Sarah Myers – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Mon, 15 Mar 2021 05:35:45 +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 Sarah Myers – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Opinion | The world hurts. Now what? https://stanforddaily.com/2021/03/14/opinion-the-world-hurts-now-what/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/03/14/opinion-the-world-hurts-now-what/#respond Mon, 15 Mar 2021 05:35:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1179800 More than 500,000 Americans have been killed by COVID-19, writes Sarah Myers. Our humanity must not die with them.

The post Opinion | The world hurts. Now what? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
After a year of enormous loss and sacrifice, we are losing our ability to feel shocked, or even saddened, by the tragedies surrounding us. At the same time, we are falling into complacency, starting to let our metaphorical masks fall below our noses and banking on the hope of vaccines. But this pandemic is far from over. The structural inadequacies and inequalities that exacerbated it and the horrors we have experienced this year will not change unless we pull ourselves together and see this through. Reading the news hurts; trying to stay afloat yourself while helping others is difficult; but turning away from these things will only lead to more pain. 

The United States has just passed a terrifying milestone: half a million deaths due to COVID-19. It is impossible to conceive of the grief encompassed in that number. Each one of the deceased will be missed by loved ones, by community members, by the people who didn’t know their name but saw them at the bus stop every day. 

Our nation, however, has barely taken a moment to mourn this enormous loss. We are too busy watching with horror and shock as it becomes clear that at least 58 people died in Texas because of a single winter storm. 

We are frightened and disurbed by increasing hate crimes against Asian American people, including a large number of attacks on Asian seniors in the Bay Area since January. 

We are watching in disbelief as Breonna Taylor’s murderers are charged with firing bullets into her neighbors’ apartment but not with her killing. Even as Black Lives Matter fades from the headlines, Black people in the United States face a disproportionate risk of dying from COVID-19. Despite a summer of activism, many Americans do not realize that, as of October 2020, one in 1,000 Black Americans had died of COVID-19. Not one in 1,000 elderly Black Americans, or Black Americans with preexisting conditions — one out of every 1,000 Black people in America.

We watched white supremacists mount an armed attack on the US Capitol.

Amid all of this, we either have the privilege of being socially isolated or the burden of being forced to continue going to work and risking exposure to the virus. People throughout the U.S. are facing financial hardship due to COVID-19, and the suffering is not equal. Black and Latino people are more likely to have slipped into poverty during the pandemic, and women of color are disproportionately likely to have lost their jobs

We are facing a mental health crisis of stress and loneliness. We are hitting the “pandemic wall.” We are profoundly tired, sad and frustrated.

And now we hear that 500,000 people have died, many of whom might have survived if only our previous president and state governments had been willing to do what was right instead of what was easy. 

In some ways, this enormous toll barely seems to register. It is too large a number for the human mind to emotionally grasp, and we have experienced far too much tragedy already in the past 12 months. Human minds are very good at getting used to things. We become desensitized without intending to do so. Now, it seems that we are getting used to human suffering. 

It is difficult, when you are already facing so much loss in your own life, to find the empathy necessary to truly feel the loss of 500,000 people whom you did not know personally. It seems pointless. Yet, we must extend that empathy and let ourselves feel the pain our neighbors are feeling, because, if we do not, callousness has won. We must feel the pain of others, because we must give them the help and kindness that we too would need, were we in their place. 

It is so very tempting to think that the end of the pandemic is just around the corner. President Biden has promised that all adult Americans will have access to vaccines by this summer. Case numbers are going down from their holiday peak. We are coming up on 12 months of isolation, and the weather is getting warmer. The hard truth, however, is that this pandemic is far from over.

Biden’s promise applies only to people eligible to get vaccinated in the United States. Outside of the U.S., 130 countries have not yet received any vaccines. Experts are already trying desperately to make us understand that everyone, all eight billion of us, must be vaccinated before anyone is truly safe. Viruses mutate; they spread across borders; they evade vaccines. Worldwide vaccination, not national vaccination, must be the goal. 

In the U.S., it will be months before many people have access to vaccines, and not everyone will be included at all. Florida has already implemented a proof of residency requirement for vaccinations, which appears to exclude migrant workers and other groups that do not have Florida-issued forms of ID. Even once we are vaccinated, or the pandemic is declared over, the lives lost to COVID-19 will not be returned. The financial hardship created by the pandemic will not be alleviated overnight, and the benefits of any economic recovery will not be equitably distributed — just look at the deeply unequal recovery from the 2008 recession, during which the 1% experienced economic growth twice as high as the 99%.

Looking at a nation which has already gone through far too much, I am deeply reluctant to make demands. Yet we must take action to ensure that the future ahead of us is not just another cycle of the tragedies behind. We have already seen how the desire to prevent another attack like the siege of the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 is leading some to repeat the mistakes of the U.S. response to 9/11, such as unethical surveillance and overpolicing. We have seen how the vaccination process is leaving behind Black people and other people of color — even though they face the most danger from COVID-19. Instead of defunding the police, some politicians have diverted COVID-19 relief funds to them.

While there are actions we can take as individuals, it’s worth addressing something that many Stanford students tend to forget. Although our student demographics are heavily tilted toward the rich, many students have experienced financial hardship, and this may have worsened during the pandemic. Many students have lost loved ones to the virus. Many students have experienced serious mental health problems, which the pandemic has often exacerbated. Many of us are in a position to donate time and money to others, but some of us are not. 

Too often, in communications from the University administration, emails from professors and even articles in this paper, we assume that the students and community members reading have not been deeply affected by COVID-19, poverty or other problems and issue general calls for “everyone” and “all of us” to take action. While calls to action are important, it is just as important for those of us who need help to ask for it, and for others to help the less privileged members of our community. A lot of organizations have been doing great work throughout the past year and could very much use our assistance.

Last spring, students launched the Stanford Basic Needs Fund, a mutual aid fund to make sure that students have access to food, housing, and healthcare. Students for Workers’ Rights has been raising funds for workers laid off by the University.

In the Bay Area, the Asian Law Caucus and Stop Asian American Pacific Islander Hate campaign are working to protect the rights of Asian people. VICE news has also put together a list of organizations working to help Asian people in the United States. Compassion in Oakland is organizing volunteer escorts for Asian people in Oakland.

Black Lives Matter is still accepting donations, and the Bay Area Council has compiled a list of organizations working for racial justice that are seeking donations or volunteers. 

Second Harvest Food Bank is accepting donations and volunteers. If you’re not in the Bay Area, Feeding America maintains a directory of food banks nationwide

Bay Area Rescue Mission is working to provide food, shelter and clothing to people without housing in the Bay Area. The National Coalition for the Homeless also maintains a national directory of organizations working to help people without housing.

And, of course, you must wear your mask, wash your hands and keep a distance of six feet from anyone not in your household. When it is your turn, get vaccinated if you are medically able. Contact President Biden, your Senators and your Representatives to urge them to present a plan to aid vaccination in all countries, not just people in the United States. Vote in local and midterm elections, and force yourself to remember or look up exactly how each candidate chose to respond to COVID-19 and every other crisis we have faced this year. 

This has been a year of loss, suffering and pain. It is easy to think that there is nothing you can do, or that any effort is pointless, but that is not true. Ending this pandemic depends on all of us being kind to each other and ourselves by practicing social distancing and getting vaccinated. Building a better and more equitable future depends on that same kindness, as well as accountability at the polls for the leaders who failed us.

We cannot become numb to the suffering in the U.S. today. Maintaining empathy and facing these tragedies head-on hurts; how could it not? But that pain is necessary. More than 500,000 Americans have been killed by COVID-19. Our humanity must not die with them.

The Daily is committed to publishing a diversity of op-eds and letters to the editor. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Email letters to the editor to eic ‘at’ stanforddaily.com and op-ed submissions to opinions ‘at’ stanforddaily.com.

Follow The Daily on FacebookTwitter and Instagram

The post Opinion | The world hurts. Now what? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2021/03/14/opinion-the-world-hurts-now-what/feed/ 0 1179800
Opinion | Mapping Stanford: A campus tour of institutional priorities https://stanforddaily.com/2021/02/11/mapping-stanford-a-campus-tour-of-institutional-priorities/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/02/11/mapping-stanford-a-campus-tour-of-institutional-priorities/#respond Fri, 12 Feb 2021 03:39:57 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1177920 The administration’s choices about what to build, what to improve and where to invest offer a set of real-world choices to compare to the aspirational mission statements in university communications, Sarah Myers writes.

