Neel Thakkar – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Wed, 15 May 2013 09:23:46 +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 Neel Thakkar – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Class of 2017 produces record high 76.7 percent yield https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/14/class-of-2017-produces-record-yield/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/14/class-of-2017-produces-record-yield/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 06:59:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077182 Stanford reported a yield rate of approximately 76.7 percent for the Class of 2017 on Tuesday -- a 3.7 percent increase from last year's figure and the highest-ever in University history, according to an email from Director of Admission Colleen Lim M.A. '80.

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Stanford reported a yield rate of approximately 76.7 percent for the Class of 2017 on Tuesday — a 3.7 percent increase from last year’s figure and the highest-ever in University history, according to an email from Director of Admission Colleen Lim M.A. ’80.Class of 2017 produces record high 76.7 percent yield

“This record breaking year is a testament to Stanford’s extraordinary excellence and spirit,” Lim wrote in a statement. “Stanford is undeniably a compelling place to learn and live, and clearly these statistics indicate that the world is aware of the transformative powers and opportunities at Stanford.”

The University also offered admission to 32 transfer students, out of 1,662 applicants, on May 10. This year’s transfer admit rate of 1.9 percent marked a further decline from last year’s 2.2 percent rate and 2011’s figure of 4.1 percent.

At 1,694 students, the Class of 2017 is smaller than the two preceding classes and may shrink further before fall quarter as students drop or defer enrollment. Last year, the Office of Undergraduate Admission faced an over-enrollment of about 50 students after 1,786 students accepted offers of admission.

This year’s elevated yield rate is the latest sign of the University’s increasing selectivity. Stanford offered admission to 2,210 students this year out of a pool of 38,828 applicants, producing its lowest-ever admissions rate — at 5.69 percent — and its highest-ever number of applications received.

By Tuesday, a number of peer institutions had also released their yield rates for the Class of 2017. Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and Brown reported yields of 8268.764.3 and 60 percent respectively.

 

 

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Black, Elam field questions about controversial class scheduling proposal https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/04/black-elam-field-questions-about-controversial-class-scheduling-proposal/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/04/black-elam-field-questions-about-controversial-class-scheduling-proposal/#respond Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:49:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076156 As the Faculty Senate approaches a vote next month on a controversial class scheduling proposal, University Registrar Tom Black and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam fielded questions and concerns from about 10 students during a town hall-style meeting Wednesday evening.

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As the Faculty Senate approaches a vote next month on a controversial class scheduling proposal, University Registrar Tom Black and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam fielded questions and concerns from about 10 students during a town hall-style meeting Wednesday evening.

Though the meeting, arranged by the ASSU Executive at the request of Black and Elam, was intended to be a forum for students to have their concerns heard directly, the duo also revealed a major update to the proposed changes, which — if approved by the Faculty Senate — would now go into effect in the 2014-15 academic year.

Instead of banning the practice of double-booking classes outright, the proposed chan

University Registrar Tom Black (left) and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam fielded questions from students about the proposed class scheduling changes during a town hall-style meeting Wednesday evening. (AVI BAGLA/The Stanford Daily)
University Registrar Tom Black (left) and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam fielded questions from students about proposed class scheduling changes during a town hall-style meeting Wednesday evening. (AVI BAGLA/The Stanford Daily)

ges would now require a petitioning process to double-book classes, according to Elam and Black. Though the details of that petitioning process were still unclear, both administrators made it clear that certain types of conflicts, such as those in which one class is filmed, would be allowed.
“I got letters from students wanting to take two classes at the same time,” Elam explained, adding that student feedback influenced his opinion in this respect.

Discussion at the meeting focused on a small number of issues. These included the effects on athletes’ practice schedules of holding large, required lecture classes at 8:30 a.m., the need — or lack thereof — of a petitioning process to double-book classes and a better ways for students to voice their opinions to University and departmental administrators.

Ben Holston ’15, a swimmer, expressed his concern that mandatory lectures — such as core physics, chemistry or human biology classes — might move to an 8:30 a.m. start time, forcing sports teams that practice during the mornings to start even earlier. Currently, these lectures begin at 9 a.m. at the earliest.

“We don’t want to wake up before 5 to get to weights at 5:30,” Holston said, adding that getting enough sleep was already a challenge for athletes.

“My response is that I don’t control that,” Black said. He explained that individual departments, to which he and Elam could only make recommendations, control the scheduling of particular classes.

Ilya Mouzykantskii ’16, who began a popular petition opposing the proposed changes last month, questioned the need for a petitioning process in order to double-book classes. He argued that there was “no pressing need to flip the balance of power to the faculty to decide when a student can or can’t take the classes,” arguing that students are capable of deciding for themselves.

Although the details of the potential petitioning process have not been agreed upon — the question of whether they will be handled by individual faculty members or by Undergraduate Advising and Research is open, for example. Elam stressed the importance of advising before making potentially crucial academic decisions like double-booking classes.

Of the students he sees having serious academic difficulties, “so many of them were because of double-booking,” Elam said.

Another student asked whether students had any avenues to express their concerns.

“There isn’t a system to do that right now,” Elam said.

Black echoed the sentiment, saying that the idea was a “good recommendation.”

Closing the meeting, Elam encouraged student input during the Faculty Senate discussion of the changes, which will take place on May 2. Though students who wish to attend must obtain an invitation, Elam said their voices would be a significant part of the debate.

“There’s space for student voices to speak,” he said.

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The Daily Brief: Friday, March 29 https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/29/the-daily-brief-friday-march-29/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/29/the-daily-brief-friday-march-29/#respond Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:10:31 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075998 Stanford Libraries will create a 'living archive' with today's leading environmental architect

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Stanford Libraries creates first ‘living archive’ | In a first for any major academic institution, Stanford University Libraries has named the renowned environmental architect William McDonough as its first “living archive.” In that role, McDonough will update and expand his existing archive in near-real time by recording his phone conversations and filming his meetings, with the content produced to be subsequently published online.

“How many of our daily discussions are worth keeping a detailed record of?” said Roberto Trujillo, head of the Stanford University Libraries’ Special Collections, to the New York Times. “My sense is Bill [McDonough] is booked solid with a lot of meaningful meetings, and so it will be a rich archive. This could well be a model for other repositories and libraries. I wouldn’t claim the idea is unique, but the scope is.”

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Joel Brinkley defends controversial column https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/13/joel-brinkley-defends-controversial-column/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/13/joel-brinkley-defends-controversial-column/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:58:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074875 Two weeks after a column on Vietnamese dietary habits written by professor of communication Joel Brinkley prompted controversy and criticism nationally and in Vietnam, Brinkley has continued to defend the column’s substance amid a proliferation of petitions calling for an apology or even his resignation.

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Joel Brinkley at Bookstore
Stanford Daily File Photo

Two weeks after a column on Vietnamese dietary habits written by professor of communication Joel Brinkley prompted controversy and criticism nationally and in Vietnam, Brinkley has continued to defend the column’s substance amid a proliferation of petitions calling for an apology or even his resignation.

In the column, published on Jan. 29 in the Chicago Tribune, Brinkley attributed the lack of domesticated animals in Vietnam, as well as the Vietnamese people’s “aggressive tendencies,” to the country’s meat-eating tendencies.

