Josee Smith – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Sat, 06 Jun 2015 00:38:38 +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 Josee Smith – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Oprah Winfrey speaks on a meaningful life at Harry’s Last Lecture https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/21/oprah-winfrey-speaks-on-a-meaningful-life-at-harrys-last-lecture/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/21/oprah-winfrey-speaks-on-a-meaningful-life-at-harrys-last-lecture/#respond Wed, 22 Apr 2015 06:31:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1099529 On Monday night, Oprah Winfrey spoke to an audience at Memorial Church packed with students, faculty members, staff and other campus guests about her thoughts on a meaningful life. “Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life” is put on annually by the Rathbun Fund in partnership with the Office for Religious Life.

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On Monday night, Oprah Winfrey spoke to an audience at Memorial Church packed with students, faculty members, staff and other campus guests about her thoughts on a meaningful life. “Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life” is put on annually by the Rathbun Fund in partnership with the Office for Religious Life.

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Oprah Winfrey speaks at the annual “Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life” as the 2015 Rathbun Visiting Fellow (KRISTEN STIPANOV/The Stanford Daily).

The lecture was created in memory of late Stanford law professor Harry Rathbun, who delivered his distinguished “Last Lecture” every year from the 1930s through the 1950s. For the past six years, the Office for Religious Life has chosen a speaker to come to campus to talk to community members about various paths to building a meaningful life.

This year, Stanford students, staff and faculty obtained their tickets through a lottery system, while special guests, such as the Rathbun family, were invited free of charge. All Rathbun funded events are free.

For fifth-year graduate student in bioengineering Katelyn Cahill-Rowley, even though she entered the lottery for tickets “on a lark,” she was excited to hear Oprah speak.

“[Oprah’s] built her career on connecting people from all walks of life…and she seems very personable,” Cahill-Rowley said. “It’s a cool topic to hear her talk about since she does it so much.”

Several students expressed having known Winfrey as a TV personality and idol and were excited to see her in person.

“It feels like [with] her being on a show she isn’t a real person, so having her here is a really cool juxtaposition, and getting to see the real her will be exciting,” said Tiondra Pier ’18 before the event.

Before the lecture, students around campus were anticipating Winfrey’s visit. Some student leaders, including the senior class presidents, had the opportunity to have lunch with Winfrey, while others began lining up outside Memorial Church three and a half hours prior to the event.

 

Winfrey as a “spiritual teacher”

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam began the lecture, telling the audience that the “mission of the Office for Religious Life is to help students discover and reflect on issues of meaning and purpose during their time and potentially monumental growth [at Stanford].”

“In this day and age…it is all the more important to have time to reflect, the space to think, not only about yourselves, but about the great world around,” Elam said before introducing the dean for religious life and professor of religious studies, Jane Shaw.

Shaw also underscored the importance of connecting people in their journey to fulfillment.

“What we do in this space is explore together what it means to lead a meaningful life,” Shaw said.

Shaw then introduced Winfrey, complimenting the guest lecturer’s contributions to daytime media, film, magazines, education and various charitable causes.

Winfrey opened her talk with a story about the last time she had been in Memorial Church, as a junior in high school participating in an oratory conference in the 1970s.

“I believe in the sharing of stories,” she told the audience. “Life gets better when you share it.”

The bulk of her talk was composed of her musings on how to lead a meaningful life, and particularly the role of spirituality in her life.

“I grew up believing that I was, for sure, God’s child,” Winfrey said. “My vision, my perception, my understanding of what it means to be a universal citizen has grown.”

Winfrey explained that for her, spirituality often takes the form of finding a “powerspace” within herself.

“And that is the reason I have been able to manage fame, handle the success, grow in grace, grow in the wisdom that is in that space of God,” Winfrey said.

“Everything that I do and all that I am comes up and out from the center of that space, even when I didn’t know what to call it,” she added.

Winfrey described herself as a “spiritual teacher” and explained that part of that comes from the fact that every person who came onto her show in its 25-year run had something to say from which she herself could grow.

“Your number one job is to grow yourself and to be the best of yourself,” Winfrey said.

 

Emphasizing gratitude

One of the main ways Winfrey emphasized as a method to grow yourself was feeling thankful and not taking things for granted.

She recommended that people participate in “holy gratitude” and described her own gratitude journal.  She also explained the importance of recording that for which she is grateful rather than that which goes wrong in her life.

“It leads to an enhanced and more meaningful life,” she said. “I’ll do it when I go home – five things that I write down that I’m grateful for or brought me joy or opened my heart space. You’re now taking stock of your life; you’re assessing where you are now…Some days there’s only three things, and then you inhale – that’s one – and exhale – that’s two. And now I’ve made my five.”

For Winfrey, everything comes back to the breath and the value of “just still being here.” She led the audience in a brief meditation session and urged everyone to fulfill the best version of themselves by coming back to the basics by concentrating on the simple act of breath.

 

Deciding between love and fear

Winfrey also connected self-reflection and emotion to our interactions with others. She believes that the only two types of emotions and actions are love and fear, and everything stems from one of the two.

“In order to have a meaningful life, you have to choose love,” Winfrey said. “Choose love and peace rather than choosing to be right.”

Winfrey also shared her twist on both Newton’s laws of mechanics and the classic Golden Rule.

“Third law of motion…every action has an equal and opposite reaction…It doesn’t matter what you do unto others, it’s already been done to you,” she said.

In addition to joking about Newton, Winfrey shared favorite quotes that have moved her from movies such as “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Color Purple,” as well as personal stories from her own life like learning to say “no” and not having the “disease to please.” She also spoke about “living life with a pure sense of intention.”

“I could determine for myself what the boundaries were,” Winfrey said.

“You get to decide because you are the master of yourself…You are no longer driven by what other people want,” she added.

 

Individuals’ empowerment

Winfrey concluded the talk with a strong emphasis on empowerment as individuals.

“Understanding that what you have to offer is your gift,” Winfrey said. “It matters to you, to the people that you love and to our planet that you are here.”

She also expressed that while there is no right way to have spiritual practice, in her opinion, a sustainable, joyful life is impossible without a connection to some sort of spirituality.

“For some people, it’s going to church,” Winfrey said. “I believe that creativity, artful expression, prayer, conscious kindness, empathy, consistent compassion [and] gratitude are all spiritual practices in the way of becoming who you really are.”

Winfrey concluded her lecture by sharing something that Quincy Jones told her after the pair finished working on “The Color Purple.”

“Your future is so bright it burns my eyes,” she said. “You can’t even imagine it.”

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Ada Throckmorton at adastat ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

A previous version of this article stated that some tickets were purchased by audience members, when in fact all tickets were free of charge. The Daily regrets this error. 

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Quad Yearbook canceled due to lack of interest https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/06/according-to-john-nguyen-15-the-editor-in-chief-of-the-stanford-quad-yearbook-an-independent-student-run-group-which-normally-releases-a-four-class-yearbook-every-year-the-quad-will-not-pr/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/06/according-to-john-nguyen-15-the-editor-in-chief-of-the-stanford-quad-yearbook-an-independent-student-run-group-which-normally-releases-a-four-class-yearbook-every-year-the-quad-will-not-pr/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2015 02:14:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1098402 According to John Nguyen ’15, the editor-in-chief of the Stanford Quad Yearbook, an independent student-run group which normally releases a four-class yearbook every year, the Quad will not produce a yearbook this year. “I was the editor-in-chief last year [as well], and staff retention was not great, and I wasn’t really able to recruit anyone […]

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According to John Nguyen ’15, the editor-in-chief of the Stanford Quad Yearbook, an independent student-run group which normally releases a four-class yearbook every year, the Quad will not produce a yearbook this year.

“I was the editor-in-chief last year [as well], and staff retention was not great, and I wasn’t really able to recruit anyone new,” he said. “So by the end of the year, it was just me, [and] I made the yearbook last year by myself.”

Because he was forced to scramble this year to put out the yearbook, Nguyen said that he didn’t have time to recruit new members or figure out a plan for this year.

“At the end of winter quarter, we had a meeting with SAL [Student Activities and Leadership] and some other groups interested in keeping the Quad alive about what things we could do this year,” he said. “Our advisor said that it wasn’t sustainable to only have one person working on the yearbook, so I could tell that something big was happening.”

At this meeting, one of the four senior class presidents, Eric Iwashita ’15, was also in attendance, and he began working with other people at the meeting to figure out how to move forward.

“It was left pretty open-ended, but [at the end of the meeting], it was just assumed that we weren’t doing a Quad [due to a lack of students working on it], so I took it on as a personal project to find different options,” Iwashita said.

According to Iwashita, the senior class presidents and cabinet have decided to create a senior yearbook for the senior class, with the help of other members of the class of 2015.

“As senior class presidents, we are tasked with creating community with the class of 2015, which includes putting on events and doing anything we can to create community,” he said. “When I heard about this [the cancellation], I was pretty shocked … I would want to buy a yearbook or something to commemorate this year.”

Because he felt that other students in the senior class would feel the same as him and would want a yearbook from this year, he decided to take on the individual project of putting together a team to produce a senior memory book or web page, depending on what the seniors who volunteered to help would be capable of making.

He stressed the fact that the Quad is completely separate from the senior class presidents and the senior class cabinet and that they have had no control over the production of the yearbook.

“The yearbook was never our responsibility,” he added. “In our role [as senior class presidents], we are trying to do what we can to put something together for the class, since we just found out [about the cancellation].”

Normally, the Quad Yearbook would be a yearbook for all four class years; however, because the senior class is the only one taking on this project, Iwashita said that whatever the team created would be just about seniors and this year. He sent out an interest form to the class to gather help for the project.

“A couple people are extremely passionate about helping out [and] have the skills and level of interest needed, so judging from [the interest form], it looks like we’ll have a good team to put together,” Iwashita said.

He explained that an info session will be held on Tuesday at 12 p.m. in Old Union 215 for seniors interested in helping out with the senior yearbook. He also added that if other students are interested in helping out with the Quad next year to make sure that it gets published, then they should reach out to SAL.

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford grad student raises funds for Kickstarter project https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/01/stanford-grad-student-raises-funds-for-kickstarter-project/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/01/stanford-grad-student-raises-funds-for-kickstarter-project/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2015 06:30:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1098128 A Stanford master student raised more than $700,000 after launching his product on Kickstarter. The product, called Sesame, is the world’s first instant smart lock and was introduced in late February.

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A Stanford graduate student raised more than $700,000 after launching his product on Kickstarter. The product, called Sesame, is the world’s first instant smart lock and was introduced in late February.

The product was born out of the collaboration of Jerming Gu MS ’15, a mechanical engineering master’s candidate, with two other Stanford engineers, Gary Chang MS ’15 and Sungjune Jang MS ’15. They bought a 3D printer and started creating prototypes of the product.

According to Gu, the idea for the product came to him after noticing people in the U.S. using apps to pay for things. He started thinking about how to digitize other products we all carry.

“So there’s things in your pocket, and one of these is a key…I wanted to get rid of the key,” Gu said.

Sesame allows users to control their door with a smartphone app. Sesame is connected to the users’ smartphone via Bluetooth and allows the phone full control of the lock. With the optional Wi-Fi Access Point that connects to the Internet, users don’t have to be physically near Sesame, which allows users to send access to their friends remotely and to make sure that doors are locked when they are not home.

According to Gu, the first prototype was made in June of 2014. It took about a half year from the conception of the idea to create it. Gu noted that he received a lot of support from resources in Silicon Valley and from friends and family back in Taiwan.

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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GSB launches first UK-based teaching program https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/31/gsb-launches-first-uk-based-teaching-program/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/31/gsb-launches-first-uk-based-teaching-program/#respond Wed, 01 Apr 2015 03:26:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097989 The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) is launching its first UK-based teaching program in London. According to the GSB, the Stanford Ignite program is a 10-week course aimed at innovative individuals with an interest in science and technology. It is also offered in Bangalore, India, Beijing, New York City, Santiago, Chile, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

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The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) is launching its first UK-based teaching program in London. According to the GSB, the Stanford Ignite program is a 10-week course aimed at innovative individuals with an interest in science and technology. It is also offered in Bangalore, India; Beijing; New York City; Santiago, Chile and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The program is intended to teach students how to monetize their ideas. The course will be part-time and will incorporate remote teaching from California and in-person sessions held in a base at Canary Wharf in London. Key components will include making innovative technology ideas commercial, building and growing a business and instilling a “Silicon Valley” culture.

According to Bethany Coates, assistant dean for Global Innovations Programs at the GSB, the UK’s “rich history of science and innovation” made it the natural choice to host the program.

“We hope that by marrying this [history] with our well-known business acumen and Silicon Valley thinking, we can really help to develop nascent ventures and new lines of business within existing corporation,” Coates said.

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Stanford asks Santa Clara for GUP amendment https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/31/stanford-asks-santa-clara-for-gup-amendment/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/31/stanford-asks-santa-clara-for-gup-amendment/#respond Wed, 01 Apr 2015 01:48:31 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097987 Stanford has asked the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors to amend the University’s General Use Permit (GUP) and Community Plan from 2000 to provide more flexibility in planning future campus housing construction, according to the Stanford Report.

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Stanford has asked the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors to amend the University’s General Use Permit (GUP) and Community Plan from 2000 to provide more flexibility in planning future campus housing construction, according to the Stanford Report.

The GUP and Community Plan placed conditions on Stanford’s land use, growth and development and outlined the circumstances under which the University could add academic facilities and housing. Under the GUP’s provisions, Stanford was given permission to build 3,018 housing units on campus, divided among faculty and staff, students, postdoctoral scholars and medical residents. All but 581 units have since been constructed. Of the 581 remaining, three are allocated to students, 228 to faculty and 350 to postdoctoral scholars and medical residents.

According to Jean McCown, director of community relations, the University’s housing needs and opportunities have changed since 2000. The University has been able to take advantage of opportunities that were not evident 15 years ago.

“We certainly did our best to project in 2000 what would be the appropriate allotment of housing for different campus groups,” McCown said. “But that forecast 15 years ago has not met the need to accommodate more students on campus.”

The amendment from the University would convert the distinct categories of housing — faculty and staff, students, and postdocs and medical residents — into one category. It would also allow Stanford to allocate the remaining 581 housing units based on current priorities, rather than the priorities from 15 years ago.

According to McCown, the University has held preliminary meetings with Santa Clara County officials and the affected groups on campus to discuss the possible changes in housing allotment.

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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ASSU elections postponed by lack of graduate student candidates https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/30/spring-assu-elections-typically-held-at-the-end-of-week-2-will-not-be-held-until-the-end-of-week-because-of-a-lack-of-candidates-for-the-graduate-student-council-gsc/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/30/spring-assu-elections-typically-held-at-the-end-of-week-2-will-not-be-held-until-the-end-of-week-because-of-a-lack-of-candidates-for-the-graduate-student-council-gsc/#respond Tue, 31 Mar 2015 03:36:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097933 Spring ASSU elections, typically held at the end of week two, will not be held until the end of week three because of a lack of candidates for the Graduate Student Council (GSC).  “The ASSU Constitution requires that elections be held during spring quarter and during week two, week three or week four,” said Saj […]

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Spring ASSU elections, typically held at the end of week two, will not be held until the end of week three because of a lack of candidates for the Graduate Student Council (GSC). 

“The ASSU Constitution requires that elections be held during spring quarter and during week two, week three or week four,” said Saj Sri-Kumar ’16, the Elections Commissioner. “Usually they’re held week two but it could happen during week four.”

According to Sri-Kumar, the Constitution also requires that elections for the Graduate Student Council (GSC) run concurrently with the Undergraduate elections. However, this year, not enough graduate students signed up to run for the Council due to a change in how word about the elections is normally broadcast to the graduate community.

“I couldn’t push one and not push the other,” Sri-Kumar said. “We’re looking to see if anyone else wants to run [for the GSC].”

Sri-Kumar noted that elections will still happen the same way, in the same 48-hour period at the end of week three.

Because of the change, the official campaign period will not start until next week and the mandatory rules meeting will likely occur next weekend.

Nikos Liodakis ’16, who is running with Dottie Jones ’16 for ASSU Executive, said that the abrupt move of elections has changed things for their campaign.

“We’ve already prepared a rollout for this week… so it just make things drag out a little longer,” he said. 

However, he noted that he views the change in a positive light, as well. 

“We’re very passionate about what we’re running on and we want people to really see that,” he said, adding that the extra time will give them more time to strengthen their campaign. “I understand why the commissioner had to change it so abruptly and it’s unfortunate that it was so last minute.”

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu

 

In a previous version of this article, The Daily incorrectly stated that graduate students were not interested in running, when in actuality the mode of broadcasting the elections was changed this year, creating difficulties for the GSC and candidates. We regret this error. 

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Board of Trustees elects two new members https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/29/board-of-trustees-elects-two-new-members/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/29/board-of-trustees-elects-two-new-members/#respond Mon, 30 Mar 2015 05:59:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097836 The Stanford University Board of Trustees recently elected two new members: Angela S. Filo, founder of the Yellow Chair Foundation, and Bret E. Comolli, executive chairman of Asurion Corp., a mobile technology services company. They will begin their five-year terms on April 1. The Board now has 36 members.

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Angela Filo was recently elected to the Board of Trustees (Courtesy of Angela Filo).
Angela Filo was recently elected to the Board of Trustees (Courtesy of Angela Filo).

The Stanford University Board of Trustees recently elected two new members: Angela S. Filo, founder of the Yellow Chair Foundation, and Bret E. Comolli, executive chairman of Asurion Corp., a mobile technology services company. They will begin their five-year terms on April 1. The Board now has 36 members.

The Board is custodian of the endowment and all the properties of Stanford University. They administer the invested funds, determine policies for operation and control of the University and sets the annual budget. The Board also has the power to appoint a president.

Filo established the Yellow Chair Foundation in 2000. She leads the day-to-day operations and programmatic work of the family foundation, which awards grants to organizations focused on education, civil liberties, gender equity and the environment.

Bret Comolli was recently elected to the Board of Trustees. The five year term begins April 1.
Bret Comolli was recently elected to the Board of Trustees. The five year term begins April 1.

Filo earned a B.A. in Human Biology at Stanford in 1993 and then a M.A. in journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999. She and her husband, David (M.S. ’90), have supported several areas at the University, including helping to launch the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship and establishing professorships in the Graduate School of Education and the School of Engineering.

Comolli became Executive Director of Asurion in 2010 and served as the company’s CEO from 2001 to 2010. He earned an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) in 1989 after serving for five years as an officer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He earned a B.S. in civil and mechanical engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1982.