The post Opinion | Mapping Stanford: A campus tour of institutional priorities appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Since Stanford decided that frosh and sophomores would not be returning to campus for winter quarter a mere two days before classes started, I’ve been pondering how to offer our classmates the support that Stanford cannot (or perhaps will not). It’s impossible to replace the community-building and intellectual development that these students are missing. However, I think it might be possible to offer a pale imitation of the campus experience. 

Some of Stanford’s campus experience is very easy to imitate; find a busy intersection and spend the five minutes before your classes begin dashing through it on a bike without a helmet (do not actually do this). Find a sunny patch of grass, bring your textbooks, call your friends, pretend they’re there with you and do not open your textbooks. Yet other parts of the campus experience are much more difficult to replicate. Seeing campus through professor’s Zoom backgrounds does not reveal the priorities communicated by Stanford’s decisions about which buildings to build and where to build them. 

Stanford’s long-term decisions about how and where to invest in campus facilities make it clear that, in the administration’s eyes, some fields are worth more than others, some regions are worth more than others and student comfort is barely worth consideration. Walking through campus proves that, no matter how many carefully written emails Stanford’s PR team writes, the University’s abysmal behavior throughout the COVID-19 pandemic is not atypical, or even unusual — it is exactly what we should expect from them. 

Let’s begin, as any stereotypical tour of campus would, at the end of Palm Drive. One hundred and sixty palm trees, according to Stanford, line Palm Drive as it leads down to the Oval and Main Quad. On one side of the road, hidden in the trees, is the Stanford family’s mausoleum, home of topless sphinxes and an annual Halloween party which was probably once cool.

Further down, closer to the Main Quad and carefully distanced from Cantor, the STEM section of campus begins. Here is a newly renovated chemistry building, followed by two older buildings currently being renovated, then (next to the Main Quad) the Hewlett and Packard buildings, the physics department buildings and an entire brand new Quad dedicated to engineering. These complexes, with the exception of the neglected and tragically beautiful Branner Earth Sciences Library, are modern workspaces with comfortable rolling chairs, plenty of natural light, coworking spaces and fancy glass whiteboards. 

The center line of this new Quad, perpendicular to Palm Drive, aligns neatly with the crossways midline of the Main Quad. If we travel down this path, we will go through one of the large gates on either side of the Main Quad and enter its large central courtyard. To your right is Memorial Church and its enormous mosaic of Jesus. Many students think that they will spend much of their time at Stanford here, and they’re half right; the Math Corner, History Corner, and Language Corner do host a fair number of classes. However, much of the Main Quad is reserved for administration offices, professors’ offices and other spaces not intended for student use. Perhaps that’s just as well, though — nearly all of these buildings are badly in need of renovation, with few to no group study spaces and leaky faucets, as well as large numbers of stairs, narrow hallways, remote elevators and ramps and other inaccessible features. 

Continuing through the opposite gate of the Quad, we find ourselves facing one end of Green Library. Green is a fascinating place, home to the “stacks,” which house most of the library’s on-site books in charming but rickety reduced-height stories. It is also the world’s first human centipede library, with the original mission-style building (facing the Quad) connected in the back to a newer brutalist construction which enjoys the impressive distinction of being one of the world’s ugliest examples of the style. Students can look forward to an upcoming renovation of the first floor, which will get rid of those annoying bookshelves and replace them with an exhibition of knick-knacks from various tech companies, intended to “celebrate the ingenuity that powers Silicon Valley.”

To the side of Green Library is the Hoover Institution, which has recently gotten an extremely fancy addition, often adorned with security guards whose job it is to protect whichever Trump administration official has dropped in to be fawned over. At this point, the vast majority of the American public know the Institution only as the home of Scott Atlas, whose fanatical devotion to ignoring scientific evidence about COVID-19 made him a favorite of twice-impeached Donald Trump.

Turning away from this monstrosity, we find ourselves walking up a hill towards the fountain nicknamed “The Claw,” next to which you might spot Stanford College Republican’s semi-monthly political theater in support of issues like banning abortion and confirming an alleged sexual assaulter to the Supreme Court. To the right is the Old Student Union, which used to house administrator offices and has been the site of a number of student demonstrations, including a sit-in demanding that Stanford divest from South Africa during apartheid. I’m sure this history has nothing to do with why administrators have now moved their offices into much more discrete locations in the Main Quad (though that hasn’t entirely stopped the protests). 

Of course, such a tour leaves out almost as much as it includes. For instance, lurking behind Lathrop Library is the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which has a set of incredibly nice buildings and dorms that it has to work very hard to keep undergraduates out of. You may remember the GSB from recent Daily headlines describing its prioritization of wine nights over social distancing. 

Across from that is Encina Hall, home to much of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies and FSI’s Europe Center. Also in the building is Stanford’s Center for Human Rights and International Justice, which has just recently moved into its forever home in the basement of the building. 

Interestingly, the Center for Latin American Studies is not part of FSI or Encina and is instead housed in Bolivar House, a rather small and somewhat run-down house located one block outside of Campus Drive. Some of the Center’s work is done in the small shed in Bolivar House’s backyard. 

Although FSI does have the Asia-Pacific Research Center, there is no Center for Africa. Stanford’s International Relations major offers a number of regional specializations, but the Latin American & Iberian Studies and Africa specializations have significantly fewer courses offered than other regions. In fact, two of the seven courses currently offered for the Africa specialization are “Global Human Geography: Asia and Africa” and “Ethnicity and Violence: Anthropological Perspectives,” both general classes rather than Africa-specific ones. Four of the remaining six classes are offered only to students studying abroad in Cape Town, one of which is the only course that focuses on a specific country in Africa (“Transitional Justice and Transformation Debates in South Africa”).

But it could be worse, and indeed it is — The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute seems to have been permanently assigned to a “temporary” trailer-style building from the 1960s. Despite repeated calls for Stanford to provide even the bare minimum support for this Institute, the University refuses to fund the Institute itself or even assist in its fundraising efforts. 

And throughout campus are outdated dorms, which lag behind other colleges in amenities, including a far larger proportion of one-room doubles (and even triples), aging buildings and fixtures and significant pest control problems (most outlandishly, residents of the FroSoCo Quad are asked not to leave first floor doors open because snakes will enter the dorms). Beyond the Business School, again outside of Campus Drive, are the Escondido Village Graduate Residences. These residences were built to house more than 2,400 graduate students and are currently housing undergraduates, likely because Stanford’s undergraduate housing, with its high proportion of shared rooms and bathrooms, is not safe in a pandemic. To prepare the residences for undergraduate use, the University helpfully removed all of the installed ovens so that undergraduates could instead be required to pay a great deal of money for a meal plan providing take out from dining halls in which they cannot actually eat. These high-rises help address the problem of insufficient graduate housing, which forces graduate students to find their own housing in the notoriously expensive Bay Area but do not solve the long-running problem that many graduate students, after paying rent for their Stanford residences, struggle to make ends meet

Stanford is a complicated institution with multiple funding streams and diverse priorities. Yet the administration’s choices about what to build, what to improve and where to invest offer a set of real-world choices to compare to the aspirational mission statements in University communications. Engineering, and STEM generally, take priority over humanities. Within the humanities, the Global South and human rights are secondary to other regions and focuses. The quality of student housing is not a priority, but Stanford is happy to increase the number of people paying rent to the University. Although some funding comes from gifts made with a specific purpose in mind, Stanford’s fundraising office fails to steer donors toward underserved areas. 

It is tempting to tell ourselves that Stanford is a fundamentally good institution, committed to providing a high-quality liberal arts education while supporting academic research and that the very public missteps, broken promises and misleading statements we have seen over the past few months are simply small mistakes made at a time of great stress. However, the very geography of Stanford’s campus, a product of carefully thought-out choices made again and again over decades, proves that wrong. Stanford is charging full tuition for a terrible experience, putting liability over students’ need for community, and abusing all of our goodwill because that is exactly the kind of institution it is and has been for several decades. 

A university that accepts the responsibility of hosting the King Institute, home to perhaps the most important collection of Dr. King’s writings, and then shoves it into a glorified mobile home and ignores it for decades on end, is not a university committed to bringing out the best in humanity. A university which in December reaffirms its plans to bring students back to campus and in January suddenly tells its students that they will not return to campus that month is acting with less integrity than it demands of the students it is failing. But this is our university, and it will continue to be until we face this reality and demand better. Stanford has a community of extraordinary teachers and students, a beautiful campus despite its flaws and, if all else fails, a $30 billion endowment. It is more than reasonable to demand more academically diverse priorities, more respect for topics like the Global South and human rights, and more integrity. If anything, it would be embarrassing and unethical to allow this shameful behavior to continue.