“Animal trafficking explains the dearth of tigers, elephants and other big beasts. But what about birds and rats?” Brinkley wrote. “Yes, people eat those, too, like almost every animal that lives there.”

Within days, two petitions—one calling on Brinkley to immediately resign and the other requesting that he “publicly apologize, and in a highly-visible way”—sprang up on the website Change.org, and the column began attracting media coverage in the United States and Vietnam. The first petition has over 4,000 signees, and the second has over 1,600.

On Feb. 1, Tribune Media Services issued an apology, saying that the column “did not meet our journalistic standards” and that it had “provoked a highly critical response from our readers.”

Though Brinkley, a Pulitzer Prize winner who was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times for almost 25 years, said the column’s reception had been “unexpected and quite surprising,” he defended the substance of the piece.

“What I wrote is what I observed and what I learned in quite a number of interviews,” said Brinkley, who conducted reporting during a 10-day trip to Vietnam in late December and early January.

Brinkley said he has been to Vietnam “four or five times” and recently published a book on neighboring Cambodia.

“There’s only one part of [the column] that I did not phrase as well as I should have, and that was the link between food and aggression,” Brinkley said.

Having spent months in Laos and Cambodia, where people primarily eat rice, Brinkley commented that “the Vietnamese seemed a lot more robust.”

“It’s perfectly logical,” he said. “If you don’t eat protein, you’re not going to have a lot of energy.”

Critics—both national and on-campus—of Brinkley’s column argued that the piece presented negative stereotypes about Vietnamese culture. In an op-ed published in The Daily, the Stanford Vietnamese Students’ Association (SVSA) complained that the article lacked factual rigor.

“His offensive statements, such as the assertion that the Vietnamese have consumed almost all of their wild/domesticated animals, are inaccurate and sensationalist,” SVSA wrote.

Katherine Vu ’13, one of SVSA’s core members, said that the op-ed was not intended to be “an offensive or defensive attack.” Kimberly Vu ’13, another core member, said that most members of the group did not agree with outside calls for Brinkley’s resignation.

“It would be so much better if this had a positive outcome in which we had a really good discussion and we could bring to light that these things [that the column describes] happen, but these are the true, real facts about what they are,” Katherine said. “We definitely want to talk to him, and I think it would be great if he came to our Culture Night or something.”

Cindy Ng, the director of the Asian American Activities Center, echoed that sentiment, crediting the “thoughtful, constructive, respectful discussion” that emerged on campus in response to the column.

Kimberly and Katherine said that the group recently decided to email Brinkley to discuss the issues raised by the column but that they had yet to reach out.

Brinkley said that there had been no communication between him and the SVSA since the column’s publication, but that he would be open to talking with them.

“Sure,” he said. “I spoke with a group of Cambodian students last week. I speak to groups here all the time. If they want to speak to me, I’d be happy to speak with them.”

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Rice leads new immigration policy task force https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/11/rice-forms-new-immigration-policy-task-force/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/11/rice-forms-new-immigration-policy-task-force/#respond Tue, 12 Feb 2013 07:30:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074848 Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state and current Hoover Institution senior fellow, announced on Friday that she will be joining a bipartisan task force that aims to address issues related to immigration policy, including determining whether and how undocumented immigrants should be given a path to citizenship.

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Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state and current Hoover Institution senior fellow, announced on Friday that she will be joining a bipartisan task force that aims to address issues related to immigration policy, including determining whether and how undocumented immigrants should be given a path to citizenship.

Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a Republican, and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros — both Democrats — are also part of the group, which will operate within the Washington, D.C.-based Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC).

With the exception of a speech she delivered at the Republican National Convention last year, the creation of the group marks Rice’s first significant foray into politics since the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2009. It came shortly after President Barack Obama urged Congress to design an immigration policy toughening border security while providing a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S.

“Securing our nation’s borders is not only a national security priority, it is important economically,” Rice said in a press release issued by the BPC.  “I am eager to develop a set of recommendations for immigration reform that both Republicans and Democrats can support.”

 

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Stanford to open outpatient cancer center in San Jose https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/06/stanford-to-open-outpatient-cancer-center-in-san-jose/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/06/stanford-to-open-outpatient-cancer-center-in-san-jose/#respond Thu, 07 Feb 2013 06:40:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074710 Stanford Hospitals & Clinics announced plans last week to build a new outpatient cancer center in San Jose. The center, which will be completed in 2014, will be Stanford healthcare system’s most comprehensive facility outpatient center other than of Palo Alto’s Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Redwood City’s Stanford Medicine Outpatient Center, according to a release from the Stanford Hospital.

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Stanford Hospitals & Clinics announced plans last week to build a new outpatient cancer center in San Jose. The center, which will be completed in 2014, will be Stanford healthcare system’s most comprehensive facility outpatient center other than of Palo Alto’s Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Redwood City’s Stanford Medicine Outpatient Center, according to a release from the Stanford Hospital.

“As an oncologist, I am excited about the opportunity to significantly expand patient access to Stanford’s cancer care and our nationally recognized quality programs,” Douglas W. Blayney ’72, medical director of the Stanford Cancer Center, said in a press release.

The new center will occupy an existing four-story, 70,000 square foot building at the intersection of State Route 85 and Los Gatos Boulevard. According to the press release, the facility will be staffed by a combination of physicians from Stanford and the local community. Patients will also benefit from the center’s Stanford affiliation in other ways including access to clinical trials, according to the statement.

“We’re extremely pleased to be able to provide residents of the South Bay region with convenient access to Stanford’s leading edge, patient-centered care,” said President of Stanford Hospitals Amir Dan Rubin in the press release. “With more than 300 ongoing clinical trials in cancer and pioneering work underway in genomics to develop targeted therapies, Stanford is helping lead the fight against this challenging disease.”

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Community centers at Stanford: A history of activism https://stanforddaily.com/2012/12/05/community-center-history-fraught-with-struggle-symbols-of-progress/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/12/05/community-center-history-fraught-with-struggle-symbols-of-progress/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2012 09:52:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1073602 When it was founded in 1891, Stanford was ahead of its time: The school did not charge tuition fees, it admitted women and it had no religious affiliation. There were Asian American and Native American students in the first classes. But despite these measures, Stanford was, for the first 70 years of its history, overwhelmingly male - and even more overwhelmingly white.

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When it was founded in 1891, Stanford was ahead of its time: The school did not charge tuition fees, it admitted women and it had no religious affiliation. There were Asian American and Native American students in the first classes. But despite these measures, Stanford was, for the first 70 years of its history, overwhelmingly male – and even more overwhelmingly white.

Community centers at Stanford: A history of activism
Students railed against budget cuts to the community centers in 2009. (Stanford Daily File Photo)

As late as 1960, there were only two black students in the entire freshman class. In 1965, just one Native American student was enrolled in the University. Women were not allowed to make up more than 40 percent of the student body – although the actual percentage was much lower.