Comolli is the chairman of the GSB Management Board and serves on the board of directors of Stanford Health Care. He also serves on the Major Gifts Committee for the $1 billion Campaign for Stanford Medicine and is a member of the national advisory board of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford.


Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Robert Wallace named president, CEO of Stanford Management Company https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/26/robert-wallace-named-president-ceo-of-stanford-management-company/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/26/robert-wallace-named-president-ceo-of-stanford-management-company/#respond Thu, 26 Mar 2015 20:57:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097792 Robert F. Wallace, CEO and chief investment officer of Alta Advisers, a London-based private investment firm, has been named president and chief executive officer of the Stanford Management Company (SMC), according to the Stanford Report.

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Robert F. Wallace, CEO and chief investment officer of Alta Advisers, a London-based private investment firm, has been named president and chief executive officer of the Stanford Management Company (SMC), according to the Stanford Report.

Wallace will succeed John Powers, who announced last fall that he would be leaving after nine years.

“Rob Wallace brings expertise in global financial management, as well as an understanding of the importance of endowment management to support higher education,” Stanford President John Hennessy said.

The SMC oversees more than $25 billion of endowment and trust assets, temporarily invested expendable funds and commercial real estate investments. The income generated from this work supports Stanford’s research and teaching, including faculty and student support, operational funds and capital improvements and infrastructure. The SMC was established in 1991 to manage Stanford’s financial and real estate assets and is governed by a board of directors appointed by the Stanford University Board of Trustees.

At Alta Advisers, Wallace oversees a global, multi-asset-class investment program. He graduated from Yale University with a degree in economics. Before his career in investment management, Wallace danced professionally for 16 years as a leading dancer with the American Ballet Theatre, the Boston Ballet and the Washington Ballet.

Wallace will begin transitioning into his new duties immediately, assuming the role full time later this year. Powers will work closely with Wallace during the transition.


Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Oprah Winfrey to deliver annual Stanford lecture on a meaningful life https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/12/oprah-winfrey-to-deliver-annual-stanford-lecture-on-a-meaningful-life/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/12/oprah-winfrey-to-deliver-annual-stanford-lecture-on-a-meaningful-life/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2015 21:38:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097623 According to the Stanford Report, Oprah Winfrey, a global media leader, producer, philanthropist and actress, will deliver “Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life” at 7 p.m. on April 20 in Stanford Memorial Church.

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According to the Stanford Report, Oprah Winfrey, a global media leader, producer, philanthropist and actress, will deliver “Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life” at 7 p.m. on April 20 in Stanford Memorial Church.

The lecture honors the late Stanford Law School professor Harry Rathbun, who delivered his distinguished “Last Lecture” every year from the 1930s through the 1950s.

“Oprah encourages so many to find the path to a meaningful life,” said Jane Shaw, dean for religious life. “She fits the remit for this speaker series perfectly, and we look forward to hearing her wisdom and experience.”

Oprah is the sixth person chosen as the Rathbun Visiting Fellow by the Office for Religious Life to deliver “Harry’s Last Lecture.” Previous visiting fellows include His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and Sandra Day O’Connor, retired associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Rathbun Visiting Fellow also spends time on campus engaging in deeper conversations with smaller groups of students, faculty and staff members in a variety of other programs hosted by the dean for religious life.

Students, faculty and staff members interested in attending Oprah’s lecture will be able to enter a lottery for free tickets. More information will be available after classes resume for spring quarter.

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Thomas Gilligan, business school dean at University of Texas, named next director of Hoover Institution https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/23/thomas-gilligan-business-school-dean-at-university-of-texas-named-next-director-of-hoover-institution/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/23/thomas-gilligan-business-school-dean-at-university-of-texas-named-next-director-of-hoover-institution/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2015 21:48:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1096333 According to the Stanford Report, Thomas Gilligan, dean of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, will be the next director of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.

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According to the Stanford Report, Thomas Gilligan, dean of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, will be the next director of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University is a public policy research center devoted to the advanced study of economics, politics, history and political economy as well as international affairs.

Gilligan will assume his post as the Tad Taube Director of the Hoover Institution on Sept. 1, succeeding John Raisian, who is leaving his post after more than 25 years as director of the public policy research center.

From 1989 to 1990, Gilligan, a scholar of economics and political science, was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution and taught economics as a visiting faculty member at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). He also held a visiting faculty member position at the GSB in 1994. According to the Report, Gilligan looks forward to returning to Stanford.

“The Hoover Institution is one of the world’s premier research centers devoted to the advanced study of politics, economics and international affairs,” Gilligan said. “I am honored to be named as Hoover’s next director and look forward to advancing its mission and reputation.”

Since 2008, Gilligan has served as dean of the McCombs School and, prior to that appointment, he held several key administrative roles between 1987 and 2008 at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Prior to that, he taught economics at the California Institute of Technology for three years.

Gilligan’s academic research has focused on microeconomics, applied price theory, industrial organization, antitrust economics and public choice. He received his B.A. in 1979 at the University of Oklahoma and his Ph.D. in economics in 1984 at Washington University.

 


Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

In a previous version of this article, we put the incorrect date for Gilligan’s time as a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was there from 1989 to 1990, not 1980. The Daily regrets this error. 

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Students find many ways to engage with activism on campus https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/06/students-find-many-ways-to-engage-with-activism-on-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/06/students-find-many-ways-to-engage-with-activism-on-campus/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2015 09:31:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1094593 As a result of recent national events, including the shooting of Michael Brown, the increase in police brutality and the continued occupation of Palestine, more and more Stanford students find themselves surrounded by different ways of getting involved in voicing their opinions about national and campus events.

While students are engaged with these topics in myriad ways, including showing up at protests, posting on Facebook or attending a talk or panel about a current event, these types of events have come together to create a more active campus.

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As a result of recent national events, including the shooting of Michael Brown, the increase in police brutality, the recent San Mateo Bridge takeover and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, more and more Stanford students find themselves surrounded by different ways of getting involved in voicing their opinions about national and campus events.

While students are engaged with these topics in myriad ways, including showing up at protests, posting on Facebook or attending a talk or panel about a current event, these types of events have created a more active campus.

What is an activist?

For some students, the term “activist” has taken on a certain connotation that makes it difficult for them to apply the term to themselves. When thinking about other students or people off campus who they have observed, some students do not feel like they can call themselves activists.

Shelby Sinclair ’15, co-president of the Black Student Union (BSU), tends to associate the term with important historical figures and names and feels hesitant to put herself into that category.

“It depends on how general you make the term,” she says. “Given my position as the BSU co-president, I would be remiss not to be engaged on some level in activist efforts. I try to keep myself informed to bring knowledge back to the members of my community.”

Dina Hassan ’15 similarly struggles with the use of the term “activist,” as she has been exposed to people who she describes as more dedicated and invested in their cause, and feels disrespectful towards them if she were to consider herself an activist.

Hassan says that to the extent that she cares about issues and is willing to turn out to support them she is an activist, but that “there are some people that I know that are so dedicated to it and spend all their time doing it, and this is the thing that makes them come alive…While I feel that it’s really important and I really want to be there, I consider myself to be a kind of person who really likes school.”

Adorie Howard ’17 also struggles with applying the term “activist” to herself but feels that it is more important for her to know what she is interested in and passionate about, and where her place is within those topics or conversations.

“For me, it’s about knowing where I’m welcome or not welcome, knowing my privilege, and knowing if I can be helpful,” she says. “Sometimes there can be this general atmosphere of ‘whatever this cause is, I’m going to fix it or make my voice heard,’ and that’s not always for me…it’s not about needing to be active…[but] about knowing my place, my passions, what I care about, what I have to offer, and my shortcomings within certain spaces.”

Though students might have trouble applying the term to themselves personally, many are able to get active on campus.

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“Activism” on campus

Nicole Follmann ’15 was first introduced to activism on campus through STAND, a human rights group where she learned about advocacy efforts, and an Alternative Spring Break (ASB) about international human rights, where she and other students were able to lobby.

“I can participate in different events, if not organize them,” she says. “I can learn from groups that are putting on events…showing up is important too.”

According to Sinclair, there are many different ways for people to become involved in activism around campus. “For some people, it might look like actually putting their body on the line; for some, it’s about creating spreadsheets and handling logistics; and for others it might be elevating actions on social media.”

Sinclair has also received emails from students asking about how to get involved with events happening around campus and she has been able to invite them to different meetings in order to see what sorts of projects the BSU and other groups are working on.

“I tell them to ask around and talk to their friends, figure out who coordinated this, who organized that,” she says. “A lot of how people learn might be through word-of-mouth.”

According to Howard, she previously expressed her opinions on current issues by writing things down and engaging with others, but during her sophomore year, she has been trying to turn these concerns and conversations into actions.

“It’s been about educating myself about these topics and having informal conversations, talking with people through email and getting linked to someone else, so I talk to them, and now it’s about implementing and turning the conversation into something concrete,” she says. “It’s been informal conversations, formal events, and getting connected with like minded people.”

For many students, this year in particular has seen an even greater surge of active engagement on campus, possibly as a reflection of national events.

“From last year to this year, there’s been a strong cultural change towards action,” Howard says. “It’s a reflection of the nation especially around issues of race and police brutality…People are tired of waiting for change.”

For Sinclair, she has also noticed a dramatic shift in the campus atmosphere this year and feels that Stanford students who engage with the issues fall into three categories.

“There’s a solid contingent of people who choose to engage with efforts in the real world that are most pertinent to them and that they care about, but it might not look the same as what I care about,” she says. “I think that’s okay. There’s also a solid contingent of people who are engaged with issues that I care about; they’re well-versed and read a lot but they don’t necessarily speak up. And then there’s a third group of students, who are super vocal and super active and are finding ways to bring conversations to campus.”

This increase in student involvement and engagement with issues on and off campus has led to some conversations about how different groups can support each other and work together.

Space for intersectionality

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For Howard, the way in which students and other players have come together to support the Black Lives Matter movement has been interesting to watch develop.

“The movement has involved people of all different races, all different ages, different physical abilities, and sexualities,” she says. “I think that’s really beautiful. One of the first demonstrations I attended was the Slow Down for Mike Brown event. It was a really hot day and I was out there with a sign not saying anything. It was just really hot and I was thinking to myself that all of us are feeling that way, so there was this large sense of unity in seeing so many people stand together for something so much larger than us. It was the first time I felt a part of something larger than our campus.”

Howard also finds it important to think about what groups might not be able to have their voice heard and why that might be. She also tries to think of ways that she can help them be heard.

“The sexual assault movement is epitomized by white, cis-gen, straight, middle class females, and other voices are silenced,” she says. “It’s about questioning why that is, since in my personal experiences and relations, I know that these are not representative of all the people whom are affected….Even with the ‘Carry Your Weight‘ mattress movement across the nation, there is so much privilege in the idea of it, ‘what about the people who can’t support the weight or who don’t have that platform?’ It’s about taking a step back and evaluating that.”

By engaging with these topics and staying active on campus, Stanford students have found a voice for themselves on national issues, even though Stanford has not always been considered a place of strong student activism.

 

Activism’s competition: apathy or busyness?

According to Sinclair, Stanford students might not seem as engaged in current issues as students from other campuses because of the multitude of other facets of our lives.

“We don’t always appear to be activists who are going to put everything on the line for the sake of a cause because there are other things that students are preoccupied with, like their course load, student groups, campus jobs or even financial aid,” she says.

According to Follman, when Stanford is compared to other schools, it can be tempting to say that Stanford students aren’t actively engaged because the engagement is not to the scale of schools like Berkeley. However, she feels that students are getting more engaged in recent years.

“Student groups have been making an effort to make it clear that we haven’t always been apathetic…there’s a deep history of activism,” she says, citing the 1994 hunger strike led by Chicano activists on campus.

This surge in student involvement in protests, demonstrations, and engagement with current events has led to conversations about the role of the University in this space.

 

University involvement

Sinclair has felt that the University tries to be responsive to the needs of student groups and to find ways to help those groups.

“Activism can be draining for students– physically, emotionally, and mentally– and the University does a good job of showing they are there for us,” Sinclair says.

According to Sinclair, part of this support is having a clear and open line of communication. She says the university’s number one concern is the safety of students. Still, “they don’t interfere in a way that would stop things from happening.”

“Stanford supports students interested in social change but I think it would be really excellent to have more guidance and support for students who are interested in [activism],” Follmann adds. “This is a great place to learn about it and be involved with it and it could lead to a career but it’s not that easy.”


Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Political science research finds nativism fears spur anti-immigration sentiment https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/13/political-science-research-finds-nativism-fears-spur-anti-immigration-sentiment/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/13/political-science-research-finds-nativism-fears-spur-anti-immigration-sentiment/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2015 05:45:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1093769 According to Insights, a publication from the Graduate School of Business (GSB), Jens Hainmueller, a political science professor at Stanford, believes that anti-immigrant sentiment does not come from natives’ concerns about their loss of jobs, but rather from fears that the immigrants will change the country’s identity and fail to contribute to it.

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According to Insights, a publication from the Graduate School of Business (GSB), Jens Hainmueller, a political science professor at Stanford, believes that anti-immigrant sentiment does not come from natives’ concerns about their loss of jobs, but rather from fears that immigrants will change the country’s identity and fail to contribute to it.

According to the article, previous research showed that anti-immigrant feelings stemmed from a fear that new members would steal jobs from native employees. However, as a result of Hainmueller’s study of more than 100 studies of attitudes toward immigration, he has shown that the actual fear comes from concerns about nativism. Natives are worried that new members of that country would change the identity of the country.

Part of Hainmueller’s research focused on Switzerland as an example of the emotional response to immigrants. In Switzerland, immigrants become citizens based on the votes of the Swiss who live in the immigrant’s region. Hainmueller found that the more culturally distant the immigrant was from Switzerland, the less likely the native Swiss were to approve them, even if they spoke the same language.

According to Hainmueller’s research, policymakers should focus less on promising more jobs or other incentives for displaced workers, and instead work to show native-born people that the immigrants are not as different as they might seem. By showing that any perceived difference might not be as severe as originally imagined, policymakers can show native-born people that immigrants are not a threat to identity.

Additionally, Hainmueller advises policymakers to highlight the positive contributions of immigrants to the country as a whole. The article references a 2010 report of the Partnership for a New American Economy, which found that immigrants or their children founded 40 percent of America’s Fortune 500 companies. Hainmueller also found that having immigrants coming to the U.S. learn English helped to quell anti-immigration sentiments.

“It’s difficult, but policymakers could think of ways to show native-born people that immigrants are not as different as they might seem to be – and that instead of being a threat to cultural identity, they can be contributors to the society as a whole,” Hainmueller told Insights.

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Friends remember Xavier Leyva-Quintana https://stanforddaily.com/2014/12/04/friends-remember-xavier-leyva-quintana/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/12/04/friends-remember-xavier-leyva-quintana/#comments Fri, 05 Dec 2014 00:50:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1092778 On June 15 this year, Xavier Leyva-Quintana ’14 passed away in his room in Xanadu. A senior at the time, Leyva-Quintana was known for his “goofy” smile, love of football and passion for bringing people together.

“He always tried to get people together and he was never too busy to hang out,” said Nick Breitweiser ’14, a friend of Leyva-Quintana. “He helped me to connect with other people and be more social.”

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NEW.120314.xavierIn its final print issue of the year, The Daily remembers two students the Stanford community lost in 2014.

On June 15 this year, Xavier Leyva-Quintana ’14 passed away in his room in Xanadu. A senior at the time, Leyva-Quintana was known for his “goofy” smile, love of football (and futbol) and passion for bringing people together.

“He always tried to get people together and he was never too busy to hang out,” said Nick Breitweiser ’14, a friend of Leyva-Quintana. “He helped me to connect with other people and be more social.”

Other friends of Leyva-Quintana echo his desire to help people connect, including those who might not ordinarily meet.

“He had all these disparate groups of friends but he was able to bring us all together,” added Alex Alifimoff ’15, who met Leyva-Quintana last year but immediately felt comfortable within his close friend group, which included Breitweiser and a couple other friends. “He was so inclusive of his friends…people felt really comfortable and got to know each other when they were around him.”

Originally from Winter Haven, Florida, Leyva-Quintana came to Stanford to study economics. He joined Los Hermanos de Stanford as a freshman and stayed involved with the cultural group up through his senior year. According to his friends, his Catholic faith was very important to him and he tried to live compassionately, giving everyone the benefit of the doubt.

“If he didn’t like something you did, he could attribute it to the fact that he didn’t know you that well,” Alifimoff said. “He always felt that there might be something going on that you don’t know about [that would explain someone’s behavior].”

Breitweiser’s best memories of Leyva-Quintana come from their senior year, living together in Xanadu and reminiscing on their time at Stanford, as the two met during their freshman year in Trancos.

“We would just always hang out back behind the basketball court [of Xanadu],” Breitweiser said. “It was everything you’d want to do senior year: just chilling with your close friends.”

Others remember the more outgoing aspects of Leyva-Quintana’s personality.

“He always described himself as ‘awesome,’” said Brenda Acevedo ’14, his former girlfriend. “He was very expressive…sometimes I see his expressions in things that other people do…and he was always dancing.”

Leyva-Quintana’s strong faith was sometimes in tension with his friends’ beliefs but few people saw it as a hindrance to their friendship.

“He grew up Catholic and I’ve always been agnostic, so sometimes we’d get into ‘heated’ arguments,” Breitweister added. “But I tried to be understanding and I started to see that it was reasonable for him to believe in his faith.”

Breitweister added that, since Leyva-Quintana’s death, he has tried to be more compassionate and outgoing when dealing with other people.

“I think a lot about what he would say,” he said. “I think people in general should talk to people more, really talk to them about life.”

“He helped foster a sense of community with all of his friend groups,” Alifimoff added. “He always felt that you should be kind to others because everyone is fighting a hard battle. That drastically changed my life view.”

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Friends remember Bryant Tan https://stanforddaily.com/2014/12/04/friends-remember-adventurous-bryant-tan/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/12/04/friends-remember-adventurous-bryant-tan/#respond Fri, 05 Dec 2014 00:50:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1092779 On June 29 this year, Stanford co-terminal student Bryant Tan passed away after a mountaineering accident in Triglav National Park in Slovenia while hiking alone.

Friends remember Tan as a quiet, hard-working “British kid” who strived for perfection in all that he did.

“If he saw something wrong, he would do something about it,” said friend Max Praglin ’14, M.S. ’15. “He was a really clever guy.”

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(Courtesy of Max Praglin.)

In its final print issue of the year, The Daily remembers two students the Stanford community lost in 2014.

On June 29 this year, Stanford co-terminal student Bryant Tan passed away after a mountaineering accident in Triglav National Park in Slovenia while hiking alone.

