosted by the President’s Office, is the latest in a series of initiatives by StanfordVotes aimed at improving civic engagement and fostering a culture of political participation on campus. Stanford is also now a national leader in the number of students registered on TurboVote, a platform that facilitates voter registration but does not directly register students to vote.

Chase Small ’22, StanfordVotes co-director, called the center “a huge step in reducing barriers to voting for our community.”

In previous elections, Tresidder has been a polling place on Election Day but not a vote center for early voting or registration.

StanfordVotes’s efforts follow historically low voter turnout rates on campus. In 2018, 42.7% of eligible students voted in the midterm elections. In the 2016 presidential election, the voting rate among eligible Stanford students was less than 50%. In the 2014 midterm elections, fewer than one in five eligible Stanford students cast a ballot. 

Stanford students who are eligible to vote in California can choose to vote either in Santa Clara County, using a campus address, or absentee, using a permanent home address. 

Students who choose to vote in Santa Clara County “can register and vote right at Tresidder,” Small said. “It’s about as easy as it gets.” 

TurboVote engagement at a high

In addition to the new voting center, StanfordVotes has overseen the widespread adoption of TurboVote, an online platform that provides information and resources for individuals interested in registering to vote and casting a ballot. While TurboVote facilitates voter registration by providing users with information, forms and instructions for registration, the platform does not directly register citizens to vote.

Small said that StanfordVotes’s efforts — including a mandatory enrollment hold on Axess that presented students with the TurboVote interface — have already resulted in “a huge spike in TurboVote sign-ups.” 

5,130 students registered on through Stanford’s TurboVote platform from Jan. 1 through Feb. 19, Megan Fogarty, former deputy executive director at the Haas Center for Public Service, wrote in a statement to The Daily. 

Stanford is currently ranked first in the country in the number of students registered on TurboVote, according to Small. The University of Michigan, which enrolls over 30,000 undergraduates, is in next place with 1,053 registrations in the same time period.

A student registering on TurboVote does not necessarily result in the student registering to vote, Fogarty noted.

“A reader might assume that ‘registered on TurboVote’ means registered to vote,” she wrote. “Our team just discussed being very clear to say that ‘registered X users on TurboVote, a platform where people can sign up to receive election reminders, get registered to vote, and apply for absentee ballots.’”

Still, Small said, the influx of TurboVote signups since the beginning of the new year is a strong first step toward electoral participation among Stanford students. He also said that historically low turnout rates on campus did not necessarily imply a lack of student interest in politics.

“College students vote at disproportionately low rates,” Small said. Low turnout rates among students “often result from the confusing nature of our voting system, differences in process across states and having other immediate priorities like keeping up with school.”

And voting is only one part of StanfordVotes’s long-term goals, according to Small.

In the future, StanfordVotes “will host events to encourage students to contact their representatives and think critically about how they can interact with our democracy in their life and career,” he said. 

Small expressed optimism about the future of civic engagement on campus and the prospect of removing additional barriers to political participation. 

“I have been honored to get to help out in reducing these barriers and encouraging students from all backgrounds and across all disciplines to actively engage in our democracy,” Small said.

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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ASSU candidate spotlight: 2 debate kids in a trench coat, provost in a mustache and more https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/23/assu-candidate-spotlight-2-debate-kids-in-a-trench-coat-provost-in-a-mustache-and-more/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/23/assu-candidate-spotlight-2-debate-kids-in-a-trench-coat-provost-in-a-mustache-and-more/#respond Mon, 24 Feb 2020 06:18:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1164419 Prepare your apathy — it’s student government election season! Prospective candidates filed for ASSU elections last week

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Prepare your apathy — it’s student government election season! Prospective candidates filed for Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections last week. Last year, an earth-shattering 34% of students turned out to vote on election day. The Occasionally is doing its part to increase this number by spotlighting some of the candidates who filed last week. Read on if you intend to participate in the most important election in the United States this year.

  • Persis Drell in a mustache. It seems that communication between the University administration and ASSU hasn’t been great, so Provost Persis Drell has donned a fake mustache and monocle and gone undercover to try and understand the students. When asked for comment, Persis Drell in a mustache said, “Ok boomer.”
  • Julián Castro ’96 and Gabe Rosen ’19. The two former Stanford senators have planned a triumphant return to the ASSU as part of an executive slate they call “The Boys Are Back.” In an exclusive interview with The Occasionally, Rosen admitted that law school hasn’t been all he had hoped: “It’s just read, read, read, work, work, work. There aren’t any lightsaber fights for campus-level political prominence. There aren’t even any lightsabers at all.” Castro, for his part, appears to be seeking a bid that he can actually win.
  • New ASSU logo. Fresh off its new rebrand, the ASSU decided to run its new logo to raise awareness. Somewhere between the “slime” every seventh grader makes for their science fair and an illustration of an amoeba from a biology textbook, the logo seeks to redefine what the ASSU means to students.
  • Two debate kids in a trench coat. It turns out that all of the suit-jacketed high schoolers crowding the Tresidder Starbucks last week were actually canvassers for their candidate of choice in the upcoming ASSU election: two debate kids in a trench coat. When asked about their campaign platform, both students simultaneously launched a well-rehearsed defense of drone attacks that had, for all its questionable ethics, absolutely stellar cadence. I’d vote for them.
  • Composite freshman candidate. With the help of genetic data-mining technology pioneered by a TreeHacks semifinalist, the office of Residential Education successfully combined more than four billion data points to create an approximation of the average member of the class of 2023. The resulting average frosh lives in Twain, is thinking about studying Symbolic Systems and has had mono for the past 4 1/2 months. As far as a campaign platform, he is super concerned about increasing bike safety on campus and also wants to make printing free.
  • Bollard lying on the side of the road. Too long have bollards been disrespected on this campus. One bollard lying on the side of the road near Meyer Green since the winter of ’98 hopes to win for bollards everywhere.
  • Tourist lost on the row. A new “tourist district” was added to the Undergraduate Senate in an effort to make the body more representative of the campus population. When a random tourist stumbled into the Row housing front desk office to ask, “Do you know where the Rodin statues are?” the ASSU took the opportunity to kidnap them and put them on the ticket.
  • Patrick Monreal. Just kidding, I missed the filing deadline. The Daily regrets this error.

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

Contact Patrick Monreal at pmonreal ‘at’ stanford.edu and Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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‘We are in a new era’: Trump critic Bill Kristol on the future of conservatism https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/13/we-are-in-a-new-era-trump-critic-bill-kristol-on-the-future-of-conservatism/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/13/we-are-in-a-new-era-trump-critic-bill-kristol-on-the-future-of-conservatism/#respond Fri, 14 Feb 2020 07:58:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1164055 “I am much more convinced than I was even a few months ago — we are facing a crisis of liberal democracy, not just a crisis of conservatism,” Kristol said.

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Despite hints of a scathing rebuke of Trumpism, neoconservative political analyst Bill Kristol delivered a generally temperate discussion of the historical transformations of conservatism, liberalism and liberal democracy at an Arrow Lecture on Thursday evening. 

Kristol began the lecture, titled, “Is a Responsible Conservatism Still Possible? Was It Ever?” by admitting his intention to diverge from the intended subject matter. 

“I am much more convinced than I was even a few months ago — we are facing a crisis of liberal democracy, not just a crisis of conservatism,” Kristol said. 

In the following hour, Kristol presented a historical narrative of how “the mood for change” among both parties’ constituencies culminated in the current American political moment. After more than three decades of what Kristol characterized as largely predictable, cautious calculations about whom to elevate to the office of the presidency, Kristol called attention to the “startling” outcomes of both parties’ 2016 primaries as the beginning of a break with traditional inclinations.

In the wake of those primaries and the following general election, Kristol has found himself in an increasingly lonely “Never Trump” camp, as most of his fellow GOP pundits have fallen in line behind President Trump.

“People like me, who hoped there’d be rebellions at different points or separation or at least some flicker of a flame of non-Trump Republicanism, have been thoroughly disappointed,” Kristol said. “The conservative movement, conservative intellectuals, mostly have accommodated, or rationalized, or even embraced Trump and Trumpism.”

Despite dwindling “Never Trump” sentiment in the Republican Party, Kristol’s opposition to Trump’s reelection remains steadfast. In a New York Times opinion piece, Kristol urged Republicans to back a primary opponent against Trump. When contenders Joe Walsh and Bill Weld failed to gain momentum, Kristol organized outreach encouraging right-leaning independents to support a “responsible and electable candidate” in early Democratic primary elections.

What moved Kristol, a veteran of both the Reagan and the H.W. Bush administrations and the founding editor of the neoconservative political magazine The Weekly Standard, to break rank with Republican peers who stepped back in line when Trump ascended to the presidency? 

Kristol expressed concern that conservatism could collapse into “the challenge of Trump and Trumpism … [the] kind of national, nationalist, populist, demagogic, somewhat authoritarian spirit.”

Kristol conceded that elements of Trump’s peculiar brand of conservatism “were always present in conservatism; they’re probably always present in any big, mass movement.” 

But the “capitulation of the [conservative] movement to those elements,” Kristol said, “is a very depressing thing.”

Speaking to the present and future of American politics, Kristol said, “We are in a new era.”

To answer the lecture’s titular question, Kristol proposed another: Can conservatism rise to the new challenges of a new political moment?

“I’m optimistic that we’ll meet them,” Kristol said. “But I think it’d be foolish to be complacent about that.”

Contact Jackie O’Neil and jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Junior Class Cabinet hosts ‘CAPS Declassified’ for dialogue on new intake model, future of CAPS-student relationship https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/10/junior-class-cabinet-hosts-caps-declassified-for-dialogue-on-new-intake-model-future-of-caps-student-relationship/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/10/junior-class-cabinet-hosts-caps-declassified-for-dialogue-on-new-intake-model-future-of-caps-student-relationship/#respond Tue, 11 Feb 2020 07:58:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1163820 Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) Operations Director Oliver Lin touted shorter wait times as a result of CAPS' new intake model and asked for student feedback at a community dialogue hosted by the Junior Class Cabinet on Monday.

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Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) Operations Director Oliver Lin touted shorter wait times as a result of CAPS’ new intake model and asked for student feedback at a community dialogue hosted by the Junior Class Cabinet on Monday.

The discussion, advertised as “CAPS Declassified,” was promoted as an opportunity for students to learn about campus mental health resources and ask questions about psychological services. Students who could not attend the discussion were encouraged to submit questions through an online form and to consult a full transcript of the event that organizers said would eventually be published online.

Junior Class President David Pantera ’21 said that CAPS’ available resources are unhelpful if students are unaware of their existence or how to utilize them. The motivation for the Cabinet’s collaboration with CAPS, Pantera said, arose in response to a “transparency or communication gap” between students and CAPS.

“Students just have so many unanswered questions about CAPS,” Pantera said. “For example, how long is the wait time before I can see a therapist? How many sessions can I have? Is it free? Can I choose my therapist?” 

In addition to answers to these and other logistical questions, CAPS’ new intake model featured heavily in the discussion. Under the new model, adopted in August, students have the option to walk into CAPS for an initial consultation, as opposed to requiring that the consultation take place over the phone. The change is aimed at reducing wait times for therapy. 

Lin characterized the new intake system as a “more brief, focused intervention” that more efficiently facilitates placements in individual and group therapy sessions, workshops and psychiatric services. 

According to Lin, previous wait times for individual therapy sessions could be four to six weeks. Under the new model, average wait times decreased to “about 11 days, at most” in November and December, he said. 

He also pointed students toward auxiliary resources, such as counselors embedded in community centers across campus, which often offer shorter wait times than traditional CAPS counseling appointments.

Lin also spoke to the future of CAPS and its relationship with the student body. 

He expressed particular enthusiasm toward opportunities to connect with campus leaders who can disseminate information about services that CAPS offers. Looking to the future, Lin spoke of “huge fantasies about frosh and transfer orientation” as opportunities for preventative mental health programming.

Pantera similarly expressed hope that the event demonstrated the potential for further student engagement in CAPS programming and potential reforms. 

“Students really do want to take an active role in any CAPS reformation process,” Pantera said. “We hope that this event will encourage them to reach out to students for input in the future.”