The number of Latino and Asian American students was also low. In fact, during much of the early part of the 1900s, the small number of Asian American students at Stanford lived in the Japanese or Chinese clubhouses. The clubhouses were separate dormitories built with private funds in 1917 and 1919, respectively, in response to racism the students encountered in the University dorms. The Japanese Clubhouse stood until 1968, and the Chinese Clubhouse, which was located where the Law School now stands, until 1971.

These clubhouses served as the earliest iteration of what would eventually become Stanford’s current system of six community centers, which were formed in the late 1960s and late 1970s as a response to the growing needs of a more diverse student population. This year, for the first time in their 40-year-plus history, the centers are being reviewed by Student Affairs under a routine assessment on all of offices under its purview starting in 2009 (see “Community centers undergo first review in history“).

 

“Creating a sense of belonging”

The small number of minority students enrolled at Stanford began to rise in the 1960s. As the civil rights movement gained national prominence and attention, Stanford began to recruit minority students, as a result of both student pressure and because of national changes.

By 1967, there were more than 100 black students enrolled at Stanford, and in 1970, the freshman class included 25 Native American students. Both increases came as results of a University recruitment push targeted at increasing minority enrollment. Though smaller than they are today – this academic year, there are 637 black or African American students and 250 Native American students out of an undergraduate population of 6,927 – these numbers marked the beginnings of a new commitment to diversity by the University.

According to Frances Morales, director of El Centro Chicano, the late 1960s saw “the beginnings of Mexican Americans, Latinos, attending universities for the first time.”

“There has long been a presence of Native Americans [at Stanford],” said Karen Biestman, director of the Native American Cultural Center. “But it really didn’t escalate to a programmatic commitment until the late ’60s, early ’70s.”

Once on campus, the minority students quickly formed communities of their own. In five years, students founded the six major community organizations: the Black Student Union (BSU) in 1967, the Asian American Students’ Association (AASA) and the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) in 1969, the Stanford American Indian Organization (SAIO) in 1970, the Gay People’s Union in 1971 and the Women’s Collective in 1972.

“At that time, there were not so many students of color at Stanford,” said Cindy Ng, director of the Asian American Activities Center, “So it was part of students creating a sense of belonging for themselves on campus.”

This early activity took place amid the anger and unrest following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. The murder produced different reactions in the Stanford community. According to a Daily article printed the following day, some members of one freshman dorm cheered King’s death and held a food fight afterwards (“University answers black demands,” April 9, 1968). The Black Student Union (BSU) held a rally in White Plaza in which 40 students burned an American flag.

Four days after King’s death, at a University-wide colloquium on white racism at Memorial Auditorium, 70 BSU members walked onto the stage and took the microphone from former Provost Richard Lyman. The BSU chair, Keni Washington ’68, told the capacity crowd to “put your money where your mouth is,” and issued 10 demands to the University relating to its responsibilities towards black and other minority students.

Two days later, the University had agreed to nine of the ten.

These commitments helped lead to the founding of the Black Student Volunteer Center – now known as the Black Community Services Center (BCSC) – in 1969, making it Stanford’s first community center. Others followed: the Asian American Activities Center (A3C), the Gay People’s Union and the Women’s Collective were founded in 1972, the Native American Cultural Center (NACC) in 1974 and El Centro Chicano in 1977.

“Out of those moments of the ’60s, both on and off campus, the University rose to the fact that it was committed to these values [of diversity],” Ng said. “It’s in keeping with the founding mission, but I think it’s a part of the social movements that occurred.”

Karen Biestman, NACC director, credited an at-times acrimonious partnership between students and the University for the growth the community centers.

“I do think [the establishment of the NACC] was student-led, but there was a partnership” between students and the University, Biestman said. “And that partnership can be credited to the evolution that these 25 [recruited Native students] built upon themselves.”

Community centers at Stanford: A history of activism
(DURAN ALVAREZ/The Stanford Daily)

“I think students had organized and asked for additional resources,” said Benjamin Davidson, the director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Resource Center (LGBT CRC). “Stanford rose to the challenge.”

 

Rallying for University funding

But getting the University to rise to the challenge was not always easy. In their early years, the centers were smaller and ran on shoestring budgets. They were staffed entirely by students, and received no money from the University for events or other programming.

“We all recall having to…sell food or something…to raise money,” Morales said.

“These six centers didn’t happen all at once. It was the result of many years,” said Vice Provost for Student Affairs Greg Boardman. The additional funding the centers have received through the years “was based a lot on student advocacy, and trying to meet the needs of students.”

Through the 1970s and 1980s, student efforts to gain greater recognition and financial support from the University on behalf of the centers were mixed with a number of other demands – political, curricular, economic and social.

Often led by coalitions of the main community groups, students held rallies and sit-ins fighting for the removal of the Stanford Indian mascot, more funding and space for community centers, the establishment of ethnic-themed dorms, the removal of the “Western Civilization” requirement, greater efforts at minority recruitment, divestment from apartheid-era South Africa, the creation of a vice provost position for minority affairs, the creation of ethnic studies programs, an increase in the financial aid budget and the hiring of more minority faculty members.

One of the most famous sit-ins came in 1989, when students from different communities came together with a variety of grievances. Sixty of them formed the Agenda for Action Coalition, and, on May 15, they occupied then-President Donald Kennedy’s office until the University responded to their demands. In the next day’s issue of The Daily, Kennedy called it the “gravest” student protest in 16 years (“Students seize Kennedy’s office, 55 arrested,” May 16, 1989).

Though the administration’s original response was harsh – Santa Clara County police arrested 55 students later that day – the sit-in produced results. Many of the activists’ demands, primarily related to the administration of community centers and the hiring of minority faculty, were met.

It was during the 1980s that Stanford hired professional staff for the community centers – first on a part-time basis, then, towards the end of the decade and the beginning of the next, on a full-time basis. According to Ng, it was not until 1994 that community centers began to receive funding for programming, a result of a hunger strike that year by Chicana students.

 

“A beacon to the people they serve”

From 1994 on, the community centers settled, more or less, into their current forms. In 2001, the University again increased funding to the centers; these increased budgets lasted until 2009, when in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the entire Office of Student Affairs took a $3 million budget cut, which resulted in a budget cut for all the community centers. The funds cut in 2009 have, for the most part, not yet been restored.

For almost the last 20 years, though, the addition of programming funds has led to an expansion of services provided by the community centers. Though each community center tailors its services to its constituent population, the outlines of each are broadly similar.

Each center offers academic support, psychological support and a physical space where students can learn more about their identities.

“If it wasn’t for a place like the Black House…I would have struggled a lot more,” said Shawn Dye ’14, a staff member at the BCSC. “Community centers are a beacon to the people they serve, and they’re also very welcoming places for people to come and learn.”

Because of the community centers’ unique place in campus debates over diversity during the last 40 years, the centers at Stanford have developed in a way that few centers at other universities have. Even compared to its peer institutions, Stanford’s community centers are unusually large and well supported.

“Not all universities even have offices to deal with issues of diversity,” Ng said. Of those that do, “There’s our model, there’s the multicultural model, and then there might just be staff people.”

In the multicultural model, used at UC-Berkeley and at Princeton, among others, all minority communities are housed in one large “multicultural center.”