Friends remember Tan as a quiet, hard-working “British kid” who strived for perfection in all that he did.

“If he saw something wrong, he would do something about it,” said friend Max Praglin ’14 M.S. ’15. “He was a really clever guy.”

According to the memorial website created by his parents after his death, Tan was born in San Mateo, California, and spent much of his childhood traveling around the world with his parents. After his birth, his family moved to Germany and then London, where Tan would attend school for the next 13 years, until Tan started at Stanford in 2010.

He started piano lessons in 2001 and picked up the violin in 2002, studying with various teachers and earning numerous awards, including the Bach Cup at the Richmond Performing Arts Festival in 2005.

According to the website, Tan joined the Solar Car Project as a freshman and participated in the World Solar Challenge in Australia, working on the car Xenith, created by the Stanford team. He spent the summer of 2011 interning at Facebook, the summer of 2012 interning at Addepar, an investment tech company, and the summer of 2013 at SpaceX, after which he accepted a post-graduation job offer.

Tan graduated in June of this year with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in electrical engineering. He was also the recipient of the Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Scholastic Award for outstanding academic achievement, according to his memorial website.

Many friends remember Tan’s enthusiasm for adventure and exploration, which came together in his passion for mountaineering.

“Bryant and I went to Iceland together about two weeks before he passed and…he was the one who was able to navigate us off [the glacier],” said Evan Shieh BS ’14, one of Tan’s Phi Psi brothers. “That’s probably one of my most recent and strongest memories of him because he was really doing what he loved when he died…In that particular incident [in Iceland], he was the one who planned out the trip and out of the group of four of us, he was the one who was able to get us out of it and I wish we could’ve been there for him [when he died].”

Shieh, who had known Tan for two years before his death, added that Tan was always the type of person to pursue adventures in the outdoors.

“One of his quotes that he really likes to follow was ‘it’s either gonna be an epic win or an epic fail but either way it’s gonna be really epic,’” Shieh said. “I think that’s one part of his character that really highlights his love for the outdoors and his love of adventure.”

For Praglin, what he really loved about Tan’s personality was his sense of humor.

“We were roommates sophomore year and our RA would always scare us in our room,” he said. “We had to get back at him, so Bryant created this device with a really loud beeping, so that if you turned off the light it would start beeping…our RA would turn his light back on and the beeping would stop…[Tan] would find the most clever way to deal with something.”

Praglin added that he was amazed to see the amount of response from the Stanford community and larger community after Tan’s death.

“I was impressed by the people who all came together [after his death] because there were so many people,” he said. “Everyone really respected him.”

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Bryant’s family has asked that friends send pictures of Bryant to rememberbryant ‘at’ gmail.com. They have also set up a memorial site in his honor at http://the-life-of-bryant.webnode.com/contact/.

In the print version of this article that appeared on Dec. 3, Tan’s name was misspelled in a headline and caption. The Daily sincerely regrets this error. The piece will be rerun in print on Jan. 5, 2015. 

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Broccoli painting stolen from EBF still missing https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/18/broccoli-painting-stolen-from-ebf-still-missing/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/18/broccoli-painting-stolen-from-ebf-still-missing/#respond Wed, 19 Nov 2014 06:21:57 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1092387 EBF's painting of fornicating broccolis is still missing.

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A painting created last spring by a EBF resident, India Emerick ’15, has been missing since Nov. 9. (Courtesy of Imani Howard)

On Saturday, Nov. 8, Imani Howard ’15 walked through the kitchen of Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF) around 1 a.m. and mentally took note of the canvas-sized painting of two pieces of broccoli having sex which had adorned the walls of EBF since last spring. As community manager and a fan of the painting, Howard was likely to notice the presence of the painting a couple of times a day. The following morning, at about 10 a.m., she walked through the kitchen again and was surprised to see the painting was missing.

According to Howard, things in EBF were likely to get moved around and she initially assumed that someone in the house had moved the painting. However, after sending out an email to the house and discovering that no one in the house had touched the painting, she realized that someone must have taken it out of the house the night before.

“It’s pretty heartbreaking when something gets stolen from the house like that,” Howard said. “One of the things that’s really integral to our culture is the art that we do.”

The painting was created last spring by a resident, India Emerick ’15, during EBF’s quarterly Creation Day. Emerick was inspired by their broccoli-themed home.

“The whole house comes together to create, build, clean, repair things for the community and the house,” Emerick said. “I was inspired in a dream about fornicating broccolis and I decided I would just try it out. I just painted it during Creation Day, was pretty stoked on how it came out, and wanted it to be displayed in a very public location.”

Emerick hoped that the painting could remain in EBF so that she could return to the house with her children when she was older and show them the kind of legacy she had left behind, like many other former residents and the paintings and other artwork they have left in EBF.

After deciding that no one in the house had the painting, Howard sent out emails to as many mailing lists as she could reach, asking the Stanford community to be on the lookout for the painting. Howard and Emerick are hopeful that the painting will be returned to EBF and that the only reason it hasn’t been returned is because it might be in a freshman dorm, one which maybe hasn’t heard about the theft yet.

“It’s pretty conspicuous, so people are going to notice it,” Emerick said. “We see that it’s just a silly prank, or an exciting thing to do as a freshman.”

Howard has plans to file a police report this week, after receiving advice from Residential Education. That same night, a large blue water pipe was stolen from EBF as well and Howard hopes that both items will be returned to the house soon.

“It’s perplexing that it’s still wherever it is,” Howard said. “Right now it’s just a waiting game.”

Last year, another painting was stolen from EBF in the fall and eventually located in a freshman dorm. It was returned to EBF that spring. Howard and Emerick don’t want to punish whoever took the painting but are hopeful that someone will come forward with information. Howard has offered many dinners for anyone who brings them information about the location of the painting.

Contact Josee Smith jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Alliance’s close-knit community attracts dancers https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/12/alliances-close-knit-community-attracts-dancers/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/12/alliances-close-knit-community-attracts-dancers/#respond Sun, 12 Oct 2014 23:52:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1089438 For co-director Jonathan Leung ’17, what most attracted him to Alliance Streetdance when he first joined as a freshman was the camaraderie of the group.

“They were like a family of sorts,” he said in reference to watching them in performances and at their auditions. “I really liked Alliance’s style…People sold it well, it really seemed like they had a good time dancing.”

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For co-director Jonathan Leung ’17, what most attracted him to Alliance Streetdance when he first joined as a freshman was the camaraderie of the group.

“They were like a family of sorts,” he said in reference to watching them in performances and at their auditions. “I really liked Alliance’s style…People sold it well, it really seemed like they had a good time dancing.”

 

Beginning to dance

Leung knew he wanted to dance for one of the hip hop teams at Stanford when he first arrived on campus, as he had been dancing hip hop since his junior year of high school.

“Junior year, I saw Step Up 2 and was inspired by Madd Chadd, the robot guy, and he just blew me away with his control, the effect of his body, with zero computer effects,” he said. “I started practicing in my bathroom…and joined a new dance team at my high school started by a guy with previous experience.”

Co-director Elijah Williams ’17 was similarly inspired by a hip hop movie (You Got Served), though he started dancing when he was much younger.

“When I was little, my mom would turn on music and we would just dance together, so that’s where I learned a lot of foundational stuff,” he said. “After seeing the movie, that’s when I started taking classes formally.”

The third co-director, Andy Le BS’14, MA ’15, wasn’t actually much of a dancer when he joined Alliance his junior year.

“I never really imagined myself dancing in high school at all,” he said. “I started out freshman year [at Stanford] being pretty antisocial, too, but decided that maybe I should probably get a life and be more social, so I went with a friend who recommended that I join Common Origins with her.”

Le enjoyed the family atmosphere and room for growth that he found with Common Origins, but he began to identify with the dance style of Alliance more and went to their auditions after junior year.

“I just really clicked with dance,” he added. “What kept me going was definitely the people and my own desire to grow.”

 

The difficulties of dance groups

While each director appreciated the family aspect of the group and how close they all have gotten as a result of their performances and practices, they all also recognized some difficulties in having a dance group at Stanford.

“The entire dance community is freaking out about dancing space,” Leung said. “We’re starting to think about practicing outside…It’d be super nice to have extra room, especially for competition teams that need to be on point with mirrors.”

For Le and Williams, their greatest difficulty comes from learning to balance Alliance with the rest of their lives.

“It’s just so easy to prioritize [the group] over everything else, which is really detrimental,” Williams said. “I only want to take 2 classes, only 12 units, and my parents are not too happy, but I just enjoy it so much.”

“It just takes over your life,” Le added. “I’ve skipped a lot of class in the past year or two because of [Alliance].”

 

The strong community

According to Leung, the really strong family-style bonding that the three directors love began to be encouraged during the last year, when the then-directors focused more on setting the baseline of the family aspect of Alliance. The three directors this year are now trying to add their own twist to that aspect, by encouraging more community between the members of Alliance and also with other dance groups on campus.

“People are not just here to dance, they’re here to bond with other people and share the love,” Leung added. “That’s a vibe that I’d love to see carried out forever.”

“I think there’s a strengthening of the hip hop community at Stanford in general,” Williams said. “I can feel the family vibe of the hip hop community…Whenever I see another person in another team, that person is legitimately my friend.”

“I’m really excited to take the team to new places,” Williams added. “The three of us have a very different vision from what we just left and how our vision plays out…What we’re trying to do [by encouraging more community] wouldn’t operate without that baseline last year.”

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford Sitcom Project premieres first episode https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/10/stanford-sitcom-project-premieres-first-episode/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/10/stanford-sitcom-project-premieres-first-episode/#respond Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:39:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1089303 The Stanford Sitcom Project released the first episode of “The Slump,” its first full-length series, last Thursday.

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The Stanford Sitcom Project released the first episode of “The Slump,” its first full-length series, last Thursday. Magellan Pfluke ’16, the president and executive producer of the project, founded the group last fall as an opportunity for him to experiment with acting and filmmaking and to spend more time with his freshman-year friends. (The first people he approached about getting involved with the group were from his freshman dorm, Otero.)

Creating a project with friends

For Elizabeth Knarr ’16, the casting director, the best part of being a part of the group is the opportunity to spend time with her friends.

“It’s so cool to hang out with my best friends and do art,” she said. “Magellan got approval for the group right at the beginning of sophomore year and we were all living in different places on campus, so it forced us to get together and have meetings and hang out.”

“90 percent of my best friends at Stanford are in the project, so meetings are so much fun,” added Shalmali Bane ’16, the executive story editor. “It’s so satisfying for me to have my social life and my extracurricular life come together, as a two-for-one kind of deal.”

The many parts of production

As the president and executive producer, Pfluke acts as the organizer of the entire project, overseeing each area of production, although he added that a lot of his final say doesn’t differ much from what the executive editors have made as their final cut.

Rahul Prabala ’16, the executive producer and vice president, said that he had more experience with filming and editing and that Pfluke had more experience with writing, so that determined what areas they each focused on from the start.

“We tried to combine our various talents,” he said. “We try to bring in as many people in as many different areas, so some people are pretty good at one specific part of production.”

For Bane, just being in charge of the script has been difficult for her because, even though she loves having the script as her responsibility and working with the writers to figure out the best script, she doesn’t know as much about the other sides of the production and has to trust those departments, such as post-production or filming, to be effective.

“I don’t know much about editing, so I have to trust them to do a good job,” Bane added. “It’s so multifaceted, not having any control or knowledge about the other aspects [outside of my own.]”

Looking forward

“The Slump” will comprise 10 episodes, each released over the course of the school year. However, the team has already started planning for the next series, with plans to write in the fall, film in the winter and edit in the spring, according to Pfluke.

“We want a clear prescription for running over a year, that’s reproducible by other groups,” he said. “This past year, we were thinking we were going to get something done by a certain time or more done but we had to compromise…I want to see the group stabilize in terms of structure and production time.”

Prabala added that they have already started the writing process for the next series, with the goal of making it more production-intensive.

“We want to add in more advanced effects, more props, just more involved,” he said.

Bane added that the series this year will be a bigger project for them, since “The Slump” was loosely based on their friend group and they were able to add in things based on their own personalities or things they said during meetings.

“It was like having an assignment that’s 25 percent done and then you just do 75 percent,” she said. “Now we have to do it all.”

“I think the biggest goal for this project from the beginning was to be something for the Stanford community that is accessible to them,” Knarr said. “It’s an opportunity for comedy writers to write comedy and actors to come and act and editors to edit and directors to direct.”

“It’s been a learning process for everyone,” she added. “We’re always looking to be better and to make better seasons.”

“If someone comes along and says, hey, I’m interested in this part of production, then we can put them,” Prabala said. “We need more people so people watching is only good for us.”

 

In a previous version of this article, Magellan Pfluke, Elizabeth Knarr and Shalmali Bane were attributed as members of the Class of 2017. All three are from the Class of 2016. The Daily regrets this error.

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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Common Origins open auditions foster a welcoming dance environment https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/06/common-origins-open-auditions-foster-a-welcoming-dance-environment/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/06/common-origins-open-auditions-foster-a-welcoming-dance-environment/#respond Mon, 06 Oct 2014 18:29:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088947 Common Origins (CO), a hip-hop dance group on campus, encourages an open and welcoming environment for new and inexperienced dancers by not requiring an audition before becoming a member.

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CO pic
Common Origins (CO) one of the three main hip-hop dance group on campus, encouraging an open and welcoming environment for new and inexperienced dancers. (ERIC THONG/The Stanford Daily)

For sophomore Crystal Tjoa, high school dances used to create a lot of anxiety because she thought she wasn’t very good.

“I would mostly just jump around and do the sprinkler,” she said. “I never actually danced until I got to Stanford and to [Common Origins].”

Common Origins (CO), a hip-hop dance group on campus, encourages an open and welcoming environment for new and inexperienced dancers by not requiring an audition before becoming a member. CO is the only one of the three main hip-hop groups on campus – the others are Alliance Streetdance and Dv8 – that take all comers.

“To me, Common Origins offers a lot of freedom to push yourself,” Tjoa said. “We try and make it possible for you… There are a lot of different ranges of experience, and it’s a very supporting community.”

“I’m glad they join solely because they think dancing is fun, because that is at the heart of what CO is,” added Aloysius Makalinao ’16, co-president this year. “We’re accommodating to our people first and our performance second.”

 

Open auditions        

According to Vienna Harvey ’16, a choreographer this year, when CO was first founded five years ago, it was intended as a place for people to express themselves through dance regardless of their skill level. It was founded by a group of friends who were noticing a lack of dance group opportunities for people who couldn’t make it through the Dv8 or Alliance auditions but still wanted a place to dance.

“CO is making dance accessible for everyone,” added Emmanuel Assa ’17. “Maybe you don’t understand dance because you’ve never danced, but when you get into the position of learning choreography [with CO] and you understand more of what dance is when you see other people dance, then you get more intrigued by it.”

Makalinao added that out of the 40 or 50 total members in CO at any given time, about 30 of those could be completely new dancers to the group. According to Harvey, this can create a high turnover rate of new members, which can lead to difficulties for the group.

“We have to start out every quarter with a whole new set of people who have never danced and bring them up to the level of performing before 700 people in 10 weeks,” Harvey said. “It’s especially difficult for people who have been there for a while, who may not want to take a step back that much [to work with a new group each time]. But I think CO takes pride in [welcoming new members].”

Makalinao agreed, noting the group’s democratic nature as a key part of the welcoming atmosphere.

“With some other hip hop groups, when you join a new one, you have less to say, but with CO it’s okay to point out that the president is wrong,” Makalinao said. “There are not any barriers that make any one person any better than anyone else [on the team].”

 

Passion for dance

Given the lack of auditions for joining CO, many of its members had no prior dancing experience before, like Tjoa, but found themselves in a comfortable place where they could learn.

“I’m a choreographer this year, but I didn’t plan to audition,” Tjoa said. “I was encouraged by other people in the group to really push myself and try it out.”

Other members, however, have been dancing hip hop for years. Assa joined a break dancing team after transferring to a new high school after his sophomore year.

“The first thing that I looked for when I got to Stanford was a student group [for hip hop dancers],” he said. “I tried out for Alliance but didn’t get it, so I went to CO.”

He added that he did join CO in order to improve his own abilities and that even though the group can change its composition and skill level each quarter, he did feel like he was given the opportunity to get better.

“A lot of the choreography we do and the teachers we bring in are fairly advanced, so you do get real dance experience,” he said. “There’s no little-kid choreography with CO.”

Harvey added that she had been dancing since she was 4 or 5 years old, mostly ballet and other styles as she got older, such as trapeze and aerial trapeze.

“When I got to Stanford, I wanted to try a different style and I thought hip hop sounded fun,” she said. “But I was too intimidated to try to join the other groups, so once I heard that anyone who wants to join [CO] is welcome, I decided to try.”

 

Dance at other schools

According to Makalinao, CO and other Stanford dance groups differ greatly from groups at other schools because the Stanford groups don’t enter competitions.

“At the Berkeley competitive hip-hop team, they practice every day and it’s basically a five-unit class,” he said. “I think the hip-hop community at Stanford knows how a Stanford student works… They don’t want to be completely bogged down by any one thing, so how it’s set up at Stanford is perfect for people who want to try it [because there’s less competitive pressure].”

“The schools in North Carolina [where I’m from] all have a competitive team and a noncompetitive team, and the competitive team practices every day,” Assa said. “I practiced with them over the summer and got a little better, but I don’t think I could’ve kept it up over the school year, so if there were competitive teams here, I couldn’t commit.”

 

The dance community at Stanford

Some of the members feel like the hip-hop community is gaining a bigger presence on campus, but that there are still ways in which maintaining CO could get difficult.

“In terms of physical space, that’s definitely going to be an issue for us this year since the Roble gym is closed and that is where the majority of the practices were,” Harvey said. “Athletic classes get priority over dance groups, so everyone is struggling to find space, not just CO.”

Nevertheless, CO and other dance groups on campus are increasing their presence and becoming more recognized by the University.

“Breaking Ground [the fall show] is held in early December, and last year it was pouring down rain, in the middle of dead week, with five other events going on at the same time, and we still managed to pack Dinkelspiel… We were turning people away,” Harvey said. “It was the highest attended dance show Stanford has ever had [and] it shows how much people enjoy dance and like to see it.”

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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In focus: XTRM https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/03/xtrm/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/03/xtrm/#respond Sat, 04 Oct 2014 02:54:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088948 K-Pop/Asian pop dance team XTRM performs at Party on the Edge on Thursday night.

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Photo of the week - XTRM

 

K-Pop/Asian pop dance team XTRM performs at Party on the Edge on Thursday night.