Lin said CAPS welcomes feedback on the new model but also expressed concern that students reporting negative experiences with CAPS could discourage other students from seeking out help.

“Every time [someone says] something negative [about CAPS] — not to invalidate their experience — but it may scare someone else that could benefit from going,” Lin said. “You get that one article [in The Daily], and it’s like ‘oh, hell no, there’s no way I’m going to go to CAPS.’”

Lin emphasized that he encouraged feedback directly to the program. 

“The last thing we want to do is discourage people from speaking out,” Lin said.

Ultimately, Lin said, the relationship between CAPS and the student body is at the core of what he does. 

“Our priority has always been the student,” he said. “We’re limited by math and things like that, but we’re on the students’ side.”

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Welcome to Stanford: A note from The Grind https://stanforddaily.com/2019/09/18/welcome-to-stanford-a-note-from-the-grind/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/09/18/welcome-to-stanford-a-note-from-the-grind/#respond Wed, 18 Sep 2019 13:37:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1157126 You’re probably wondering when and where you’re going to find your place here, how you’re going to make this imposing institution the tiniest bit yours, what on Earth you’re going to do now that your parents and the rental car have exited the bubble.

I don’t have all the answers. But I’d like to make a suggestion.

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To all the freshmen who aren’t sure whether to wear that bright red lanyard with pride or embarrassment; who might be sleep-deprived from early morning travels or late night nerves or both; who are already getting a taste of have-I-met-this-person panic and never-genuinely-listen-to-anyone’s-name guilt; who almost (but not totally) believe the 30th upperclassmen advising them to please, for the love of all that is holy, toss that four-year plan immediately:

You probably have questions. You’re probably wondering when and where you’re going to find your place here, how you’re going to make this imposing institution the tiniest bit yours, what on Earth you’re going to do now that your parents and the rental car have exited the bubble and you are, for maybe the first time — and despite the sung or chanted assurances of your RAs or volunteer move-in day greeters that have bombarded you since 7 a.m. — completely on your own.

I don’t have all the answers. But I’d like to make a suggestion.

I joined the Daily’s lifestyle section — wittily and appropriately named The Grind — because I had exactly one idea for an article, and I stayed because asking myself what thoughts or experiences I had to write about every subsequent week gave me a much-needed mechanism for reflection in the most formative, messy and remarkable year of my life. I wrote about love, balance and stress. I chronicled my weirdest experiences and the most challenging ones. I considered what Stanford has taught me, from 3,000 miles away, about my home.

It may be hard to believe now, but just two years down the line, your first year at Stanford may play in your head like a blur of undifferentiated chaos. When you graduate, or when you start your first real job, or when you send a kid of your own off to college, you’ll be glad to have a time capsule of your development and growth immortalized in the Daily’s print and online archives.

The best part? Our writers write about what they want, when they want, how they want — for the most part.

If you’re anything like me, you will finish your first year at Stanford with more questions — about your future, about your place, about the meaning of community and about yourself — than you have today. But putting your thoughts to paper and sharing them with this huge, intimidating, inspiring community, however terrifying that process may be, will help you develop a sense of what questions matter to you and how your Stanford experience can help you explore them.

So if you have something to share or wish you had something to share; if you’ve ever written a journal or a blog or tried to; if you want to write about something, anything, or if you don’t yet know what you’d like to write about at all; if you’re not sure where you’ll fit in at The Daily or where you’ll fit in at this university, I urge you to join us at The Grind. We would be thrilled to have you.

In case you haven’t heard it enough already, I’ll leave you with one last piece of advice: seriously, click and drag your meticulous four-year, double-major, triple-minor, honors-PLUS-coterm master plan straight to the trash without giving it another glance. Oh, and the lanyard is embarrassing — but you deserve to wear it with pride. This is your university now, after all. Welcome!

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Learning from the past in the present https://stanforddaily.com/2019/02/04/learning-from-the-past-in-the-present/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/02/04/learning-from-the-past-in-the-present/#respond Mon, 04 Feb 2019 09:00:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1149086 On a fictional presidential debate stage, President Bartlet of “The West Wing” made a bold assertion: “Every once in a while, there’s a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong. But those days almost always include body counts.” After this past weekend, Virginians like myself can confidently offer up an amendment: even in the […]

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On a fictional presidential debate stage, President Bartlet of “The West Wing” made a bold assertion: “Every once in a while, there’s a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong. But those days almost always include body counts.”

After this past weekend, Virginians like myself can confidently offer up an amendment: even in the absence of death or destruction, sometimes those days include a medical school yearbook photo of a governor in blackface and a pal with a white hood.

That’s right: my beloved state’s Democratic governor, who took home 87 percent of the state’s black vote in his gubernatorial election, also appears to have been nicknamed “Coonman” during his tenure at the Virginia Military Institute.

Whether or not Governor Northam eventually makes the honorable choice and resigns, the photo’s unearthing will effectively end his political legitimacy – rightly so. And yet, despite the complete, utter, absolute wrongness of this behavior, I still found myself hearing an argument perennial in situations like these: it was 1984. Think about the context. Times have changed.

Notwithstanding the fact that donning Klan robes is – and was widely known to be, in 1984 – unconditionally impermissible in any decade, the notion that evolving standards of decency should lead us to excuse past behavior troubles me, particularly when applied to public officials.

I fully understand that people change as times do, and that categorically dismissing individuals with evolved perspectives because of former beliefs would be counterproductive. At the same time, I cannot shake the sense of betrayal I feel at having invested time and effort into the political prospects of a man who knew about his deeply offensive actions – however far removed from them he considers himself to be – and still chose to run for the highest office in a state with a particularly salient history of racial injustice.

The fact remains: irrespective of the “social acceptability” of blackface and other displays of racism at the time this photo was taken, its harm reverberates deeply in the present. It is not only that Governor Northam’s failure to disclose his past shattered the trust of the Virginians who elected him (and all those he represents). The act itself, despite the 35 interceding years, causes pain and harm just as real in 2019 as in 1984.

I know that many of my peers are conscious of the ways in which their current actions might be judged in 15 or 20 or 40 or so years, particularly if they plan to run for elected office or otherwise enter the public sphere. We don’t know how public opinion will develop over time, what possibly-questionable actions might become widely chastised or escape criticism.

In the spirit of President Bartlet’s prime-time remarks, I’m going to make a bold assertion of my own: It doesn’t matter.

The potential for harm stemming from any particular action is not constrained by its potential to draw criticism. The question we should be asking is not, will this action (or article, or speech, or statement, or costume) be frowned upon in 2036? The question must always be, how might my behavior hurt those around me, regardless of the likelihood of social opprobrium now or in the future?

At times we will inevitably fail at living up to this standard, and we will work hard to become better – to understand better, to empathize better and to do better the next time around. But if we seriously commit ourselves to minimizing the pain we cause each and every day, we can spend our careers making the world better instead of making excuses. What this generation of future leaders needs is not foresight into the minds of voters 20 years from now, but a highly sensitive moral compass that will endure the evolution of public opinion.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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21 thoughts football newbies will have at Big Game https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/30/21-thoughts-football-newbies-will-have-at-big-game/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/30/21-thoughts-football-newbies-will-have-at-big-game/#respond Fri, 30 Nov 2018 10:32:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1146903 Whether you’ll be making the trek up to Berkeley or escaping the still-questionable air quality at a watch party, the 121st Big Game is upon us. With the pressure of finals on hiatus for one much-anticipated week of break, Saturday’s game is perfectly timed to attract fans of all intensities and levels of knowledge. For some, the game is just one of many opportunities to don body paint and cheer on the Card with routine fervor.

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Whether you’ll be making the trek up to Berkeley or just hiking across campus for a watch party, the 121st Big Game is upon us. With the pressure of finals still (theoretically) one week away, Saturday’s game is perfectly timed to attract fans of all intensities and levels of knowledge. For some, the game is just one of many opportunities to don body paint and cheer on the Card with routine fervor.

For those like me, however, Big Game is one of only a handful of fall sporting events on our radar. While I’m always thrilled for the opportunity to buck my tradition of weak participation and get into the spirit of Cardinal football, my lack of knowledge about most of the sport’s technical details can be pretty perplexing during game time. If you’re in the same boat, prepare for the confusion: Here are 20 thoughts you’ll probably have during Big Game.

  1. Okay, we’re eight for eight versus Cal in the last eight years, so that bodes well, right?
  2. Half of Stanford’s undergraduate population must be on this team. Why do they need so many players? How many of them can possibly fit on the field at once?
  3. Hold up, why do some of them have the same roster numbers as each other? (Pro tip: There is apparently a defensive team and an offensive team. Now you won’t have to wonder – you’re welcome.)
  4. I wonder if they’re all tight with the guy who has the same number as them, like sorority big-little pairs. Maybe they also make each other thoughtful baskets full of candy and face masks.
  5. Why is everyone shaking their keys? What happened to clapping?
  6. How do the cheerleaders have routines that match every song snippet perfectly? Do they get the set list beforehand? Or are they just really lucky?
  7. Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.
  8. Ah, five minutes before halftime. The perfect strategic time for a bathroom break.
  9. I am not the only person who identified this sneaky bathroom strategy. This is gonna be a while.
  10. People get really riled up about first and fourth downs. Where’s the love for second and third?
  11. Honestly, it seems kind of unfair that the winner of this game gets an axe. I guess theoretically an axe could take down a bear as well as a tree, but still – the symbolism is there.
  12. The winner should get something with equal potential to harm both mascots. Like pepper spray. Or a large slingshot.
  13. Flag on the play! Flag on the play! (This is the sole piece of commentary that I can confidently offer with 99% accuracy. It’s pretty self-evident, but I still like to feel like I’m contributing.)
  14. Seems kind of unfair that teams can get three points for field goals. The whole goal is to run it into the end zone, right? But you can just give up and profit anyway?
  15. All of these men are much larger than they appear on screen.
  16. I wonder how much one of their biceps weighs.
  17. What’s the point of allowing timeouts when the game pauses every 25 seconds? Seriously, for “players,” the guys on the field spend way more time off the clock than actually playing.
  18. I thought football had four 15-minute quarters? Isn’t that 60 minutes? Why has it been three hours? What is math?
  19. Everyone on the sidelines looks way more legit with a clipboard. I should start carrying a clipboard around. And a headset.
  20. They can really just kneel and chill for 40 seconds at the end of the game? Sounds like my kind of sport.

And after the game is over, here’s the final thought you’ll have:

    21. Nine for nine, and it feels just as good every time.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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20 thoughts I had while rolling out new Daily writers https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/03/20-thoughts-i-had-while-rolling-out-new-daily-writers/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/03/20-thoughts-i-had-while-rolling-out-new-daily-writers/#respond Wed, 03 Oct 2018 09:00:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1144241 My phone’s default alarm setting, a muffled trill under my pillow, sounds particularly irritating at 4:30 in the morning. I quickly shut it off, mumbling a quick prayer that my roommate hasn’t been similarly jolted awake in the other half of our two-room double. In the next few minutes I stumble out of bed, clumsily […]

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My phone’s default alarm setting, a muffled trill under my pillow, sounds particularly irritating at 4:30 in the morning. I quickly shut it off, mumbling a quick prayer that my roommate hasn’t been similarly jolted awake in the other half of our two-room double. In the next few minutes I stumble out of bed, clumsily rub a pair of contact lenses into my barely open eyes and shove my feet into my best window-scaling shoes. It’s Rollout Day at The Stanford Daily.

If you’ve only experienced rollouts as the rollee and never the roller, you may be under the misguided impression that rollouts are a carefree, fun and exciting Stanford tradition that cause absolutely no stress — just pure, unadulterated, highly caffeinated joy. Wrong. Behind the scenes of brightly colored welcome signs and early morning mingling with other over-eager new members in various states of early morning disarray, here are 20 thoughts I had while rolling out new Daily staffers.

