Rae Staben – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Tue, 02 Jul 2013 04:05:46 +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 Rae Staben – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Revived Sex and Love class probes college hookup culture https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/15/revived-sex-and-love-class-probes-college-hookup-culture/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/15/revived-sex-and-love-class-probes-college-hookup-culture/#respond Tue, 16 Apr 2013 06:00:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076482 Enter SOC123: Sex and Love in Modern Society, a class offered by the Department of Sociology that attempts to shed light on contemporary issues of sexuality and romance.

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At a university populated with ambitious and intellectual students, it can be difficult to find a subject Stanford undergraduates haven’t mastered yet. But what about a less-discussed topic: love? Or perhaps even a more common experience in college life: hookups?

Enter SOC123: Sex and Love in Modern Society, a class offered by the Department of Sociology that attempts to shed light on contemporary issues of sexuality and romance.

First taught in 2005 by former Professor of Sociology Paula England as a means of researching the college hookup culture, the class found a broad and receptive audience among both sociology majors and the Stanford undergraduate community at large due to its unique but simultaneously relatable subject matter.

“I started the class the second semester I was at Stanford, in the fall of 2005, in part because I was interested in studying about the new hookup culture and teaching about it,” England said. “To learn more about it myself, I had focus-group assignments that students participated in and developed an online survey [about hookup culture].”

Twenty-one universities participated in England’s study, with the data collected still used in research today.

When England left Stanford to work at New York University in 2011, the class was discontinued until Alison Fogarty M.A. ’09 Ph.D. ’13, England’s former research assistant and a current sociology doctoral student, took on the class this quarter.

“I’ve restructured the course, updated the materials and added in new topics,” Fogarty emphasized. “I have done a lot of modifying the course since the days that Paula taught it.”

Although Fogarty has developed a new curriculum and course structure based on England’s previous lectures, she noted that the general subject matter of the class has been left untouched.

“We look at both sexual interactions as well as relationships, and so we do cover quite a broad amount of topics,” she said.

Those topics include controversial items, like sex positivity, pornography and the college hookup culture. Still, Fogarty said that she intends to look at more widely accepted and often common elements of contemporary sexuality, including homosexual relationships and same-sex families, as well as the effects of cohabitation on childbirth.

“We also look at things like American families and how the demography of them has been changing, covering topics like out-of-marriage childbirth and cohabitation,” she added.

David Huynh ’14, a member of Fogarty’s class, said he enrolled in the course purely out of interest in the often-taboo subject matter.

“Most of the topics are interesting, including college hookup culture,” he said. “There was a disclaimer in class that there will be some touchy material discussed.”

In order to respect student privacy, the class has a policy that any personal experiences shared in class cannot be shared elsewhere on the Farm — or anywhere else at all.

Still, Huynh conceded that the intimate nature of such storytelling made him uncomfortable at first.

“I think the only thing that made me uncomfortable is that there is a lot of personal story sharing,” Huynh said. “People have been through a lot … It shows you that there is a lot out there. People do some crazy things.”

According to Fogarty, the class used to be a lecture-style course with over 100 students, which she has since reduced to a mere 25 in order to foster a more personalized experience that also focuses with greater depth on the assigned texts. For example, students write a short analysis about the readings or lecture for each class period.

“When Paula was teaching it, it was a huge class, so it was much harder to have assignments like that,” Fogarty said. “I think it is really important for the students to integrate the information and to have that opportunity to reflect on how the material is impacting them … and so I think that, for me, is one of the things I am most excited about the course offering to students.”

Although the class has just entered its third week, students like Jacky Lee ’14 said they have found the novelty of discussing issues like sex positivity to be eye opening.

“I’ve never heard about sex positivity,” Lee said, referencing the course’s first lecture, which was led by renowned sex educator Charlie Glickman. “There should be more of an open mindset for looking at sex. I thought it was really interesting because I’ve never thought about it that way. I grew up in a very sex-negative mindset.”

Lee said that he enrolled in the class simply as a means of expanding her knowledge about sexuality, a subject his background prevented her from analyzing to any great extent.

“I thought it would be an interesting class to take because I came from of a conservative Chinese culture … and I’m also Catholic,” Lee said. “I’m going in with an open mindset. I’m thinking of it more as a learning experience.”

Similarly, Huynh commented the class has already impacted his life.

“Just from the first class analysis that we did, it made me reflect on how I can improve by becoming more sex positive versus sex negative,” he said. “It made me more knowledgeable and respectful of other people, just in the first two classes.”

While Huynh and Lee entered the class with little idea of what to expect out of such discussions, Whitney Wells ’12 M.A. ’13, a former employee of the Sexual Health Peer Resource Center, joined Fogarty’s course as a way of grappling with these issues in her own life.

“I’m most excited to use the class to discover any sex negativity in myself,” Wells said. “Before taking the class, I hadn’t considered studying sex and love. Now I want to carry it on as I go forward in my studies.”

With such positive student feedback, the class may be on its way to once again becoming a Stanford staple.

“Gender, sexuality, relationships and love are topics that impact all of us in our lives,” Fogarty said. “Getting to understand the social processes that are involved in structuring the way that these things operate is hugely important, both on a personal level and on a sociological level.”

 

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Tour guides curate Stanford for visitors https://stanforddaily.com/2012/11/08/tour-guides-curate-stanford-for-visitors/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/11/08/tour-guides-curate-stanford-for-visitors/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2012 07:36:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1072881 Stanford tour guides introduce over 100,000 visitors annually to the Farm through campus walking tours overseen by Stanford Visitor Information Services (VIS). And they do it all while walking backwards.