All of us can act now to demand better. This past June, Stanford students launched the #StandWithKing initiative, as well as a drive for donations led by the Class of 2020. Stanford students can follow our peers at Columbia, who have begun a tuition strike to demand a better COVID-19 response. We can pledge not to donate to Stanford after we graduate unless the University invests in the humanities, offers adequate academic programs on the Global South, supports the King Institute and prioritizes student well being. We know that Stanford responds to financial incentives and, to a lesser extent, public shaming. It’s time to use those tools.

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers2 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Opinion | Mapping Stanford: A campus tour of institutional priorities appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2021/02/11/mapping-stanford-a-campus-tour-of-institutional-priorities/feed/ 0 1177920
The hypocrisy of it all https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/25/the-hypocrisy-of-it-all/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/25/the-hypocrisy-of-it-all/#respond Mon, 26 Oct 2020 04:09:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1174011 It is embarrassing that an entire country is reacting to the death of an esteemed judicial leader by immediately squabbling over her replacement. Yet in the long term it is perhaps even more disappointing and embarrassing that a country’s entire political establishment is flip-flopping on its positions at will for the sake of ever smaller bits of power.

The post The hypocrisy of it all appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
In March 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia passed away and President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to take his place. Senate Republicans blocked the nomination, saying that presidents should not be able to fill Supreme Court vacancies in an election year. The United States Constitution makes no such restriction. Garland was highly qualified, having served as chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for some time.

In September 2020, less than two full months before the 2020 presidential election, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. Justice Ginsburg passed away on a Friday evening. The following Tuesday, President Donald Trump stated that he would announce his nominee for her replacement on Saturday. As planned, Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett on Sept. 26 in a Rose Garden ceremony which appears to have become a super-spreader event in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Republican senators hastened to announce their support for the nomination. 

Sen. Mitch McConnell, who led efforts to block Garland’s nomination, is now leading the push to confirm Judge Barrett. The list of senators who opposed Garland’s confirmation as senators in 2016 and are now supporting Barrett’s nomination is 39 names long. 

Of course, the list of Democrats who’ve done the same switch in the opposite direction isn’t exactly short. Republicans started this fight and made up a ridiculous claim with no basis in the law to block Merrick Garland’s confirmation, but Democrats are now stooping to the same ridiculous level. The difference in time between the elections and Scalia and Ginsburg’s passings is significant, but the president still has legal authority to nominate a new justice. In other words, “they started it” is not a valid legal doctrine. 

This stunning display of hypocrisy is not random, nor is it solely a result of these specific senators’ lack of integrity. It is the culmination of decades of deregulation of American elections bringing more and more money into politics and it is the result of of voters rewarding showmanship and partisanship over substance and integrity. Until common sense regulations limiting political spending are put in place, the rich will continue to buy politicians and policies. Common sense regulations must come from Congress and state legislatures, not piecemeal Court decisions, and that will not happen until voters prioritize electing honest, qualified candidates over good sound bites. 

At this moment, it is disappointing that the awe-inspiring Justice Ginsburg will likely be replaced by someone whose entire career seems dedicated to making decisions that undermine or invalidate Justice Ginsburg’s achievements. It is embarrassing that an entire country is reacting to the death of an esteemed judicial leader by immediately squabbling over her replacement.

Yet in the long term it is perhaps even more disappointing and embarrassing that a country’s entire political establishment is flip-flopping on its positions at will for the sake of ever smaller bits of power. We have reduced politics to public theater, financed at extraordinary levels by taxpayer money. Even the most fervent supporter of any political candidate will freely admit that their candidate sometimes dodges questions, changes their position or takes liberties with the facts for the sake of winning over voters or gaining power once they’re in office. 

This has perhaps always been true, but it has intensified recently, thanks to shortening attention spans and political polarization, and it has been growing since what many political scientists see as an inflection point in the second half of the 20th century. The Vietnam War, Nixon’s impeachment and the enormous crisis of trust they engendered created a seemingly long-lived, or perhaps permanent, “credibility gap” between those perceived as political elites and most voters. 

Many analysts and pundits have pointed to this complete lack of integrity as a contributing factor for Trump’s success. Trump, the story goes, seems more authentic, less like a polished politician and more like someone you might know in real life. That story might have a kernel of truth, but disgust with today’s mainstream politicians is not a free pass for racism.

That said, even if one realizes that support for Trump is more a question of bigots having an excuse and outlet rather than disenchanted voters looking for authenticity, we absolutely must fix the crisis of integrity at the heart of our political institutions. Democracies cannot survive if their citizens do not think they are legitimate. The United States government, with Trump’s enthusiastic help, is losing the last bits of legitimacy it had left. If we do not get more honest, consistent politicians, then the entire system will be in jeopardy. 

The question of how to get those politicians is not easy. The U.S., with the assistance of Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United v. FEC (the “money is speech” case), has set up a system of elections in which one must have a great deal of funds to win. This system produces candidates who are willing to say the right things and make the right promises to win backing from lobbyists and industry organizations. The corrosive effects of ever greater amounts of money have combined with the hollowing out of public debate and increasing rewards for partisanship over policy to create a government full of hypocrites. 

We need limits on individual donations, prohibitions on donations by profit-seeking entities, the end of PACs and super PACs, limits on political advertising and consequences for dishonest ads, anti-corruption regulations which include more than quid pro quo, strict limits on lobbyists’ access to politicians, strict limits on politicians and their families’ interactions with foreign entities, moderate stipends campaigns so that non-rich people can enter politics and a host of other reforms. These changes cannot come from court decisions or pledges by candidates. They must be enacted with convincing majorities by Congress and state legislatures or they will not work. And that enactment requires better politicians who will be willing to write and pass such legislation. 

We as voters have also become more comfortable with filling in the blanks. Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings are an exercise in not answering the question, because it has become customary for Supreme Court nominees to be coy about their actual beliefs. This election’s vice presidential debate, while at least less awful than the first presidential debate, was also dominated by unanswered questions and rhetorical dodges. This is not some epidemic of reticence. Politicians have learned that refusing to answer difficult questions and allowing voters to assume whatever they prefer the answer to be is a much more successful strategy than answering truthfully and inevitably alienating at least some people. Until we, the voters, reward honesty and forthrightness over obfuscation, even when we disagree with honest answers, this behavior will continue. 

This will not be easy. As we saw in 2016 and again this year, the two-party system and primary system interact to yield very little voter choice in general elections and often select candidates whose base of supporters is enthusiastic but very small or they simply select the blandest candidate. Ending the two-party system is probably not possible without constitutional amendments, which are out of reach as long as our politics are controlled by money and dishonest politicians. 

However, a large majority of voters do not participate in presidential primaries, and even fewer participate in state and local elections and primaries. This allows the voters who do show up, many of whom hold more extreme views, and large donors, who do understand the importance of primaries, to choose the candidates they prefer. If you feel dissatisfied with this year’s candidates or with political parties generally, the answer is to take primaries seriously and actually participate, not vote for demagogues or stop voting at all. 

Voters have created similar perverse incentives when it comes to policy decisions while our representatives are in office. We decry hypocrisy but want our representatives to win no matter the cost. When Justice Ginsburg passed away, senators on both sides of the aisle knew that they absolutely had to toe the party line (unless, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski, they come from a swing state and hold a seat that will be up for contention in 2022). To do otherwise would be to anger their base and party for no clear reward. In a two-party system whose primary elections are dominated by extremist party members, there is no reward for sticking your neck out for decency. 

None of this absolves any of the senators above or any other politician. All of them are adults with a great deal of social capital who constantly have the choice to reject hypocrisy and constantly fail to do so. But, it’s painfully clear that they are not going to fix this problem. Until we demand more egalitarian election practices, until voters reward integrity and honesty, we will continue to be disappointed and embarrassed by our politicians’ hypocrisy. 

Electing Biden this year will at least slow the decline of our democracy. In the face of Trump’s increasingly anti-democratic actions, that counts for a great deal. But a new president alone cannot fix the problems that brought us to this point. We must demand more honest, consistent behavior from our representatives, and then demand that those representatives enact better election regulations. Those demands will occasionally work against the candidates or party we support, as both sides have become far too comfortable with money and dishonesty, though I would argue that one has gone much farther than the other. But compromising desperately needed reform for the sake of party loyalty is exactly what senators are doing now, exactly what we must oppose. 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The Daily is committed to publishing a diversity of op-eds and letters to the editor. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Email letters to the editor to eic ‘at’ stanforddaily.com and op-ed submissions to opinions ‘at’ stanforddaily.com. Follow The Daily on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The post The hypocrisy of it all appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/25/the-hypocrisy-of-it-all/feed/ 0 1174011
From Stanford, yet another disappointment https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/17/from-stanford-yet-another-disappointment/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/17/from-stanford-yet-another-disappointment/#respond Fri, 18 Sep 2020 06:21:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172526 Stanford recently announced that frosh, sophomores and transfer students will no longer return to campus this fall quarter. This was almost certainly the right decision, given the frightening rise in cases in California in recent weeks and the United States’ seeming inability to contain COVID-19.  Buried deep in that Re-Approaching Stanford email, though, was yet […]

The post From Stanford, yet another disappointment appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Stanford recently announced that frosh, sophomores and transfer students will no longer return to campus this fall quarter. This was almost certainly the right decision, given the frightening rise in cases in California in recent weeks and the United States’ seeming inability to contain COVID-19. 