  1. If I dropped out of school right now, I wouldn’t have to make it to the Daily building by 5:10. It might be time to weigh my options. Accept my fate. Move on with my life.
  2. Wait, did I just feel rain? You’ve got to be kidding me. This should make the morning all the more delightful.
  3. Maybe if I fight my way to the front of the room I can claim an upperclass dorm and take my sweet time collecting one or two new recruits.
  4. I actually get Donner, Serra, Burbank and Zapata? Well, that dream’s dead.
  5. It’s really going to be a time getting into a dorm with no swipe card access…
  6. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and some unfortunate athlete will be heading out for practice as we pull up to Stern.
  7. No? Nobody? Window it is.
  8. Why did Recreation & Wellness spend all that money building an outdoor fitness playground when you can get all the functional fitness training you need trying to straddle both sides of a half-open freshman dorm lounge window 10 feet off the ground?
  9. Given the severely unfortunate placement of hard, sharp bits of windowsill exactly where I’m attempting to sit, it truly might be less painful just to throw myself off the side and hope the lounge carpet is more forgiving.
  10. And she sticks the landing! Well, not exactly — but with only one and a half knees down, it was a solid 8.5/10.
  11. Please, please let all of the new members be roommates.
  12. Alternatively, please, please let all of the new members be located on the first floor, given my doubt about my ability to walk up stairs after my acrobatic break-in efforts.
  13. No roommates and four recruits on the third floor? This is just classic.
  14. Do I really have to pound on the door? Do they have a doorbell somewhere I can ring? I better pound because no one’s going to wake up to a soft knock.
  15. Well, that was way more painful on the knuckles than I anticipated.
  16. Who takes two full minutes to answer the door? Is it possible someone actually slept through a rollout on their very own door?
  17. If they want to walk to the Daily in bare feet and no coat, I guess that’s fine.
  18. One down, 35 to go. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.
  19. Between the exhausted stares in our new members’ eyes, the groans of awoken roommates who just wanted a solid eight hours and the bruises quickly forming on both of my door-pounding fists, I’m beginning to wonder if anyone at all actually finds this a worthwhile and exciting activity.
  20. If forcing a freshman to climb through the open window of the second dorm on my list is a violation of the Fundamental Standard, it’s a risk I’m willing to take. Never again.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The metamorphosis of my coffee order https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/24/the-metamorphosis-of-my-coffee-order/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/24/the-metamorphosis-of-my-coffee-order/#respond Mon, 24 Sep 2018 09:00:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1143739 I was born and raised a Frappuccino girl. I entered adolescence at a time when the middle school cultural scene was dominated by poorly plucked eyebrows (often badly drawn back on with muddy eyeshadow), all-purpose outfits consisting of soccer shorts and an inevitably clashing Aeropostale blouse, and egregious overuse of the Clarendon Instagram filter. As […]

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I was born and raised a Frappuccino girl. I entered adolescence at a time when the middle school cultural scene was dominated by poorly plucked eyebrows (often badly drawn back on with muddy eyeshadow), all-purpose outfits consisting of soccer shorts and an inevitably clashing Aeropostale blouse, and egregious overuse of the Clarendon Instagram filter. As it turns out, all of these cornerstones of my middle school experience paired quite nicely with vanilla bean Frappuccinos (pictures of which were always promptly posted on Instagram after being utterly desecrated by — you guessed it — the Clarendon Instagram filter). 

While I occasionally branched out to try the mocha or caramel renditions of the icy, sugar-loaded blended drink, I maintained a sworn opposition to any and all beverages that resembled actual coffee in any manner. By the time I entered my final years of high school, my go-to Starbucks order had developed slightly to the cloyingly sweet Skinny Mocha, but the principle remained.

When I embarked on my first college summer internship and entered the corporate world, however, I knew that it was high time to force my taste buds to evolve. The lack of vegan options in my hometown had already required me to order a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the standard intern-courting lunch outing on my first day of work. I imagined that to follow that incident up by ordering a ten-syllable coffee at a Starbucks meeting would be something of a professional faux pas, so I settled on a conventional almond milk latte.

My dedication to inconspicuous lattes stuck for weeks — mid-morning coffee runs and quick lunches with coworkers were made much less nerve-inducing without the fear of judgement. But on more formal outings, when ordering meant announcing my drink preference in front of a supervisor or senior colleague who would then pay for me, it remained disconcerting to be the only individual deviating from a classic Pike Place or a black cold brew. Knowing that my middle school self would be distraught to discover that I had taken up recreational coffee consumption, I started slowly by mixing an excessive dose of soy milk into a house brew.

As my work projects grew more substantial and my days in the office proportionately more chaotic, my need for caffeine took precedence over my skepticism toward pure coffee. On each successive coffee run I seemed to spend less and less time doctoring up my coffee. I eventually mastered the art of adding a splash of soy milk to my venti Pike Place with one hand while juggling my purse, phone and office badge in the other, completing the pre-work caffeine pit stop in record time before hustling down the street to make it to work by 8:30.  

Insignificant as it may seem, the way I’ve approached coffee shop orders over the last eight years seems to me to reflect — or at least to hint at — my professional and social development. I fully understand that assigning metrics of sophistication or professionality to coffee-based drinks is somewhat absurd. Impracticality aside, I couldn’t help but wonder what it meant for my transition to adulthood when, on my last day at my summer internship, I relayed my new coffee order to a colleague who was making a Starbucks run for the office: “Grande dark roast, please. Black.”

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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By the numbers: My failed resolutions from freshman year https://stanforddaily.com/2018/08/10/by-the-numbers-my-failed-resolutions-from-freshman-year/ Fri, 10 Aug 2018 09:32:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?post_type=tsd_magazine_post&p=1143238 As anyone who has studied for a PSYCH 70 final can tell you, we tend to regret the things we didn’t do more than we regret all of the embarrassing, guilt-inducing or downright idiotic things that we’ve actually done. Whatever the psychological explanation for this phenomenon, it certainly seems to ring true as I look […]

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As anyone who has studied for a PSYCH 70 final can tell you, we tend to regret the things we didn’t do more than we regret all of the embarrassing, guilt-inducing or downright idiotic things that we’ve actually done. Whatever the psychological explanation for this phenomenon, it certainly seems to ring true as I look back on my first year at Stanford. All of the times I stayed up too late before an important exam or presentation, decided I wouldn’t need an umbrella twenty minutes before a winter quarter downpour, wore a pair of heels altogether inappropriate for the amount of walking I knew I would have to do on a Friday night, and forewent nutritious dining hall options for a dinner consisting primarily of sweet potato fries seem insignificant now, and when I consider my biggest regrets from the last year, most of them boil down into my failure to keep up the resolutions I made as an over-eager pre-frosh during NSO.

I can’t blame my past self for not sticking to all of the goals I had in mind for my first year. After all, I was fully expecting the NSO whirlwind to die down during the first few weeks of fall quarter — instead, a chaotic juggling act left me with little time to do anything more than sleep and try to stay on my feet while balancing schoolwork, extracurriculars, budding friendships and a determination to avoid FOMO at all costs. I had a better freshman year than I had ever dreamed or anticipated, and generally my reflections on the past ten months are overwhelmed by happiness and early-onset nostalgia. With that said, calculating the sacrificed outcomes of my failed promises to myself makes me all the more determined to stay on track with my resolutions in the coming year.

  1. I mistakenly believed that only one sentence per day would be a reasonable journaling goal. As it turns out, the minimal “one sentence” requirement isn’t as important as the “per day” condition. One missed day inevitably turned into one missed week, and that was the end of my journaling resolution. If I had filled the pages of my One Sentence Daily journal with reflections, I would now have the benefit of a 262-entry chronicle of my freshman life.
  2. It’s safe to say that gym visits did not feature in my daily routine as prominently as I had hoped. If I take for granted the fitness world’s assertion that almost anyone can conquer a marathon after 24 weeks of training, sticking to this resolution would have given me 13 and a half weeks of wiggle room to work up to the 26.2-mile race. With a little more dedication I might have spent my spring break triumphantly crossing a finish line instead of lying poolside all day, every day.
  3. In an effort to handle stress more effectively in college than I did in high school, I decided to practice daily meditation once I arrived on campus. This habit lasted all of three days, and I found myself frustrated that I wasn’t able to practice for more than 10 minutes at a time. If I had started small and committed, I may have been able to increase my daily sessions from five to ten to twenty or thirty minutes, accumulating more than 3,000 minutes of zen by the end of the year—which would be well worth the increased clarity, focus and calm that accompany consistent meditation.
  4. My determination to enjoy as many sunrises and sunsets as possible was quickly dashed by the need for sleep in the mornings and a steady slew of homework and other obligations in the evenings. Had I reduced my expectations to only one Sunday morning sunrise per week, I still could have caught 32 of them during my first year instead of snoozing through brunch and missing out on the natural beauty that surrounds the Stanford campus.
  5. I promised myself I’d take advantage of the Dish even before I realized how close it was to my room in Stern. Despite the fact that I could get to the entrance in just a few minutes, I ended up hiking or running the trail only a few times. If I had maintained a weekly streak throughout the year, I could have walked or run the Dish trail 32 times, logging just over 115 miles.  
  6. When winter quarter hit hard, I got into the unfortunate habit of whisking my meals directly from Stern Dining to my room, where I continued working, reading or studying in between bites of whatever lentil soup was on tap that day. Though my multitasking skills benefited greatly from this daily practice, I missed out on the opportunity to share meals with friends and dormmates. If I had kept up the habit of eating dinner in the dining hall four or five nights each week for the second half of the year, I could have traded endless studying for more than 100 valuable conversations with my peers.
  7. During my NSO, when Provost Drell charged my class to connect with professors at office hours, I truly believed that I would do so. In reality, a combination of inconvenient scheduling problems and completely unfounded nerves kept me from visiting a professor’s office hours more than a handful of times. If I had taken the time to approach a professor once a week to talk about a shared interest for half an hour or so, I could have spent more than sixteen hours of my first year forming important relationships with people who are experts in the fields about which I’m most passionate.
  8. When I crammed my suitcase full of way too many books on the way to NSO, I didn’t imagine that all of them would end up collecting dust for the duration of the year before being shoved back into a duffel bag for the trek home in June. Now that I’m home for the summer and finally making headway on my reading list, I wish I had taken some time to do the same while at Stanford. If I had read a book of my choosing once every couple of weeks, I could have gotten a 19-book head start on the pile currently accumulating on top of my dresser.
  9. The fast pace and quick turnover inherent to the quarter system left me missing the year-long extended projects that I completed during my high school years. I briefly considered filling this gap by slowly writing the first part of a novel. I never actually made it to the “create Word document” stage of this plan, but if I had written just 500 words four times a week from the first day of classes to the last, I could have created a respectable 75,000-word dent in the first draft.
  10. After hiding indoors from Virginia’s 100% humidity index all summer, I spent the plane ride to Stanford daydreaming about lying out in the sun as much as possible. Had I committed myself to two dedicated hours of sunbathing per week while at school, I could have logged 65 hours under the sun and potentially returned to Virginia less vampirishly pale.
  11. After a flat tire paired with my stubbornness and laziness rendered my campus bike defunct for the months of November-June, I walked everywhere I went on campus and in the surrounding area. In all of that time alone with my headphones, I easily could have cycled through all of the podcasts I set out to listen to at the beginning of the year. Instead, I jumped around a truly embarrassing collection of Spotify albums heavily featuring One Direction and the pop country genre. Had I spent that time more wisely, I might have walked away an expert on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, early American history, Beatlemania, or any of the other million podcast topics available on iTunes.
  12. Between working part-time jobs throughout the school year and doing my best to get the maximum possible value out of my mandatory meal plan, I had high hopes for developing some money-saving habits. Instead, most of my savings materialized as Trader Joe’s hauls and unnecessary retail therapy after tough exams. If I had saved $20 every week of school, I could have finished out the year with an extra $650, the equivalent of four flights from San Francisco to New York City, 13 pairs of my favorite flip-flops, or 63 Ike’s sandwiches.
  13. In the case of my resolution to commit at least one act of kindness each week, the foregone benefits don’t end with me. If I had performed one good deed for someone for each of the 32 weeks of the school year, who knows how many people’s days could have been made by a chain reaction of kindness?

As I consider the opportunity costs of my failure to keep up my first-year resolutions, an obvious question remains: what for? What exactly was it that ultimately proved more important than a potential novel, the possibility of getting impressively ripped at the gym or countless foregone knowledge from all of the books, podcasts and office hour conversations I didn’t end up engaging with?