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Tour guides curate Stanford for visitors
Stanford campus guides lead visitors on campus tours, but their facts are sometimes imperfect. (CHRIS SACKES/The Stanford Daily)

Stanford tour guides introduce over 100,000 visitors annually to the Farm through campus walking tours overseen by Stanford Visitor Information Services (VIS). And they do it all while walking backwards.

“You get to be the face of Stanford to the 20 people on your tour,” said tour guide Eric Mattson ’15. “It’s very gratifying, getting to show people around the campus. That has done a lot for me personally.”

“[Training] is pretty intensive,” said tour guide Kristi Bohl ’13. “It takes about two months from the point at which you are hired before you give your own tours…The VIS quiz is thorough and it goes point by point through all the major facts.”

To become a tour guide, students must go through training for most of spring quarter. VIS hires guides beginning in mid-March, giving successful applicants “the VIS Bible,” or the tour guide training manual. They then attend an orientation session, shadow five or six tours and are paired with a more experienced guide.

The most crucial tool in the tour guide kit is the training manual, a 200-page binder filled with facts about Stanford. It gives detailed information about Stanford academics, athletics, housing and student groups. And guides aren’t joking when they call it the bible: the manual’s preface includes instructions like “duct tape it to your torso” and “make it a part of you.”

Facts inside – such as “Did you know the Bookstore is the second-largest university bookstore in the U.S.?” – change from year to year.

“It’s based on the previous years’ manuals, and then every year we may add or take away depending on how things change,” said Christina Ziegler, VIS administrative associate. “For example, this year, the Thinking Matters program is coming out, so we’re going to kind of have to do a lot more than we would normally do to put together information about that for the guides.”

But not every tour will use the same facts.

“We try to give way more information than you would every give on a tour so you can kind of pick and choose what is important to share on each tour,” Ziegler said. “If it’s a group of third graders coming, facts that [tour guides] share are going to be different than if it is international businessmen coming, because obviously the group is going to have different interests.”

Guides continue professional development throughout their tour-guiding career. They practice public speaking, complete workshops on customer service and go on tours of specific areas of campus, such as Hoover Tower, to learn more detailed information.

Despite the training tour guides complete, some errors slip through. On a recent tour, a guide claimed human biology is the most popular major at Stanford, followed by computer science. Last year, though, 220 students declared a computer science major, making it the most popular major at Stanford. The guide also flubbed the total Stanford population, overestimating by several thousand students.

Errors with numbers may be the result of recalling over 200 pages worth of information while, of course, walking backwards. However, many errors stem from oversimplifications of University policies.

For example, one guide said that all sections for large lecture classes are capped at 16 students. Though the majority of large classes have small sections, larger sections of about forty students are also common.

Another maintained that Stanford offers need-blind financial aid for all students, though this is not true of international students.

Many of the tour guides use mistakes as learning experiences, taking their errors in stride so they can be more accurate in the future.

“It was actually not even a tour with other people,” Mattson said, recalling an instance of giving incorrect information on a practice tour. “I literally had no idea what to say, and so I just started babbling. That was a good learning experience. It prompted me to go back and make sure that what I’m saying is substantiated in the manual.”

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PA Council to discuss proposed complex near Caltrain station https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/16/city-council-to-hold-referendum-on-university-avenue-development/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/16/city-council-to-hold-referendum-on-university-avenue-development/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2012 08:35:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1071887 The project, which will be voted upon at the Nov. 5 meeting, has received funding from John Arrillaga '92 MBA '98 and will house TheatreWorks, the third-largest theater company in the Bay Area.

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The Palo Alto City Council will seek a referendum on its plans to develop an office and professional theater complex across from the Palo Alto Caltrain Station at 27 University Ave.

PA Council to discuss proposed complex near Caltrain station
(MADELINE SIDES/The Stanford Daily)

The project, which will be voted upon at the Nov. 5 meeting, has received funding from John Arrillaga ’92 MBA ’98 and will house TheatreWorks, the third-largest theater company in the Bay Area.

The City Council has also requested a traffic study, a reexamination of the size and scale of the structure by the Planning and Transportation Commission and a comprehensive plan for public outreach before further steps are taken. The public will be able to air any concerns at the November meeting.

A City Council staff report dated Sept. 24 stated that the plan aims to create an “arts and innovation district” at the “highly visible and accessible” area between Stanford University and downtown Palo Alto.

“It brings together the edges of the Palo Alto community with the Stanford community and begins to create a new place of interchange,” said Palo Alto Councilman Greg Schmid.

Some Palo Alto citizens have already voiced their discontent. Martin Sommer started an online petition to urge the mayor and City Council to retain the 50-foot limit, which the building would violate. The current complex is planned at over 100 feet.

“If John [Arrillaga] were to build his office complex, it would destroy my living space, and the space of 43 other homeowners in Abitare,” Sommer wrote in his online petition. Sixty-seven supporters have signed the petition as of Oct. 15.

The city’s enforcement of the 50-foot limit has loosened since it was established in the 1970s. The 101 Lytton Ave. building measures 70 feet and restrictions were eased for the Stanford Hospital & Clinics medical center.

“We are well aware of the petition and the number signed and the interest in the community,” Schmid said. “I think our next scheduled meeting… will be a time for us to hear from a range of the public. We are looking forward to the public playing a big role in this.”

University Director of Community Relations Jean McCown said that while Stanford is not directly involved in the development’s approval process, it is supportive of the project.

“It is impossible to propose this without the University’s consent of proposal,” McCown said.

McCown also wrote a letter to Palo Alto Vice Mayor Greg Scharff expressing the University’s support, saying, “Stanford is pleased that the city of Palo Alto will be giving this proposal its thoughtful and constructive consideration.”

According to Schmid, all of the proceeds of the office space will be given as a gift to Stanford.

 

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