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Q&A with the Editor-in-Chief of the Stanford Political Journal https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/29/qa-with-the-editor-in-chief-of-the-stanford-political-journal/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/29/qa-with-the-editor-in-chief-of-the-stanford-political-journal/#respond Mon, 29 Sep 2014 16:54:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088387 Jason Willick '15 created the Stanford Political Journal last spring after noticing an absence of a forum for political discussion on campus. The Daily sat down with him for an interview about his decision to start this new group.

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willick_headshotJason Willick ’15 created the Stanford Political Journal last spring after noticing an absence of a forum for political discussion on campus. The Daily sat down with him for an interview about his decision to start this new group.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): Can you talk to me a bit about the process of starting this journal?

Jason Willick (JW): I transferred from UC Berkeley at the end of my sophomore year, and I got here as a junior and saw that there was no political magazine or publication on campus. I had written a column at the Daily Cal and with The Stanford Daily for a while but I thought that it would be good for Stanford to have a magazine devoted to political commentary like those that exist at Berkeley, Yale, Princeton and Duke, other peer institutions. To me, the fact that this type of magazine works at other institutions means that it would probably work at Stanford too. Plus, I was eager to have an outlet to write for again.

So at the end of last spring, I got some people together. For now we’re only online but we hope to print someday, and we’re looking forward to recruiting more people.

We’re trying to be nonpartisan, which doesn’t mean that people don’t have opinions or aren’t partisan on the magazine, but that we don’t have an editorial line that we take or a political position, but rather right and left and everywhere in between. We’re trying to be modeled after magazines like The Atlantic, with an array of views, but not ideological.

TSD: Who else is involved?

I started out recruiting some people I knew already, but we also sent out emails to the political science, international relations and public policy mailing lists. We did an interview process in the spring to get our staff of about 15 or so. We hope that we’re going to reach more people after the activities fair and now that we’re online.

TSD: Though the journal is still new, can you tell me what the reception has been like on campus?

JW: All of the reception that I’ve gotten has been really positive. People think the website has been really good. Everyone who’s communicated with me has liked what he or she has seen. We haven’t reached as many people as I hope to [reach]. The 10 articles that we’ve published right now I think are all very well written and people seem to think so too. I‘ve gotten some suggestions, like things to write about, logos and so on. But all the comments about what’s been written so far have been good.

TSD: Where do you see it heading in the future?

I think the real test of my leadership of the journal this year is whether it’s still around next year or in five years. I don’t want it to be something that exists now just for a quarter or for a year. I plan on it becoming an important institution on campus that is an important forum for talking about politics. I certainly hope it sticks around and I have every reason to think it will. We had a lot of interest in the spring and I think we’ll get a lot more. I think there’s a niche on campus for this kind of publication and I’m hopeful that it’ll stick around for the next few years.

TSD: What influence do you hope for it to have on the Stanford community and the community at large?

I think Stanford is not as politically engaged as other campuses are. I think students know a lot about politics if you talk to them but I don’t think there’s as much debate about politics or campus politics. I hope that the journal helps to elevate the politics to a more important place in the campus dialogue. I hope it makes people more interested, to think about politics, social issues and politics on campus. I just hope to have a more vigorous political atmosphere than we do now.

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Another Look book club discusses Roth’s “The Ghost Writer” https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/26/another-look-book-club-discusses-roths-the-ghost-writer/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/26/another-look-book-club-discusses-roths-the-ghost-writer/#respond Wed, 26 Feb 2014 10:22:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082720 Another Look, a book club founded by the English Department to discuss books deemed to have not yet received their time in the spotlight, took on Philip Roth’s ‘The Ghost Writer’ on Tuesday night.

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KRISTEN STIPANOV/The Stanford Daily
KRISTEN STIPANOV/The Stanford Daily

Another Look, a book club founded by the English Department to discuss books deemed to have not yet received their time in the spotlight, took on Philip Roth’s ‘The Ghost Writer’ on Tuesday night.

Tobias Wolff M.A. ’78, professor of English and director of Another Look, moderated the discussion, which also featured writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon. Wolff said that he aimed to give the book more attention.

“’The Ghost Writer’ is one of Roth’s books that might have fallen out of the range of serious readers when compared with some of his greater monumental works,” Wolff noted.

The 1979 novel tells the story of Nathan Zuckerman, a young writer who travels to a writer’s colony. There, he meets E.I. Lonoff, one of his inspirations as a writer, and Amy Bellette, a woman living anonymously in the United States after the Holocaust whom Zuckerman suspects is Anne Frank.

Panel members looked at elements in Roth’s lesser-known novel, ranging from the influences in the book to the author’s thoughts about the writing process to the reader’s relationship to the work.

“There’s an expectation as a Jewish writer in terms of what’s going to be your Holocaust book,” Waldman said. “[Roth]…approaches this terrifying subject in a masterful way.”

Wolff also addressed Roth’s protests about being called a Jewish writer.

“People reading Roth understand that he’s American and a writer and a Jew, and that he writes about these themes,” Wolff explained. “He’s not being held in a category.”

Waldman first read the novel when she was a young girl, calling the experience “magical.”

“It was one of the first times I noticed how people write and what a writer’s voice sounds like and how different Roth’s voice sounds from the day-to-day or from other writers,” she said.

Chabon also spoke to Roth’s influence on his work. He found himself relating to Zuckerman strongly when he first read the novel at the age of 23 before starting his Master of Fine Arts studies.

“I was the same age as Nathan and identified with the sense of anticipation he has for the career he hopes he’ll have,” he said. “I became so captivated by the possibility that some life like what he anticipates might lie in store for me as well.”

The panel further explored the way in which real life can intersect with fiction, noting the similarities between Zuckerman and Roth, and between Roth and characters in his other pieces of fiction.

“He almost always writes about a man of his age, going through similar experiences,” Waldman said. “But that’s the joy of fiction. You can take those real life experiences and then make stuff up and mix it all together in this delightful stew. You play the game on purpose.”

For Waldman, reading this book a second time in preparation for this talk helped her remember what it means to be a writer.

“I just told myself to get back to work,” she said. “I know what that is: getting up in the morning and sitting down at your desk and doing your work. When I finished my last novel, it’s like I forgot that, but this book helped remind me what my job is.”

Wolff said that Another Look aims to do just that—to refresh interest in the books the club chooses to spotlight.

“We talk about television shows all the time,” he said. “Why shouldn’t we talk about books in the same way?”

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Stanford and the Civil Rights movement: Celebrating 50 years of activism https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/21/stanford-and-the-civil-rights-movement-celebrating-50-years-of-activism/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/21/stanford-and-the-civil-rights-movement-celebrating-50-years-of-activism/#respond Fri, 21 Feb 2014 09:09:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082581 Stanford University celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

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“I prefer free white citizens to any other class or race. I prefer the white man to the negro as an inhabitant of our country.”

These polarizing words were spoken by Leland Stanford in 1859, as he accepted the Republican Party nomination as governor of California. He would go on to found Stanford University in 1891.

Yet this discriminatory mindset held by Stanford and others of his time no longer commands the same influence on this campus as the University celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended all major forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion or gender.

Civil rights at Stanford

According to Clayborne Carson, professor of history and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, Stanford has changed dramatically in the years following this legislation, with the “white Anglo-Saxon, Protestant background” becoming the minority on campus.

Student demonstration protesting Marine recruting. 04/12/1977
Student demonstration protesting Marine recruting. 04/12/1977 (Courtesy of Stanford News Service)

As a student at UCLA during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, Carson had worked in Los Angeles with the Student Nonviolent Coordinator Committee (SNCC).

“We didn’t have segregated lunch counters, [but] we dealt with employment discrimination, trying to get the black community in Los Angeles not to buy things from businesses that refused to hire black people as clerks,” he said.

Carson noted that in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., various campuses — including Stanford, UCLA and Berkeley — began offering courses in African American history for the first time, and those schools started looking for black students for their graduate schools so that they eventually could teach in that field.

“I knew that many students at Stanford were involved in the movement and when I arrived here, there were still people around who were a big part of that,” he said. “At that point, most of the activism of the mid-1960s reached its peak during the anti-war campaign during the early ’70s.”

Carson added that in the early ’80s, the South African apartheid struggle stimulated another burst of activism.

“The ’80s were for Stanford what the ’60s were for Berkeley,” he said. “That was the period when the campus was the most politicized…The number of black students was increasing, along with significant numbers of Latino and Asian students, all with the attitude of, ‘Yes, I’m really thankful to get admitted, but while I’m here, I’m not going to treat Stanford as if it can’t be transformed into something different, something better.’”

For history professor James Campbell ’83 Ph.D. ’89, remembering the Civil Rights movement is more than just celebrating the positive outcomes but also understanding its complexities and human costs, such as the struggles specific to Mississippi’s civil rights movement.

“Mississippi was a different kind,” Campbell said. “Martin Luther King, Jr., spent very little time there, as it was far more dangerous as a citadel of Jim Crow laws. The kind of movement that emerged elsewhere — in which you had movements associated with King’s large-scale demonstrations in public spaces, freedom rides, the sit-ins at the lunch country, the Montgomery bus boycott — that’s not what was happening in Mississippi.”

According to Campbell, in Mississippi, a small number of people began working under the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), registering people to vote and trying to create a group-centered leadership. They actively opposed the vision of politics enshrined by King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights organization spearheaded by King.

“[SNCC] didn’t want to make followers, because if you did that, what was left when you left?” Campbell said. “Instead, they tried to identify, tap into and nurture the capacity for leadership and wisdom that was indigenous to small communities and people living in a brutal society of white supremacy.”

After facing violent opposition — including arrests and murders — and realizing that the murders of its black supporters made little stir in national conversation, SNCC decided to create a summer project to recruit students from white, northern universities, including students from Stanford, to help with the organizing work in the summer of 1964.

“They decided the nation was never going to care unless they brought the nation’s children to Mississippi,” Campbell said. “Once some of them got killed, then the nation would pay attention. And that’s exactly what happened. Three students were killed and it became front-page news.”

Ongoing discussions

While such issues of civil rights no longer command as much presence in current campus discourse as they did in the past, activism remains of interest for many Stanford students.

“Activism through social media, nationally, has emerged as another means of activism,” said Jan Barker-Alexander, director of the Black Community Services Center and Resident Fellow in Ujamaa.

However, she acknowledged that students at Stanford sill struggle with what it means to be an activist, in terms of defining the broadness or narrowness of the term, and with talking about race in general.

“Oftentimes, people feel that they are being accused of something when it really is people wanting to have a dialogue and a courageous conversation about issues that are difficult,” she said. “If people were to step out of their comfort zone…they would begin to gain an understanding of current-day issues of how race and racism are still a part of the fabric of America.”

For Kaela Farrise ’14, co-president of the Black Student Union (BSU), Stanford makes a well-intentioned effort to create the space for different racial and ethnic groups to come together and share their stories, but doesn’t make it a first priority.

“Sometimes, especially during elections every year, the burden is put on the students of these groups to prove their worth,” she said. “It’s put on the students to defend our spaces…Conversations that you might hear about Ujamaa and the BSU are oftentimes negative or talk about self-segregation, and that conversation needs to be framed differently. There should be an institutional explanation for why we are here.”

According to Farrise, one of the important parts of the BSU is bringing the conversation about race to the forefront of people’s minds.

“It’s important for us to have a collaboration with other groups, because it’s our job to make sure that our community has a sense of belonging at Stanford and a sense of owning a part of Stanford,” she said.

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11@stanford.edu.

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Graduate student soars to tech policy stardom https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/13/stanford-postdoc-soars-to-tech-policy-stardom/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/13/stanford-postdoc-soars-to-tech-policy-stardom/#respond Thu, 13 Feb 2014 09:08:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082320 From serving as a consultant to law enforcement to collaborating with Firefox on a cookie-blocking feature, Jonathan Mayer J.D. '12 Ph.D. '16 has made a name for himself in recent years with regards to technology policy and online privacy issues.

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Courtesy of Linda A. Cicero
Courtesy of Linda A. Cicero

From serving as a consultant to law enforcement to collaborating with Firefox on a cookie-blocking feature, Jonathan Mayer J.D. ’12 Ph.D. ’16 has made a name for himself in recent years with regards to technology policy and online privacy issues.

Despite being recently named as one of Forbes Magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30,” however, Mayer framed the public plaudits as simply a way to ensure that his work continues to influence public debate well into the future, noting that even being considered for the Forbes nomination had been a surprising—if entirely positive—experience.

“It’s one of those things where you don’t really ask for it or expect it, but it’s really nice to get it,” he said.

A native of Chicago, Mayer earned his undergraduate degree in public policy from Princeton University in 2009 and came directly to Stanford with the intent of completing the first ever J.D./Ph.D. in computer science (CS).

“I wasn’t going to do law and policy lite or CS-lite—I was going full in on both,” he reflected. “I applied to both programs at Stanford, without really asking about it in advance or knowing if it was possible. I’d read something that suggested it was okay, but I intentionally avoided asking questions.”

Even while working towards his law degree, Mayer split time between Law School classes and CS research.

“Some days it [was] very challenging,” he said. “I’d be walking from corporate lectures to CS research. Thankfully the areas I was interested in were of interest to both law professors and the CS department. I was able to do the stuff I wanted, which happened to have law and CS together.”

His research in tech policy, an area that Mayer describes as “the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] for technology,” has led him to work on issues related to Google’s cookie-tracking policy online, phone metadata privacy and the NSA’s international tracking, among others. He framed his interest in those fields as reflective of not only personal curiosity but also a desire to educate the public about how their data is used.

In fact, Mayer began looking into cookie tracking at about the same time that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began their investigation into Google. The FTC acknowledged looking at Mayer’s research throughout their investigation, which eventually resulted in a $22.5 million fine for the Silicon Valley giant.

Mayer framed the cookie-tracking issue as presenting significant implications for the general population.

“When you go to a website on your computer, a cookie is set, which is just a little bit of text, with a unique ID number, that can follow you to another website that you go to, so that someone could know that you were the same person who looked at both websites,” Mayer said. “Apple tries to prevent that cookie sending, but there’s a weird quirk in Safari where you could send the cookie anyways. Google took advantage of this quirk in Safari to ensure that the cookie got sent from the first website [so they could track your movements].”

Patrick Mutchler Ph.D. ’16, whose research interests involve mobile security, began working with Mayer this past summer on the phone metadata privacy research.

“[Mayer] is a unique researcher because having a J.D. with a Ph.D. gives him some expertise that few people have, even at Stanford,” Mutchler said. “He’s working on things that have an obvious direct influence on people, which is not something you see as a researcher. It’s harder to come up with things that have a direct influence right away.

For Mutchler, the most unexpected part about working with Mayer was the practice of publishing their preliminary results on Mayer’s blog, which is followed by various news media.

“It got picked up by the media and it was weird to see them not reporting the information correctly,” he said. “You could see how they could get it wrong, but it was still wrong, and that was hard.”

For Mayer, one of the hardest parts of trying to push back against technology giants like Google is seeing the limited impact of his information and research on policy debates.

“The person with the largest megaphone or greatest notoriety has the greatest sway, not the person with the best facts or correct understanding of technology or law—there’s no real way to correct that,” he said. “I think I’ve been fortunate to have an impact but I only have such a large megaphone.”

Mayer also expressed frustration with the media’s lack of nuance, an issue particularly pronounced in recent investigations into the National Security Agency’s information-gathering practices.

“Let’s suppose the NSA did follow the rules,” he said. “Did those rules make sense? No. I think that’s more relevant and a more persuasive argument, but it’s not always the best way to move the debate…Journalists get mad at me because they want me to [say] ‘screw the NSA,’ but I’m not going to say it—I disagree and talk about the things they’ve done wrong.”

For Mayer, the need to function as a pseudo-ACLU for technology issues is symbolized by the enormous asymmetric exchange of information in the tech industry.

“I’ve been involved in law policy and CS work because it brings clarity to the impact of certain practices,” he said. “People should know that the NSA phone policy, which looks at how closely connected phone calls are, claims to have no names involved, yet a quick study and search through Yelp and Google and Facebook showed that we could identify over 90 percent of the numbers we were looking at.”

“I don’t think an ordinary member of the public could be expecting to have that kind of intuition about it, so this space provides the essential information,” he added. “Who else is going to do it, but those in academia?”

Contact Josee at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Q&A: Religious studies professor discusses University’s relationship with religion https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/31/qa-religious-studies-professor-discusses-universitys-relationship-with-religious/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/31/qa-religious-studies-professor-discusses-universitys-relationship-with-religious/#respond Fri, 31 Jan 2014 08:50:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1081938             Steven Weitzman is a professor of Jewish Culture and Religion in the Department of Religious Studies and the director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Weitzman came to Stanford from Indiana University five years ago and currently serves as the resident fellow in Roble Hall, accompanied by his wife […]

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            Steven Weitzman is a professor of Jewish Culture and Religion in the Department of Religious Studies and the director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Weitzman came to Stanford from Indiana University five years ago and currently serves as the resident fellow in Roble Hall, accompanied by his wife — an ordained rabbi — and his four children. The Daily spoke with Professor Weitzman about his work on campus and his own thoughts about religion.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): How did you end up as a Resident Fellow (RF)?

Steven Weitzman (Courtesy of Stanford News Service)
Steven Weitzman (Courtesy of Stanford News Service)

Steven Weitzman (SW):In my previous position, I taught a lot of undergraduates and I really valued that experience. In the humanities right now, there are not that many students in it, and I missed the context of undergraduates. I found out about the RF option and I thought it was a great way to develop relationships with undergraduates. I also realized that it would be a great way for my kids to grow up.

I have four children and they’re different ages [15, 12, 7 and 7], and it’s been a different experience for the four of them. For all of them, though, it’s been enormously stimulating. They’ve learned about what college life is like, both the good and the bad, and they’ve had a lot of interpersonal and cultural experiences. The older ones are shy, but even if they don’t want to talk to the students, they still learn a lot from watching them in the dorm.

TSD: How do you try to bring religious programming to the students on campus?

SW: In the religious studies department, I’m affiliated with the Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE). CCSRE is about ethnicity and the religious department is about religion, and I recognized that for a lot of people in the world, those two things are both part of their identity. I was looking for ways to develop connections and build bridges between those two areas. We conceived of this initiative, The Stanford Project for Religious and Ethnic Coexistence. It supports programs on campus that explore religious and ethnic conflict and coexistence. There’s a component to the initiative that takes place in the residences.

Last year was the first year of the initiative and we had programs that were largely initiated by other RFs and sometimes by students, in a range of areas, such as a film showing and discussion about evangelical music, a Syrian hip-hop concert, and programming on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

TSD:What reception has this programming garnered from students on campus?