Buried deep in that Re-Approaching Stanford email, though, was yet another disappointing bit of news. Stanford’s original plan for the 2020-21 academic year called for juniors and seniors to be on campus in the winter and spring. Now, the University says that frosh, sophomores and transfers will be on campus in the winter, leaving only spring for juniors and seniors. Frosh, sophomores and transfers will still be on campus in the summer, meaning that juniors and seniors are now getting half of the time on campus that underclassmen will get. 

Stanford’s original rationale for bringing underclassmen back first was that they, and frosh in particular, needed to spend their first quarter of college on campus. That made sense at the time — the first year of college is when most students meet the vast majority of their friends, join clubs, learn how to live independently and lean on other students for emotional and academic support during a time of enormous change. Additionally, underclassmen are less likely to have summer internships, so they could return in summer without seriously disrupting their academic and professional development. The longer break between the fall and winter quarters would allow Stanford to clean the dorms between occupants. 

Almost none of that logic applies now. Frosh and transfer students will have to spend their first quarter remotely, and bringing them to campus in winter won’t change that. Students can’t realistically wait to start school until winter unless the University suddenly decides to push a whole bunch of three-class series back a quarter — which would seriously undermine students in every other class and put seniors at risk of not being able to graduate on time. Furthermore, the break between winter and spring is never going to be long enough to safely turn over the dorms. Stanford hasn’t even managed to pack up and store the stuff I left in my dorm room five months ago; how can they expect to clear out and sanitize every room on campus in a week-long spring break?

There’s also the important point that juniors and seniors had entirely justifiable and reasonable expectations that the University would at least make an effort to help us salvage this year. Junior year is often one of the hardest academic years. Senior year is supposed to be difficult in some ways but also fun and rewarding in others. Seniors are facing enormous decisions about their future, made even more challenging now that the job market is cratering, saying goodbye to college and their friends and often working on theses or final projects. And, to be completely honest, senior year is supposed to be the year when you get to celebrate all the work you’ve put into college. 

I thought I would spend this year working on my thesis with my friends and cohort members, spending way too much time in Green Library and relying on the books there for much of my background literature. Now, I won’t have that support and I may not be able to get the books I need for my thesis. Perhaps foolishly, I spend the three years leading up to this one prioritizing work over fun. I’ve still had plenty of fun, but I thought it was better to focus on my academic record so that I could really enjoy senior year. Now, it seems that I’ll never get the chance. This year was supposed to be a year of being a student leader and building communities that would continue long after I left campus. Instead, I am desperately trying to figure out how anyone can feel a sense of community from a different time zone and battling my own Zoom fatigue while wondering if I can possibly convince my friends to show up for yet another Zoom event I’m planning. I am painfully aware that these losses and griefs are utterly insignificant compared to the experiences of so many others right now. Yet that doesn’t make them hurt any less. 

Many rising seniors had already accepted that celebrations would be scaled back and socially distanced, that graduation would be done over Zoom and that this year would not be the year we were promised. Now, Stanford is asking us to accept yet another sacrifice. Admittedly, I don’t have an anonymous source in the President’s office, but it’s hard not to suspect that this is more of a cynical calculation than a compassionate choice. 

Stanford knows that seniors and juniors are significantly less able to take this year off and wait for the return of normal college life. We have thesis programs, professional plans, and other pressures keeping us enrolled. Underclassmen, especially frosh, have significantly fewer reasons to stay enrolled for a subpar frosh and much more freedom to simply wait until next year. Stanford has made it clear that they don’t want students taking time off, even though doing so could lead to much better academic and personal experiences, because it hurts their bottom line. So it’s hard not to see this decision as motivated by cash rather than caring. After all, it’s not as if frosh and sophomores will somehow be less prone to COVID-19 than juniors and seniors, and prioritizing them actually makes the logistics more difficult. 

You would think that the work upperclassmen have put in, the contributions we have made to this university, would mean something, but apparently they don’t. Frosh and sophomores have the choice to take a leave of absence, and a reasonable expectation that COVID-19 will end before their college years do. Juniors and seniors have neither. 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers2 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The Daily is committed to publishing a diversity of op-eds and letters to the editor. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Email letters to the editor to eic ‘at’ stanforddaily.com and op-ed submissions to opinions ‘at’ stanforddaily.com.

Follow The Daily on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The post From Stanford, yet another disappointment appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/17/from-stanford-yet-another-disappointment/feed/ 0 1172526
To all American citizens: We must stand up for international students https://stanforddaily.com/2020/07/12/to-all-american-citizens-we-must-stand-up-for-international-students/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/07/12/to-all-american-citizens-we-must-stand-up-for-international-students/#respond Mon, 13 Jul 2020 06:17:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1170042 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently announced that nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students will not be granted visas or allowed to stay in the United States this year if they are taking a fully online course load. This decision is cruel, xenophobic, and antidemocratic. Stanford University and its students must do everything possible to ensure that this decision is reversed and that Stanford’s international students are able to continue their education with as little disruption as possible.

The post To all American citizens: We must stand up for international students appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently announced that non-immigrant F-1 and M-1 students will not be granted visas or allowed to stay in the United States this year if they are taking a fully online course load. This decision is cruel, xenophobic and antidemocratic. Stanford University and its students must do everything possible to ensure that this decision is reversed and that Stanford’s international students are able to continue their education with as little disruption as possible. 

Roughly one million international students are currently pursuing degrees in the U.S. For context, the U.S. has a total of 19.9 million undergraduate and graduate students, counting U.S. students and international students. International students represent a large and important part of our student population. 

Yet ICE believes that it has the authority to decide, without any public debate, that one out of every twenty students in the U.S. can be thrown out of the country in the middle of the pandemic. This decision was announced without warning, without any congressional hearings, without any of the public consultation and debate that make democracies democratic. This alone should be enough to invalidate the decision. 

Any substantive discussion would have made it abundantly and painfully clear that this move is ridiculous. Thanks to the U.S.’s shameful, likely criminal, failure to suppress or even contain COVID-19, less than 30 countries are currently accepting or plan to accept travelers from the U.S. Many international students cannot return home, whether they want to or not. Furthermore, it is completely unrealistic to expect students to plan and pay for international travel at a time when airlines are operating at less than 50% capacity globally and many carriers are requiring passengers to be tested for COVID-19 (and the U.S.’s testing capacity is still insufficient). Even students who can afford vastly inflated airfare may not be allowed to enter their home countries. Students that do make it home may face unavoidable and politically motivated internet outages, political suppression and persecution and a plethora of other hardships which will undermine their education. Most importantly, requiring students to travel forces them to risk contracting and spreading COVID-19. It is hypocritical and almost cartoonishly malicious for the U.S. to attempt to force a mass exodus from our country, where COVID-19 is completely uncontrolled, even as we restrict entry from other countries. 

All this for absolutely no reason. I cannot imagine a single reasonable argument for kicking international students out of the country simply because their classes will be online. Sure, online classes mean that they are not required to be physically present in the U.S., but why would we respond to that by arbitrarily exiling them? What harm can it possibly do to have people who, in ordinary times, would live here and study here, live here and study online? What purpose can this announcement possibly serve, besides satisfying and stoking xenophobia while hurting international students?

Often, American debates about immigration and international students go to weird places. Advocates for immigration allow themselves to fall into the rhetorical trap of needing to defend immigrants’ “American-ness,” economic utility or low likelihood of committing crimes. All of these arguments, though true, concede what should be the most important part of the argument. Immigrants should not need to earn their place in the U.S., or prove their worth or their usefulness to the abstract concept of our “national interest.” Similarly, we hear about international students somehow “taking” from our education system by returning home after completing their degrees — never mind that they pay tuition, contribute to research while they’re studying and often are denied the chance to stay in the U.S. after graduation by our ridiculous immigration system. 

All of this misses the point. We should welcome immigrants because we should understand that the U.S., although deeply imperfect, is still one of the best places to live in the world, and we should want to share that with other people. We should welcome international students because our universities are some of the best in the world, and everyone deserves to learn, no matter where they come from. 

