Jonathan Seymour – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Sat, 04 Feb 2017 01:46:21 +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 Jonathan Seymour – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Police reach out to students through dorm-officer liaison program https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/03/police-reach-out-to-students-through-dorm-officer-liaison-program/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/03/police-reach-out-to-students-through-dorm-officer-liaison-program/#respond Fri, 03 Feb 2017 09:09:26 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1122425 Under Stanford dorm-officer liaison program, deputies are assigned as points of contact for a few specific residences each so that every single dorm, house, co-op and self-op on campus is covered.

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Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS) is set to begin its second round of dorm outreach meetings this school year through the dorm-officer liaison program, in which deputies are assigned as points of contact for a few specific residences each so that every single dorm, house, co-op and self-op on campus is covered.

Police reach out to students through dorm-officer liaison program
(HANNAH KNOWLES/The Stanford Daily)

The program is in its 14th year. As dorm liaisons, deputies educate their assigned residents about smart safety practices as well as relevant laws – for example, on underage possession of alcohol. During dorm meetings, officers also inform residents about building security as well as property and personal safety. They advise students to walk in pairs at night, to keep their doors locked, to keep their windows closed and to ensure their bikes are locked.

“We have a lot of houses to cover, and we try to cover them as best we can,” said Sergeant-on-Patrol Adam Cullen. “We try to reach out to the Resident Assistants (RAs)… We’ll go and meet with them and answer any questions they have and work with them on any concerns they have during the quarter.”

According to Cullen, SUDPS Chief Laura Wilson started the liaison program after remembering one of her first times out on patrol as a deputy. During the patrol, she noticed that residents would close the doors to their dorms whenever she walked by.

“What [Wilson] wanted when she became chief was the deputies out and having contact with the students so the students got to know the deputies a little better when not in those confrontational situations,” Cullen said. “Part of the goal is that contact from our department, just in an informal, kind of non-emergency type of situation.”

While the program offers residents a point of contact, SUDPS advises students who observe a crime in progress to call 911 rather than the dorm liaison.

When officers visit dorm meetings as part of their liaison duties, they are there to help out, Cullen said. Their goal is not to penalize students for drinking or other potential offenses that they might witness while there.

“The deputy is there to make contact with students in the dorm,” Cullen said “Obviously, if there’s something major going on, we’ll have to deal with it, but we’re not going in there to deal with alcohol inside the dorm. But if we go into a dorm room and find six pounds of cocaine, we’re probably going to have to deal with that.”

Regardless, officers’ approach to alcohol-related offenses is not focused on arrest. If people are passed out drunk or need to go to the hospital for having too much to drink, officers will show up to write a report, but they will not make an arrest. Campus police only arrest drunk people when they do not cooperate or commit a second crime, such as littering or public urination.

Deputy Sheriff-on-Patrol Robert Edwards said SUDPS has maintained the dorm-officer liaison program because it believes it to be a useful service for the Stanford community that helps keep students out of trouble. Edwards is assigned to three dorms: two Row houses and Synergy. He simply emails RAs to set up a time to meet.

The deputies generally try to offer a first round of dorm liaison meetings at the beginning of the school year and another as winter quarter progresses.

“Because [students] just got back from break, we were just talking about going out and doing our second round of community outreach,” Edwards said.

 

Contact Jonathan Seymour at seymourj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Dorms cancel ski trips due to travel complications https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/22/dorms-cancel-ski-trips-due-to-travel-complications/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/22/dorms-cancel-ski-trips-due-to-travel-complications/#respond Mon, 23 Jan 2017 07:53:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1121762 While students were disappointed to miss the annual freshman dorm tradition, they still bonded with each other this weekend on campus.

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The majority of this weekend’s dorm ski trips were canceled after the bus provider Stanford Parking & Transportation was working with decided to cancel all buses to Lake Tahoe out of concern for how heavy snowstorms would affect the safety of commuters.