SW: The people who choose to participate in the programming have found them very meaningful. I think it can be tough for people to talk about religion outside of their own religious community. We encountered some difficulty in generating programs that were meaningful for people because people don’t really know how to talk about religion outside of their own. I think this is the role of religious studies, to help people understand religion, not to attack religion or promote religion but to understand it. I think there’s a role for that on campus because people have a hard time talking about their beliefs or understanding the beliefs of others.

One program that was sponsored this year brought a group of students to see “The Book of Mormon,” which is a very funny play but is also very critical of religion, and I think it made some students who are religious very uncomfortable, which was a shame. A lot of times people feel like you are either attacking or supporting religion, but there’s also a lot of room for understanding religion.

TSD: What type of dynamic have you seen between students who are religious and students who are not?

SW: We haven’t measured anything like that in any formal way, but the students that I’ve interacted with have appreciated the chance to talk about these things. Sometimes I don’t know even know how to start a conversation with someone about religion, and so having options and programming that can help people get into the kinds of conversations they wouldn’t know how to start otherwise can be really rewarding.

TSD: In what other ways have you tried to incorporate religion into your time at Stanford, outside of this initiative? 

SW: I’m a scholar of religion, so my courses are about religion. I’m not a promoter of religion, and I don’t see myself as a religious person. I take religion seriously and I identify as Jewish, but I don’t have any religious motivations that I am aware of. I do find value in helping people understand religion, especially religions that are different from their own.

I function as an advisor for a student-initiated course called Interfaith at Noon, which will be offered again in the spring for the third year. It meets once a week over lunch, with a theme that functions as the focus of a quarter-long discussion that brings in guest speakers and involves the students in a discussion amongst themselves. The first year, the theme was religion and the stranger, so what religion teaches about one’s responsibility to strangers, to others, to the marginalized. Much of the focus was on religion and immigration policy. The second year was on religion and the ethics of wealth, and the third is likely to be on religion and politics.

TSD: How do you view Stanford’s relationship with religion?

SW: I teach a course every other year in the fall called Is Stanford a Religion? This course works to understand Stanford and its culture and the rituals of Stanford undergraduate life, so looking at things like Full Moon on the Quad. One of the topics of the course is Stanford’s own history and its relationship with religion.

From the very beginning, Stanford was committed to being non-denominational and not identified with a specific religion, which distinguished it from other universities like Harvard and Princeton, which identified with a specific denomination. That set a precedent for Stanford being a diverse place, open to multiple points of view. But I think that also means that now, a lot of faculty and students don’t identify as religious or some don’t take it seriously. Even today, I think some students find it hard to be out in the open about their religious identity.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford Law School clinic offers free legal services in East Palo Alto https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/29/stanford-law-school-clinic-offers-free-legal-services-in-east-palo-alto/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/29/stanford-law-school-clinic-offers-free-legal-services-in-east-palo-alto/#respond Wed, 29 Jan 2014 09:10:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1081864 A modern office space is now open to clients seeking free legal services at the Community Law Clinic (CLC) in East Palo Alto, one of the eleven clinics offered by the Stanford Law School that offers a hands-on learning experience for aspiring lawyers while giving back to the community.

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Courtesy of Judy Gielniak
Courtesy of Judy Gielniak

A modern office space is now open to clients seeking free legal services at the Community Law Clinic (CLC) in East Palo Alto, one of the eleven clinics offered by the Stanford Law School that offers a hands-on learning experience for aspiring lawyers while giving back to the community.

The law school allotted $100,000 to complete the “long-overdue but very successful facelift for the space,” according to Juliet Brodie, law professor and the clinic’s director.

The CLC is one of only a handful of organizations that provide free legal representation to individuals from low-income households in the East Palo Alto community, Brodie said.

“All across America, there’s a crisis with the lack of attorneys for poor people in some of the most important areas in their life, like housing, wages and income,” she said. “There just aren’t enough lawyers, so we hope to be a tiny part of the solution.”

“We become their lawyers and help them in the way that lawyers do,” she added.

A clinic’s history

 

The CLC opened in its current form in 2003; however, a previous iteration of the clinic, named the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, had been located on the same site on University Avenue for many years prior.

According to Brodie, the reopening in 2003 came as a result of the Law School’s rededication to a dual mission: to provide legal representation to low-income people in the surrounding area, and to give law students the opportunity to act as real lawyers.

She added that the reopening in 2003 was part of a dramatic growth in the law school clinical education program in general.

“Before 2003, the clinic was just one of a small handful of stand-alone experiential learning opportunities for students,” Brodie said. “In the past ten years, the law school has made one of its principal initiatives to build a sizable and strategic clinic.”

Brodie began working at the clinic in 2006 after having spent the previous 10 years working in similar community-based programs at two other law schools. At the CLC, Brodie supervises the law students with three other clinical supervising attorneys: Danielle Jones, Lisa Douglass and Larisa Bowman.

For Brodie, one of the most successful parts of the clinic is its ability to adapt the practice to the needs of the community.

“We can’t do everything people suggest, but we can keep our ear to the ground and try to understand what’s needed,” she said. “I see for the future of this clinic continuing that process of engaging with the community to see how we can be most useful.”

Student lawyers

 

After submitting her application last year, Nisha Kashyap J.D. ’14 began working at the clinic this quarter.

Law students can apply to be a part of one of the eleven clinics offered through the law school, Kashyap said. If accepted, these students spend the quarter working full-time for the clinic, receiving academic credit for their work and refraining from enrollment in any other classes. Brodie compared this kind of program to a residency, in which the student is completely involved with the process.

“[At the CLC], students become the actual lawyer on record for low-income people in a bunch of different cases,” Brodie said. “They work cases related to eviction defense work, social security hearings, wage disputes and helping people with criminal record expungement.”

According to Brodie, the law students — under the supervision of one of the four attorneys — are involved in every step of a case: They go to the court, interact with the judges, write up files and research their cases.

“The type of work I want to do is legal aid work and direct service work – working with clients – and I thought this might be a good way to practice that kind of work before graduating,” Kashyap said.

For Kashyap, the primary function of the CLC is to bring legal aid and services to a community that does not have many options, especially for free legal services.

“There’s a lot of need for this kind of work in East Palo Alto and in the Bay Area in general,” she said. “[The CLC] helps fill that gap with services.”

Kashyap added that the clinic was a great opportunity to get out of the classroom environment and practice the kinds of skills she’ll be using as a lawyer.

“Class is great, but the things I do in class are not the kinds of things I’ll be doing as a lawyer,” she said.

Casey Raymond J.D. ’14 has been working at the clinic for three quarters.

“What I loved about the program, and why I’ve stayed with it for so long is that it’s so hands-on,” Raymond said. “I think law school is academic, but it’s also a trade school, and I think it’s good to have done some litigation or been before a judge or done negotiations with clients or other lawyers before starting your legal practice.”

Maintaining a balance between classroom and clinic work can create a much more successful and rewarding law school experience, Raymond added.

“We help provide and protect the basic needs and rights of people in the community,” he said, mentioning that he is currently working on a class action suit that has been filed for a client who was working, but was not paid wages.

Kashyap is currently working on two cases. One focuses on expungement of a criminal record for a client with old criminal convictions from twenty years ago that he would like to have removed from his record.

“The other case involves a client who was disabled in a workplace environment five years ago and can no longer work,” she said. “I’m helping her apply for supplemental security income benefits, through the social security administration.”

For Kashyap, getting exposure to different kinds of law in the clinic is a great experience.

“The clinic gives you an opportunity to be exposed to more types of law, like expungement, wage and hour,” she said. “That’s how the clinic is shaped, to give you more exposure as to the types of options for law you could work with after school.”

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Civil Rights Act of 1964 celebrated at Law School symposium https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/27/civil-rights-act-of-1964-celebrated-at-law-school-symposium/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/27/civil-rights-act-of-1964-celebrated-at-law-school-symposium/#respond Mon, 27 Jan 2014 09:21:41 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1081796 This weekend, The Stanford Law Review and the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties hosted “The Civil Rights Act at Fifty,” a symposium celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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

This weekend, The Stanford Law Review and the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties hosted “The Civil Rights Act at Fifty,” a symposium celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The symposium, held in the Law School, featured an array of panels and talks focused around the history of the civil rights movement and the state of civil rights in the country today.

Friday night featured a panel on the history of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with speakers from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, the University of Virginia School of Law and the Stanford Law School.

Following the panel was a talk given by Eva Paterson, president and founder of the Equal Justice Society—an organization dedicated to changing the law through progressive legal theory, public policy and practice.

For Paterson, the symposium and the panels were not only a chance to talk about the history of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but also an opportunity for “thinking about where we are, where we’re going and where we’ve been.”

“I think we should all take this opportunity to deepen our understanding of our history, through these discussions and panels,” Paterson said, adding that pop culture is useful for better understanding our history.

Paterson said that it is important to understand the factors that led up to the Civil Rights Act, and in particular the events that were driving people to resist racism. She cited the episode on June 11, 1963 when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the University of Alabama entrance to black students James Hood and Vivian Malone Jones and how that event eventually led to the March on Washington.

“It’s very important to understand what was fueling people and why a quarter of a million people showed up in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963,” she said.

Paterson added that today the country is not a post-racial society, as issues of racism still permeate society today, including racially biased ads negatively depicting the Obama family, the shooting of young black men because of a subconscious bias against black faces and race-conscious voting rights laws that prevent certain people from voting.

Saturday featured four more panels, focused on topics such as sex, gender and sexuality in civil rights, and the changing tides of the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act. A panel of three legal scholars discussed employment discrimination and freedom of association.

Richard Ford ‘88, a professor of civil rights and antidiscrimination at Stanford Law, commented on the importance of understanding true intent in employment discrimination cases, as someone could be an incompetent employee yet claim discrimination as a result of their loss of job.

On the other hand, employers have to follow the duty of making decisions that do not perpetuate preexisting social inequalities, according to Ford.

Richard Epstein, the Laurence A. Tisch professor of law at the NYU School of Law and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, and Samuel Bagenstos, professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, both talked about public accommodation laws and recent freedom of association civil rights issues.

Specifically, Bagestos cited the “Boy Scouts of America v. Dale” case in 2000, in which it was determined that the Boy Scouts, as a private organization, were allowed to exclude members based on certain criteria because the presence of that person would affect the group’s ability to advocate their viewpoints.

The symposium ended with a closing reception at the Law Lounge on Saturday afternoon.

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Limited exceptions granted to international travel policy https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/23/limited-exceptions-granted-to-international-travel-policy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/01/23/limited-exceptions-granted-to-international-travel-policy/#respond Fri, 24 Jan 2014 07:55:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1081751 Despite the University’s policy of prohibiting Stanford funded, organized or sponsored trips for undergraduates to countries on the State Department’s travel warning list, trips to Israel and Mexico have been granted exceptions in the past two years. According to Stephanie Kalfayan, vice provost for academic affairs, the two exceptions have been made for faculty-organized trips […]

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Despite the University’s policy of prohibiting Stanford funded, organized or sponsored trips for undergraduates to countries on the State Department’s travel warning list, trips to Israel and Mexico have been granted exceptions in the past two years.

Last summer, several Stanford students traveled to Israel on a program organized by Hillel at Stanford. Because Hillel does not receive funds from Stanford, it is not subject to the University's International Travel Policy. (Courtesy of Maddy Bayer)
Last summer, several Stanford students traveled to Israel on a program organized by Hillel at Stanford. Because Hillel does not receive funds from Stanford, it is not subject to the University’s International Travel Policy. (Courtesy of Maddy Bayer)

According to Stephanie Kalfayan, vice provost for academic affairs, the two exceptions have been made for faculty-organized trips that provide an educational benefit in a carefully planned program and are reviewed in advance to minimize risk.

Steven Weitzman, a Religious Studies professor, led an overseas seminar to Israel last summer through the Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP). According to the State Department travel warning, US citizens are warned against traveling to areas in Israel.

“We were able to travel to Israel and have this seminar by agreeing to stay out of certain areas, like the West Bank or Gaza Strip,” Weitzman said.

In order to make it possible to take students to Israel, Weitzman had to fill out a petition to the provost in order to travel to that country.

“Two years ago, the [Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford] committee made some recommendations to encourage the University to encourage more travel for the students, thus making the policy more flexible,” he said. “We weren’t going around a ban, necessarily, but we had to understand the risks and try to minimize them while in Israel [by staying out of certain places].”

Kalfayan said this trip was approved because of the educational benefit and need for that type of program, as well as the capability of BOSP and the participants to take on the added responsibilities required to manage the risk. The trip to Israel was subsidized by BOSP.

There are other trips to Israel that are not required to adhere to the program, according to Rabbi Serena Eisenberg.

“Hillel at Stanford is a separate organization, and therefore not subject to these restrictions [from Stanford], since we do not receive Stanford funding for our programs,” she said. “Over the past several years, Hillel has sponsored Israel travel opportunities for Jewish and non-Jewish students on campus.”

Eisenberg added that the Graduate School of Business organizes an Israel trip with about 40 business students each spring, but graduate students are not required to adhere to the policy. She also noted that the wording in the State Department travel advisory changed with respect to Israel in June 2013, encouraging visitors to major metropolitan areas.

Mexico is another country listed on the State Department’s warning list; Oaxaca, however, is not located in one of the warning areas.

“The State Department travel warning to Mexico is not national, but regional, and the state of Oaxaca itself has no travel restrictions,” Gabriel Garcia, professor of medicine and faculty leader of the Oaxaca program, wrote in an email to The Daily.

“[We] petitioned the provost’s office to start our…program and after appropriate investigation and discussion with them and the University’s international office, our overseas program was approved, with significant restrictions that aim to enhance the safety and well-being of our students,” he added.

These restrictions include flying directly from the United States to Oaxaca, having course faculty and Child Family Health International colleagues onsite at all times during the program and limiting in-country travel to the capital and nearby communities.

Many peer institutions have addressed similar issues with respect to student travel to Israel and other countries on the travel advisory list, Eisenberg said.

“In some cases, the University requires an additional student waiver, in recognition of potential risk and liability,” she said. “Some have partnerships with Israeli institutions and some administer faculty-led programs.”

“What all these programs have in common is that they allow some kind of overseas studies in Israel, provide advising and the planning of an academic program and allow students to use University financial aid and other resources,” she added.

Eisenberg said that Harvard University runs a faculty-led summer school program in Israel and in 2009, the UC system restored overseas studies in Israel, including a program at the Hebrew University. In 2011, the Cal State system restored overseas studies in Israel.

“A lot of our peer institutions have those programs put in place,” Weitzman said. “It was time for us to do the same.”

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Tjossem talks Gaieties 2013 production https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/20/tjossem-talks-gaieties-2014-production/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/20/tjossem-talks-gaieties-2014-production/#respond Wed, 20 Nov 2013 09:39:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080666 Nora Tjossem ’15, is the producer of Ram’s Head Theatrical Society’s Gaieties show this year. The show is one of the many Big Game Week traditions at Stanford and will run today, Thursday and Friday.

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CHRISTINA LEE/The Stanford Daily
Courtesy of Christina Lee

Nora Tjossem ’15, is the producer of Ram’s Head Theatrical Society’s Gaieties show this year. The show is one of the many Big Game Week traditions at Stanford and will run today, Thursday and Friday.

The Daily recently sat down with Tjossem to talk about her direction for this year’s show and how she took on this Stanford tradition.

The Stanford Daily (TSD):How did you get involved in Gaieties?

Nora Tjossem (NT): I’ve acted the past two years in the show and then this year I guess I was ready to take on a bigger role, and it has been a bigger role.

It was about a year ago, week six of fall quarter, when I joined on as the producer, and we started hiring all of the writers. It’s crazy because you start from nothing: It was just me and this name, Gaieties 2013.

It’s been a long process and we’re right at the end. Every single rehearsal I go to, I’m like “they’re so good” and it’s so exciting to see it come together.

 

TSD:What theme does Gaieties have this year?

NT: “Gaietiesburg: A Campus Divided.” We don’t like to disclose too much about the plot. We like to keep it somewhat hidden, but it centers on the fuzzy-techy divide civil war between the factions and much drama is had.

A former Disney star appears as a villain and Harry Elam is the heroic narrator. There’s good stuff in store.

 

TSD: How was this theme decided on?

NT: The first people I hired were the head writers, Safiya Nygaard ’14 and Katie Kirsch ’16, and together we hired the rest of the writers – I think for a total of ten writers.

The first thing they did when they were hired was to start generating plot ideas; specifically what Gaieties should be about. They brought their ideas to me and to Ram’s Head and we thought about what had the most potential. I think this theme has become even more appropriate because it seems like every week there’s another article about the crisis in the humanities, or something like that. It’s a division I’ve felt very acutely these past two years and it’s pervasive.

I came into Stanford not seeing a distinction, thinking I could be an English major or a Biology major, and since then it’s become more apparent. Even just the terminology speaks a lot to that kind of divide, techy vs. fuzzy. We’re trying to tackle that division.

 

TSD: Can you give us a sneak preview of the show this year?

NT: I can’t tell you much, but we got express permission to create characters based on three popular professors at Stanford, including Harry Elam.

We’ve also got a lot of great songs because we had a really talented composer help us out. We try to give as many shout-outs and fun things as possible, so there are a lot of smaller references.

Gaieties has always hinged on cameos and one-liners, so there’s a lot of those, some really golden things. I think there’s something for everyone, which is what makes Gaieties really awesome. Even if you don’t find all of it funny, there’s usually something you can laugh at.

 

TSD: How are you putting your own flare on this Big Game Week tradition?

NT: I did [Structured Liberal Education] SLE my freshmen year and the past two years in the show, SLE hasn’t come off too well, so I think we do pretty okay with that this year.

It’s a lot of time and it asks a lot of you, but because of everything done by all the people around you, you’re not getting a script that you’re paying royalties for. You’re completely organically creating one. You’re implementing the script, you’re making the music, the lyrics, you’re doing everything. It’s so cool to be able to talk to all of these people who are creating everything and the people who are going to be implementing it.

 

TSD: How has Gaieties changed over the years?

NT: A lot of the long-time Gaieties people graduated last year also, so we’re seeing a lot of new blood . . . There are a lot of freshmen in this cast, and they bring this new energy and curiosity about this tradition that’s been really great. So the few of us who have returned to Gaieties this year are making sure to keep the tradition strong.

 

TSD: What do you hope students get out of this year’s performance?

NT: There’s two sides to the coin, because on the one hand we’re a Big Game rally. That’s a big part of Gaieties, getting people excited. But on the other hand, it’s also a culmination of a lot of student work. I really like seeing how people can be really creative while also doing academics. The show is all about energy and bringing that on stage in a way that lets us see how talented all these people are. Plus, the humor always helps, especially this late in the quarter. It’s a really great release.