“For some, they argue that the multicultural model is better because if you put the students together, they can learn from each other,” Ng said. “But I think to really develop a depth of understanding and to be able to learn from people who are different, which is critical, there needs to be a strong sense of who you are to begin with.”

Another criticism Stanford’s model faces is that, by separating each community center from the others, the school forces students to choose one identity over another.

But the center directors dismissed that concern.

Having a separate space for each community, Biestman said, allows students to gain a deeper understanding of their identities and a closer engagement with the issues their communities face than would otherwise be possible. And most importantly, she added, each center stands as a symbol of the University’s commitment to diversity.

“It’s really more than just a place. It is the embodiment of this history, the embodiment of this relationship, of the partnership and the promise of the future,” Biestman said of the NACC. “[It’s] an institutional commitment we can build upon so we use this actively not only to support current students, but, when future students come, when recruitment events come by, we say that Stanford has a physical legacy that others don’t have.”

 

The number of African American or black and Native American students listed in this article as currently attending Stanford has been updated to reflect the total undergraduate population in 2012-13.

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Community centers undergo first review in history https://stanforddaily.com/2012/12/04/community-centers-undergo-first-review-in-history/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/12/04/community-centers-undergo-first-review-in-history/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2012 07:59:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1073569 For the first time in their 40-plus year history, Stanford’s six community centers are undergoing a review and assessment by Student Affairs.

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For the first time in their 40-plus year history, Stanford’s six community centers are undergoing a review and assessment by Student Affairs. The review is the latest in a string of reviews conducted by Student Affairs, which began them in 2009 with the intention of evaluating each office under its supervision.Community centers undergo first review in history

Calling the review process “purposeful, integrated [and] strategic,” Boardman said it consisted of three parts: a self-evaluation completed by each center, a review done by an internal steering committee and finally a review done by an external committee of people chosen by Boardman in collaboration with the community centers.

“When I became vice provost of student affairs, we didn’t do a very good job with student assessment as a division,” said Greg Boardman, who took the position in 2006 and currently holds the post. “Within the departments, some were doing them, some were not.”

“For me, personally, there is always that scare when an organization gets reviewed,” said Vince Moua ’13, a staff member at the Asian American Activities Center (A3C). “Because we have received budget cuts in the past few years already, it won’t come as a surprise if we were to get budget cut, but there are a lot of programs and a lot of other things that all the community centers do that are very necessary for mental health and for the well-being of students on campus.”

The centers experienced substantial budget cuts in the wake of the 2008 economic downturn, most of which have not yet been restored. Frances Morales, the director of El Centro Chicano, said at the time that the center’s “programming and student salary budget will be reduced by 34 percent.” Additionally, professional staff at the centers saw their hours during the months of July and August cut in half.

Boardman, however, said he did not foresee more cuts to the center’s programming.

“We’re not looking to reduce anyone’s funding,” he said. “If anything, there’s a possibility of increased funding if we identify additional needs that are not being met.”

Community center directors and staff said the review was still in its early stages but stressed the importance of the services the community centers provide.

“We are constantly doing self-assessment for each of our programs,” said Cindy Ng, director of the A3C. “This is something I think the University as a whole is trying to create: a culture of assessment.”

Ng said she hopes the funding cut in 2009 will be restored as a result of the review process, describing the A3C’s role in “promoting a sense of belonging, academic success” and “educating the larger Stanford community about the Asian-American experience.”

While most of the funding the centers lost has not yet returned, the University has established other offices, like the Office of Diversity and First-Generation Programs and the Leland Scholars program, to step into roles that the community centers have usually filled. For example, the Leland Scholars program — a three-week summer immersion program for incoming freshmen from low-income backgrounds — stepped into the shoes of a smaller, three-week immersion program run for Native students by the Native American Cultural Center (NACC) that was reduced to three days after budget cuts.

“The community centers — we’ve always been very lean, in terms of staffing as well as funding,” Ng said. “While we are the face of diversity at Stanford, there can sometimes be a disconnect between the resources and the needs.”

According to Sally Dickson, associate vice provost for student affairs, the funding disparity between the community centers and the new Office of Diversity and First-Generation Programs results from the fact that the latter is funded by an anonymous donor, who provided a gift for the establishment of the office in April 2011.

“[The creation of the Office of Diversity and First-Generation Programs] doesn’t take any recognition away from the community centers, which have historically and continue to provide support to students,” Dickson said. “But why not give this population additional resources?”

Still, Dickson admitted that there were funding issues to be addressed.

“Is there a question about additional resources needed?” she said. “Yes. I’m just going to leave it at that.”

Both Dickson and Boardman declined to speculate on how the results of the review might affect the community centers.

“I have no agenda of what the future will look like,” Boardman said. “That’s what the purpose of this review is.”

Dickson hopes to have the recommendations from the review finalized by the beginning of the next academic year. In the meantime, the community center directors said they are cautiously optimistic.

“This is a new process for the whole review team, and I think everything is on the table,” said Karen Biestman, director of the Native American Community Center. “There’s too many things we don’t know yet, but I’m hopeful based on the good will and the trust and the participation so far that that’s the case.”

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Play delves into nuclear negotiations https://stanforddaily.com/2012/05/09/1065867/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/05/09/1065867/#respond Wed, 09 May 2012 09:20:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1065867 There is a moment in Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Rhodes’s new play, “Reykjavik,” when, after days of negotiations over nuclear weapons between then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan suddenly drops a bomb of his own.

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There is a rhapsodic moment in Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Rhodes’s new play, “Reykjavik,” when, after days of negotiations over nuclear weapons between then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan suddenly drops a bomb of his own.

“Why don’t we get rid of them all?” Reagan asks. “Can we agree, at the end of ten years, to nuclear abolition?”

For a moment, the two men come together, shoulder to shoulder, at the front of the stage. They look up and out into the audience, as Reagan envisions the two of them meeting again as old men, drinking champagne as they watch the world’s last two nuclear missiles being ground into scrap.

Play delves into nuclear negotiations
Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Rhodes debuted his new play, “Reykjavik,” performed Tuesday night in Cemex Auditorium. Set in 1986 during the Reykjavic Summit, his play portrays a pivotal attempt at negotiation between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. (NICK SALAZAR/The Stanford Daily)

But in the play, as in 1986, when the Reykjavik Summit actually occurred in the capital city of Iceland, talks between Reagan and Gorbachev ultimately collapse.

Those few minutes, however, represent the feelings of both hope and regret that characterize “Reykjavik,” which was presented Tuesday night at Cemex Auditorium.

The hour-long production — featuring just Reagan, played by Drama and Classics Professor Rush Rehm, and Gorbachev — is notable for staying close to the transcripts of the famous event. Rhodes, who is affiliated with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), previously won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1987 book, “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.”

“I was going through the transcripts of the Reykjavik summit in 2006, and it was intriguing to see [the Soviet and American transcripts] side by side and see what the American side left out,” Rhodes said after the performance. “Particularly, Reagan’s move to eliminate everything [all nuclear weapons] was excised.”

The play seeks to show a fuller picture of both leaders. Reagan is shown to be charismatic and good-hearted, but forgetful. For much of the summit, he reads his arguments off note cards and repeatedly mentions how, in the aftermath of World War I, Europe’s great powers agreed to ban chemical weapons, but “held onto their gas masks.”