Dorms cancel ski trips due to travel complications
(Courtesy of Bakari Smith)

Freshman-Sophomore College alone was able to hold its trip as planned because one of the organizers called a second bus company. While students were disappointed to miss the annual dorm tradition, they said they still bonded with each other this weekend on campus.

“I’m bummed that our ski trip was canceled as it is a good chance for dorm bonding, and so much money, time and effort was put into [planning] it,” Larkin Resident Assistant (RA) Emma Sanderson ’18 said in an email. “However, we did have a fun pizza mixer with Arroyo on Friday night and had a blast at our ‘Larkin Lock-in’ on Saturday night that consisted of fun games, crafting and a lot of food.”

The bus company canceled too close to the trips’ planned departure date on Friday for the dorms to find alternate travel accommodations, and ultimately they decided to suspend the trips completely because of the dangerous weather conditions.

“We recognize that a great deal of planning, anticipation and financial commitment goes into scheduling ski trips and other activities that are supported by our Charter Services,” wrote Brian Jackson, transportation operations manager for Stanford Parking & Transportation Services, in an email to The Daily. “If there are safety concerns due to weather and road conditions, we place the highest priority on safety.”

“Although I was really looking forward to the experience, I understand [that] these things happen,” Larkin resident Will Kenney ’20 said. “It’s unfortunate, but hopefully another opportunity will arise.”

The dorms’ RAs are exploring rescheduling the ski trips or potentially even taking other trips around California. In Larkin’s case, the dorm would not be able to reschedule its ski trip until April when the house Larkin was planning to stay at becomes available again, according to Sanderson.

Burbank and Arroyo residents might be able to ski sooner than April, though, as the house Burbank had rented out this weekend will be available again in February and Arroyo’s house will be available again in late March, according to Haley Hodge ’20 and Lauren Taylor ’20, residents of Burbank and Arroyo respectively.

“We’re considering rescheduling, but it depends on whether or not we can get a refund on the house,” Hodge said. “I’m bummed because I’m [a member of dorm government], and we put a good amount of work into it, but I’m also not super upset. I had a lot of work this weekend and not going meant I could go to the San Francisco Women’s March.”

Taylor said ski trip is “already such a privilege” that it is difficult to complain about the cancellation. She believes the main goal of the trip was achieved.

“Instead, since many of us were already prepared not to study this weekend, we’ve been able to spend time together more than we normally do,” Taylor said. “So one of the most important components of the trip happened anyway.”

Contact Jonathan Seymour at seymourj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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New Roble Field parking to open in January https://stanforddaily.com/2016/12/01/new-roble-field-parking-to-open-in-january/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/12/01/new-roble-field-parking-to-open-in-january/#respond Fri, 02 Dec 2016 07:52:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1120655 A new five-level parking structure with capacity for 1,100 vehicles will open next quarter under Roble Field.

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A new five-level parking structure with capacity for 1,100 vehicles will open under Roble Field in late January after three months of delays due to unanticipated construction obstacles.

Construction crews began working to revert Roble Field from a construction zone back to an outdoor recreation space in November with the expectation that the grass area will reopen in February.

The vehicle entrance to the new parking garage will be on Via Ortega. Pedestrians will also be able to enter the garage on Panama Street, on the Roble Gym side of Santa Teresa Street and at the corner of Santa Teresa Street and Via Ortega. Located between Arrillaga Outdoor Education and Recreation Center and the newly reopened Roble Gym, the structure will provide parking to community members on the west side of campus.

Besides restoring Roble Field, the last two months of construction will include finishing elevators and pedestrian entrances as well as extending Via Ortega to connect Panama Street and Santa Teresa Street.

While construction finishes, drivers have been using alternate parking including the year-old Searsville parking lot, which holds 600 vehicles and is located at the intersection of Santa Teresa Street and Campus Drive West.