 

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Senior Synthesis grants underused, UAR encourages more applications https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/06/senior-synthesis-grants-underused-uar-encourages-more-applications/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/06/senior-synthesis-grants-underused-uar-encourages-more-applications/#respond Wed, 06 Nov 2013 10:12:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080230 After receiving lower than expected interest from seniors last year, Undergraduate Advising and Research (UAR) is continuing to encourage seniors and juniors to work on a Senior Synthesis grant.

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Courtesy of Jeff Owen
Courtesy of Jeff Owen

After receiving lower than expected interest from seniors last year, Undergraduate Advising and Research (UAR) is continuing to encourage seniors and juniors to work on a Senior Synthesis grant.

Project applications are received monthly beginning in October and according to Brian Thomas, associate dean of UAR, no students applied last month.

The grant program was first launched in January of last year and Thomas said that he expected more interest last year from seniors. However, after being given a chance to speak with an advisory group of students later that year, he realized there was a different class year attracted to the program.

“They all started thinking earlier than expected, as juniors,” Thomas said. “They saw the end and they had their plans cast.”

However, Thomas said he believes that the outreach and publicity done last year will generate more proposals this year because students have had more time to think about incorporating these projects into their time at Stanford.

Some students have already begun working on their projects, which are meant to allow time to reflect on a substantial amount of academic work and personal experiences at Stanford.

“The kinds of projects we’re supporting are really varied, by nature of the grant itself,” Thomas said.

He explained how one student combined her interest in cosmology with a study of cultural dances.

“We had an STS major who was interested in astronomy and cosmology and (…) she had a serious side interest in dance, and had taken a lot of courses in dance at Stanford, and wanted to cross those two interests,” he said. “The way she did that was to go and study with some dance troupes that were working on a body of work originating in West Africa, that was expressing the origin stories of West African culture.”

For her project, Elizabeth Matus ’14 brought together her academic interests in culture, media and society with her personal experiences living in Synergy.

“I started thinking about the structure of [Synergy] and the activities we do, and how we structure the space that we reside in and how those things have developed and maintained the culture we are living in,” she said.

Matus looked at two different co-ops and two different “eco-villages” this summer, places that are described as intentional communities.

“I was studying at these different sites how the culture of the sites and the social order that’s decided upon and agreed upon is maintained,” Matus said. “I wanted to see how the culture is manifested across different worlds, within older communities and younger communities (…) basically a comparison across these intentional living spaces.”

For Matus’ final project, she is putting together a print publication that will capture her experiences and observations from her summer interactions with these intentional communities.

“I want to be able to describe to someone who doesn’t have the ability to go to these places about the experiences there (…) with stories, pictures, and interviews,” she added.

Matus said she saw the synthesis project as a chance to bring together her life and academics at Stanford.

According to Thomas, every student who receives a synthesis grant is asked to work with a faculty member, but sometimes it can be hard for students to identify who would be best to work with.

“In the research world, it’s clear who your mentor should be: someone who’s working on similar projects and can help you with techniques,” he said. “In a synthesis project, sometimes that’s the best match, but there are other mentors that make sense too. That might include your academic advisor or maybe your pre-major advisor as a freshman – maybe you’ve stayed in touch with (them) and they’ve seen you develop over the four years.”

Matus enlisted Fred Turner, an associate professor of communication, to help with her project.

“I worked with Professor Turner on my project and met with him during the year before my summer doing research,” she said. “He told me what places to look at and what literature to read. He was very encouraging and helped me feel like I was capable of doing what I was doing.”

However, one issue Matus had with her synthesis project was, because she received the grant during its pilot year, she didn’t have anything to compare her progress with.

“I felt like I had a lot of independence and creative license with my project, to come at it organically without worrying too much about the structure of my final piece,” she said. “It’s a blessing and a curse to have the creative license and so many possibilities to take the project and make it something that’s my voice  (…) but it’s difficult to gauge whether or not I’m doing a good job.”

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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2013 Roundtable at Stanford panel discusses achievement, measurement of happiness https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/21/2013-roundtable-at-stanford-panel-discusses-achievement-measurement-of-happiness/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/21/2013-roundtable-at-stanford-panel-discusses-achievement-measurement-of-happiness/#respond Mon, 21 Oct 2013 10:19:18 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079630 What does it mean to be happy? Can we control happiness? Are we happiness junkies?
These questions and more were discussed at the 2013 Roundtable at Stanford last Friday, hosted by Katie Couric.

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What does it mean to be happy? Can we control happiness? Are we happiness junkies?

Courtesy of Ian Terpin
Courtesy of Ian Terpin

These questions and more were discussed at the 2013 Roundtable at Stanford last Friday, hosted by Katie Couric.

The five-person panel—titled “Are You Happy Now? The New Science of Happiness and Wellbeing”—featured experts in the fields of psychology, business, neuroscience and design discussing research on happiness that has recently grown in popularity.

“I thought it was an opportunity to have a really interesting, stimulating conversation with a lot of very intelligent and accomplished people,” Couric said in an interview after the event.

During the panel, Couric pointed out that, in the last month, more than 1,000 new books about happiness have appeared on Amazon.

Panelist Sonja Lyubomirsky Ph.D. ’94, a psychology professor and director of the Positive Psychology Lab at the UC-Riverside, explained that, in many parts of the western world, people have achieved a level of comfort that has enabled a focus on finding happiness.

“We are able to devote more time to researching happiness and have learned that it is something that can be measured,” Lyubomirsky said.

Measures of happiness
One of the research topics on the measure of happiness brought up by Ian Gotlibchair of the department of psychology and director of the Stanford Mood and Anxiety Disorders Laboratory—was that people have different set points of happiness, along with set points of friendliness, aggressiveness and other such characteristics.

“This set point is influenced by genetics but also by your upbringing and environment,” he said. “When you experience events that are positive or negative, you fluctuate around this set point, but you always return to it.”

Lyubomirsky provided further evidence of the role of nature and nurture on happiness measurements.

“Studies have been done on identical twins versus fraternal twins and have found that identical twins have a more similar happiness level than fraternal twins, indicating the genetic component of happiness,” Lyubomirsky said. “But there is a component of what you do in your everyday life that affects it. If you learn happiness habits, you can raise your happiness set point.”

David Kelley M.S. ’78, founder of the global design consultancy IDEO and professor in mechanical engineering, personally tested the influence of one’s own habits on raising happiness levels when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2007.

He said that he focused on his calling in life and doing something of importance, which led to him finding meaning in his life during the medical ordeal.

“I’d recommend a diagnosis of a terminal illness [to achieve more happiness], as long as you don’t actually have one,” Kelley said. “If you’re going to try to survive the illness, you get excited about what is fun in your life.”

The flipside of happiness
The panelists also addressed the topics of depression and anxiety, focusing on the increase in rates of these illnesses over the years.

Gotlib explained that the rates are higher for younger people and that, while there are many theories as to why this is the case, there is no definitive reason.

Lyubomirsky said that she felt that there was a norm or desirability to be happy, with a lot of closeted unhappiness as a consequence.

“We shouldn’t be happy all the time,” she said. “Negative emotions have their value. They become a problem when they are chronic.”

Lyubomirsky also discussed the term “hedonic adaptation,” in which a person gradually gets used to the new things in his or her life and stops gaining the positive effects he or she originally gained.

“Appreciating what you have combats this adaptation,” she said. “You must savor what you have and put less focus on what you don’t have.”

The need for reflection
In reviewing studies and research on happiness, the panelists also offered the audience their personal tips on how to achieve happiness in their day-to-day lives.

Kelley emphasized the importance of being present and mindful in your life and awareness about the good things happening to you.

“You should celebrate the positive things so that they stick,” he said.

For Jennifer Aaker Ph.D. ’95, professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, understanding how one is spending one’s time is key for gaining happiness.

“We feel like we don’t have enough time during the day and so our stress increases, and this can drive unhappiness,” she said.

“Think about how you are spending your time. What experiences are you going through? Are you present during everything? What is the nature of your relationships? Are you happy?”

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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SURPS showcases diverse projects https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/21/surps-showcases-diverse-projects/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/21/surps-showcases-diverse-projects/#respond Mon, 21 Oct 2013 10:15:31 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079628 The 2013 Symposium of Undergraduate Research and Public Service (SURPS) featured 115 student posters in the annual showcase of students’ individual projects held at the Arrillaga Alumni Center.

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The 2013 Symposium of Undergraduate Research and Public Service (SURPS) featured 115 student posters in the annual showcase of students’ individual projects held at the Arrillaga Alumni Center.

According to Vivienne Fong M.A. ’95 Ph.D. ’98, the research programs director of Undergraduate Advising and Research (UAR), SURPS asks students to think about how they will share their research and projects with the larger community to inspire peers to partake in the resources available for independent work.

Robert Urstein, director of UAR and dean of freshmen, said he encourages freshmen to attend SURPS to get a broader scope of the areas of study in which they can be involved.

He emphasized the value of SURPS for gaining skills in all fields.

“We want students to appreciate that getting involved in research can help build skills that are valuable past your education,” Urstein said. “These skills can be applied to different career paths and different areas of interest.”

According to Associate Dean of UAR Brian Thomas, SURPS is used as a link between the research students are doing and how the different majors at Stanford support those students and allow them to do research.

“As you are exploring different majors, you should attend SURPS,” Thomas said. “We want students to understand the importance of research and show them that it’s what faculty are doing and it’s what other students are doing.”

Diverse projects
The diverse projects presented this year were based in the Natural Sciences, Creative Arts, Public Service, Social Sciences and Humanities and Engineering. Many of the projects were funded by the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) though some received more unconventional forms of funding.

Linta Reji ’14 studied the diversity and abundance of a certain type of gene in the estuary sediments of the San Francisco Bay this past summer.

“I can’t explain how much I learned [this summer],” Reji said. “If I were taking classes instead, I wouldn’t have learned as much. I loved doing the research…I was really sad when it ended, but I’m going to continue working with this project over the next few years.”

Laura Marsh ’15 spent her summer doing research at Chavín de Huantar, an archaeological site in Peru, looking at ceramic origins through thin-section analysis.

According to Marsh, she first went to Chavín two summers ago with an archaeology field school program and wanted to return this past summer in order to work on her own personal research. Marsh’s studies were funded through a Major Grant from UAR.

“There’s a lot that can and should be done with [this data],” Marsh said. “I’d like to go back this summer to take more data and look further into it because now I have a better understanding of how to look for it and how to go about the process of analysis.”

Marsh said she wants to turn her research into an honors thesis in archaeology.

Natalie Griffen ’14’s project stemmed from a personal curiosity and represented work she had started as a rising junior. She spent this past summer studying the process of creating more comfortable high-heeled shoes at the London College of Fashion.

“My research started with an interest in sports shoes,” Griffen said. “Why don’t we have nice shoes that make us feel good? I want to translate the attitude of creating really comfortable sports shoes into creating more formal shoes.”

Griffen received a Chappell Lougee Scholarship when she was a sophomore that allowed her to spend the summer in London studying how to make shoes. This past summer, a Major Grant from the Engineering Department helped her extend her research.

Jessica Savoie ’14 took a distinct research approach by interning with the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“What I ended up doing was working with a lot of immigration detention cases and apprehension cases,” she said. “Basically, my job as an intern was to be the first eyes on a case. I would get a file or a complaint stack [and] would help make decisions about what to do with the case.”

Unlike many other students, Savoie did not get her fellowship through Stanford. Instead, she sent out her resume to various government departments and was contacted by the DHS for an interview.

“It was hard for the University to understand that I got this on my own,” she said. “I had to call them to get proof of enrollment…and the University was reluctant to release that information because it wasn’t through Stanford.”

Savoie did receive an award from Stanford’s Public Policy Summer Internship Funding program that enabled her to present her work at SURPS.

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Lemony Snicket shares inspiration, advice for storytelling https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/10/lemony-snicket-shares-inspiration-advice-for-storytelling/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/10/lemony-snicket-shares-inspiration-advice-for-storytelling/#comments Thu, 10 Oct 2013 08:19:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079286 Through collaboration between the Stanford Storytelling Project and the Stanford Speaker’s Bureau, Daniel Handler gave a talk at Cemex auditorium Wednesday night.

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“It’s magical to do something when you think no one is going to care.”

That is how Daniel Handler—more commonly known as Lemony Snicket—went into the writing process of his popular children’s series, “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”

Through collaboration between the Stanford Storytelling Project and the Stanford Speaker’s Bureau, Handler gave a talk at Cemex Auditorium Wednesday night.

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

During the talk, Handler read passages from “When Did You See Her Last?”, the second installment in his “All the Wrong Questions” young adult series, which follows the life of Lemony Snicket as a young man. The author also read a passage from his first novel, “The Basic Eight.”

Three students were given the chance to ask Handler questions about his work at the event. Robin Summers ’16, Aaron Broder ’15 and Ouree Lee ’17 engaged Handler in a question-and-answer session that ranged from topics concerning his writing style to his inspiration for “All the Wrong Questions” to his spirit animal.

Handler told the audience his interest in writing stems from his interest in telling stories. He was inspired to write “All the Wrong Questions” because of his curiosity concerning how Count Olaf, the antagonist of “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” could become the kind of man readers see in the series.

“In ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events,’ Lemony Snicket is a full grown man, with a habit of defining his own words,” Handler said. “Where do you get a habit like that, that you might still have as an adult?”

The noir genre of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” and “All the Wrong Questions” came around because of a parallel Handler noticed between the journeys of a noir detective and a child as he or she grows up.

“It’s like the agenda that adults tell you when you’re growing up because they want to hide something from you,” Handler said. “The noir detective discovers this agenda and wants to pursue it and he’s told to lay off the case and doesn’t like that. That’s childhood too.”

“Children are trying to find their own moral path that’s separate from the moral path assigned to them. They’re hitting adolescence and realizing that everyone’s lying all the time,” he added.

Handler said he finds inspiration for his stories in everyday life.

“I’ll have some idea or see something or an event will strike me in a certain way,” he said. “I’ll string it along immediately and think of where it could lead and where it could go. I think of a story.”

The interaction between the three students and moderator was followed by the audience Q&A session. During this time, Handler gave his views on the importance of plot over character.

This distinction was important for Arielle Basich ’15, a member in the audience who has dealt with the issue of character versus plot importance in her own writing.

“It was a really refreshing look at storytelling and different from how a lot of other people think about it,” she said. “I hate how people think you should know everything about a character.”

During the talk, Handler also discussed his inspiration for “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”

Handler told the audience he came up with the idea for the series after thinking about all of the terrible things that could happen to orphans.

“No one thought it was going to work,” Handler said. “And we were all wrong.”

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford Peace of Mind hosted discussion on mental health, happiness https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/03/stanford-peace-of-mind-hosted-discussion-on-mental-health-happiness/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/03/stanford-peace-of-mind-hosted-discussion-on-mental-health-happiness/#respond Thu, 03 Oct 2013 08:20:29 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079045 On Oct. 1, Stanford Peace of Mind (SPoM) hosted Let’s Talk, an open discussion on mental health and the campus attitude towards happiness, where students were able to brainstorm potential ideas to help make Stanford a better experience for all.

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On Oct. 1, Stanford Peace of Mind (SPoM) hosted Let’s Talk, an open discussion on mental health and the campus attitude towards happiness, where students were able to brainstorm potential ideas to help make Stanford a better experience for all.

Nikita Desai ’15, co-president of SPoM, said that the goal of the group and these discussions is to help start and maintain conversations about mental health and happiness on campus.

“Universities are finally accepting that these are issues that have to be dealt with,” Desai said. “Only students who are both academically strong as well as students who have good physical and mental health are really going to be able to succeed.”

A recent 2012-13 school year crime review reported that the number of 911 calls for mental health concerns on campus have been on the rise in the last three years, with 27 calls in 2010-11 and 67 in 2012-13.

Desai explained that while the spikes in these phone calls are difficult to rationalize, several plausible explanations include people become more comfortable calling if they’re suffering or if their friends are suffering, or the police changing their guidelines for what constitutes a mental health-related call.

“Without looking deeper into the issue, it’s nearly impossible to tell the real reason behind it,” Desai said.

Regardless of what contributed to the rising trend of these 911 calls, SPoM hopes to continue engaging community members in open discussions on mental health issues.

According to Desai, SPoM had a smaller presence on campus two years ago, after many of its leadership team graduated. However, Desai and others restored the student group last year in order to increase its reach and encourage the discussion on campus about mental health issues that many students deal with.

One of the biggest programs the group put together last year was a series of panels held in various dorms on campus in which three or four students shared their stories about dealing with mental health.

“The panels are meant to be an informal thing,” Desai said. “They are for anyone who wants to feel like they can voice their concern about the campus climate and how we should address those issues.”

Analyssa Lopez ’16, a member of SPoM, said that while hosting these panels in freshman dorms proved to be a success in terms of audience turnout, it is more difficult to break into other areas of campus including sororities and ethnic communities.

“If our goal is to reach Stanford’s campus in general, then one of our focuses should be more panels targeted towards different audiences,” Lopez said.

At the open community discussion this week, one of the talking points revolved around the campus attitude towards dealing with unhappiness, something Madeleine Gill ’15 – financial officer for SPoM – considers to be a prevalent issue among peers.

“It’s impossible not to feel inadequate here, when everyone around you is really smart,” she said. “When you’re at Stanford, you forget how awesome you are.”

Gill added that there is a campus-wide level of discomfort when it comes to opening up about one’s problems.

“People here know that other people have problems, but no one’s open about it, so they aren’t able to help themselves,” she said.

The group went on to discuss potential plans for the year, including a flyer campaign with statistics on the number of Stanford students who have dealt with mental health issues.

“The main thing is that people want to know they’re not alone,” Gill said.

Desai said that SPoM plans to increase its presence on campus this year.

“We’re hoping to collaborate with other groups and let students know that there are resources and places for them to get help,” Desai said.

Gill discussed the importance of reaching out to other communities on campus, such as the LGBTQ community or ethnic groups on campus, in order to spread the conversation where needed.

“Those are spaces where students already feel comfortable,” she said. “We could weasel our way in, and show how your mental health is an aspect of your life that can tie into other parts. We could make them feel like it’s part of their community.”

Contact Josee Smith at jsmith11@stanford.edu.

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Tenure process rewards teaching, research https://stanforddaily.com/2013/06/04/tenure-process-rewards-teaching-research/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/06/04/tenure-process-rewards-teaching-research/#respond Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:57:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077695 Nearly 50 percent of assistant professors who are hired at Stanford will go on to obtain tenure, according to Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences Richard Saller, who noted that around 80 percent of those faculty members who reached the point of being considered for tenure are granted it.