Gorbachev is depicted as the more intelligent and focused of the two, but also spends time talking about his youth, which was spent working on a collective farm.

Both he and Reagan find common ground in having “come from nothing.” Such conversations take place when the negotiations have grown too tense. Reagan describes his years as a lifeguard or taking care of his alcoholic father as a child.

“Something that gets lost in reading history texts is the feeling and emotion of the event,” said Ravi Patel ’13, an international relations minor who attended after learning about the summit in some of his classes. “All I really knew was what was accomplished during the meeting. I didn’t know the tensions involved in the negotiating process,” Patel added.

The play demonstrates some of those tensions. For all the friendly feeling generated by swapping childhood stories, the two leaders cannot bring themselves to trust one another.

In the performance, the heart of the disagreement between the two men is Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), dubbed “Star Wars” by the media. The initiative would have established an American space-based missile shield to prevent against nuclear attack.

“Damn it, Mikhail, SDI is for defense,” Reagan says. “Why do I have to keep saying that? And we’ll share it. You have my word.”

“You don’t even share your milk machines with us!” Gorbachev retorts.

The play suggests Reagan’s famous stubbornness, something which Tom Woosnam, a high school physics teacher and member of the audience, said he both admired and disliked.

“I was not convinced that Reagan’s stubbornness was based in rationality,” Woosnam said. “[But his] motivation was to protect his country.”

Everything in Rhodes’s play — moments of levity included — points to this fundamental mistrust in both leaders. When negotiations have failed at the end of the play, each character blames the other.

“You just don’t get it,” Reagan says. “How am I supposed to trust you?”

“I don’t know what else I could have done!” Gorbachev replies.

“Well, I do” Reagan says. “You should have said ‘yes.’”

“Reykjavik” will be performed again tonight at 7 p.m. in Cemex Auditorium.

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Zimbroff/Wagstaff garners support from campus groups https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/12/zimbroffwagstaff-garners-support-from-campus-groups/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/12/zimbroffwagstaff-garners-support-from-campus-groups/#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:07:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1063157 For most students interested in running for ASSU office, an essential part of the process is seeking endorsements from various on-campus students groups. These student organizations help the candidates they endorse by tapping their large mailing lists, putting up flyers, posting on Facebook and holding events to introduce the candidates to voters.

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For most students interested in running for ASSU office, an essential part of the process is seeking endorsements from various on-campus students groups. These student organizations help the candidates they endorse by tapping their large mailing lists, putting up flyers, posting on Facebook and holding events to introduce the candidates to voters.

To see what goes into the endorsement process, The Daily contacted the leaders of several major endorsement groups to explain how they choose which candidates to support. The Daily contacted the Women’s Coalition and the Green Alliance for Innovative Action multiple times but did not receive a response in time for publication.

 

First-Generation Low Income Partnership (FLIP)
“Not everyone has the opportunity to speak to the candidates directly,” wrote Lena Sweeney ’12, co-president of FLIP, in an email to The Daily. “If they trust the leaders of FLIP, the endorsements provide information on how candidates support and understand the first-generation/low-income community on campus.”

According to Sweeney, the group selects candidates by reviewing applications submitted by candidates online. From that pool, some of the candidates are invited back for an interview. The FLIP leadership team then votes on all the candidates interviewed to determine whether or not to endorse them.

This year, FLIP endorsed nine candidates for Senate and Robbie Zimbroff ’12 and William Wagstaff ’12 for ASSU Executive.

 

Jewish Students’ Association (JSA)
The JSA’s endorsement process has three parts: an application, an information session and an interview. In an email to The Daily, Doria Charlson ’13, who runs the endorsement process for the Association, wrote that the group looks for candidates with passion, motivation and an interest in having “a relationship with members of our community and organization.”

This year, the JSA endorsed Zimbroff-Wagstaff for the Executive post, and nine others for Senate positions.

 

Queer Coalition
The Queer Coalition looks for candidates with a “spirit of ally-ship” with the queer community, according to Alex Kindel ’14, who heads the Queer Coalition’s endorsement effort, in an email to The Daily. Kindel, an ASSU Senator, also currently serves as ASSU Parlementarian.

Although all of the candidates the Coalition has chosen to endorse this year identify as heterosexual, Kindel said that they all “showed an understanding of queer issues and a dedication to addressing issues that they aren’t personally affected by.”

The Queer Coalition has existed for four years and is composed of representatives from various Queer Voluntary Student Organizations (QVSOs), who together interview all candidates who apply for endorsement.

This year, a majority of the candidates seeking election applied for an endorsement. Of that pool, the Coalition selected six candidates to endorse for Senate and one slate – Zimbroff-Wagstaff – for Executive.

 

Stanford Democrats
Like most of the other endorsing organizations, the Stanford Democrats select their endorsees after an application and an interview.

In an email to the Daily, Campaign Director Namir Shah ’14 wrote that the Democrats look for candidates who “can make the most tangible impact on the lives of Stanford students, and not necessarily the candidates with the strongest liberal leaning.”

Shah wrote that no more than half of the candidates running typically seek out the Democrats’ endorsement. This year, a group of four interviewers, including Shah, selected the group’s four Senate nominees as well as their choice for Executive, Stewart MacGregor-Dennis’ 13 and Druthi Ghanta ’14.

After MacGregor-Dennis received negative attention for his use of social media contractors, the group reconsidered its endorsement up until polls opened, ultimately deciding to stand by its initial decision.

 

Stanford Review
Like the Democrats, The Review has a defined political stance.

According to Editor in Chief Nadiv Rahman ’13, The Review does “not seek conservative candidates,” but does support those who are “responsible with finances” and do not try to use the ASSU as an “overreaching action committee.”

This year, The Review received endorsement applications from eight prospective Senators and three Executive slates. After reviewing the applications, The Review endorsed four candidates for Senate and one slate – Zimbroff-Wagstaff – for Executive.

Rahman views the endorsements as “signaling functions,” helping people make voting decisions. Still, he sees some problems.

“While we are wary, and sometimes frustrated, by some particular groups whose candidates seem to have an unnatural success rate,” he wrote in an email to the Daily, “it would be beyond a conservative or libertarian paper to claim that there should be increased supervision on who can endorse a candidate.”

 

The Students of Color Coalition (SOCC)
            SOCC is composed of six ethnic community groups: the Asian American Students’ Association (AASA), the Black Student Union (BSU), Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), the Muslim Student Awareness Network (MSAN), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Stanford American Indian Organization (SAIO).

According to SOCC Liason Tina Duong ’12, about 30 candidates apply for SOCC endorsement each year, making the group’s endorsement one of the most sought after. This year, the group endorsed Zimbroff-Wagstaff for Executive and 12 candidates for Undergraduate Senate.

“All Stanford students have some vested interest in SOCC issues,” Duong wrote in an email to the Daily. “Our candidates are not homogeneous in their ideals, but they all align with SOCC values.”

For further coverage, see “Guaranteed success for SOCC.”

 

The Editorial Board of The Stanford Daily

The Stanford Daily Editorial Board is independent from The Stanford Daily editorial staff. Currently, five students sit on the board. The Editor in Chief of The Daily chooses the Editorial Board chair through an interview process. The chair then selects a number of students to the Board by application.