Despite building the Searsville lot and the new Roble parking garage, Stanford continues to support alternative methods of transportation that reduce cars on campus.

In its recently submitted long-term land use permit application to Santa Clara County, the University asserted that future construction projects through 2035 will not produce additional commute trips on Stanford campus. While the application proposes a parking supply reserve, Stanford assures the county this additional parking would only be built under specific conditions because the University plans to continue to encourage other transportation modes.

Partly due to ongoing alternative transportation advocacy programs, half of Stanford employees not living on campus commute by means other than driving, and Stanford states it is currently developing additional initiatives.

While the Roble Field parking garage will benefit West Campus, potential parking shortages still loom next quarter for graduate students in Escondido Village, where some fear a parking crunch caused by the winter construction of a new 2,400-bed graduate housing complex. For the duration of construction, which is set to finish in 2019, parking capacity in Escondido Village is expected to be reduced by more than 800 spaces — a source of much deliberation at Graduate Student Council sessions.

 

Contact Jonathan Seymour at seymourj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Q&A: ‘Designing Your Life’ professors discuss their bestselling book https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/13/qa-designing-your-life-professors-discuss-their-bestselling-book/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/13/qa-designing-your-life-professors-discuss-their-bestselling-book/#respond Mon, 14 Nov 2016 06:28:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1119780 “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” is inspired by David Evans and William Burnett’s popular upperclassmen course ME 104B. The book is a New York Times bestseller.

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Design lecturer David Evans ’75 M.S. ’76 and Consulting Associate Professor William Burnett ’79 M.S. ’82 published “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” this fall. The book, which is inspired by Evans and Burnett’s popular upperclassman course ME 104B: “Designing Your Life,” has since reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list, selling over 100,000 copies. Evans and Burnett have been publicizing nationwide; recently, they taped a segment on “The Dr. Oz Show.”

The Daily sat down with Evans and Burnett to talk about their book and the class that inspired it.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): Could you talk about your book and how it might be different from your class?

William Burnett (WB): Sure. Let’s start back with the class first. We started about 10 years ago. Dave was doing something over at Berkeley, and I came over and said, “Hey, do you think we could apply design thinking to this idea of what do you do after college?” And I said, “Absolutely, let’s try it.”

So we prototyped a bunch of different classes and ended up with the “Designing Your Life” class, right. So that’s 60-something seniors every quarter. And then we get asked by various people to go to talk to other people and tell them what we’re doing, and they say, “Oh can we take your class? That sounds awesome.” These are people in the middle of their careers and people in retirement.

TSD: Do you let them in?

Both: No. (laughing)

David Evans (DE): Unless you’re one of the 16,000 students going here, then get out of here. So we were saying no to everyone who wasn’t a registered Stanford student for 10 years, and frankly that gets old.

WB: Yeah, and we just felt bad. So, we got an agent and a book person who knew what they were doing and just helped us out. The book’s different from the class. Very different. In fact, the very first thing we wrote… I just took all our lectures and transcribed them.

DE: We wrote the class. It was a wreck.

WB: Dave did some. I did some, and we read this and thought this was boring. Reading someone’s lectures, that’s horrible. So we restructured the book.

DE: [Reading a book] is different from being with a small group and collaborating. … [The book] is a self-administered experience. It can be done alone, and it’s written in a linear fashion. We teach in a very nonlinear way, and if you jump around as much in a book as we do in class, you confuse the heck out of people, so we made it much more linear, and we very intentionally wrote to everybody from 18 to 88.

You have the three classical moments in your life. [First] when you’re 20 and you’re hitting the world for the first time, [then] somewhere between 35 and probably 48 when you’re in the middle of your career and your life and go, “Really? Who ordered this? This is not what I had in mind.” A lot of people have that experience and decide to reinvent themselves or somehow figure it out again. And then the encore years, when you’re 55 to 65 and you’re retiring from your classical career and thinking of that new thing you want to do.