On balance, I’m more than content with the way my first nine months at Stanford turned out. While I didn’t wake up to catch the sun rise as many times as I would have liked, I managed to drag myself out of bed early enough to make it to triathlon practice with respectable frequency—at least during fall quarter. Though my ambitious stack of just-for-fun reading material didn’t make it off the shelf until move-out, I fell in love with my classes and found myself completely engrossed in assigned reading material for the first time. Despite my failure to stick to a daily meditation ritual, I experienced moments of peace and true happiness every day.

And while my list of unrealized resolutions might suggest total failure, I did manage to pull off one impressive feat during my time on the Farm. In what can only be described as a procrastination daze during the final months of spring quarter, I plowed my way through every single existing episode of both Grey’s Anatomy and Jane the Virgin on Netflix. A reliable internet source tells me that the necessary time input for such an accomplishment comes out to a whopping 294 hours over eight and a half weeks, for a slightly inspiring and equally depressing average of 4.32 hours per day. Just imagine all the sunsets I could have enjoyed with that much time on my hands.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Things I learned embarrassingly late https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/08/things-i-learned-embarrassingly-late/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/08/things-i-learned-embarrassingly-late/#respond Fri, 08 Jun 2018 19:01:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1141991 As my first year at Stanford winds down, I’ve started to engage in all the typical nostalgic reminiscing about the last nine months. Looking back on all of my experiences, connections and growth since September, it’s clear that I learned an incredible amount along the way. However, some things took a bit longer than others. […]

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As my first year at Stanford winds down, I’ve started to engage in all the typical nostalgic reminiscing about the last nine months. Looking back on all of my experiences, connections and growth since September, it’s clear that I learned an incredible amount along the way. However, some things took a bit longer than others. Despite my best efforts to acclimate to Stanford as smoothly as possible, I somehow didn’t learn the following tips and tricks until the last four weeks of spring quarter — a little too late for them to be of much use.

 

  1. How to use the strength equipment at the gym. Granted, I considered learning this at the beginning of the year, but I was too embarrassed to try and fail miserably in front of everyone else in AOERC.
  2. There is a stand in Tresidder where you can buy sushi and an overwhelming variety of juices with Meal Plan Dollars. Apparently I am the only person who did not know this until recently.
  3. If you press the start button on the dryers multiple times, your clothes will dry for more than 15 minutes and will probably (though not definitely) come out only slightly damp rather than still soaked.
  4. There is a Marguerite route that stops at the Stanford Shopping Center, and it is actually not necessary to walk the 3.4-mile round trip every time you want a pressed juice.
  5. Stanford printers have wireless printing capabilities which do not require you to log into an entirely new computer every time you need to print an essay.
  6. Professors can see how long you spend on their Canvas pages — allegedly.
  7. There is a bathroom (multiple, actually!) in Arrillaga Dining.
  8. Old Union has a second floor full of couches. It is both just quiet enough and just close enough to a steady supply of waffle fries to make it the perfect study spot.
  9. The Stanford Daily has a new app and you can download it for free from the App Store?! (This is just product placement. But it is technically recently-acquired knowledge, so it counts.)
  10. You can look up how many meal swipes you have remaining each week online.
  11. Pre-assigning instead of trying your luck in the Draw is an extremely underrated opportunity.
  12. The Bookstore actually does sell Apple headphones (they’re just hidden in a corner on the second floor).
  13. You can download Microsoft Office for free through a Stanford Outlook account.
  14. Self-storage units are way, way, way cheaper than the companies that pick up your boxes and store them for you.
  15. Lathrop has a basement. With a cafe! Who knew? Not me.
  16. Sometimes the departments running experiments on undergrads get confused and send you Amazon gift card compensation even though you already received the course credit you signed up for. Don’t ask questions, just take it.
  17. Most of the school supplies I brought to campus in the fall were entirely unnecessary and went unused. Remind me why I thought it necessary to haul two containers of extra staples across the country?
  18. There are more Wifi networks on campus than ‘eduroam.’ This is probably the fact I’m most upset about not knowing all year.
  19. According to a semi-reliable brochure that can be found outside the Campus Store, Stern Dining keeps vegan waffles in the freezer. I have yet to verify this information.
  20. Only one person in your draw group needs to participate in Med Draw for your entire group to receive the accommodation. Shake off that 1,900-level lottery number and say hello to two-room doubles in Norcliffe for you and your closest three friends!

 

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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How are you? It’s Week Nine. https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/31/how-are-you-its-week-nine/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/31/how-are-you-its-week-nine/#respond Fri, 01 Jun 2018 03:44:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1141868 Great! Fine. Alright. Tired. Hanging in there. Pretty good. Asking “how are you?” typically yields a short filler response and a quick reciprocation of the question. Outside of Stanford, you can generally expect people to estimate their moods with phrases similar to the above samples. However, here on Campus, students have picked up a new […]

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Great! Fine. Alright. Tired. Hanging in there. Pretty good.

Asking “how are you?” typically yields a short filler response and a quick reciprocation of the question. Outside of Stanford, you can generally expect people to estimate their moods with phrases similar to the above samples. However, here on Campus, students have picked up a new heuristic for explaining how they’re feeling: what week of the quarter it is.

Almost every week this year, I’ve heard people respond to “how are you?” with a simple statement of fact: “Oh, it’s Week X.” This usually elicits a knowing look from the asker, as though much more has been said than this obvious, vague statement. In my experience, replying with the week of the quarter tends to mean something markedly different depending on which week it actually is — maybe this simple response actually presents a more nuanced and expressive meaning than meets the eye.

“It’s Week One”: You’re feeling great. You started the day enrolled in 20 units and ended it at a reasonable 15 when you found out about a final paper that you simply did not want to write. The next 10 weeks are entirely under your control: With the least outside work you’re likely to have all quarter, you split your extra time between cycling through Netflix series and strategically adjusting your schedule to ensure the smoothest quarter possible.

“It’s Week Two”: Things are picking up. It’s getting a little late to add new classes, so the pressure’s on to make sure you have a full roster of classes you’re willing to commit to. You feel a little behind already but nothing you can’t push through. How is it only Week Two?

“It’s Week Three”: Your chem midterm just came out of nowhere, and you’re still reeling just a bit. You can’t decide whether to drop an unexpectedly difficult class — it’s bound to get even tougher, but you’ve already survived almost a third of the quarter, so how bad could the next two-thirds be? Now is the time to put your game face on, buckle down and tough it out. You are a warrior.

“It’s Week Four”: You ran out of Meal Plan Dollars and pencil lead on the same day. Despite the fact that you’ll have to make it until the quarter’s end without TAP’s sweet potato fries to help you through, you feel like you have most of your life together. Midterms are looming around the corner, but for the duration of Week Four you put them out of your mind and tell yourself you’ll conquer your massive to-do list over the weekend.

“It’s Week Five”: It takes you a second to readjust to human interaction before you answer, since you spent the last seven straight hours in the stacks at Green. You would elaborate on your mood, but you’ve just run out the clock on your strictly scheduled 10-minute study break.

“It’s Week Six”: That one lingering midterm that you didn’t have time to study for last week now consumes your waking hours. You take the best nap of your life after it’s over. You feel battered but unbroken. You’re over the hump and stronger for it. You take a well-deserved break from the grind over the weekend and come back refreshed on Monday of Week Seven.

“It’s Week Seven”: It seems as though the worst is over, if only temporarily. You can now slip into your schedule things like laundry and washing your dishes, which you’ve been putting off since Week Four in the interest of surviving midterm season. You barely have time to breathe a sigh of relief before your professor drops the phrase “final paper” in class. Three more weeks.

“It’s Week Eight”: You don’t understand how you’ve made it from Week One to Week Eight in the span of what feels like 5-7 business days. Everything is happening so fast. You start bringing your study materials to the dining hall. Your desire to make an informed decision about grading statuses is hampered by the fact that you still have no available grades. You feel caught up in a whirlwind but unsure how you got here.

“It’s Week Nine”: You have to admit to yourself that it is past time to get started on those final papers. You’re unsure if you’re physically capable of accomplishing everything you need to get done before the end of the quarter. At the same time, the end is in sight. If you can make it through this, you’re free.

“It’s Week Ten”: A week from now, it’ll all be over. You have exams, take-home finals, papers and projects competing for space in your mind. Still, you can’t help but waste time daydreaming about your next break. Though Week Ten and exam week can feel like the end of the world, you know deep down that what’s done is — for the most part — done.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu

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A breakdown of Bay to Breakers https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/22/a-breakdown-of-bay-to-breakers/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/22/a-breakdown-of-bay-to-breakers/#respond Tue, 22 May 2018 10:00:57 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1142489 At 7:03 a.m. on Sunday, I breathe a sigh of relief and turn to face my friend. “Wow, I’m really glad that train ride ended before I had to join the group lap dance.” If this distinct sense of gratitude resonates with you, then you’ve probably experienced Bay to Breakers. Despite the fact that the […]

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At 7:03 a.m. on Sunday, I breathe a sigh of relief and turn to face my friend.

“Wow, I’m really glad that train ride ended before I had to join the group lap dance.”

If this distinct sense of gratitude resonates with you, then you’ve probably experienced Bay to Breakers. Despite the fact that the 12-kilometer race tends to take a top spot on Stanford bucket lists, most of my freshman friends and I had no idea what we were truly getting into when we suited up in rally and raced to catch the 6 a.m. Caltrain on Sunday. But fear not! Everyone’s Bay to Breakers experience is different, but the following stages may help you mentally prepare for next year.

Stage 1: Wake up call

If you took a power-nap to recharge after Frost, your alarm is likely to go off any time between four and five in the morning. You feel refreshed, recharged, calm even. So naive. You don your fourth choice Halloween costume from last year (the one that just barely missed the Halloweekend cut) and head out to meet up with friends to begin the race-day festivities. If your roommate isn’t joining in on the fun, be warned: trying to pull up those rainbow fishnet tights without waking up the peaceful sleeper five feet from you may prove harder than the race itself.

Stage 2: The Caltrain

Assuming that you made it to the train station still conscious, ticket in hand, you’ll crowd into a train car with a couple hundred of your closest friends. Despite the fact that there are literally hundreds of empty seats in adjacent cars, everyone you know will insist on cramming into a single car, which in turn will reach a sauna-like level of heat. You will try to maintain your balance while dancing along to the Spotify playlist blasting from a portable speaker, though you’ll probably fall a few times. Eventually, you’ll make a break for it and squeeze past your co-passengers to another car, where you can finally catch a breath of air that doesn’t taste like sweat and Juul vapor.

Stage 3: The long wait

After navigating through the city to find the starting gates, you’ll hop in line with the pace-appropriate group and wait for about an hour before the race starts. You may start to feel more comfortable with the madness as you snack on a free Clif Bar sample, but be warned: this is more likely than not the stage in which you will see your first (but definitely not last) set of genitalia for the day. Hundreds of unique costumes demonstrate the creativity and innovation of Bay Area residents, but despite the infinite options for fun and unique outfits, some runners prefer to go un-costumed. In my experience, the best course of action is simply to avert your eyes and try not to think about it as the countdowns and starting guns commence.

Stage 4: The beginning

It’s finally here! You trot along with your corral and enjoy the view of the city. You feel great. You could run this whole thing. Nothing can stop you! One foot in front of the other, that’s all. Seven and half miles isn’t that many anyway. You’re going all the way.

Stage 5: Mile two

You did not go all the way. You told yourself you’d take one tiny break to pet a costumed dog on the side of the road, and then you never made it back to your jogging pace. You remind yourself that finishing – even at a 19-minute-per-mile stroll – is the goal, and besides, the dog was dressed as a lion. A lion. Worth it.

Stage 6: Hayes St. Hill

Nothing I can say will prepare you for this part. Just grit your teeth and bear it. If you believe that your legs will last the whole way up, then they will. Probably.

Stage 7: Mile five

You feel like you must have traveled at least three miles since the four-mile marker by the time you hit the fifth. By this point, the people who actually trained for the race are walking back with their post-race goodies in hand. Their toned calves mock you as they pass. You focus on the promise of food just past the finish line. Also, the t-shirt pick-up is at the finisher’s expo, and how will people know you did Bay to Breakers if you don’t snag the shirt to prove it? Use the dogs playing in Golden Gate park as a distraction (this tactic is also helpful for avoiding accidental sightings of the aforementioned genitalia).