The Daily Editorial Board only endorses Executive candidates. This year the Board, led by Chair Adam Johnson ’13, endorsed Zimbroff-Wagstaff. Board members Mitul Bhat ’12, Rebecca Johnson ’11, Peter Johnston ’14 and Meredith Wheeler ’14 all participated in the endorsement process as none hold affiliations with other endorsing bodies.

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Harvard prof Louis Menand tells tale of Great Books https://stanforddaily.com/2012/03/09/harvard-prof-louis-menand-tells-tale-of-great-books/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/03/09/harvard-prof-louis-menand-tells-tale-of-great-books/#respond Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:05:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1061112 Harvard English professor Louis Menand declared the era of Great Books curriculum “over” at a talk Thursday evening at the Stanford Humanities Center. He added, however, that vestiges of the curriculum still linger, and the effect it has had on the structure of American universities has been profound.

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Harvard English professor Louis Menand declared the era of Great Books curriculum “over” at a talk Thursday evening at the Stanford Humanities Center. He added, however, that vestiges of the curriculum still linger, and the effect it has had on the structure of American universities has been profound.

 

The Great Books are a collection of canonical Western texts, including authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Homer and Dante. Stanford’s Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) program is currently an effort to introduce freshmen to some of these works while the Structured Liberal Education (SLE) program makes them its focus.

 

According to Menand, a Pulitzer prize winner and contributing writer to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, the Great Books idea–the grouping of those books together and elevation of them over others–emerged in the late 19th century.

 

“They were intended for people who didn’t have the chance to go to college,” Menand said.

 

Since then, he said, “the market for Great Books has moved around, but there always seems to be a market someplace.”

 

For most of the 20th century, that market has been at least partly in universities. Menand focused on the histories of Columbia University and the University of Chicago, which both have Great Books “core” curricula, as well as Harvard, his own institution, which has a more flexible program.

 

Though Columbia was the first to institute a version of the Great Books curriculum, each university has been through multiple cycles and renamings since World War I.

 

“There has never been a golden age of Great Books curriculum,” Menand said.

 

Explaining how the idea of such a curriculum came about, he pointed to two factors in early and middle 20th-century America: increasing socioeconomic and racial diversity, as well as a trend of intellectual relativism in American thought.

 

For example, Menand said, John Erskine, an English professor at Columbia who founded the forerunner to the school’s current Literature Humanities program, noticed that Columbia students were increasingly first- or second-generation immigrants.

 

“He wanted to provide people of different background with a common culture,” Menand said.

 

At the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins–president of the university from 1929-1951–wanted to institute a four-year Great Books curriculum based on the ancient system of the trivium and quadrivium methods of the Renaissance.

 

But American academia turned away from that model.

 

When Harvard University set out to change its undergraduate curriculum in 2007, “one of the things we discussed was a Great Books program,” Menand said. “We decided it was a bad idea to require it of everybody,” he added.

 

In the end, Menand said, “The Great Books idea was a tolerated guest in the system of the modern research university.”

 

Instead of the general, humanist approach of the Great Books thinkers, based on the idea that the classics were accessible to everyone, U.S. universities committed to specialization.

 

“The humanities had to make their way in a world science had shaped,” Menand said.

 

Minku Kim, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of East Asian Languages and Culture, said Menand’s lecture helped him think about how he would approach teaching his own students.

 

“It was a great opportunity to learn about the historical development [of the Great Books idea]…and how it connects to teaching and learning at Stanford,” he said.

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Occupy Berkeley https://stanforddaily.com/2012/03/04/occupy-berkeley/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/03/04/occupy-berkeley/#respond Mon, 05 Mar 2012 03:09:06 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?post_type=gab_gallery&p=1060178 The post Occupy Berkeley appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

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Occupy Berkeley Occupy Berkeley Occupy Berkeley Occupy Berkeley Occupy Berkeley Occupy Berkeley Occupy Berkeley Occupy Berkeley Occupy Berkeley Occupy Berkeley

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Students occupy education https://stanforddaily.com/2012/03/02/students-occupy-education/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/03/02/students-occupy-education/#comments Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:04:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1060316 Members of Occupy Stanford spent Thursday demonstrating in Berkeley and Oakland in support of Occupy Education, a movement protesting funding cuts of public education and tuition hikes in the University of California system.

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Members of Occupy Stanford spent Thursday demonstrating in Berkeley and Oakland in support of Occupy Education, a movement protesting funding cuts of public education and tuition hikes in the University of California system.

The rallies, which were part of a nationwide Day of Action to support public education, kicked off a five-day march in Northern California to the Capitol building in Sacramento, where demonstrators plan to begin occupying the Capitol on Monday.

“This movement won’t stop,” said Laura Wells, the Green Party candidate for governor in 2010, to The Daily. “You can’t deal the next generation a lack of opportunity and expect them to sit there and take it.”

Students occupy education
Occupy movements from around the state gathered at U.C. Berkeley for a rally on California’s higher education system Thursday afternoon. Occupy Stanford began the event by reading a statement of support and later marched with demonstrators six miles to Oakland. (NEEL THAKKAR/The Stanford Daily)

After smaller teach-ins and discussions under the rafters of the UC-Berkeley Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union building, Thursday’s main action began at noon in Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, under drizzling rain.

The 16 Stanford demonstrators led off the rally, taking turns reading an enthusiastically received statement of solidarity to a huddled group of about 150 UC-Berkeley students and staff and city locals.

“An education like one receives at Stanford should not be ‘elite,’ and you should not have to be ‘lucky’ to get an education,” the statement read. “We won’t accept a future where access to education is a privilege, and not a right.”

Students drafted the statement in Meyer Library Wednesday evening.

“I know California is in a budget crisis,” said Josh Schott ‘14 to The Daily before the event, “but education should always be a No. 1 priority because it’s a key ingredient of democracy.”

The hour-long rally featured speakers whose various demands reflected the diversity of the audience.

Andrea Barrera, a senior at UC-Berkeley, called for the restoration of affirmative action, while Joshua Clover, an English professor from UC-Davis, said a wholesale restructuring of capitalism is necessary.

Others recounted previous protest experiences or asked for protection of union rights. Decorating the plaza were murals painted by local high school students for the occasion.

“Don’t close the colleges,” one painting read. “We’re coming.”

After the rally, with the weather clearing up, about 100 protesters gathered to make the six-mile march to Oakland’s Oscar Grant Plaza, where Occupy Oakland and students from other area colleges were meeting. To chants of “No cuts, no fees, education must be free,” the crowd fanned across the breadth of Telegraph Avenue.

The public they met along the way matched their enthusiasm, for the most part. The marchers were met with many honks of appreciation, but also a few obscene gestures. One motorist was so incensed he got out of his car, punched a demonstrator and sped away, according to another protester.

Though the rally and march were smaller than previous demonstrations, the atmosphere among the protesters remained hopeful.

Edwin Okongo, a lecturer in Swahili at UC-Berkeley, said he was marching for his nine-month-old daughter, whom he used to bring to Occupy Oakland protests.