Americans, even those of us who have had the privilege of international travel, do not seem to understand what an honor it is to be the world’s most popular destination for immigrants and international students. Other countries pay immigrants to come to them. We turn away millions every year. Americans, as a rule, do not grow up dreaming of moving to another country for the sake of opportunities or civil rights. We do not understand what it means for millions of people to be willing to give up the town they grew up in, the food they love and the culture they know in order to join our society. We do not understand why students might go to the trouble of pursuing a degree in their second language, far from home, for the sake of a better education. 

This can be particularly true for American students at American universities. We meet international students, ask them (often very basic) questions about their country and don’t think too hard about the difficulties our friends face in coming to the U.S. That was never good enough, and it’s certainly not now. We must stand up for our classmates, our campus leaders, our dearest friends. 

Stanford, after initially responding to the decision to expel students in a subsection of the July 6th Re-Approaching Stanford email, did send a stand-alone message from Marc Tessier-Lavigne on July 8th making it clear that Stanford opposes the rule. Tessier-Lavigne’s message also announced that Stanford would be joining Harvard and MIT’s lawsuit challenging the rule. This response, although delayed, is a good start, but there is more to do. 

Some universities have proposed one-unit in-person classes for international students, which can help some people but is problematic for immunocompromised students who cannot risk any in-person activities and students who aren’t able to get to or live near campus. Such classes would also expose instructors to higher risk and require significant resources to implement, which will be a problem for the many universities already facing financial difficulties due to COVID-19. 

Ultimately, there is no ethical or practical way for universities to protect international students by following ICE’s guidelines. The joint lawsuit may be able to block this rule, but we should act as if it won’t. All of us should be calling our senators and representatives to express our anger and demand that they take action. All of us should be calling ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to demand that they rescind this announcement. The privilege of being American citizens comes with the responsibility of standing up for those who are not citizens. 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The Daily is committed to publishing a diversity of op-eds and letters to the editor. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Email letters to the editor to eic ‘at’ stanforddaily.com and op-ed submissions to opinions ‘at’ stanforddaily.com. 

Follow The Daily on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The post To all American citizens: We must stand up for international students appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2020/07/12/to-all-american-citizens-we-must-stand-up-for-international-students/feed/ 0 1170042
When the ‘S’ in S/NC stands for stress https://stanforddaily.com/2020/05/13/when-the-s-in-s-nc-stands-for-stress/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/05/13/when-the-s-in-s-nc-stands-for-stress/#respond Wed, 13 May 2020 19:18:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1167713 S/NC was meant to help smooth over the inequities between students that have widened as a result of the pandemic. ... Unfortunately, the reality of an S/NC grading scheme has not lived up to that promise.

The post When the ‘S’ in S/NC stands for stress appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
When the Faculty Senate voted to approve Satisfactory/No Credit (S/NC) grading for spring quarter, students were told that this grading scheme would allow us to continue studying during the COVID-19 crisis without experiencing undue stress. S/NC was meant to help smooth over the inequities between students that have widened as a result of the pandemic. Although S/NC was the least popular grading scheme among students, many of my friends and acquaintances expressed relief that the Senate at least made an effort to respond to the extraordinary circumstances in which we are collectively living. 

Unfortunately, the reality of an S/NC grading scheme has not lived up to that promise. One friend recently told me, “S/NC is a scam, it’s like requiring you to get an A or B if you don’t want to fail but if you pass you don’t get to flex that A.” My friend’s frustration, while perhaps not accurate for all classes, is by far not the biggest problem S/NC grading has created.

Allison Tielking ’20 and a group of her friends planned to take a computer science course taught by a professor they liked this quarter. During the first lecture, the professor warned that, under his S/NC grading scheme, up to one third of the class might not pass this quarter. Tielking noted that it was possible that the professor only wanted to scare people, but said it was “a very insensitive move given the circumstances.” While presenting the slides, she said, the professor told students, “I don’t want any sob stories about you needing this class to graduate.” A few minutes after that, Tielking and her friends all dropped the class. 

Professors are not alone in their ability to undermine the policy. A Stanford co-term student set to graduate with a master’s degree this spring was surprised when, on Monday of Week 4, her department, the Center for Russian, East European and East Asian Studies (CREEES), announced that it would not accept all S grades for the M.A. degree. Instead, the department would require that students receive a B or higher. The co-term student asked to remain anonymous because the program is small, and she fears retaliation.

In an email to CREEES students, the department asked students to get in touch with professors themselves to request written confirmation of a B or higher grade to be sent to the program administration (since CREEES has fewer than a dozen students, classes taken for the degree are not exclusively filled with CREEES students). This requirement also meant that professors would need to keep “shadow grades,” which the University administration recommended but did not require this quarter (that recommendation was only for letter grades without + or -, but the CREEES department specifically noted that a B- would not be accepted). 

The co-term student raised concerns about the unusual adverse circumstances many students are facing this quarter, as well as the department’s failure to notify students of this requirement until nearly halfway through the 10-week quarter. The department declined to change the policy, noting that, based on students’ performance in previous quarters, administrators believed that the B requirement would not pose a significant challenge. The student who spoke with me noted that “that high performance was achieved during non-pandemic quarters … the whole point of the S/NC policy was to account for the unique challenges of this quarter’s context.” Ultimately, she feels that the choice “really seems to show [that the department is] prioritizing the dept’s reputation over its students’ well-being … Especially since it seems like the vast majority of other depts aren’t so worried about the ‘integrity’ of their programs.”

I am finding myself in a similar, though much less severe, situation. One class I’m taking is the second part of a two-class series, with both classes taught by the same professor. I respect this professor a great deal, and still believe that he is one of the best teachers I’ve had at Stanford. However, his approach to S/NC grading has left me concerned. 

For the first week of this quarter, this professor assured us that he would do everything in his power to ensure that we still had a final in some form, despite the administration’s directive that classes should not have finals. The next week, he announced that we would be required to have made a good faith effort on every problem set. The problem is, he went on to define good faith effort as matching our performance on problem sets in the prior quarter.

I made it through last quarter with significant effort and a great deal of generous help from classmates and friends. Now that we are scattered throughout the world, it is much more difficult to collaborate on problem sets the way we normally would (and are encouraged to do by the department). It is also more difficult to get help. Although our professor and TAs are making great efforts to hold accessible office hours and answer Piazza questions quickly, time-zone issues and the difficulty of communicating while not face to face present serious challenges. To expect us to perform as well on problem sets as we did last quarter is unrealistic, potentially unfair — and exactly the concern that led the faculty senate to adopt the S/NC scheme.

Our professor has specifically said that he does not want us to stress about passing this class, but I cannot help being stressed under these circumstances. It did not entirely help that our professor said, as he was discussing the updated grading policy, that he believes that grades are one of the ways students are motivated to learn. This professor did not say that grades are students’ sole motivation, and he did note they are glad that grades are less of a focus this quarter. My professor is not alone in his concern about the lack of grades. The professor from Tielking’s class, in an email to The Daily clarifying details of his policy, wrote that grades “play an important role in motivating some students to stay on track or get help.” 

I do not think that any of the troubling grading schemes being proposed and enacted this quarter are motivated by malice. I do think that a lot of Stanford professors are revealing the extent to which they view grades as foundational to learning, and the seemingly punitive and overly harsh grading schemes we are seeing this quarter are a symptom of the difficulty professors are having in reconciling teaching a class with not giving letter grades. This is a sad situation because many students are finding themselves more stressed about grades than they were last quarter. But it is also sad to think that our professors feel their days are spent teaching students who are only there for the grades.

There are certainly students who prioritize grades over learning. There are also students who are taking a heavier course load than usual this quarter because they want to complete WAYS and major requirements without putting in the work. Their actions will likely hurt them in the long run. Right now, they are hurting professors and classmates who are finding themselves dealing with underqualified or checked-out students. But many students are not behaving this way. We should not allow a few people’s poor choices to convince us to treat everyone with suspicion. It is often better to treat everyone as if they are a good-faith actor and occasionally end up benefiting a few bad-faith actors than it is to treat everyone with suspicion. 

There are many professors who have made extraordinary and generous efforts to optimize their classes for online S/NC learning. My Mandarin Chinese class has managed to transition almost seamlessly. It is clear that the department and our professor have thought carefully about the limitations we face this quarter and have worked hard to optimize the class. I’m also taking a class in German, and our professor has continuously updated her syllabus and lesson plan to improve our experience. I have not heard of any professor not making a sincere effort to adapt and improve their teaching in this new environment. 