Stage 8: Post-race expo

You did it! Only three short hours after the first starting gun, you have officially Broken the Bay, or whatever. Use your newly-acquired t-shirt as a makeshift bag to carry all the free protein bar samples you can get your hands on. You’re going to need the extra energy for the final leg of the race: the walk to the Uber pick-up location. Though your legs feel like jello and you’re pretty sure you heard “Eye of the Tiger” more times than any person should have to in a single day, the pure joy of plopping down in the passenger seat of your Caltrain-bound rideshare is almost enough to make you want to do it all again next May.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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SoulCycle as a novice https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/14/soulcycle-as-a-novice/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/14/soulcycle-as-a-novice/#respond Mon, 14 May 2018 08:02:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140959 I pull open one of two towering glass doors and step into the SoulCycle studio at 3:43 p.m., assuming that I will need a few extra minutes to complete my first-timer waivers and to get acclimated to the magnetic cycling machines before my 4 p.m. class. Several tank top-clad girls welcome me at the front […]

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I pull open one of two towering glass doors and step into the SoulCycle studio at 3:43 p.m., assuming that I will need a few extra minutes to complete my first-timer waivers and to get acclimated to the magnetic cycling machines before my 4 p.m. class. Several tank top-clad girls welcome me at the front desk, and as I complete the sign-in process I notice that every employee I’ve seen since entering the building (an admittedly lacking sample size of five) appears incredibly well-hydrated. I have never seen such consistently glowing skin among a group of individuals in my life.

I toss my bag and tennis shoes in a locker, slipping into my cycling shoes and hesitantly entering the studio. I notice a container of yellow earplugs on the wall outside the studio as I enter. Who needs earplugs for a cycling class? I wonder. I walk past without taking any, figuring that I don’t need extra items to keep track of as I try to navigate the 45-minute experience.

As I walk slowly to the general area of my assigned bike, another yellow-shirted employee asks if I’m new. I get the feeling that she’s been waiting for me, since my name was highlighted in green on the sign-in sheet. According to the chart, I am the only person in today’s class taking advantage of the two for $32 newbie deal. I try to push this thought out of my mind while Shannon* adjusts the many components of Bike 20. She helps me clip in my shoes and I start pedaling. I am still the only person in the studio.

I manage to keep my legs moving for ten minutes, during which I decided I should refill my half-empty water bottle, realized I probably wouldn’t be able to clip my shoes back in without assistance, abandoned the idea of hydration and watched the studio fill up with more experienced SoulCyclists. The instructor suddenly skips into the room. A few people cheer. The instructor, Jamie*, is followed closely by a college-aged woman in a sports bra and wildly-patterned leggings. She hops on the elevated bike on the front of the room and Jamie introduces her as Shelby*, our class’ model. I notice that Shelby’s feet are moving remarkably fast. As I will soon learn, she plans to keep this pace consistent for 40 minutes (of the 45-minute the class). I think Shelby may not be human.

The lights go off, and a red glow envelopes the room. It appears that I am the only person in the studio not wearing earplugs. Jamie connects his playlist to the studio’s speakers, and I realize too late why everyone else opted for the earplugs. The combination of dim lighting and insanely loud hip hop music more closely resembles a rave than a boutique fitness class.

The next 45 minutes are a whirlwind of an athletic endeavor that can only loosely be described as “cycling.” I struggle to keep my legs moving at the pace of the deafening music while also attempting to engage in all the push-ups, high-fives, rotations, body shifts and other dance-like movements prescribed by Jamie, who alternates between directives and motivational assurances. I would describe this part of the experience in more detail, but I’m fairly certain I blacked out for a sizable portion of it.

Toward the end of the class, Jamie lights candles and places them on the floor in front of the first row of bikes. I am confused until later in the song, when he ceremoniously offers each candle to a cyclist, who in turn somehow understands the tacit order to blow it out. I pray inwardly that he doesn’t approach me for this task, since I am confident that the steady stream of sweat sliding off my nose would extinguish the flame before I could gather enough breath to blow. He offers a candle to the woman directly in front of me instead. I try to breathe a sigh of relief but cannot stop gasping for air long enough to do so.

When the lights finally go on again, I am relieved for a second by the thought of freedom. This comfort is rudely interrupted by the horrifying realization that every other cyclist can now see the dripping, tomato-red mess that I have become over the course of the class. I follow the stretching instructions that Jamie gives over calming music, shuddering to think of what my legs will feel like tomorrow.

Before embarking on my SoulCycle experiment, I sought intel from more experienced friends. A consensus formed around the description of Soul as “cultish.” Indeed, the company’s website describes its classes as “primal,” “tribal” and “transformative.” During class, instructors encourage cyclists to “release your inner warrior,” and to “take control of your journey.” I’m still slightly unclear on what these affirmations really mean, and I’m not totally sure where I stand on the experience itself (in part due to sensory overload and in part due to my own incompetence, both of which inhibited me from getting the full experience). But when I called my mom on my walk back to campus and she asked how my first class went, I defaulted to the only evaluation I was certain about: “I don’t even know how to describe it, but I definitely want to try it again.”

*Name has been changed.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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What the roommate survey should actually ask https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/10/what-the-roommate-survey-should-actually-ask/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/10/what-the-roommate-survey-should-actually-ask/#respond Thu, 10 May 2018 19:20:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140876 Every year, two students undertake the enormous task of matching each set of roommates in the incoming freshman class. While the survey used to assess roommate compatibility is certainly thorough, after a year of living in a freshman dorm (chock-full of involuntary roommate pairings of varying levels of success), I’m prepared to suggest a few […]

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Every year, two students undertake the enormous task of matching each set of roommates in the incoming freshman class. While the survey used to assess roommate compatibility is certainly thorough, after a year of living in a freshman dorm (chock-full of involuntary roommate pairings of varying levels of success), I’m prepared to suggest a few changes. Typical wake-up times and study habits are undoubtedly important, but there are some questions whose addition to the survey might yield even more precisely paired roomies.

What is your star sign? This should be an open-ended question, rather than multiple choice, since the depth of knowledge a survey taker is able to provide in response to this question is in and of itself telling of their personality and consequent roommate compatibility.

What is your Netflix binge style? There are few behaviors more illuminating than whether someone typically spends whole days curled up in a blanket crying over Grey’s or reserves their favorite reruns for one-at-a-time viewings as rewards for hitting homework milestones.

How would you describe your interior decor preference? This question does double duty by assessing both roommate compatibility and the potential aesthetic unity (or lack thereof) between both halves of the room.

How soundly do you sleep? The times that roommates go to bed or wake up in the morning arguably don’t matter as much as the potential for the other roommate to be woken up around those hours. If you could sleep through a hailstorm, the fact that your roommate is an early riser probably won’t have much relevance to your compatibility.

Rate your affinity toward headphones on a scale of 1-10. Maybe you never go anywhere without your trusty headphones, going so far as to wear them even when you’re alone. Maybe you’d rather project your music/TV/movie tastes for the world to hear over a speaker. Either way, you’d probably be better off with a roommate who shares your headphone-related tendencies.

What is your Myers Briggs personality type? Sure, this identifier is a bit of a catch-all for a variety of character traits and habits, but it’s worth knowing. Why run the risk of sticking an INTJ with an ESFJ?

Where do you draw the line re: roommate nudity? Obviously you’re sharing pretty tight quarters, and everyone should feel comfortable in their own living space. But let’s be real, there’s a range of typical duration of pantslessness, and most people wouldn’t want to live with someone on the other end of it.

What is your Starbucks/pizza/Jamba Juice/TAP order? This question arguably has little relevance to roommate compatibility, but each person’s answer should be provided to the matched roommate in advance of move-in, just in case conflict arises and you find yourself needing to ask forgiveness — bribery never hurts.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Types of LinkedIn users https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/03/types-of-linkedin-users/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/03/types-of-linkedin-users/#respond Thu, 03 May 2018 08:00:29 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140424 As posts flooded the Class of 2021 Facebook group in the days after early action decisions were released in 2016, admitted students scrambled to share Twitter handles, Instagram usernames, Snapchat codes and other social media identifiers with soon-to-be-classmates. I scrolled past posts soliciting Xbox gamertags and online chess forum usernames without a second thought, but […]

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As posts flooded the Class of 2021 Facebook group in the days after early action decisions were released in 2016, admitted students scrambled to share Twitter handles, Instagram usernames, Snapchat codes and other social media identifiers with soon-to-be-classmates. I scrolled past posts soliciting Xbox gamertags and online chess forum usernames without a second thought, but I paused when I saw a post filled with dozens of my fellow admits’ LinkedIn profile links. “LinkedIn,” I thought. “Isn’t that for middle-aged, uptight businesspeople?”

Never to be left out, though, I spent a few days over winter break filling in my very own LinkedIn profile, dredging up old club memberships and leadership roles that I had long forgotten. Though I’ve mostly left my profile untouched since then, I’ve done enough LinkedIn people-watching to notice a few trends within my growing pool of connections.

The Gatsby: Can’t repeat the past? Well, maybe not, but it certainly features heavily on lots of LinkedIn profiles. I count myself among those users who have made little-to-no effort to update our profiles since high school. No matter what I pursue, join or accomplish on the Farm, the most significant piece of information that people can glean from my profile remains my tumultuous tenure as president of Italian Club in high school.

The Techie: I don’t understand half the words on these profiles. Somehow, the techies have coded their way to some seriously impressive-sounding accomplishments that I admittedly wouldn’t be able to tell from that program that makes Karel punch bricks, or whatever it is everyone was working on in 106A all of fall quarter. If your profile includes Silicon Valley internships, CS 107 section leading and “B.S. in Computer Science” as your header since before you matriculated, you probably have a techie LinkedIn profile.

The Mystery: It seems that the LinkedIn bug has infiltrated a number of schools across the country, since I’ve received lots of connection requests from high school acquaintances and other pre-Stanford friends I haven’t talked to since graduation. More often than not, I get these requests in the early stages of the other person’s profile set-up, so their profiles are usually comprised of the grey default headshot icon and a very limited amount of information beyond where they attend college.

The Blogger: Believe it or not, I have several friends who make time to post actual blogs on LinkedIn when they’re not crushing p-sets or hammering away at a final paper. How anyone has the time to share words of wisdom during Week 5 I have yet to understand, but regardless, these people deserve a round of applause. Bloggers’ content on LinkedIn spans a wide spectrum from political rhetoric to motivational anecdotes – LinkedIn is like a box of chocolates that way, if the box of chocolates had the side effect of reminding you that every single person you know has a summer internship lined up except for you.

The Social Butterfly: I’ll admit that when I saw LinkedIn included in the barrage of social media posts in the 2021 Facebook group so long ago, I was skeptical. I wondered how a career-centered website could possibly qualify as “social.” This group of LinkedIn users proves me wrong: with over 500 connections, I’d say the social butterflies have made LinkedIn about as social as it can be. And so long as they don’t start trying to sell me Flat Tummy Teas, I’m glad to see it.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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A guide to vegan food on and around campus https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/27/a-guide-to-vegan-food-on-and-around-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/27/a-guide-to-vegan-food-on-and-around-campus/#respond Fri, 27 Apr 2018 08:45:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140120 So you’ve decided to take the plunge. You avoided the influence of Bay Area culture for as long as possible, but you buckled under the allure of soy mint CREAM sandwiches and the prospect of saving the planet, loving the animals, all that jazz. You’re going vegan. Luckily, there aren’t many better places to do […]

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So you’ve decided to take the plunge. You avoided the influence of Bay Area culture for as long as possible, but you buckled under the allure of soy mint CREAM sandwiches and the prospect of saving the planet, loving the animals, all that jazz. You’re going vegan. Luckily, there aren’t many better places to do it — start with one of these (omnivore-approved!) dishes, and there’s no turning back.