“She’s part of that, the protest,” he said, “and [it’s important] to know that you can’t just sit back and wait for things to be handed to you. You have to fight for them.”

It helps that he also lives in Oakland, Okongo added.

“If this runs into any trouble or anything, I’ll just say I was walking home,” he laughed.

Another marcher, Paul Bloom, said he has been a resident of Berkeley for almost 40 years and has been involved in activism for even longer.

“You make your path by walking, and this is kind of consciously doing that,” Bloom said. “This is just one day, and a rainy day at that…I don’t think you can take a quick measurement and say we’re doing well because we have a thousand people or we’re not doing so well because we have 200 or this or that.”

After two hours of walking, during which the number of marchers dwindled to about 80, the crowd arrived at Oscar Grant Plaza, chanting, “Here comes Berkeley.”

Joined with the protesters already there, the size of the whole crowd swelled to just under 200, as it prepared to begin the “99 Mile March for Education and Social Justice” to Sacramento. Though about 80 people were committed to walking at least part of the way, organizers said they expect thousands at the protest that on March 5.

Here the group from Stanford parted ways with one of its members, Peter McDonald ‘11, who is walking the entire distance to the Capitol. Other Occupy Stanford members will join him when he gets there.

McDonald explained why he decided to make the “99-mile march,” saying that Stanford students are usually too concerned with academics.

“[At Stanford], everyone’s always so focused on the class in front of them that it’s hard to engage,” he said. “Marching 80 miles is a really important statement.”

Occupy Stanford expand the scope of its operations this quarter, participating in Occupy Wall Street West in January and coordinating with Occupy movements around the Bay Area.

The group has faced questions on campus about the size and strength of its movement, but Occupy members said they believe their involvement in demonstrations such as Thursday’s proves otherwise.

“You can always criticize people for shouting,” said Emma Wilde Botta ‘14. “But this is more doing something concrete.”

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Panel probes Iranian law and society https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/16/panel-probes-iranian-law-and-society/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/16/panel-probes-iranian-law-and-society/#respond Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:30:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1058800 Questions about the future of democracy in Iran dominated a wide-ranging panel discussion Wednesday evening, titled, “Law and Society in Iran.” The Stanford Law School Program in Law and Society hosted the event, which attracted an audience of about 140.

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Questions about the future of democracy in Iran dominated a wide-ranging panel discussion Wednesday evening, titled, “Law and Society in Iran.” The Stanford Law School Program in Law and Society hosted the event, which attracted an audience of about 140.

 

The three-member panel, moderated by Helen Stacy, coordinator of the Program on Human Rights at the Freeman Spogli Institute, included Stanford professor Abbas Milani and two visitors: Farhad Ameli, a professor at Sorbonne University in France, and Mehrangiz Kar of Brown University.

 

Leading off with an “atmospheric view” of the past century of Iranian legal history, Ameli described the swing from the increasingly secularized system of justice which began with the signing of Iran’s first constitution in 1906 to the resurgence of Sharia law after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

 

Before the revolution, Ameli said, “everyone was looking for judges who knew Western law. Now, everyone is looking for judges who know Islamic, or Sharia, law.”

 

The conflict between the two systems of law – constitutionalism and Sharia – is at the heart of what Abbas called the defining conflict of the last century and a half in Iran – the conflict over modernity.

 

“What is modernity? Do you have to lose your faith?” he asked. “Does Islam lend itself to modernity? Is modernity Western?”

 

According to Milani, the Iranian government has taken a very strong stance against modernity.

 

“The notion of popular sovereignty is complete anathema to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Milani said. The government believes “the whole idea of a sovereign other than Allah was inculcated to undermine Islam.”

 

The implementation of Sharia law after the Islamic Revolution brought about what Stacy called, “a 30-year retrenchment of women’s rights.”

 

“The law has become a tool to ignore the humanity of women… in the name of Islam,” said Kar, a longtime human rights activist whose husband committed suicide last year after spending almost a decade in imprisonment. According to Kar, this repression has “barred Iranian entry into modern life.”

 

Women have historically pushed back, Kar said, with non-violent, peaceful demonstrations in favor of their rights. She believes such actions set the example for the widespread demonstrations in the summer of 2009, after Iran’s disputed presidential election.

 

According to Milani, those demonstrations, among numerous other indicators, seem to show an Iranian society that feels very differently about modernity.

 

“I think the trajectory [of Iranian society] is great, historically,” Milani said. “We now have more women poets, more women writers, more women publishers, more women film-makers than we have ever had in the history of Iran. And this is under a regime that wanted to do to women what the Taliban did in Afghanistan.”

 

In many ways, Iranian culture has already bypassed its government, Milani said. “Yet it has a regime on top of it that is trying to enforce a medieval system.”

 

Milani noted a recent survey that reported that 80 percent of Iranian high-school girls say they have a boyfriend. The government “was going crazy, saying ‘We have lost the culture war,’” he said.

 

For Mitra Parineh, a member of the audience and the daughter of Iranian immigrants, the discussion felt incomplete, but went toward explaining the Iran she had heard about all her life.

 

“I’ve always sort of been incensed at a government I didn’t even know,” she said.  With the amount of opposition to the theocracy in power, she said she couldn’t understand “why Iran is the way it is.” Her question to the panelists was simple – why have reform efforts so far failed?

 

Referencing the demonstrations in 2009, Milani said it was clear that the “regime still had a lot of fight in it left.”

 

“Don’t look at it in terms of our lifetime,” he said. “Our lifetime has been taken away from us. We have become exiles.  But we have made something here, and for a hundred years we have been resisting the bastards who have taken it away from us.”

 

Such resistance would, all three panelists thought, eventually succeed.

 

When the first constitution was passed in 1906, Ameli said, it was the work of only about 10 educated people.

 

“Do you think that with the five million Iranians living outside of the country, like all of you, we can’t find those 10 people?” he asked. “It’s just that the time isn’t right, or the price people are willing to pay isn’t as much as the people are, let’s say, in Syria right now.”

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CS seeks greater female involvement https://stanforddaily.com/2012/01/11/cs-seeks-greater-female-involvement/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/01/11/cs-seeks-greater-female-involvement/#respond Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:04:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1053995 Perhaps even more remarkable than the record-breaking enrollment in CS 106A last quarter was the percentage of those 594 students who were female.

Gender parity, if only in the introductory class, is encouraging news for a department that is overwhelmingly male.

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Perhaps even more remarkable than the record-breaking enrollment in CS 106A last quarter was the percentage of those 594 students who were female.

“We’re getting pretty close to gender parity,” said Mehran Sahami, BS ’92, M.S. ’93, Ph.D. ’99, an associate professor of computer science who teaches the course in the fall.

Gender parity, if only in the introductory class, is encouraging news for a department that is overwhelmingly male.

Unfortunately, the percentage of female students in computer science drops off considerably from 106A, even though, according to Roberts and Sahami, women do just as well and report liking it just as much as men.

Each subsequent course in the track becomes more and more male-dominated. The percentage of female CS majors remains only 20 percent, according to computer science professor Eric Roberts.