Stanford has the good fortune to face this challenge armed with a community of hard-working and sincere professors, TAs and students. This quarter has already surpassed expectations in many ways. But there is more work to do, and a key area for progress is the way in which all of us think about grades and learning. It is perhaps worth remembering that all students, to some extent, are doing this quarter for the love of knowledge. Many of us could have taken a leave of absence — although Stanford’s rules on leaves, financial difficulties and other factors meant that not all of us could. Even the students loading up on credits are here because they believe that the classes taught and taken this quarter have value even if they do not have letter grades.

Speaking as someone whose quarter abroad was canceled, I am here (or, at least, on Zoom) not because any of the classes I’m taking are vital to my academic success but because I could not imagine going until next fall without classes. In the midst of this terrible historic moment, it is incredibly comforting and meaningful to memorize vocabulary and struggle through a problem set. Even when I know that my answers are wrong. The Faculty Senate seems to have understood this when it chose S/NC, but the grading scheme may not be living up to those faculty’s own ideals. 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

The Daily is committed to publishing a diversity of op-eds and letters to the editor. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Email letters to the editor to eic@stanforddaily.com and op-ed submissions to opinions@stanforddaily.com.

Follow The Daily on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The post When the ‘S’ in S/NC stands for stress appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2020/05/13/when-the-s-in-s-nc-stands-for-stress/feed/ 0 1167713
Stanford should hope its COVID-19 response is graded S/NC https://stanforddaily.com/2020/04/01/stanford-should-hope-its-covid-19-response-is-graded-s-nc/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/04/01/stanford-should-hope-its-covid-19-response-is-graded-s-nc/#respond Wed, 01 Apr 2020 18:10:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1165897 Compared to the Trump administration, Stanford’s response to the pandemic has seemed relatively competent. But that’s a rather low bar. A closer look at the decisions made by Stanford’s administration reveals serious missteps and oversights.

The post Stanford should hope its COVID-19 response is graded S/NC appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
At the time I’m writing this, approximately 3 of 4 Americans are being instructed to stay home. By the time this article is published, it is likely that more people will receive even more stringent instructions. For many people, these restrictions represent a shocking escalation of a crisis many expected would be contained before it ever affected the United States. Even for those who realized that the U.S. would probably not escape unscathed, the magnitude of the crisis, and the U.S.’s seeming inability to respond effectively, have been deeply concerning. Compared to the Trump administration, Stanford’s response to the pandemic has seemed relatively competent. But that’s a rather low bar. A closer look at the decisions made by Stanford’s administration reveals serious missteps and oversights. 

I had a bit of a head start on worrying about COVID-19, at least compared to many Americans. As an International Relations major, I am specializing in East and South Asia while studying Mandarin Chinese. Last fall, I was given the opportunity to participate in a health policy internship split between Beijing, Zhejiang and Bangkok this summer. It was a little worrying to see reports of three people in China being infected with the Bubonic Plague last fall, but the disease was contained. Then, I started seeing articles about a new disease in Wuhan. The New York Times reported on an outbreak of a “mystery pneumonia-like illness” on Jan. 6, but on Jan. 10, reports still indicated that the virus probably could not spread between humans. This would prove false. The outbreak grew quickly in China, despite lockdown and quarantine orders that at one point restricted the movement of more than 780 million people.

Of course, China’s outbreak now seems relatively sedate. Graphing the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in each affected country by the days since that country’s 100th case shows that the U.S., and possibly Italy and Spain, experienced a more rapid increase in confirmed cases than China did. Even more alarmingly, deaths due to COVID-19 seem to be doubling much more rapidly in other countries than they did in China. There are a lot of complicating factors here, including the different criteria used to confirm cases of COVID-19 in different countries and the limited availability of laboratory tests which can confirm the presence of the virus. But it would be understandable for someone who is not an epidemiologist and doesn’t immerse themselves in world news to be surprised, and even shocked, by the seeming explosion of cases outside of China in the past month or so. 

Stanford announced that the remainder of winter quarter would be moved online on Friday, March 6. At the time, the U.S. had 282 confirmed cases, with 24 of them in Santa Clara county. Although Santa Clara was likely experiencing community spread of the virus by late February, it is difficult to “confirm” community spread. COVID-19’s incubation period, which is roughly five days on average, makes tracking the disease difficult. So does the fact that asymptomatic people can infect others, which wasn’t widely reported until more recently. At the time, therefore, Stanford’s decision to move to virtual classes seemed reasonable.

Stanford had already suspended BOSP’s study abroad program in Florence on Feb. 27. Social distancing measures, primarily involving canceling large gatherings, were introduced on campus on March 3. All of BOSP’s spring study abroad programs were canceled on March 4. Two students went into self-isolation after possible exposure to the virus on March 6 (they later tested negative for the virus). That same day, classes were moved online and Admit Weekend was canceled. The next day, March 7, Vice Provost Susie Brubaker-Cole sent out a message to students confirming that they could leave campus and finish the quarter remotely. All winter BOSP program students were asked to return home on March 10. That same day, President Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced that spring quarter would be conducted online for an indeterminate amount of time, and asked all students who were able to leave campus. On March 13, Tessier-Lavigne announced that the first Stanford undergraduate student had tested positive for the virus, that winter quarter final exams would be optional, and that all undergraduate students had to leave campus unless they had no place to go. In the following days, Santa Clara County enacted a shelter-in-place-order, which prompted the University to delay final exams. On March 19, all of spring quarter was moved online. 

The University administration made a clear effort to communicate quickly and clearly with students, starting with email blasts about measures being taken to respond to the outbreak. It was helpful that all mass communications from the administration were posted online, allowing students and family members to more easily find the latest news. However, looking back at this series of updates reveals a troubling pattern. The administration consistently tried to protect students and staff while minimizing disruptions to classes and research, but the desire to minimize disruptions ultimately undermined transparency and increased stress and uncertainty. 

The administration could have addressed whether students should stay on campus in its March 6 announcement that winter quarter classes and exams would be online, but it did not. The announcement did not address whether students were allowed to leave campus, so everyone had to wait until the next day to learn whether they could leave. The next day, when the administration announced that students were allowed to leave, it did not provide explicit guidance on whether they should leave. Messages to students did mention that students might face difficulty returning to the U.S., but the University did not announce that spring quarter would begin online until later. This left international students in a deeply uncertain position, as they were forced to ponder whether leaving campus in order to protect themselves would leave them unable to come back in time for spring quarter. 

This pattern of insufficient information continued later in the week on March 10, when Stanford asked students to leave campus and announced that spring quarter would begin online but did not provide an estimate of how much of spring quarter would take place online. Stanford also failed to commit to giving at least two weeks notice before classes restarted, which would have been the only way for international students to know that they would have sufficient time to get back to campus (travel restrictions on entry to the U.S. have generally barred people from entering the country if they have been to a hotspot in the past 14 days, and new hotspots were being added to the list with little warning). 

It wasn’t until March 19 that the administration offered more clarity about spring quarter, announcing that it would be moved entirely online. But the administration had asked all students who were able to leave campus by March 18, leaving many students uncertain whether they should bring all of their belongings with them or plan to return to campus. By delaying announcing plans for spring quarter, the University created more stress and uncertainty for students and more work for itself, as hundreds (if not thousands) of dorm rooms must now be vacated without students being on campus. 

Stanford’s administration has tried to stay optimistic about its chances of keeping the University running as normally as possible, and I appreciate that. But that optimism has led to an incremental approach that maximized student uncertainty and chaos. On March 6, when winter quarter was moved online, Tessier-Lavigne could have also announced that the University might be forced to ask students to move out, that spring quarter might be partially or fully conducted online and that the university would give students two weeks of notice if it called us back to campus. At any point in the past month, the administration could have sent out an explanation of its long-range plans, including the options being considered for finishing winter quarter and conducting spring quarter, and what factors (the number of cases in Santa Clara County, or in the U.S., or new information about the virus) would affect its decisions. At a minimum, each announcement could have included a set of possibilities for the next announcement. For instance, the March 6 announcement could have included the statement: 

“Depending on how circumstances evolve, the University may:

  • Proceed with spring quarter as planned
  • Begin spring quarter online and later move back to in-person classes, with a two week notice before the transition
    • This course of action might necessitate asking students to leave campus temporarily
  • Move spring quarter online in its entirety
    • This course of action would lead us to ask all students who are able to leave campus”

Of course, many Stanford students  were already discussing these possibilities on March 6. But hearing what was on the table for the administration, and what wasn’t, would have been enormously helpful. On March 9, The Daily Editorial Board even called on Stanford to “provide plans — even a highly provisional set — for how spring quarter may proceed.” This call was not answered. Instead, we got a stream of surprising and disruptive announcements with little to no forewarning. I suppose I’m asking for something like the Federal Reserve’s forward guidance: Since the early 2000s, the Fed has often taken advantage of public statements to provide hints about its long-range plans. Forward guidance is intended to reduce instability in financial markets and reassure investors. Frankly, Stanford students could use some reassurance. 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The Daily is committed to publishing a diversity of op-eds and letters to the editor. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Email letters to the editor to eic@stanforddaily.com and op-ed submissions to opinions@stanforddaily.com. 