  1. CoHo Edamame Salad: Its colossal size makes it better as a meal than as a study snack, but this is probably my favorite vegan dish on campus. If you’re risk-averse, I’d recommend asking for the dressing on the side because it’s usually laid on pretty thick, but CoHo does not disappoint with the ideal greens-to-soybean ratio. You can also add fried tofu if you’re feeling particularly vegan-y. Go crazy.
  2. Coupa Hummus Plate: This is the epitome of tried and true. Hummus is any good vegan’s best friend, and you can keep it classic with pita or substitute vegetables — it’s really impossible to go wrong.
  3. Stern Dining Lemon Lentil Soup: Technically every dining hall features this soup at the same time, but it’s worth it to head to Stern for the burrito bowl-sized bowls that facilitate the perfect half-rice, half-soup portion for this dish. I eat this soup every time I find it in the dining hall (which often happens twice in one day) — it’s that good. As an added bonus, the green lentil soup is also amazing, and you’re likely to find some type of lentil soup in campus dining halls at least once every week.
  4. Cal Ave Farmer’s Market Samosa Slider: This Samosa/Chana Masala/Chutney combination is my favorite off-campus vegan discovery. It’s $3 and will keep you full for a solid part of the day. I recommend walking the mile or so to and from the farmer’s market because 1) the walk is beautiful, and 2) you’re going to need time to digest.
  5. Rebecca’s Mighty Muffins Dream Bar: But wait! Before you start the trek back to campus, swing by the Mighty Muffins tent at the farmer’s market and pick up an assortment of vegan baked goods. I can personally vouch for the Seven Layer Dream Bar, and if it’s any indication of the quality of the rest of the line, you’re in for a huge treat.
  6. ZombieRunner Mocha: California Avenue gets one last shoutout for ZombieRunner’s mocha. Though you can veganize beverages pretty much anywhere around here, ZombieRunner’s stands out for its use of Oatly, an oat milk specially made for hot drinks. The mocha is ridiculously smooth and rich, and there are several indoor tables perfect for popping in to take a break from the sun.
  7. Gloria’s Spring Rolls: You can find a good selection of Gloria’s products at Munger, Tresidder and TAP, but I consistently go back to the tofu spring rolls. They’re a little pricey, but the rolls and accompanying peanut sauce are well worth it, especially since you can buy them with Meal Plan Dollars.
  8. Treehouse Shiitake and Tofu Teriyaki Bowl: The style of tofu has differed every time I’ve ordered this dish, but it’s consistently delicious. Teriyaki sauce is the perfect final touch over carrots, broccoli, mushrooms and tofu piled high on a mountain of white rice. Given Treehouse’s long hours, it’s a super convenient spot to satisfy your vegan cravings.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Reimagining free time https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/10/reimagining-free-time/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/10/reimagining-free-time/#respond Tue, 10 Apr 2018 08:00:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138958 Hosting my younger sister on campus for a few days at the end of spring break was meant to give her a better idea of what Stanford is really like, but I’d venture to say that during her visit I learned almost as much about my life at Stanford as she did. Unadjusted to the […]

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Hosting my younger sister on campus for a few days at the end of spring break was meant to give her a better idea of what Stanford is really like, but I’d venture to say that during her visit I learned almost as much about my life at Stanford as she did. Unadjusted to the time change on our first morning on the west coast, we woke up on Saturday morning around six with little hope of going back to sleep. That morning I did my best tour guide impression as I led Lauren around every campus landmark I could think of, but by the time we arrived back at Twain, we still had just over 12 hours of Saturday left to fill. When I asked Lauren what how she’d like to spend the rest of the day, she raised an eyebrow at me. “I mean, you go here … What do you usually do in your free time?”

I paused. I looked back on the last several weeks of winter quarter, trying to come up with a suitable response. My weekday routine outside of class generally consisted of equal parts hitting the gym or triathlon practice, hanging out with friends, fulfilling club-related duties and watching Grey’s Anatomy. But Lauren didn’t have access to the gym, nearly all of my friends were off campus for break, my clubs were on a break-induced hiatus and binging Grey’s seemed like an unsatisfying way to spend a weekend meant for exploring Stanford and the surrounding area.

When I relayed this slightly dispiriting revelation to my sister, she suggested brainstorming my ideal use of free time–how I imagined myself filling my calendar as an idealistic pre-frosh. So I did. I imagined studying in CoHo, on the Law Terrace and on Meyer Green rather than holed up in Twain’s basement conference room. I had wanted to hike the Dish regularly, to take advantage of the sand volleyball court outside my window, to walk to Town & Country and window shop every once in a while.

These were all fairly reasonable expectations that I carried with me into my first year at Stanford, but I’d become caught up in the pressures of academic and extracurricular duties, falling into a routine that involved much more time at my desk alone than I had hoped or planned for. Three days with no school-related obligations remained before my first spring quarter class on Tuesday, and there seemed no better time to cycle through my wish list with my sister in tow.

For three days, I tried out all the things I had hoped to incorporate into my typical schedule over the past two quarters. Lauren and I played beach volleyball and frisbee on Wilbur field, read books and tanned on Meyer Green, and took over a corner of CoHo (no studying involved, but I wasn’t complaining). We walked to and around Town & Country and ate our way through the California Avenue farmers’ market. We spent an afternoon at Half Moon Bay and a morning hiking the Dish at sunrise (which was admittedly only possible due to our EST-adjusted circadian rhythm).

Wanting to be a decent host was the push I needed to fulfill the promises I made to myself when I enrolled at Stanford last year. In the first week of spring quarter, I’ve done most of my readings outside the confines of Stern, walked to the Stanford Shopping Center, Town & Country and downtown Palo Alto and relaxed with a book in the sun. Reexamining how I was spending my free time made me realize just how much I was neglecting many of the opportunities that had drawn me to Stanford in the first place. I may not have any more days truly without responsibilities or obligations this quarter, but changing the way I structure the free time I do have has been the best adjustment I’ve made at Stanford yet.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Spring quarter resolutions https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/04/spring-quarter-resolutions/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/04/spring-quarter-resolutions/#respond Wed, 04 Apr 2018 16:14:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138682 One of the benefits of the quarter system is that we get a fresh start every 10 weeks. In the spirit of “New Quarter, New Me,” I like to take a few days before each new term begins to think about what I’d like to accomplish during the next go-round. Some of my goals derive […]

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One of the benefits of the quarter system is that we get a fresh start every 10 weeks. In the spirit of “New Quarter, New Me,” I like to take a few days before each new term begins to think about what I’d like to accomplish during the next go-round. Some of my goals derive from past failures, while others are simply things I wish I had taken the time and effort to do (or stop) in previous quarters. If this quarter is anything like the last two, I’ll inevitably have varying degrees of success in accomplishing these resolutions, but I’ve found that even writing down my goals motivates me to commit more seriously to them, and I could use all the accountability I can get.

  1. Watch the sun rise. Maybe once, maybe twice, maybe (probably not) weekly. In an ideal world this resolution would involve a sunrise Dish hike, but I do my best not to set myself up for failure, and the probability that I make it to the Dish before 6:30 in the morning is approximately zero.
  2. Go to professors’ office hours in addition to TAs’. I’m slightly embarrassed to say that in twenty weeks as an undergraduate I’ve never been to a professor’s office hours – it’s about time to get over those nerves and take advantage of the people who know more than I can imagine about the things I want to learn.
  3. Find new study spots. So far I’ve been lucky never to need to fight someone for my secret desk deep in the stacks at Green, but the better weather has inspired me to find some sunnier, less secluded spaces to get my readings done.
  4. Read more than what’s assigned. Spring quarter feels like an opportune time to crack open one of those “for pleasure” books that I hauled here from the East Coast because I was certain that in college I’d be the kind of person who reads for fun all the time. I managed to get through one novel while on duty as a swiper in Stern Dining last quarter, but my overly ambitious pre-frosh self ensured that I won’t deplete my stash if I can commit to a couple more.
  5. Text people first, make plans and stick to them. Gone are the days when I’d allow myself to wriggle out of commitments with friends because I was tired or stressed or more interested in “This is Us” and a pint of ice cream. Even if plans change based on those factors, I’m going to stop canceling outright – having company for my Rocky Road-fueled Netflix marathons can’t hurt.
  6. Be healthier on my own terms. Commitments that involve a number of gym sessions per week or a requirement of at least one salad per day have never worked for me. I’d rather commit more generally to striving for health and listening to my body regardless of whether it craves a great workout or a night in bed with some of TAP’s sweet potato fries.
  7. Get out of bed when I wake up. I’m intensely guilty of lounging in bed until I absolutely have to get ready for class, sometimes hours after I initially wake up. Instead, I’ll get out of bed and start my day as soon as I feel rested.
  8. Sleep regularly, well and long enough. Obviously I’m not going to be too disappointed if I have to pull a few late nights to meet deadlines, but on weeknights I’m attempting to get to bed at a regular time that allows for enough quality sleep before I need to get to class.
  9. Stop defaulting to Netflix/social media. In my room, my immediate answer when I have nothing else I absolutely need to do is to press play on an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.” Outside of Twain, muscle memory has me checking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, my email and even Canvas almost constantly. This is going to be the hardest habit to break, but also probably the most important.
  10. Donate more (time, resources, money, etc.) Trade the aforementioned Netflix time for volunteer work, skip the morning latte and save up money for causes I’m passionate about, and generally be more giving with anything I have to give.
  11. Take notes on readings. Assuming that I’ll absorb and remember reading material through a once-over is ineffective and frustrating. Some strategic highlighting and a few notes in the margins should make my study sessions much more rewarding.
  12. Check the weather before getting dressed. I spent too many March afternoons walking back from class in a rain-soaked hoodie and shorts because my outfit that had seemed appropriate in the morning was decidedly inappropriate when the clearly forecasted thunderstorm hit. Checking the weather for the whole day instead of just glancing outside is a 30-second fix that I can definitely spare the effort to make.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Reinventing a village https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/03/reinventing-a-village/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/03/reinventing-a-village/#respond Tue, 03 Apr 2018 08:00:41 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138597 They say it takes a village to raise a child. It’s the mantra my parents used to cleverly defer credit when anyone congratulated them on my acceptance to Stanford, and I have to think that for those fortunate enough to have a village around them, it couldn’t be more true. Growing up, my village was […]

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They say it takes a village to raise a child. It’s the mantra my parents used to cleverly defer credit when anyone congratulated them on my acceptance to Stanford, and I have to think that for those fortunate enough to have a village around them, it couldn’t be more true. Growing up, my village was chock full of teachers who encouraged my love of learning by giving me a platform to develop and express my academic passions. The influence of childhood friends and classmates shaped me into the person I am now, though obviously not with the intent of “raising” me. Family friends and neighbors all did their part to watch over me, keep me safe, and encourage me at every step.

But what happens when the child is fully raised and the proverbial village is suddenly 3,000 miles away? Being in college offers an opportunity to redefine our villages for ourselves, regardless of what they looked like during our actual childhoods. Some aspects of the village may stay quite similar: where I had teachers, for example, I now have professors and TAs. My parents are still my parents, just a phone call away rather than in the next room. But Stanford also provides a wide variety of avenues for building a village that diverge from my childhood experience.

My relationship with my PMA, for example, is a connection with someone who is invested in my success as I do my best to navigate college without the people who took me from kindergarten to my senior year of high school. Members of my house staff represent some sort of parent-teacher-mentor-confidant-friend mashup with the ability to conform to many aspects of my village that I left on the East Coast. Club-sponsored opportunities like coffee chats with upperclassmen give me a glimpse into the endless paths that students who share my interests can take over the course of their undergraduate career at Stanford.

It certainly took a village to raise me. But now that I’ve been sent off to conquer my own life across the country, I’m glad to find that the Stanford community involves several opportunities to build a village for myself here. Though the proverb doesn’t ring true for everyone, it is nice to know that there are people here waiting to become part of our new villages, however we choose to build them.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Why I won’t do it all https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/06/why-i-wont-do-it-all/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/06/why-i-wont-do-it-all/#respond Tue, 06 Mar 2018 09:00:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137780 Halfway through my public policy lecture, I glanced over the shoulder of the student sitting two rows in front of me. Her Google Calendar tab was open, and I felt my eyebrows raise subconsciously as I marveled at the sheer chaos of it. A dozen colors coded different types of activities – class time, clubs, […]

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Halfway through my public policy lecture, I glanced over the shoulder of the student sitting two rows in front of me. Her Google Calendar tab was open, and I felt my eyebrows raise subconsciously as I marveled at the sheer chaos of it. A dozen colors coded different types of activities – class time, clubs, community service, work and random events littered the week-long calendar view. Most event blocks partially overlapped with others, and the unfilled white space denoting free time was confined to tiny slivers and the early hours of the morning.