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After years of graduate school spent researching, reading, writing and publishing, the freshly-minted Ph.D.’s that Stanford hires as assistant professors each year might be tempted to slow down. After all, for many graduate students a faculty position is the ultimate goal.

For new assistant professors, however, another clock begins to tick immediately after they are hired: the tenure clock. Though policies vary slightly from university to university, Stanford assistant professors generally have seven years to show their colleagues that they deserve the security of tenure.

Nearly 50 percent of assistant professors who are hired at Stanford will go on to obtain tenure, according to Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences Richard Saller, who noted that around 80 percent of those faculty members who reached the point of being considered for tenure are granted it. Those seven years in between being hired and being reviewed for tenure, however, prompts scholars to frenetically juggle the demands of teaching, research, networking and life.

Tenure’s significance

Saller framed obtaining tenure as a means of ensuring job security and acquiring greater latitude for academic investigation.

“[It’s about] having the sense of freedom to pursue research directions that are high-risk,” he said. “It surprises trustees from the corporate world that our faculty continue to work and to be as productive as they are given that they have jobs for life after receiving tenure…The incentives at a place of this caliber are much more peer recognition and just [the] sheer joy of research and teaching.”

“You are freed up to do research in whatever you want,” said Claire Jarvis, assistant professor of English. “You have a place in the department even if the people in charge change.”

For Chris Lowe, assistant professor of biology, tenure allows a researcher doing basic scientific work the chance to ride out periods of low funding.

“You have the security to build a risky research project that’s high-yield but risky,” Lowe said. “Not only don’t you have to worry about job security, you might take more risk with research than you would otherwise. Tenure gives people a little more space to take risks and create more ambitious research goals.”

For Aliya Saperstein, assistant professor of sociology, tenure “is there to protect innovative scholarship. Once you have tenure, you don’t have to worry about losing your job [if] you’re doing something cutting edge or a little risky…In theory, you can do better work because you’re not constantly seeking approval in advance.”

Working towards tenure

Assistant professors teach two to four classes each year, along with working on their own research in labs and trying to get their work published in order to show their impact and worth as professors. Expectations for good academic work differ from department to department.

“The main goal of tenure is to make certain that the people given tenure are the best in the world at what they do,” said Jim Plummer M.S. ’67 Ph.D. ’71, dean of the School of Engineering.

To that end, according to Lowe, the biology department focuses on the quality and broad impact of its assistant professors’ work.

“One way to evaluate if you have an impact is the kind of publications you produce,” Lowe said. “Some universities are really interested in how many publications you’ve produced, whereas other universities are more interested in if you’re published in high-profile journals, which have brought interest to not just your immediate field but a much broader range of scientists.”

In the English department, the assistant professors are told from the beginning what they are expected to do in order to gain tenure.

“You must have one book in print and be working towards publishing a second [after seven years],” Jarvis said. “It has to have an impact…Plus, you have to have good course evaluations in the classes you teach and show service to the University.”

“In your day to day, you focus on classes, on grading, on students,” Jarvis added “But you’re still trying to get a book published. It’s still in the back of your mind, always.”

“[At Stanford], what matters is the quality and the impact of your work and if you are seen as someone who is an expert in your subfield or specialty…within your age cohort,” Saperstein said. “Have you made yourself stand out in your age cohort?”

Typically, assistant professors are aware of their progress and whether they are on track for being granted tenure, having been given feedback when they are reappointed after four years.

“You get an initial contract and then are reviewed after three or four years,” Saperstein said of the department of sociology’s process. “At that point, your department lets you know if you’re on track or not, if you need to do more work. Then you’re given another temporary contract and after that you come up for tenure.”

“After the mid-career review, you typically take a sabbatical the next year to give you more time to get ready for tenure,” she added.

“The way the process works in biology is that there is a three-year period where you are evaluated in a formal way by the department,” Lowe said. “They evaluate whether or not you’re getting grant funding and whether you’re getting published…You’re given a heads-up about any obvious problems you need to focus on in terms of proceeding.”

Tenure review

According to Saller, the process for earning tenure at Stanford is similar to that of peer institutions.

“The only thing that varies much [between universities] is the use of external committees at various points in the process,” he said. “Harvard has this elaborate process with an ad-hoc review by the president of the university with a committee that’s made up of half internal faculty, but from outside the department, and half external faculty.”

At Stanford, department chairs appoint committees of departmental faculty, who solicit external letters and other assessments. If the department as a whole votes to support a positive committee recommendation, the candidacy is forwarded to an appointment and promotion committee in the school’s dean’s office.

That committee was recently changed to be made up of department chairs from the appropriate academic cluster—social sciences, natural sciences or humanities—for each candidate, according to Saller.

“What that means is that the committee is made up of people closer to the area of expertise of the person under consideration,” he said. “That provides a more sensible committee.”

The dean of the school then decides whether to forward the application on to the Provost’s office, where it is reviewed by an advisory board and the Provost.

Each committee considers every case for tenure in that academic cluster, evaluating the assistant professors primarily on two major areas: research and teaching.

“It’s a combination of things,” Plummer said. “Some are semi-quantifiable, such as the number of publications or awards, talks that may have been given at conferences in his or her field…On the teaching side, we look at student evaluations, the amount of teaching done…along with letters from external senior people in the field of the candidate.”

These letters are solicited from 12-15 external people in a leadership position within the assistant professor’s field, according to Plummer. The professors are also evaluated as compared to a peer group of four to six of their peers.

“Ideally, [the peer group is composed of] recently tenured people in peer institutions in similar fields,” Plummer said. “We can make a specific comparison of the impact and contributions the Stanford candidate has had with respect to their peers. Where does the Stanford candidate fit?”

“More people are working in interdisciplinary fields or multiple fields and it becomes more difficult to choose the right set of letter writers if someone works in multiple areas or in between areas,” Plummer added. “It can be hard to find peers in peer institutions or finding referees who can write about the whole spectrum…You have to just recognize that someone is working in multiple fields and find people who can write for those fields.”

Course evaluations are included in the tenure process, an input that Saller described as flawed.

“It’s something less than a nuanced response,” he said. “Students will pick out one number in the column and mark it off down the page.”

“We would like to assign as much weight to teaching as to research—and we do take it seriously—but if we don’t feel as if we’ve got good information about [the professor’s teaching], it’s hard to know what to make of it,” Saller said.

That lack of information has a broader impact on the way in which the committees weight research and teaching.

“You can’t be a bad teacher and get tenure,” Saller said. “You can’t be an average researcher and get tenure…With teaching, we can probably identify the 10 percent who are brilliant and the 10 percent who are duds, and the 80 percent in between [are] very hard to rank in order.”

If a professor is denied tenure, they are given a year to find another job, either elsewhere in academia or in the corporate world.

“[The year] gives them the time to do a careful job search, time to figure out how to deal with Ph.D. students who haven’t finished up their research, helping them find another advisor or getting them closer to finishing,” Plummer said.

The future of tenure

As public funding for research and for education diminishes, many institutions across the country have cut back on the number of tenured positions they maintain. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported in 2010 that the proportion of college instructors who either had tenure or were on the tenure track dropped from 57 percent in 1975 to just 31 percent in 2007.

Despite such national trends, Saller and Plummer said the University, which currently has 1,995 tenured or tenure-line faculty, remained committed to maintaining the system of tenure.

“There’s a periodic question about whether we keep the tenure system, but I think it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future,” Saller said. “It’s hard to imagine, [because] the competition for top faculty is intense, which of our peer universities would do away with the tenure system and continue to try to recruit faculty.”

In competing with its peer institutions for talented faculty, Saller said Stanford focuses its energies on attracting young academics with high potential, with around 75 percent of professorial appointments going to assistant professors rather than tenured faculty from other institutions.

“When we make decisions about authorizing searches [for new faculty], we presume it’s going to be an assistant professor search unless there’s some kind of programmatic need for someone more senior,” Saller said. “We see it as our responsibility and goal to recruit young people who are of the quality to make tenure and then to nurture them in a way that they will succeed.”

Marshall Watkins contributed to this report.

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Honors theses offer challenges, enrichment for students https://stanforddaily.com/2013/06/04/honors-theses-offer-challenges-rewards/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/06/04/honors-theses-offer-challenges-rewards/#respond Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:54:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077689 For most, the honors thesis journey accounts for one of the most challenging—and enriching—experiences of their academic careers.

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Each year, some seniors from departments across the University spend their final year as undergraduates working on an honors thesis project that acts as an academic capstone for their time at Stanford. Some students write reports about the research they have done in labs since their freshman or sophomore year, others write about their fieldwork in a foreign country and still others take on a more creative stance with artistic final projects.

For most, the honors thesis journey accounts for one of the most challenging—and enriching—experiences of their academic careers.

From research to thesis

Cody Aros ’13, a biology major, wrote his thesis on long non-coding RNAs and their role in coetaneous squamous cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer. The goal of Aros’ project was to identify, from a clinical standpoint, the novel therapies of this skin cancer through a genomic characterization of the disease and by looking for RNA species that are important in regulating epidermal homeostasis.

“It’s quite a mouthful,” he said. “I joined the lab at the end of my freshman year and the [post-doctoral student] that I worked closely with had the foundations for the project,” he said. “After we performed the sequencing on patient samples we had, I studied one candidate RNA that was interesting to us.”

Aros spent about 9-10 hours per week in the lab during his freshmen year and continued into his sophomore year. During his summers he worked for 40-50 hours a week and then spent closer to 20 hours a week in the lab his junior and senior years. As a junior, he realized that what began as a research assistant position could turn into something more integral to his academic experience.

For Aros, the entire process—as opposed to simply the end product—was enjoyable.

“Having done the research beforehand…the process of writing all of what I had done throughout my undergraduate experience was rewarding,” he said. “It was both reflective and I felt that I was learning how to best convey my results…I felt like everything came full circle—everything came together and there was a finality to it.

Despite his gratification, Aros’ process, like that of many other students, was not without difficulties.

“I started working on this one project during my sophomore year, and I could kind of see it turning into a thesis project, but I’d say by the end of my sophomore year, beginning of junior year, the project kind of failed,” he said. “It was part of the process and I used the skills I learned in that project to guide my next project.”

For Aros, the most challenging part was coming to the realization that one of the projects he was working on was not going to make it into his thesis.

“The thesis experience is not just the project that succeeded and what you ultimately end up writing on,” he said. “For me, it’s from the start of my research to the end of it.”

Much in the same vein as Aros, Ruby Lee ’13 was inspired to embark on her honors thesis after joining her professor’s lab.

Lee’s honors thesis focuses on a data process platform she built that allows the user to extract data from any slice of a simulation, giving a visual representation drawn in real-time with the data that is being regenerated.

“I took a class [with] my advisor, [Assistant Professor of Bioengineering] Markus Covert, who taught BIOE 101…and was compelled by him, so I talked to him more and joined his lab,” she said. “I was given flexibility in what I wanted to do, so I spent the academic year talking to people, getting a handle on the work they were doing…With the data visualization project, I felt like I had a good handle on how I could approach it and I had an idea about the end product.”

According to Lee, a goal of the project was to develop a tool that would help the lab and make it possible to communicate the data to the public.

“Originally, I was just going to do research without honors,” Lee said. “[Bioengineering] is a new major and this was the first year they offered the option…I thought it aligned really well with what I was going to be doing.”

In Lee’s opinion, the most captivating part of her experience was the multidimensionality of her finished work.

“In my case, [the honors thesis process] was interesting because the main goal is the website and the thesis is more of a way to explain how it works and the process that went into it, why we chose to implement or deny things,” she said. “It’s nice to have the thesis and the written process, with the website as a second component.”

One of the challenges facing Lee was conveying the relevancy of such conceptual—as opposed to practical—research.

“From the perspective of people in the lab, it’s clear why we’d be motived to create this,” Lee said. “It was harder to get the general public to see it…putting into words to explain the rationale of something we’d thought about very intensely but never put into writing. There are not very many other data visualization platforms…so finding similar software programs to compare to…and drawing parallels was challenging.”

Pursuing passions

For Michael Hughes ’13, a history major, one challenge presented by his thesis was time management. Hughes, who wrote his thesis on the New Deal-era Supreme Court, conceded that he was prone to procrastination.

“It’s human nature to procrastinate,” he said. “It’s about making yourself, ahead of time, get something done, and then you can circle back. In the fall [in a class for students working on honors theses], I wrote about half to a third…It wasn’t really a thesis but more of a template, heavily based on secondary sources…It was immensely helpful to write that part of it and incorporate it into a longer document. I had something I could use as a guiding post.”

Hughes used his honors project as a means of combining two of his academic interests: the Supreme Court and economics.

“I was interested in the Supreme Court and the Court’s approach to government in general history, in respect to economics,” he said. “[The Great Depression] was a pivotal time. The court wasn’t completely against governmental regulation but would defer to the legislature when it came to economic issues…I wanted to complicate things by looking at early cases that didn’t fit that narrative.”

Hughes also cited the value of an honors thesis in providing a capstone project for his undergraduate career.

Matthaeus Weinhardt ’13 M.A. ’13 decided to forego taking fewer classes as a senior to focus on his thesis, instead choosing to coterm and take 45 units of graduate level courses.

“I decided on psychology fall of my freshmen year,” Weinhardt said. “It’s a pretty small major and left me with space, so I started thinking about what else I could do…It was a nice opportunity to do something more in-depth, either with honors or a coterm. I had heard that it was possible to do a coterm in four years, so I decided to try.”

Weinhardt’s research focuses on intuitive decision-making and integration of value. He led different psychological experiments that involved gambling games played on a computer, such as choosing between different colored shapes.

“We can infer the intuitive decisions people are making…and whether intuition picks up on shapes that pay more or less,” he said.

Weinhardt began thinking about doing his own original research project early on and applied for the Chappell-Lougee research grant.

“I ended up doing four or five experiments,” he said. “Some worked and some did not, but I was fortunate that the most recent did work.”

Like Aros, the most challenging part for Weinhardt was when the first study did not work out.

“It was supposed to be a replication of another study, with some changes made to it,” Weinhardt said. “Everyone agreed they were good changes and that it would work better, and then it didn’t. The results were confusing and didn’t make sense with the possible theories we were considering. We had to go back to the drawing board and figure out why the results looked this way.”

In order to avoid a similar situation, Weinhardt recommended careful deliberation and an early start.

“If your ideas are good and you have some persistence, then you will find what you’re looking for, even if it’s not the original way you thought of it,” he added. “You will contribute to the field.”

Forging a distinct path

As a junior, Ty Olson ’14 has only just begun the research into his thesis project but has a clear idea of what he wants to do: a short narrative film that takes place in North Dakota, where Olson is from, and focuses on a Norwegian-American family.

“Where I’m from is heavily populated with Norwegian immigrants,” Olson said. “It’s ethnocentric, but not in a bad way…It perpetuates old world traditions and cultures, values and ideals…[The film] is a portrait of an overlooked part of our society.”

Olson, whose cinematic project diverges significantly from most other honors theses, is interested in studying themes of foreignness in America.

“I had an idea for a short film and American Studies was the only place that allowed me to do it,” he said. “[An honors project] gives me academic support…I can get professional and technical support elsewhere, but it’s great discussing the themes I’m talking about and having the support of an advisor and a department at Stanford.”

In addition to a 22-minute film, Olson’s project will include a 10- to 15-page reflection paper that will tie in some of the academic questions he studies in his movie, exploring his questions more and bringing in some of the other materials he has been studying in preparation.

Olson has some experience making short films and filming professional music videos for Scandinavian artists, but he hopes to gain more experience with an endeavor for which he will travel to North Dakota to conduct filming.

“It’s a short film that will be comprised of a lot of family members and locals,” he said.

The biggest challenge Olson envisions will be fundraising for the project. Although he has some leads, he concedes that recruiting community members for financial support will not be easy.

Still, Olson is hopeful that his project will succeed, citing his stalwart devotion to the inspiration—his Norwegian heritage—that encouraged him to pursue an honors thesis in the first place.

“People start to lose track of why they are interested [in their topic],” he said. “You need to hone in on it and what it is that made you interested in the first place…you’ll inject more of a personal connection to your thesis, since you live with it for a year.”

Aros echoed this perspective.

“Pick something you are interested in,” Aros said. “It’s a long road and it can be challenging. If you’re not doing something you’re interested in, it will be harder.”

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Faculty Senate hears plans for more housing, budget report https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/30/faculty-senate-hears-request-for-more-housing-budget-report/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/30/faculty-senate-hears-request-for-more-housing-budget-report/#respond Fri, 31 May 2013 06:50:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077595 The Faculty Senate heard an annual budget report from Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. '82 at its Thursday meeting.

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The Faculty Senate heard an annual budget report from Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ’82 at its Thursday meeting.

“We are in good health financially,” Etchemendy summarized. “The budget also shows a lot of caution and concern for a lot of things on the horizon.”

Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News Service
Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News Service

Reviewing Stanford’s consolidated budget, Etchemendy noted that– despite increases in the financial aid budget, employee salaries and benefits, graduate student stipends and selected research funding– the University is projected to generate a surplus of $173 million for the 2013-14 fiscal year.

Turning to the general funds budget, which consists of unrestricted funds, Etchemendy said that budget would be used to increase the University’s reserve funds, remove the need to use buffer funds to support financial aid and increase research support.

Etchemendy also remarked on the University’s capital plan, which includes every project undertaken or completed over the next three years, drawing attention to Stanford’s continued growth.

“When I was an assistant professor here, I remember seeing all the construction and wondering when they were going to be done,” he said. “I realized Stanford is like a city. It’s never going to be done.”

While the capital budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year totals $658 million, Etchemendy estimated that only around 80 percent of that sum would actually be spent. Notable construction projects include the Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI) project, which is slated to receive $207.9 million next year.

“[SESI involves] tearing up every street on campus and replacing the stream pipes with hot water pipes,” Etchemendy said. “We are going to end up with the most advanced energy system in the world but it’s going to cost us about $438 million [in total].”

Other significant construction projects include adding a fourth building– for bioengineering and chemical engineering– to the Engineering Quad, adding to the Stanford Hospital and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, remodeling Roble Gym into an “arts gym,” remodeling the Old Chemistry building and adding a contemplative center to campus.

The University will also add more housing options to campus. The Comstock Graduate Housing project will add 362 beds for students, while the expansion of Graduate School of Business housing will add a further 150. A fourth dorm will be built in the Manzanita quad and two new dorms will be added to Lagunita.

There are also plans to add 180 housing units to Mayfield California Avenue for faculty and staff.

“This is something we desperately need,” Etchemendy said.