Follow The Daily on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The post Stanford should hope its COVID-19 response is graded S/NC appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2020/04/01/stanford-should-hope-its-covid-19-response-is-graded-s-nc/feed/ 0 1165897
The war on friendship https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/05/the-war-on-friendship/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/05/the-war-on-friendship/#respond Wed, 05 Feb 2020 09:30:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1163476 When I talk with my friends, one of the fears they mention most frequently is being alone. Technology is filling the time we could spend with friends and family members. At the same time, harmful notions of what it means to have a “good” relationship are undermining our ability to form meaningful connections.

The post The war on friendship appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
When I talk with my friends, one of the fears they mention most frequently is being alone. Our generation is not unique in having this fear; every generation has faced the uncertainty of leaving home and building a new life. Yet I think we may have more reason to worry than our parents and grandparents did. Technology is filling the time we could spend with friends and family members. At the same time, harmful notions of what it means to have a “good” relationship are undermining our ability to form meaningful connections.

I’ve written about the effects of technology on our lives before. Internet-based services, and specifically social media and streaming services, are consuming our time and, therefore, our lives. We spend hours each day glued to our phones, laptops, and tablets. We tell ourselves that this technology actually brings us closer together — that we can instantly communicate with far-flung friends and family and even meet new people from the other side of the world. This is often true. I certainly talk more with my parents than they did with my grandparents, and technology makes it a great deal easier to stay in touch with high school friends. 

But that’s not the whole story. Technology also disincentivizes us from spending quality time with those close to us. We text instead of calling and call instead of meeting in person. We tell ourselves that liking someone’s photo on Instagram is good enough, instead of reaching out to them. Choosing to avoid social media only deepens the problem, as we miss invitations and news which friends assume we’ve seen.

It’s hard not to worry that these problems will only intensify after college. College offers a built-in community — we live with, attend classes with and participate in clubs with thousands of similar people. It’s difficult to envision how our social lives will develop without that foundation. The more time all of us spend on our phones, the less likely we are to go out with friends, join clubs or make a serious effort to meet new people. Instead, we meet people through work or pre-existing connections. The particularly bold among us might try Bumble’s friend-finding feature.

This is a self-reinforcing cycle. The more people retreat into technology, the harder it becomes to connect in the real world. The harder it becomes to connect in the real world, the more people retreat into technology. 

This isn’t just technology’s fault, though. Our society encourages us to view relationships as a kind of zero-sum game, in which a “good” relationship is one where we put in less emotional effort, and are less vulnerable, than our partner. Characters in TV shows and movies who make an effort to make new friends are often mocked for their perceived desperation for companionship. The characters we are supposed to admire, meanwhile, keep themselves aloof while mysteriously attracting loyal followers. It is considered humiliating to care more about someone than they care about you. It is understandable to view relationships this way. All of us want to be cared for but would be hurt to find that someone cared less about us than we did them. But this is also incredibly unhealthy. 

In international relations, we often study mercantilism, a dominant mode of thought in Europe from the 1400s to 1700s. Mercantilist states view trade as a zero-sum game. Instead of pursuing free trade policies and exploiting their competitive advantages, they create barriers to trade, build empires to procure cheap raw materials and then sell finished goods at inflated prices, prioritize trade surpluses and hoard precious metals and resources. These policies are built on the assumption that there are limited resources in the world and a state’s success can be measured by how much of those resources the state manages to collect. 

Many people now seem to view interpersonal relationships the same way mercantilist states viewed trade. They think that, because someone else might gain more from the relationship than we do, the relationship is not worth pursuing. They view relationships as emotional transactions. 

Technology certainly intensifies this mindset — text messages make it very clear when one person is doing more to keep a conversation going, and social media interactions quantify everyone’s affection. People today are not stockpiling friends or trying to get monopolies on group chats. But it’s not uncommon to hear college students claim that they make sure to reply to texts just a bit more slowly than their partner does. Social media users notice who’s liking and commenting on their posts and often base their own likes and comments on that. But technology is not the sole cause — this mindset is also the result of popular media’s belittling of friendly people and the natural human fear of isolation or humiliation.

This instinctual accounting — of who issues invitations more often, shares more about themselves or texts back more quickly — does not increase our happiness. Instead of focusing on building genuine connections, people worry about coming off as overeager or fume over perceived slights. People worry more and enjoy less, convincing themselves that they’re just trying to be treated well, even as they mistreat others. 

Between unhealthy perceptions of relationships and technology, we seem to be trapped in a vicious cycle of isolation and detachment. There isn’t a particularly good way to fight the interlocking cycles of withdrawing into technology and viewing relationships as zero-sum, either. Individuals cannot reconfigure the structure of our collective social lives. It’s difficult to imagine anyone, or any group, who could. But I don’t particularly want to accept the current situation, much less an intensified version of it. So, for now, I’d like to urge everyone to reach out to a friend they haven’t heard from recently. There’s nothing to lose and, for all you know, they’ve been embarrassed to reach out first and stuck waiting for you to make the first move. At the very least, no one likes to eat alone.

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu

The post The war on friendship appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/05/the-war-on-friendship/feed/ 0 1163476
Screening out distractions for some time to myself https://stanforddaily.com/2019/12/09/screening-out-distractions-for-some-time-to-myself/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/12/09/screening-out-distractions-for-some-time-to-myself/#respond Mon, 09 Dec 2019 08:37:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1161426 I’ve certainly come to believe that my phone use has done serious damage to my ability to focus for long periods of time. A lot of my screen time is used for browsing social media, consuming individual posts for seconds at a time or less. The endless scrolling facilitated and even encouraged by social media apps has a bizarrely addictive, yet numbing effect on my mind. Even reading on my phone had become difficult, because the mental cue of using my phone put me in a mindset of super-fast attention switching and superficial processing. It didn’t help that new notifications constantly interrupted my reading.

The post Screening out distractions for some time to myself appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
When I finally decided to look at the Screen Time report my phone helpfully generates for me every week, the results were, to put it mildly, alarming. I was genuinely ashamed of how much time I had spent on my phone every day, to the point where I haven’t admitted what the specific number was even to my closest friends. Suffice it to say that it was more than three hours. 

It’s not clear how atypical my problem is. Various studies have found that the average American adult spends between 1.6 and 5.4 hours on their phone every day. It’s difficult to know how accurate those results are. Asking people about total phone use or specific types of use leads to different answers. Not all phones have a built-in tool for measuring screen time. Regardless, it seems clear that phones are taking more and more of people’s time, with significant negative effects on our mental health and acuity.

I’ve certainly come to believe that my phone use has done serious damage to my ability to focus for long periods of time. A lot of my screen time is used for browsing social media, consuming individual posts for seconds at a time or less. The endless scrolling facilitated and even encouraged by social media apps has a bizarrely addictive, yet numbing effect on my mind. Even reading on my phone had become difficult, because the mental cue of using my phone put me in a mindset of super-fast attention switching and superficial processing. It didn’t help that new notifications constantly interrupted my reading.

My phone use heightens my stress while numbing me to that same stress. Constantly feeling my phone vibrating to indicate new emails; notifications from The New York Times and the Washington Post and messages via text, GroupMe, and Slack has left me constantly on edge. At the same time, endlessly scrolling through intellectually vacant social media streams keeps me enthralled and, at the same time, deeply bored. 

After seeing my screen time statistics and watching perhaps a few too many high-energy episodes of Queer Eye, I decided to attempt to reduce my screen time by at least half. I ended up trying a lot of the silly-sounding tips for reducing one’s phone use. I deleted all of my “fun” apps and moved around everything that was left. I think that this actually helped — I realized on the second day that, without conscious thought, my hands automatically navigate to where my social media apps used to be whenever I felt bored or nervous. I also had to turn off notifications for pretty much everything except calls and texts in order to make progress. This created a pervasive sense of FOMO-adjacent anxiety for the first few days until I realized that I am not, in fact, important enough for it to matter whether I respond to emails within an hour or see breaking news headlines as they are published.

The first few days of reduced phone use felt deeply strange. My day felt much longer and more tiring. I was bored almost constantly. I felt strangely bereft, unable to see what was happening with random public figures whose social media accounts I had been following. I had to learn new routines for going to bed and waking up. It was genuinely difficult to unwind without boring myself to sleep on my phone or to wake up without bombarding myself with blue light and frightening headlines. 