We wanted all three of those people to be able to read the book. It’s literally for everybody.

TSD: Do you guys think that this book has the potential to be as effective a guide as the two of you in person for a full quarter?

WB: I think you overstate what we’re worth.

DE: The book doesn’t compete with the class. The book competes with the thing you weren’t doing before. It’s much better than that.

WB: In the class, you’re working with six or eight students and that’s your little cohort, and you’re working through all these problems together. So actually, even when we’re teaching the class, your experience really is with [these] eight people, and you’re sharing your stories. By the end of 10 weeks, that section inevitably exchanged emails and the people are hanging out together. So these little life design pods, these cohorts — it turns out that’s the important thing.

Our social media person said there are over 150 book clubs now that have formed around the book, where there’s four or five people doing these little exercises together, and that’s really where the transformation occurs. We just propped up the exercises and gave you some things to do, but when you do them with another person, and you say, “This is what I came up with. What did you come up with?” — that’s the big plan.

TSD: What essential, singular piece of advice do you think is necessary for everyone, even those who don’t read the book or take the class, to have?

DE: Take the workshop. We’re coming up with a one-day version of the class for students who don’t have time to take the full class. … We’ll offer [it] a couple of times per quarter. Not everyone can do a full class but everyone can do a workshop. It’s literally one eight-hour workshop where we’ve boiled down the essential experience. It’s not the same as 20 hours over 10 weeks, but it’s pretty good.

TSD: But still, for someone who takes 22 units and is doing research and doesn’t have even one day to spare, do you have an essential piece of advice?

WB: Stop doing that. Terrible way to do college.

DE: We don’t believe in the [so-called] three simple steps.

WB: But there is an answer. You’ve got to be the agent in your own life. … Our one-liner might be, “Don’t plan. Prototype.” You’re trying to invent the future, but you don’t know the future, and you don’t particularly know the [version of yourself] that you’re going to meet in the future. Right?

You can’t think your way into your future, but you can build your way into your future. Design thinking is about building your way forward, not analyzing your way forward. Engineers analyze and solve tame problems, but designers build their way into wicked, messy problems, and your life is a wicked, messy problem. Empirical, hands-on experience is really the approach we take.

Contact Jonathan Seymour at seymourj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker ’85 talks careers, future of business https://stanforddaily.com/2016/10/26/secretary-of-commerce-penny-pritzker-talks-careers-future-of-business/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/10/26/secretary-of-commerce-penny-pritzker-talks-careers-future-of-business/#respond Wed, 26 Oct 2016 08:00:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1118651 Pritzker described her own “life journey" and discussed the future of the economy and the workforce in the face of historic demographic shifts.

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On Tuesday evening, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker M.B.A. ’85 J.D. ’85 discussed her career in the context of mid-life transitions. Pritzker was the Distinguished Careers Institute’s (DCI) annual fall speaker and received the organization’s inaugural Life Journey Inspiration Award.

Pritzker described her own “life journey,” discussed the future of the economy and the workforce in the face of historic demographic shifts and gave advice based on her own preparations to return to the private sector after the next president is inaugurated.

(MICHAEL SPENCER/The Stanford Daily)
(MICHAEL SPENCER/The Stanford Daily)

The Distinguished Careers Institute, a three-year-old program founded by former School of Medicine Dean Philip Pizzo, brings small groups of mid-career individuals to Stanford to reorient their careers toward social impact. According to Pizzo, Secretary Pritzker — the 38th Secretary of Commerce and fifth female Secretary of Commerce — is the perfect recipient for the institute’s new award because she embodies the three tenets of the DCI: purpose, community building and wellness.

“I think it was very inspirational, and I think that [Pritzker’s] story is unique on so many levels, both as this business leader and as a public servant while also being a female through this whole thing,” audience member and DCI 2016 fellow Michael Levinthal ’76 said.