In faculty discussion following Etchemendy’s report, Professor of Development Biology Margaret Fuller queried whether the proposed additions to undergraduate housing would accommodate a potential desire to expand the undergraduate population.

“We would need something beyond that,” Etchemendy said. “Some of these new housing options will be used for the existing undergraduate population, but in order to grow the [population] further, we would need more housing.”

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Faculty Senate discusses future of Ph.D. degree https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/16/faculty-senate-discusses-future-of-ph-d-program/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/16/faculty-senate-discusses-future-of-ph-d-program/#respond Fri, 17 May 2013 06:56:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077245 The Faculty Senate heard a report from a panel of faculty members on the future of the Ph.D. degree at its meeting on Thursday.

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The Faculty Senate heard a report from a panel of faculty members on the future of the Ph.D. degree at its meeting on Thursday.

Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News Service
Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News Service

Senate Chair Raymond Levitt M.S. ’73 Ph.D. ’75, professor of civil and environmental engineering, opened the meeting by congratulating six faculty members newly elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

The subsequent panel discussion featured Professor of Philosophy Debra Satz, Professor of Engineering Jim Plummer M.S. ’67 Ph.D. ’71, Professor of Biology Bob Simoni, Professor of Political Science Josiah Ober and Professor of Biochemistry Daniel Herschlag.

According to Russell Berman, professor of German and comparative literature and the discussion’s moderator, the panel was intended to launch a discussion about the future of the Ph.D. program that would serve as a starting point for further deliberation.

“We wanted to frame some of the issues that could be part of the discussion for next year’s session,” Berman said.
Berman opened the presentation by discussing critical aspects of current Ph.D. programs in the humanities, including an increasing recognition — in some quarters — of the breadth of careers options available beyond academia for Ph.D. students.

“For many grad students, there’s an assumption that faculty look at certain alternative careers with disdain,” he acknowledged. “Some students don’t want their advisors to know they are considering that path.”
Berman noted the importance of assessing the internal structure of the humanities’ Ph.D. programs.

“Are we preparing our students appropriately for the career options they’ll have?” he asked. “To what extent do we provide appropriately broadened professional development opportunities? … I think we do that well at Stanford, but are we doing enough and are we doing what’s appropriate?”

Berman also emphasized the importance of developing hard data over a long time period on students’ post-graduation entry into various careers.

Satz agreed with many of Berman’s points and reflected on a study conducted by the School of Humanities and Sciences on the doctoral Class of 2002’s employment 10 years after graduation.

“Roughly 50 to 60 percent [of the students] were in academic careers,” Satz said. “But we couldn’t find a lot of the others. We need to do more research because we need to know if we are serving those students well and how satisfied they are with their training.”

According to Satz, many humanities students are confused by the job market and are unsure about their ability to apply their degrees in fields beyond academia.

“We need to know what’s happening to our students,” she said. “We need to have a discussion about what the Ph.D.’s for.”

Plummer subsequently spoke about the happiness of School of Engineering faculty with the state of the Ph.D. program. According to Plummer, roughly 80 percent of the School’s doctoral graduates go into industry.

“[That] is not surprising given where we are, in the Silicon Valley,” Plummer reflected. “We have the opposite problem of many other departments on campus: that too few of our students don’t want to go on to academic careers.”

According to Ober, the Department of Political Science has seen both an increasing number of applicants and an increased yield among admits, creating an increasingly selective program whose graduates have largely obtained satisfactory employment.

“Virtually all of the students [are] getting placement, although sometimes it takes a couple of years,” he said. “About half go into research and the other half into teaching at universities or think tanks.”

“I’d like to get a better sense of why students seek admission to a Ph.D. program in the first place,” Ober added. “We need a sense of how their thinking evolves about their aspirations<\p>…<\p>and how they think about the value of the Ph.D. in later years. We need to get a better and more detailed accurate university-funded data set that would allow us to track evolving student career ambitions and be able to make adjustments to the Ph.D. program that can best serve the students and society.”

Simoni spoke about the strength of the Biology Department’s Ph.D. program, drawing attention to a high number of applications. He also noted recent changes to the biology curriculum, including the introduction of “micro” or “mini” courses lasting less than the duration of a quarter.

“The unit of course time is much smaller, which allows them to do more in a quarter,” he elaborated. “It becomes more focused and concentrated and gives a lot of flexibility.”

According to Herschlag, the School of Medicine aims “to tell students that they should be seeking a career of their choice … We should be training them for existing jobs and also training them to find and create new paths.”

Herschlag criticized undergraduate education in the life sciences, saying it discourages aspiring graduate students from taking risks.

“They would fail as graduate students,” Herschlag said. “We are trying to put in place radically different models that are more interactive and collaborative, with hands-on problem solving, to better train our students.”

The panel presentation was followed by a wider faculty discussion.

Andrea Goldsmith, professor of electrical engineering, expressed concern about focusing the Ph.D. program too much on career paths.

“This discussion should be about an education, about a broadening of horizons, that transcends engineering, science [and] the humanities,” she said.

However, Herschlag reiterated the broader issue of students being unaware of different careers made accessible by their education.

“It’s not necessarily that you’re getting a vocational training,” he said. “It is to help allay the fears of students.”

 

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Knight Fellow shares power, burdens of investigative journalism https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/12/knight-fellow-shares-power-burdens-of-investigative-journalism/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/12/knight-fellow-shares-power-burdens-of-investigative-journalism/#respond Mon, 13 May 2013 06:37:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077143 For Musikilu Mojeed, his passion for journalism began in high school, when the John S. Knight Journalism Fellow wrote an article about teachers whipping students for leaving the school through a hole in the fence surrounding the school and then leaving through the same hole themselves.

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For Musikilu Mojeed, his passion for journalism began in high school, when the John S. Knight Journalism Fellow wrote an article about teachers whipping students for leaving the school through a hole in the fence surrounding the school and then leaving through the same hole themselves.

When the article—identifying specific teachers—was published in the school newspaper, Mojeed was forced to go underground for some time to avoid punishment from the angry teachers. Eventually, the principal held a staff meeting and ordered the teachers to stop victimizing Mojeed and to set a better example by no longer using that exit.

“I saw that journalism was a powerful point to push for change,” Mojeed said.

Having been born and raised in the small agrarian town of Iwo, Nigeria, Mojeed stressed his humble origins.

“We didn’t have a TV or radio,” Mojeed said. “I wondered how we survived, because we depended on one stream in the village…we ate good food because my father was a farmer.”

Mojeed began primary school in a government-funded school ten kilometers from his village. He said he was lucky to attend the school, even though it was far from his home.

“My mother dressed me up in the best clothes I had,” Mojeed recalled.

After primary school, Mojeed’s uncle returned from his posting in another part of the country and decided that Mojeed, whom he thought was unusually bright, needed to receive an education at a better school.

In high school, Mojeed was initially interested in engineering. After becoming president of the press club that published his article about the teachers’ offenses, however, he realized his passion for journalism and channeled that interest into cultivating a reputation for the club.

“We wrote about examination malpractices, bullying of juniors by seniors…stories about affairs between female students and male students…a story about students urinating anywhere on campus,” Mojeed said. “People were scared when a member of the press club was around…If you did something wrong, we wrote about it.”

“We were correcting a lot of things that were wrong,” he added. “I started realizing how powerful journalism could be.”

Mojeed subsequently attended the University of Uyo in Nigeria, where he completed his undergraduate degree in Communication Arts and remained very active as a campus journalist. After graduating, he worked at a number of Nigerian newspapers before settling at the Premium Times, where he now works as the managing editor.

During his journalistic career, Mojeed focused on uncovering corruption, trafficking and human rights violations, abuses that extended to the highest reaches of the Nigerian government. In one instance, Mojeed investigated the Halliburton bribery scam—in which Nigerian officials took bribes from companies in exchange for allowing them to build on Nigerian land—and uncovered the corruption involved in the transaction.

“I exposed the former president of Nigeria, and the present president, who was his deputy, for keeping 17 ambulances to themselves in the presidential village,” Mojeed added. “Some of the hospitals [in the country] have only one ambulance. I exposed the presence of those ambulances packed in the presidential village, whereas people were dying because there were no ambulances…Once we exposed that, the ambulances disappeared from the presidential village.”

Mojeed also exposed a respected Nigerian scientist who lied about helping to invent the Internet, as well as several state government officials—including one currently imprisoned in the UK—for corruption.

“Many [Nigerian] officials are excited that I’m out of Nigeria,” Mojeed said.

While Mojeed’s work has won him many awards, including the Editor’s Courage Award from the Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR), the Wole Soyinka Investigative Reporting Award and the Celebrity Media Award, it has also prompted threats and harassment.

“I was severely harassed in 2011 by [the] police about a story involving officials in the administration getting bribes from people importing into the country,” Mojeed said. “I exposed it with video and audio evidence. The police harassed me and I had to go underground…Even though the stories are uncomfortable for some people, it is difficult for authorities to fight my reporting [because] I try to be as accurate as possible.”

Mojeed said distrust of his work extends beyond government and the police to society at large.

“I have very few friends because I don’t know who to trust,” he said. “I fear for my life but just feel that it’s a job that must be done, especially in a country that is very rich but where people are still very poor.”

Mojeed said he was flattered to receive a Knight Fellowship. The program brings about 20 journalists to Stanford every year.

“They come here to create things that could help journalism, interact with the campus, all of that,” Mojeed said. “I feel very lucky to be selected. I am the only fellow selected from Africa in my class of 2013.”

At Stanford, Mojeed has worked on the IMOLE project, a platform connecting investigative journalists in Nigeria with resources and documents that authorities would prefer to keep hidden and private. “Imole” means transparency or light in Mojeed’s native Yoruba language.

“I am trying to point journalists reporting on Nigeria in directions where they can get information about Nigeria,” Mojeed explained.

Mojeed stressed the importance of investigative journalism in maintaining a healthy, transparent society.

“I believe that every type of journalism should be investigative,” he said. “As long as you go under the surface, dig out the facts, all journalism, whatever you’re reporting on…make it investigative.”

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Theater group connects “Death of a Salesman” to Asian American experience https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/09/aatp-connects-death-of-a-salesman-to-asian-american-experience/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/09/aatp-connects-death-of-a-salesman-to-asian-american-experience/#respond Fri, 10 May 2013 06:57:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077088 This weekend, the Asian American Theater Project (AATP) will put on a production of “Death of a Salesman” -- with a twist. Rather than relying on an all-white cast appropriate to the play’s 1949 composition, the AATP version has cast a largely Asian ensemble, an unorthodox decision framed by co-producer Ken Savage ‘14 as offering a distinctive take on the American classic.

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This weekend, the Asian American Theater Project (AATP) will put on a production of “Death of a Salesman” — with a twist. Rather than relying on an all-white cast appropriate to the play’s 1949 composition, the AATP version has cast a largely Asian ensemble, an unorthodox decision framed by co-producer Ken Savage ‘14 as offering a distinctive take on the American classic.

ZETONG LI/The Stanford Daily
ZETONG LI/The Stanford Daily

According to Savage, AATP was inspired to put on the production because the group thought that the themes explored in Miller’s play were also relevant to the Asian American experience.

“Part of AATP’s mission is to look at all plays through an Asian and Asian American lens and see how each of these plays speak to our culture, our family values, the ideas and themes that matter most to us,” Savage said. “What does the American dream mean to an immigrant family?”

For Asia Chiao ‘15, AATP’s artistic director, being involved in the play allowed her to better grasp some of the issues concerning Asian American actors.

“Since coming to the U.S. for college, I’ve realized how many problems of representation, both underrepresentation and misrepresentation, there are in theater, particularly with regards to Asian Americans,” Chiao said.

Chiao, Savage and other members of the AATP board of directors made the decision to put on “Death of a Salesman” this quarter with a primarily Asian cast as a means of exploring some of these issues.

“We wanted to see how AATP could put a fresh spin on it, looking at the play in the context of an Asian American community,” Chiao said.

Dina Hassan ‘15, director of the play, suggested that Miller’s piece was chosen because of the ability of the topics addressed to transcend ethnic boundaries.

“The themes [in the play] relate to humanity and to us as Americans,” Hassan said. “It’s a classic American play, not a classic white American play.”

Hassan argued that such universalism extends beyond plot lines to the makeup of the cast itself.

“People can relate because they can see themselves in those shoes,” she said. “In AATP, we want to encourage Asian American participation in the theater because there’s a stigma that minority actors face. Some say, ‘You couldn’t play this role because it doesn’t pertain to your world.’ We all can relate to this play. The experiences are universal.”

By pushing the horizons of what is traditionally expected of such a performance, Hassan hopes to challenge the audience to embrace the unconventional.

“One of my goals for the play is to open the minds of the audience and allow them to see that the Asian American experience is not limited to what you see on TV or anything like that,” Hassan added. “It’s very expansive and can be related to quite easily.”

Chiao framed her goals for the play as inducing the audience to consider their beliefs concerning theater.

“I want people to think, ‘This is really interesting,’” Chiao said. “‘Why does it have to be played by an all-white cast? Why do we come in with these assumptions about ethnicity?’ This is a chance to see a production of ‘Death of a Salesman’ unlike anything before.”

Chiao and her fellow directors also aimed to prompt the Asian American theater community to embrace diversity in the types of roles they choose to take on.

“Productions like this — where we’re giving opportunities to Asian American actors, directors, artists, to give them a chance to work on projects that encourage people to think, reinterpret, evaluate — this is why I joined AATP at the end of last year and why I will continue to be a part of it,” Chiao said.

According to Savage, this production was many of the actors’ first forays into theater.

“We want to make sure they have an opportunity that they have never had,” Savage said. “Our goal is to make sure that everyone is enjoying themselves and feels supported and safe. A secondary goal I have is to really [make] sure this play sparks dialogue between the production, actors and the audience about what the American dream means, especially among minority groups.”

Despite their casting of a predominately Asian American ensemble, Hassan said that the production team has not had to make many changes to the script in order to accommodate an Asian American family.

“At first it was hard, because I was thinking about, how I can change this to make it work for an Asian American family,” Hassan said. “But we just needed to look at it from a different perspective … You don’t think, ‘I have to make this Asian.’ You think, ‘How is this relatable to the minority experience?’”

Catherine Zaw ‘15, the set designer, emphasized that she did not have to make too many changes for an Asian American family.

“The only changes I had to make were because of space constraints and tiny changes, like using a tea pot [instead of a pitcher],” Zaw, who is a Daily staffer, said. “I wanted a very minimalistic stage because I didn’t want it to be so personalized that it was clearly Asian. I wanted it to be contemporary to its time, but it could go in either direction about whose how it is. We didn’t put distinct things or cultural things in the play.”

Savage noted that the production’s leaders hadn’t realized how well the concept of an all-Asian family would work.

“The synergy between casting and the text itself has been wonderful,” he said. “This is something new that Stanford hasn’t seen before.”

Although Hassan said that her crew has not received much criticism from the Stanford community about changing the play’s traditional casting, she conceded that some people did not think it was a good idea.

“Yale did an all-black version of ‘Death of a Salesman’ and got so much flak about it, that it doesn’t reflect black history and the black experience in America,” Hassan said.

Still, Hassan and Savage concluded that the play’s experiences and references work in an Asian American context.

“Arthur Miller thought it would work, too, because [apparently] he brought the play to Beijing,” Hassan said. “[‘Death of a Salesman’] is very relatable.”

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Pre-assignment applications rise more than 10 percent https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/02/pre-assignment-applications-rise-more-than-10-percent/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/02/pre-assignment-applications-rise-more-than-10-percent/#respond Fri, 03 May 2013 06:25:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076933 The pre-assignment process received over 876 completed applications for the 2013-14 academic year.

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The pre-assignment process received over 876 completed applications for the 2013-14 academic year, according to Zac Sargeant, Residential Education (ResEd)’s assistant director for operations.

This year’s total constitutes an increase of more than 10 percent over last year’s figure. Overall, 470 students were accepted to the 23 theme houses.

According to Sophie Meyer ’14, Synergy’s pre-assignment overseer, her house enjoyed a similar demand to last year.

“Most of the pre-assigners were freshmen and returners,” Meyer noted. “This is fairly equivalent to most other co-ops.”

Meyer added that Synergy’s staff felt like they were turning away too many current residents that they wished could have stayed.

“We could have staffed the whole house with qualified people,” Meyer said. “We had to decide which people we loved not to let in.”

Meyer complained, however, that the burden of selecting next year’s Synergy residents wasn’t evenly distributed.

“This year, it was primarily me meeting people who applied,” she said. “My staff was not as involved, so it ended up with me collecting impressions about the people and my other staff members not being as involved. In the past, we’ve tried to do it as a group.”

This year, Synergy chose people based on a lottery system in an effort to accelerate the process.

“We had a certain number of returner spots and freshmen spots and pooled those who didn’t get in into a general tier and drew from there,” Meyer said. “But it was really hard because we turned down people we loved. Some staff members had close friends that got turned down. I really wish we could have had more spots.”

Jan Barker-Alexander, one of Ujamaa’s two resident fellows, also said that her dorm was very popular this year.

“It was very competitive this year,” she commented. “We have a very robust intellectual community, and we’re not hurting for people to live in the dorm.”

In order to pre-assign to Ujamaa, students must write up a proposal for a presentation related to the African diaspora that they will present on during the year as part of the Ujamaa Scholars Program. Even with that obligation, Ujamaa continued to receive a high number of applicants comparable to past years.

Laura Cussen ’15 said that she pre-assigned to La Casa Italiana to take full advantage of the house’s community.

“I thought it was a good way, before the draw, to see if I could get somewhere that I really liked,” she said. “I wanted to try to reach first, and then if it didn’t work out, then I’d do the draw. I just wanted to increase my chances of getting somewhere cool.”

Cussen added that most pre-assignment options offered similarly strong communities.

“I’m definitely looking forward to the community next year,” Cussen said. “Having lived in relatively large dorms… my first two years, it’ll be nice to have that smaller group of people– you can start the year knowing that you’re going to know them relatively well by the end of the year. You don’t have to choose who you’re going to get to know.”

Cussen added that she is also interested in the cultural side of Casa Italiana as well.

“I kind of took a break from loving Italy for a few years, after I went abroad there in high school, and it will be really nice to indulge in another culture again,” she said.

Barker-Alexander emphasized that the pre-assignment process took place without any technical glitches.

“The process went smoothly,” she said. “ResEd was very supportive and helpful.”

However, some students reported problems with the website, citing confusion over whether interviews were required for all theme house applicants and where students could check the status of their application.

“Overall, I was happy with the experience, but I wish the website was clearer with instructions and about when we would be informed of the decision,” said Elena Leon ’14, who pre-assigned to Casa Italiana.

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