As my eyes dashed left and right, trying to find order in the brightly-colored calendar, I felt a pang of envy. I remain well aware that I have neither the grace nor energy to navigate such a full schedule. I wanted, in the least creepy way possible, to find an opportunity to ask this girl, “How do you do it?” I wanted her to teach me how to conquer such an intimidating agenda, the method to taking control of the madness.

Anyone with a Stanford email address (or at least, anyone still subscribed to the “svc4all” mailing list) can relate to the flood of emailed opportunities that inundate our inboxes every day. We’re beyond fortunate to have access to so many resources that allow us to pursue our interests, but it’s hard not to feel a little guilty when we pass up these opportunities. This is only one component of a larger culture that sometimes dangerously promotes the practice of and pressure to “do it all.” Freshman dorm doors are plastered with signs announcing the extracurricular involvements of that room’s inhabitants, inviting passersby to marvel at the student whose door is adorned with six signs, or to wonder, upon seeing an undecorated door, “what is this person doing with all their time?”

I’m not trying to suggest that rollouts are a bad thing – they’re a relatively harmless way to invite students into a new community and to celebrate that they’ve decided to join a group of people passionate about similar things. But there are a number of reasons that students might feel uncomfortable with the celebration of those who can balance school, clubs, work, volunteering and more. Some students devote their time to working to support themselves or their family financially. Others, for any number of reasons, focus solely on their education in a rigorous and competitive academic environment. Still others simply don’t feel inclined to participate in many activities outside of class, preferring to spend time with friends or to relax or to meditate. All of these scenarios, as well as many more, are completely valid college experiences – just as much so as one jam-packed with seven leadership roles.

I have reflected a lot on how I choose to divide my time in college, and I’ve made peace with the fact that I don’t have the ability or volition to take on as much as some of my peers. So why did I feel the slightest pang of failure when I saw a visual depiction of just how much one of my peers could juggle? I think it has something to do with the socialization we undergo as students at one of the most demanding and prestigious schools in the country. We laugh, “I worked on this p-set from noon yesterday until 5 this morning, and I nearly passed out at my 8:30 pilates class,” with the subtlest hint of superiority. But when our thoughts are more like, “How is it that I’ve gotten four extensions this quarter and I still find myself canceling dinner plans to catch up on sleep?” we’re more inclined to keep them to ourselves.

There’s a mantra that I would venture to guess almost all Stanford students have heard from peers, parents, mentors and even strangers when they find out where we will or do attend college, whether it’s said outright or implied: “Don’t waste it.” Spending four (or more) years here is the greatest blessing many of us could ever imagine, and there’s enormous pressure to make the most of it, to squeeze the life out of every minute we spend here.

Oftentimes that pressure manifests itself in the quest to do everything. When we know someone who plays a sport, takes 18 units, volunteers, does research with a professor, gets eight hours of sleep every night and still has time to stay caught up on “This is Us,” we envy them. And those people deserve to be admired, absolutely. But so does everyone at this school who is trying – failing sometimes or often, maybe, but trying nonetheless.

So I won’t ever be the one to “do it all.” No one is going to go googly-eyed over my calendar, and the number of rollout papers on the door to my dorm room won’t make anyone pause. But I’m trying my hardest not to waste my time at Stanford, and that is the standard by which I choose to measure my success.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Missed Uber connections https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/28/missed-uber-connections/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/28/missed-uber-connections/#respond Wed, 28 Feb 2018 22:37:18 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137541 The first time I fell in love in an Uber Pool, I was on my way to a farmer’s market.

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The first time I fell in love in an Uber Pool, I was on my way to a farmer’s market. The object of my affections wore a man bun, which was enough to give me hope that he, too, was en route to the California Avenue market. We rode in near-complete silence for a few long miles, and I imagined that we would make polite small talk on our way to the Cone Food tent. I mentally stocked up on conversation starters in preparation for the big event, but when the car pulled over to the side of the market my fellow passenger made no move to exit the vehicle. I watched from the sidewalk as he swerved down an adjacent street and I lost him forever.

Two weeks later, my friend and I caught an Uber Pool from her Berkeley dorm room to the BART station. I was seated directly behind the passenger seat, which didn’t allow for much observation of the front seat passenger’s physical appearance, but our arrival clearly interrupted his animated discussion with the driver about Biblical history. Even with minimal knowledge of religious studies, I was enthralled by the passenger’s passionate opinions. I felt a twinge of jealousy when my friend managed to whip out some convenient Biblical history knowledge and make a series of intelligent-sounding contributions. By the time we parted ways at the station I hadn’t gotten a word in edgewise, and my denim-jacketed potential love interest left me with nothing but regret for my lack of passion for the many nuances of Mary Magdalene.

A quick glance through the Missed Connections section of Craigslist tells me that my tendency to crush on complete strangers in my Uber is fairly common. Some passengers regret not keeping in touch with other riders headed to different destinations. Often, passengers lament not having worked up the courage to make a move on their driver. Bound by what I can only imagine are fairly strict guidelines concerning driver-rider behavior, many drivers are powerless to act on their interest in a passenger.

I haven’t put my finger on what it is about Uber Pools that induces this evidently common intra-Uber attraction – I spend lots of time in plenty of public spaces, including other methods of public transportation like buses and trains, but it’s my Uber Pool co-riders who always seem to leave their mark on me. Maybe it’s the pressure to make some sort of conversation, however forced. Maybe it’s a continuation of childhood car-ride behavior – where I used to make up backstories for the occupants of passing cars on long road trips, now I conjure up daydreams about happy futures with my co-passengers and drivers. Whatever the reason, one thing is certain: my impulse to invent brief, fleeting feelings for the people with whom I share Ubers isn’t going anywhere – unlike my love interests, who are all going straight down the street to their own destinations, lost but not forgotten.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Living with a roommate as told by ‘Grace and Frankie screencaps https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/08/living-with-a-roommate-as-told-by-grace-and-frankie-screencaps/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/08/living-with-a-roommate-as-told-by-grace-and-frankie-screencaps/#respond Thu, 08 Feb 2018 13:00:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1136322 Whether you’re accustomed to the luxury of your own room or you’ve been boarding with siblings or peers all your life, sharing a cramped living space in college is sure to throw you some curveballs. Though there’s no lack of literature on the ups and downs of roommate life, it’s possible that Netflix’s (absolutely stellar) […]

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Whether you’re accustomed to the luxury of your own room or you’ve been boarding with siblings or peers all your life, sharing a cramped living space in college is sure to throw you some curveballs. Though there’s no lack of literature on the ups and downs of roommate life, it’s possible that Netflix’s (absolutely stellar) series “Grace and Frankie” tells it best. Here are 11 times that the show got it right when it comes to the struggles and blessings of having an in-house best friend.

When your roommate hints at even the slightest emotional problem and you jump on the case:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

When you auto-pilot into your room with complete disregard for the sock on your door handle:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

When your roommate is your most effective method of quality control before a night out:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

When you take it upon yourself to make sure that all of your roommate’s potential flings are worthy:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

And after you approve, you’ll never let your roommate get away without knowing exactly how everything went down:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

When you get to know all of each other’s weird quirks and preferences:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

When your roommate attempts to hide emotional problems from you because they know you’ll react like this whether they like it or not:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

Once you get comfortable around each other, your roommate really never knows what they’re going to witness upon opening your door:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

When your roommate is one of the only people you can trust to tell it like it is:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

When your roommate steps out while their friend is hanging in your room:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

When you and your roommate experience all the highs and lows of college life together, one thing’s for sure:

Living with a roommate as told by 'Grace and Frankie screencaps
Courtesy of Netflix.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at 

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An honest cover letter https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/31/an-honest-cover-letter/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/31/an-honest-cover-letter/#respond Wed, 31 Jan 2018 09:00:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1135784 Dear Selection Committee, I am writing to apply for the internship position listed on your website for the summer of 2018. I was particularly excited to learn of this opening as it aligns perfectly with a niche area of academic study about which I have just now, serendipitously, decided I am passionate. I have excitedly […]

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Dear Selection Committee,

I am writing to apply for the internship position listed on your website for the summer of 2018. I was particularly excited to learn of this opening as it aligns perfectly with a niche area of academic study about which I have just now, serendipitously, decided I am passionate. I have excitedly pursued a number of related topics in my recent courses, which is to say that I am almost certain that I read — okay, was assigned — books that mentioned these subjects tangentially.

I won’t bore you with meticulously glamorized anecdotes about past research and educational experiences that prove just how prepared I am for this position because, to be frank, I don’t have any. However, like any good millennial, I can confidently and truthfully say that I have beyond sufficient practice with one qualification mentioned in the job description: social media. There’s just one catch: You’re going to have to blindly trust me when I tell you that I am a social media mastermind.

To do justice to my expertise would necessitate revealing to you, my (possible) future employer, that the Facebook page which I grew from its conception to a record high of more than 110,000 likes was a One Direction fanpage. So the fact that I finessed a six-figure audience and leveraged my social media clout to secure online sponsors (which provided me with — you guessed it — free One Direction merchandise) will have to go unsaid. The unfortunate truth is that my only relevant, marketable accomplishment is a byproduct of my 13-year-old self’s major thing for Harry Styles. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you also don’t care that Ariana Grande and Austin Mahone follow me on Twitter, but that’s a story for another time anyway.

The truth is that I have no hard evidence that definitively proves any level of interest in your organization or its mission. How am I supposed to cultivate a cohesive, on-brand academic profile when I could be taking classes like ancient athletics or social dance instead? Pardon me for believing everyone when they assured me that as long as I made it through my first quarter at Stanford with a decent GPA, I’d have CEOs falling at my feet. Instead, I’m just hoping this letter makes its way to you before all of this year’s graduating seniors give up on their dream starting salaries and resign themselves to the same applicant pool that I’m trying to infiltrate.

Thank you so much for taking the time to review my application. I would love to speak with you further about this opportunity to contribute to your company or about any other open positions for which I am equally unqualified. I look forward to hearing from you soon, though my current response rate suggests that it’s a long shot. I wonder why.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Jumping in puddles: Optimism on cloudy days https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/23/jumping-in-puddles-optimism-on-cloudy-days/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/23/jumping-in-puddles-optimism-on-cloudy-days/#respond Tue, 23 Jan 2018 09:00:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1135425 I shook the water off of my umbrella and stashed it under my desk, plopping onto my bed with limbs splayed and eyes closed. It was day two of winter quarter, and I was exhausted. 48 consecutive hours of rainfall coupled with an overloaded “shopping period” schedule meant that by mid-afternoon on Tuesday, I wanted to do […]

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I shook the water off of my umbrella and stashed it under my desk, plopping onto my bed with limbs splayed and eyes closed. It was day two of winter quarter, and I was exhausted. 48 consecutive hours of rainfall coupled with an overloaded “shopping period” schedule meant that by mid-afternoon on Tuesday, I wanted to do nothing but sleep until the sun finally revealed itself again.

I was mere seconds from finally dozing into my long-awaited nap when a knock on the door jolted me awake. My RA bounced a few feet into my room before his excited shout forced the last remnants of sleep from my mind.

“Hey! Do you wanna go jump in some puddles?”

No.

My instinct was to decline politely, citing some trite, fabricated excuse about not having rain boots or being seconds away from bolting for an afternoon meeting, internally admitting that I would rather just lie in bed and feel sorry for myself after a long day than voluntarily subject myself to the never-ending downpour. I’m still unsure whether it was FOMO or a lack of quality sleep talking, but I heard myself squeak a quiet, “Okay, sure,” and within seconds I had my Bean Boots laced up and my rain jacket off its hanger.

A few hallmates and I flipped hoods over our heads and dashed out into the street in hot pursuit of several other Twain residents in the Escondido turnaround. Suddenly, one of them plunged his boots down into a large puddle with full force, sending rainwater and mud droplets flying in every direction. My clothes already soaked, I exchanged a “why not?” smile with a friend before we followed along, hopping into a rain-filled pothole with abandon.