Pritzker’s career

Pritzker spent 27 years in the private sector founding companies while simultaneously building entrepreneurship communities, Pizzo said. Fulfilling the Institute’s third “wellness” tenet, Pritzker also made time to compete in the Ironman Triathlon and run or work out every day.

Pritzker grew up in a wealthy Chicago family known for owning the Hyatt hotel chain. Living in an environment of businessmen and, more importantly, businesswomen, Pritzker decided from a young age that she would be a business builder.

“I grew up in a household where the dinner table conversation between my mom and dad was about business challenges and business opportunities,” Pritzker said.

After graduating Stanford with an MBA and JD, Pritzker went into entrepreneurship in Chicago, where she noticed an atmosphere of male domination.

“Women were secretaries but not Secretaries of Commerce,” Pritzker said.

She became good friends with President Obama through Michelle Obama’s brother, a fellow parent of her son’s basketball team. Obama asked for Pritzker’s support when he ran for a Senate seat and then asked her to be his presidential campaign’s National Finance Chair two years later.

Obama asked Pritzker to be his Secretary of Commerce in 2013, expressing his hope that Pritzker would bring the voice of business into commerce legislation.

“The bar was low,” Pritzker joked about Obama’s expectations for Pritzker’s performance, noting that the job had been vacant for the past year.

Obama announced her nomination on her birthday May 2 and told her that her birthday present was Senate confirmation hearings.

“I met with the full spectrum from Senator [Jay] Rockefeller, this marvelous dean of the Senate, all the way down to Senator [Ted] Cruz,” Pritzker said. “I was confirmed 97 to one and I won’t tell you who the one was, but I will tell you that I felt the ‘Bern.’”

As for her upcoming career transition, Pritzker said that she is compartmentalizing her plan into buckets of decreasing importance. She will prioritize family, she said.

Having walked away from her entire business enterprise upon confirmation as Commerce Secretary, Pritzker plans to return to her family business. However, after four years in the Cabinet, she also wants to continue to offer her opinions on government, leadership and working. Her final goal is community service, though she is still deciding how she will engage in this priority.

“Once you become a cabinet secretary, you resign from everything [because everything is considered a potential conflict],” Pritzker said. “So, on January 20, I face nothing.”

The future of U.S. business

Asked how the country will deal with some of the biggest demographic shifts in its history as the workforce ages and diversifies racially, while also adapting to increasing digitization and technology innovation, Pritzker hypothesized that the vast majority of the workforce will need to retrain. The government will also need to evaluate whether the basic educational structure requires change, she said, adding that it is unclear what role the next administration will play in potential changes.

“We cannot overlook the knowledge that’s in this room, the accumulated wisdom about how to get things done, the dynamics of teams [and] the importance of network,” Pritzker said, referring to her audience of DCI fellows and senior members of the workforce.

Pritzker said the government cannot simply ignore the existing workforce and “put them out to pasture” to make room for new workers, as she put it.

She also refused to consider the idea that jobs will not exist in the future due to automation.

(MICHAEL SPENCER/The Stanford Daily)
(MICHAEL SPENCER/The Stanford Daily)

“I’m an optimist,” Pritzker said. “That’s my bias.”

Pritzker advocated bringing greater social consciousness to business leadership, explaining that senior members of the workforce should take advantage of their experience and act as coaches and explainers for younger generations. She also argued that building confidence among senior citizens is important for the economy. Finally, she called to diversify the workforce, saying that business leaders must evolve and offer more jobs to non-white men as the white, male demographic group shrinks.

“This is just smart, but you’ve got to be intentional, and if we as business leaders are intentional, then we’ll change our environment,” Pritzker said.

 

Contact Jonathan Seymour at seymourj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Prtizker’s graduation year and degrees earned. While her social graduation year was 1984 as originally stated, Pritzker officially graduated in 1985 with both M.B.A. and J.D. degrees. The Daily regrets this error.

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