The number of women matters, said Roberts, because universities are producing a tenth of the computer scientists that the industry is demanding, because existing technology reflects its producers and because the major can be empowering, especially in terms of salary.

That number is an improvement on recent years — in 2009, only 8.1 percent of students graduating in computer science were women — but represents no change in the longer run. Roberts, who has taught at Stanford since 1990, remembers the percentage of women in the major ranging from 14 to 26 percent.

“It’s one of the lowest of the engineering disciplines,” Roberts said.

Last quarter, computer science major Sophia Westwood ‘13 was among the latest to try and figure out why that was the case, talking to professors and doing her own research as well.

The issue “is always present, but pushed under the rug,” Westwood said.  “The actual numbers…were pretty stark.”

“Fundamentally, it’s a simple idea,” Westwood said.  “We’re getting all these people in 106A and we’re having trouble keeping them.”

Each person’s case for not continuing is unique, she said, but some of the deterrents she found were rooted in stereotypes and misconceptions of the major.

To combat that perception, the department overhauled the major in 2008, adding tracks, like Artificial Intelligence and Graphics, which catered to students’ interests, and emphasizing the multidisciplinary nature of computer science.

Another obstacle is the sense that computer science can be solitary and for some, socially isolating.

“The stereotype of the socially awkward nerd has some basis in reality,” Roberts said.  “I’ve always thought the milieu in CS can be off-putting to people who put more value in the social side of things.”

But Westwood said she believes this is not usually the case, especially with the department’s recent multidisciplinary focus.

“Other interests make you a better computer scientist,” she said. “You’re not going to be in a cubicle; you’re not going to be antisocial and you’re not going to have a monitor tan. Unless you want to be.”

The field’s gender gap can be self-reinforcing.  With fewer female role models in computer science, women can shy away

“For a lot of guys, their default is to continue and for a lot of girls, the default isn’t,” Westwood said.

Changing that default setting for women, Westwood realized, can be as easy as sitting down to speak with and advise them.

“For a lot of them [female computer science majors] there was a part where someone reached out and said, ‘You’re really good at this,’” Westwood said.

Beginning last quarter, Westwood began a program in which section leaders in the 106 series would reach out to talented freshman and sophomore women to talk to them about a future in the subject.

Although the program could not reach everyone it sought to, Westwood ended up speaking one-on-one with just over 30 women of the 60 she contacted.

Bonnie McLindon ’14 was one of the students Westwood engaged.  After taking 106B in the fall, she was considering majoring in the subject. And the ensuing discussion with Westwood “definitely solidified my declaring CS,” McLindon said.

“I felt very included in the community,” McLindon said.  “It made me want to reach out to the other girls in 106B [who were] with me.”

Westwood also encouraged the students she spoke with tap into another effort by the department: recruiting more female section leaders for the 106 series.

That way, “the students see a greater number of female role models,” Sahami said.

The program seems to be working, as McLindon said she is applying to become a section leader in the spring.

Westwood plans to continue and expand her outreach program into this quarter and beyond.

“The building blocks are in place,” she said, referring to the revamped major and the pull of the troubled economy. “A push here would help.”

Contact Neel at nthakkar@stanford.edu.

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Three Strikes Project drafts ballot initiative https://stanforddaily.com/2011/11/29/three-strikes-project-drafts-ballot-initiative/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/11/29/three-strikes-project-drafts-ballot-initiative/#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:29:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1052392 Faculty and students involved with Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project have drafted a ballot initiative that would revise California’s controversial Three Strikes Law. Pending approval by the Office of the State Attorney General and the collection of 500,000 signatures, the proposal would appear on the state ballot in 2012.

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Faculty and students involved with Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project have drafted a ballot initiative that would revise California’s controversial Three Strikes Law. Pending approval by the Office of the State Attorney General and the collection of 500,000 signatures, the proposal would appear on the state ballot in 2012.

Three Strikes Project drafts ballot initiative
(SERENITY NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily)

Under the 17-year-old law, persons convicted of felonies can be sentenced to up to 25 years of life in prison if they have been previously convicted of two serious or violent felonies.

According to Michael Romano, the director of the Three Strikes Project, the law has sentenced people to life imprisonment for relatively small crimes, such as drug possession or petty theft.

“That is not a way to run a state or a criminal justice policy,” Romano said. “A life sentence for petty theft or drug possession is excessive.

Though the Three Strikes Project’s usual work is to argue on behalf of clients given third strikes for non-serious, non-violent crimes, it began work on the ballot initiative about a year ago after being approached by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The initiative would restrict application of the third strike to serious or violent felonies only, which Romano said is meant to restore the law to its original intent.

If the initiative passes, over 3,000 of the roughly 8,800 inmates currently jailed for third-strike offenses could go back to court for a new sentence, according to Malaina Freedman, a law student who works with Romano.

California’s Three Strikes Law was passed in 1994, partly in reaction to a string of gruesome murders committed by ex-felons. California is one of 24 states with similar laws, but is “widely regarded as the harshest non-capital sentencing law” in the nation, according to Romano.

Still, the original law retains some staunch supporters. Mike Reynolds helped draft it after his daughter Kimber was murdered in 1992.

According to Reynolds, the state saw a 37 percent drop in crime in the first four years after the law was implemented. He said he also believes the law has helped contribute to a 40-year low in crime rates.

“While all states have seen drops,” Reynolds said, “none have as much as in California.”

Although the proposed revision would not affect third-strikers jailed for serious or violent crimes, Reynolds said he believes letting any “career criminals” out of jail would be disastrous.

“If criminals are on the street, especially repeat offenders, what are they going to be doing?” he asked.

The debate over the Three Strikes Law is part of a larger debate over the future of California’s prison system.

Last May, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the state’s prisons were overcrowded enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment. At one point, the prison population was at 156,000 – almost double the system’s capacity.

As a result, California has begun a complicated process called realignment, in which it will move tens of thousands of prisoners deemed low-risk to county jails. Inmates will also be given the opportunity to serve only half their sentence if they behave well, as opposed to the former two-thirds requirement.

Reynolds said he believes the combination of the realignment program and a reformed Three Strikes Law would be “overload,” and hard for the public to swallow.

However, Romano noted that a study by the California Department of Corrections found that third-strikers jailed for non-serious, non-violent crimes were the least dangerous inmates. Giving them a way out of jail would leave more room for higher-risk inmates, Romano said.

There have been past efforts at reforming the law, the most notable of which came in 2004.

That attempt, Proposition 66, was much more ambitious – altering the second and third strike and redefining burglary – and received no support from prominent law enforcement officers or elected officials. The measure failed by a substantial margin.

Calling the 2004 effort “not well-conceived,” Romano said the Stanford team’s approach is much simpler.

He said he expects significant support from law enforcement and elected officials in the coming months, although there have not been any such announcements so far.

An independent poll conducted in June found that 74 percent of registered voters also agree with altering the Three Strikes Law.

But such support is tenuous. The 2004 proposition also enjoyed support from a healthy majority of voters until the last month of campaigning, when it sank under attacks from district attorneys and elected officials.

Reynolds said he believes the vote will essentially be a referendum on the success of the Three Strikes Law.

“Laws come and laws go,” he said. “The question is which ones work and which ones don’t.”

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