Twenty minutes later, after having sought out everything even somewhat resembling a puddle, we headed back indoors to hang our clothes over the radiator and bundle up in dry, warm alternatives. I toweled the raindrops off of my face and tugged on multiple pairs of socks, feeling simultaneously more tired and more invigorated than I had half an hour prior. As I imagined the possibility of a perpetually rainy winter quarter, visions of trudging to class under my trusty umbrella were now punctuated with childlike laughter as I raced my friends to find new puddles with which to splash each other.

Glancing out the window, I noticed the sun peek through a crack in the clouds, piercing the all-encompassing grey. Despite the fact that the cold seemed to have settled into my bones, I couldn’t help but think that the drizzly sky was the tiniest bit pretty. Though I never thought I’d say it, jumping in puddles is a little like life that way — when it feels like the rain might never let up, sometimes all it takes is a shift in perspective to convince you that it can’t ever be all bad.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

 

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How to be resourceful at Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/16/how-to-be-resourceful-at-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/16/how-to-be-resourceful-at-stanford/#respond Tue, 16 Jan 2018 09:00:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1135046 During my first quarter at Stanford last fall, I watched as my meal plan dollar account quickly depleted, and I began to accept my role as the archetypal Broke College Student. While most of us can relate to smuggling full Tupperware containers out of the dining halls and attending student organization events for the free […]

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During my first quarter at Stanford last fall, I watched as my meal plan dollar account quickly depleted, and I began to accept my role as the archetypal Broke College Student. While most of us can relate to smuggling full Tupperware containers out of the dining halls and attending student organization events for the free lunches, there are quite a few lesser-known ways to stretch resources until your summer job starts up.

 

  1. If you have a coffee maker, the possibilities for culinary innovation are truly endless. With a pot full of boiling water, you can easily cook pasta, vegetables, hard-boiled eggs or soup. Between your coffee pot creations and the microwavable mug cakes that are all the rage nowadays, you really can cover the whole food pyramid, even without a proper kitchen.
  2. Iron? Never heard of it. Instead of spending money and precious dorm room storage space on a bulky iron and ironing board, smooth out wrinkles with a flat iron. Make sure to look up the standard temperature guidelines for ironing different types of fabric and adjust the flat iron’s temperature accordingly. Bonus points if you can do this while wearing the clothes in question!
  3. Guests from home can be few and far between for students who don’t live in California, so unfortunately those five guest meals per quarter often go to waste. If you’re approaching the end of the quarter and you haven’t had any visitors, split meal swipes with a friend who’s in the same boat and get up to five extra dining hall meals each.
  4. Money spent on air fresheners and incense is money wasted. Instead, hang a few dryer sheets over your room’s air conditioner unit. It’ll make your room smell like fresh laundry, which might just allow you to excuse yourself for the egregiously large pile of dirty clothes threatening to spill over the brim of your hamper. (Don’t worry, we’ve all been there – hey, even though the laundry machines are free, we’re busy people.)
  5. Forget dogs or diamonds – Command Hooks are any resourceful college student’s best friend. These things can literally organize anything: hang jewelry from them wherever you keep accessories, stick one next to the door so you never leave without your keys or use them as a wall-mounted iPad holder and watch your favorite Netflix series in style and hands-free. Disclaimer: if your walls aren’t made of cement, keep your creativity contained to shelving units and wooden furniture to escape the wrath of R&DE.
  6. Let’s face it: you’re probably going to log a tragically high number of hours at the campus libraries before you graduate anyway, so you might as well get paid to do it. Securing a coveted work-study job at a library is one of the most rewarding hacks you’ll encounter as a Stanford student.  Make a few extra bucks for studying during the job’s ample down time and listen to lecture recordings or podcasts while you shelve books.
  7. If you can force yourself out of bed earlier than 10 minutes before class in the morning, use the time to hit the gym before you start your day. Go to bed the night before in your comfiest workout clothes so you only have to change clothes once a day. You’ll decrease your laundry frequency and get those endorphins up while you’re at it!
  8. Sometimes even the most frugal college students can’t resist the temptation of Starbucks just around the corner in Tresidder. When the craving hits, bring along your favorite mug and save $0.10 off that six-dollar, seven-word latte order.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Waiting on a 3:20 a.m. SuperShuttle https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/23/waiting-on-a-320-a-m-supershuttle/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/23/waiting-on-a-320-a-m-supershuttle/#respond Thu, 23 Nov 2017 09:00:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1133813 Of all the naive mistakes I’ve made at Stanford so far, my assumption that I would have no trouble getting myself together for a flight home at 6 a.m. stands out in terms of complete and utter miscalculation. By the time the clock ran out on the Big Game, I found myself unpacked, uncleaned and unprepared for […]

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Of all the naive mistakes I’ve made at Stanford so far, my assumption that I would have no trouble getting myself together for a flight home at 6 a.m. stands out in terms of complete and utter miscalculation. By the time the clock ran out on the Big Game, I found myself unpacked, uncleaned and unprepared for the SuperShuttle that was headed my way at 3:20 a.m.. The following is a minute-by-minute playback of how I spent the hours between Stanford’s victory on the field and my departure for Thanksgiving Break – kids, don’t try this at home.

8:45 p.m.:  I open my door to reveal several piles of clothes heaped around my bed. I decide laundry should be my first move.

8:50 p.m.: I haul an overstuffed hamper down to the basement, planning to spread the load across the dorm’s three machines. All three are in use. The Laundry Alert poster mocks me on my way out.

9:15 p.m.: I remember my plan to write a seven-page final paper on the plane in the morning and wonder if I can’t just grind it out now and then pack. I sit down at my laptop and begin to write.

9:28 p.m.: The paper reads, “Frederick Douglass’ speech,” and nothing else.  I decide to nap until 10 p.m. and then try again.

10 p.m.: I decide to nap until 10:15 p.m. and then try again.

10:15 p.m.: I decide to nap until 10:40 p.m. and then try again.

11:36 p.m.: Someone messages the dorm’s GroupMe to allege that there is hot cider in the kitchenette, the product of an RA’s on-call activity. This finally rouses me.

11:43 p.m.: On the way to the kitchenette, I run into a friend outside her room. I plop down on her floor to continue our hallway discussion and by the time I check the time, it’s 12:50 a.m.. I think about my looming deadline, my undone laundry and the apple cider that has certainly disappeared by now. I tell her I have nothing but time.

1:16 a.m.: I trudge to the dorm’s kitchenette, surprised to find that there is still some room temperature cider on the stove. Things are looking up!

1:17 a.m.: I realize I forgot my mug.

1:22 a.m.: I find a sleeve of small plastic cups in one of the cabinets. I fill two of them with cider and microwave them in my mug once I get back to my room.

1:30 a.m.: The cider is gone. Only darkness and dirty laundry remain.

1:35 a.m.: On my second laundry trip, I find one empty machine that I stuff to capacity, setting a timer to retrieve it in half an hour.

1:43 a.m.: I wonder how much of my paper I can finish before the laundry timer goes off. I delete the first three words and prepare to rewrite the opening line.

1:55 a.m.: I still can’t figure out how to open the essay, so my net essay growth is negative three words. Instead of hunkering down and forcing the paper out, I Snapchat my friends asking if I should just drop out. Most say, “probably.”

2:07 a.m.: I flip my laundry and remember the bagel I heisted from Wilbur at brunch. On my walk back upstairs, I debate eating it versus keeping it for sustenance during the flight.

2:09 a.m.: The bagel lasts about 90 seconds after I open the door to my room.

2:15 a.m.: With an hour left before my flight, I figure I should get started on packing. This process mostly consists of me shoving every clean article of clothing in my possession into a duffel bag and calling it a day.

2:32 a.m.: I browse Netflix for movies to download for the flight, just in case I actually finish the paper on the first five-hour leg. I know full well that this will not happen.

2:35 a.m.: I cannot figure out how to download movies from Netflix. To quell my sorrow, I eat the remainder of the junk food that I had packed for the flight.

2:41 a.m.: I drag my laundry from the laundry room back to my own. There’s no time to put it away, so I hide the hamper full of clean clothes in my closet. This is now a problem for Next Week Jackie.

2:55 a.m.: After a few minutes of cleaning, all that’s left is to finish up a few final tasks. I fill my water bottle, unplug all my electrical cords and take out the trash. I am finally ready to leave.

3:07 a.m.: SuperShuttle texts that my driver is five minutes away. Suddenly, inspiration strikes. I know exactly how to write my paper. Perfect timing.

3:12 a.m.: By the time I locate the SuperShuttle and hop into the backseat, I have completely forgotten how I planned to phrase the first paragraph of my essay. I consider whipping out my laptop and trying to revive my vision. I decide against it and instead shuffle through Justin Bieber’s Christmas album on Spotify. It’s going to be a lovely flight.

 

Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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How to get out the door in 10 minutes in the morning https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/17/how-to-get-out-the-door-in-10-minutes-in-the-morning/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/17/how-to-get-out-the-door-in-10-minutes-in-the-morning/#respond Fri, 17 Nov 2017 09:00:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1133636 We’ve all been there: You kill one too many alarms on Monday morning, and by the time you rub the sleep out of your eyes to check the time, you realize that to be on time to your 9:30 lecture, you’d have to leave … 10 minutes ago. If you’re not a freshman, this is […]

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We’ve all been there: You kill one too many alarms on Monday morning, and by the time you rub the sleep out of your eyes to check the time, you realize that to be on time to your 9:30 lecture, you’d have to leave … 10 minutes ago. If you’re not a freshman, this is probably the point at which you’d take a solid half-second to mull over your options, decide it’s not worth rushing your morning routine and roll back over for another hour of sleep. But for anxious first-quarter frosh and other students depending on attendance credit to keep them afloat, what ensues is a frenzied five-minute race to pack up, pull on the first articles of clothing you see and dash out the door.

But there’s another way. Instead of trying to force yourself awake 45 minutes before class time, why not shorten your morning routine to a relaxed 10 minutes and pocket the extra half hour of sleep? Following these tricks of the trade will have you out of bed and out the door in 10 minutes, tops.

  1. Streamline the outfit process by choosing and laying out your outfit before you go to bed. If you’re getting up for a workout or planning to rock a sweatshirt and leggings to class, sleeping in tomorrow’s outfit makes getting dressed monumentally more efficient. Never wait to try on a new outfit until the morning — you’ll inevitably spend all 10 of your precious minutes swapping out various parts of the outfit until you perfect the look.
  2. Pack breakfast the night before and aim for convenience. A couple of packets of instant oatmeal and a spoon in a to-go cup go a long way in saving time in the morning. (Pro tip: If you’re really committed to saving time — and less committed to general standards of cleanliness — you can even forgo the microwave and make your oatmeal using hot water from your sink.) Granola bars, fruit and pre-portioned cereal are also efficient breakfast options.
  3. Every night, prepare a bag with whatever you’ll need from the time you leave your room in the morning to when you plan to return, breakfast included. Don’t forget to throw in your room key before going to bed to avoid a frantic search in the morning. Sit your shoes next to your bag to reduce the number of stops you’ll need to make before heading out the door.
  4. If you find you can’t resist the snooze button in the morning, there are a few ways to kick that bad habit quickly. If you don’t have a roommate, or if your roommate leaves before you do in the morning, consider leaving your alarm across the room, loud enough that it’ll force you up and out of bed to turn it off. Alternatively, if you tend to use around 35 alarms on five-minute intervals in order to get up in the morning, try setting only one alarm at the latest possible time you can wake up and still be on time. You’ll have no choice but to heed your alarm clock the first time — and you’ll catch some extra Zs in the process.
  5. Even if you have no trouble waking up in the morning, sometimes overnight Instagram notifications and missed texts can keep you distracted in bed for too long in the morning. By upholding a no-phone policy until you’re brushing your teeth (if you can multitask effectively), you’ll increase your productivity and efficiency and shave minutes off your routine.

There’s no guarantee that these tips will prevent the occasional slept-through-half-of-lecture-already morning chaos. But preparedness and planning ahead can ease even the most stressful morning rush, and nailing down a short routine can save you some much-needed sleep any day.

 

Got any more tips for getting out the door in the morning? Contact Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

The post How to get out the door in 10 minutes in the morning appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

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