There were, however, a fair number of benefits. I suddenly had extra hours in the day. I finished two books that I’d been meaning to read for a year in the first week. After that, realizing that my mental associations between using my phone and goofing off were still very much alive, I decided to switch to paper books for the time being. I’m already becoming much more familiar with Green Library’s stacks. I finished my homework days and even weeks in advance — it’s much more difficult to procrastinate if you have nothing else to do. I drove 20 minutes to the nearest Wendy’s for a chocolate frosty (and was astonished at how far it was until I remembered that Stanford is in Palo Alto). I cleaned my bike, which was actually very satisfying. Being able to pump up my tires without coating my hands in dirt and grease was nice. 

I also felt, by the end of the week, much calmer and in control than I have in a long time. Freeing up my time and attention allowed me to get ahead in my classes, take in the world around me and step outside of the cycle of fear and anger that today’s news cycle seems to inevitably engender. 

Altogether, I reduced my screen time by just over 70%. I am hoping to make further reductions as time goes on, in part because I am aware of how delicate this achievement is. I am proud to have made it this far, but I can feel how easy it would be to end up right back where I started every time I instinctively reach for my phone. I am living and studying in the very heart of Silicon Valley, an industry built on making consumers dependent on technology. My goal seems laughably insignificant in this context. 

So I suppose I’m recommending that you make a concerted effort to recognize how technology is affecting you and take action to change your behavior based on what’s important to you. At the same time, I think all of us need to recognize that this is a societal problem that cannot be solved by individual action alone. This is particularly true at Stanford, which has become a feeder school for Silicon Valley and uses its cozy connections with tech giants like Apple and Google to market itself to students.

Stanford profits from attention-stealing, addictive technology because Silicon Valley profits from that technology. Everyone involved in this cozy ecosystem seems happy to decry the negative effects of phone use (and go to extreme lengths to protect their own kids) while continuing to collect extraordinary profits. If Stanford truly sees itself as a non-profit institution dedicated to furthering the human good, it’s time for a serious reconsideration of our institutional relationship with these technologies.

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Screening out distractions for some time to myself appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2019/12/09/screening-out-distractions-for-some-time-to-myself/feed/ 0 1161426
Presidential election 2020: Back to the future https://stanforddaily.com/2019/11/11/presidential-election-2020-back-to-the-future/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/11/11/presidential-election-2020-back-to-the-future/#respond Tue, 12 Nov 2019 04:28:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1160277 What if Democrats start playing to the Democratic base? What if young liberals were genuinely excited to vote? The demographic game has changed since 2016, in ways significant enough to affect the election. But if people were reluctant to vote for a candidate they didn’t believe in in 2016, I can only imagine how difficult the Democratic party will find it to drag demoralized and unenthusiastic voters to the polls in 2020.

The post Presidential election 2020: Back to the future appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Like many Americans, I am deeply worried about the coming year of domestic politics. This election has become a referendum not only on Trump but also, in many people’s eyes, on liberal democracy in the United States. 

In 2016, many liberals consoled themselves by calling Trump’s election a fluke. They pointed to the popular vote, or the inauguration’s crowd size, or the Mueller investigation. When it gradually became clear that Trump could ignore, lie about or obstruct these things, they focused on his abysmal approval ratings and the midterm elections. 

But none of this can overcome the full truth, which is that a large number of Americans voted for Trump, fully aware of his bigoted attitudes towards any number of minority groups. These Americans have celebrated Trump’s election, while condemning and dismissing obstacles like the Mueller investigation. Republicans as a group are by far the most likely to oppose impeachment. Despite Trump’s retreats in the Middle East, damaging trade wars and embarrassing nepotism, Republican voters in key swing states are sticking with him.

Democrats, particularly those who identify as centrists or moderates, have a tendency to write off the more bigoted and contradictory tendencies of the American electorate as uncommon, or flukes, or both. Trump’s election and possible re-election, if nothing else, must show that this narrative is flawed.

I’m certainly not the first person to make this point. But it’s worth revisiting as we come closer to the 2020 general election. The New York Times recently published an article about poll results which showed Trump leading Sanders and Warren, and only narrowly trailing Biden, in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina. I expect that the Biden campaign will lean into this heavily — Jill Biden has already asked people to vote for her husband, even if they don’t like him, because he is “electable.” 

Frankly, I think that this is a moment in which Democrats will have to choose between what they view as a safe bet and what they like. This is, to some extent, the choice that a lot of people made in 2016. I didn’t like Clinton, but I liked Sanders even less and hoped that Clinton’s experience and connections to more popular politicians would get her through. 

During democratic primaries, people tend to worry about whether candidates can appeal to undecided or swing voters. This plays into the “safe bet” question, as people argue for unexciting — or even unpopular — candidates on the grounds that their policies are moderate enough to lure independent and Republican voters. 

It’s time to let go of these ideas. Trump supporters have made it clear that they are in it for the long haul. Moderating, toning down and negotiating the Democratic platform into a bland morass of centrism will not win over Republican voters. If anything, the opposite is true — it was Sanders’ more radical policies which drew people who ultimately voted for Trump in 2016. Trump is successful because he is polarizing, and appeals strongly to a particular Republican base, not because he has some broad appeal to moderates. Perhaps it’s time for Democrats to learn from Republicans’ success and embrace their own base.

The argument might be made that swing voters will be alienated by a radical, or even further, left-wing candidate, and therefore vote Republican. In this election, it’s hard to see that happening. Even the most left-leaning candidates in the democratic field seem fairly centrist compared to Trump. Furthermore, Trump has spent three years showing himself to be an incompetent, corrupt bigot. Frankly, if there really are swing voters out there who prefer a bigoted screw-up to a competent candidate who supports Medicare for all, the Democratic party should ignore them. At some point, sacrificing one’s platform for the sake of luring voters becomes morally problematic. In this election in particular, the Democratic party must recognize this. Winning an election is meaningless if it requires sacrificing everything you are winning the election to accomplish.

What if Democrats start playing to the Democratic base? What if young liberals were genuinely excited to vote? The demographic game has changed since 2016, in ways significant enough to affect the election. But if people were reluctant to vote for a candidate they didn’t believe in in 2016, I can only imagine how difficult the Democratic party will find it to drag demoralized and unenthusiastic voters to the polls in 2020. 

Biden still has the most support among Democratic voters. But his popularity in national polls has been falling dramatically, while Warren’s has climbed. Biden is weighed down by his history of troubling behavior around women’s personal space, gaffes and possible age-related problems (remember to put on your record players, folks!). Arguably, his initial popularity was more thanks to his name recognition and association with Obama than it was to his own merits. 

In fact, Warren is now more popular than Biden among democratic voters in some polls. This is true even though 15% of Democratic voters are twice as likely to say that they are unsure about or have not heard of Warren. Although Warren may look weaker against Trump than Biden does now, there’s still a year before the election. That is more than enough time for Warren to increase her name recognition enough to tip the scale. (It’s also more than enough time for Biden to drive his campaign into the ground with gaffes and uncomfortable photo-ops with women.) Somewhat paradoxically, as unknown candidates drop out of the democratic field, it may be time to stop focusing on who’s most well known now and start asking who can become popular and exciting for the democratic base. 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Presidential election 2020: Back to the future appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2019/11/11/presidential-election-2020-back-to-the-future/feed/ 0 1160277
Stanford fails its Jewish community https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/23/stanford-fails-its-jewish-community/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/23/stanford-fails-its-jewish-community/#respond Wed, 23 Oct 2019 09:57:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1159037 This year, classes were held on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These holidays are the High Holy Days of Judaism. Yet Stanford decided that classes would be held, and professors would be free to create assignments with no regard for students observing these days.

The post Stanford fails its Jewish community appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Stanford welcomed us (back) to campus this year with several messages from administrators updating us on recent initiatives and their goals for the year ahead. Vice Provost Susie Brubaker-Cole wrote in an email to students that she wanted to “ensure every student feels a deep and abiding sense of community and belonging, and health and well-being.” Unfortunately, only two weeks into Fall Quarter, Stanford failed. 

This year, classes were held on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These holidays are the High Holy Days of Judaism, so-called because they are the holiest days of the year for Judaism. Rosh Hashanah lasts two days and Yom Kippur one. Many Jews attend services for most of the day on these holidays. Fasting is considered a key part of observing Yom Kippur. Yet, Stanford decided that classes would be held, and professors would be free to create assignments with no regard for students observing these days. 

Only a year ago, under pressure from the Jewish community, Stanford shortened and delayed the beginning of New Student Orientation to avoid conflicting with the High Holy Days and allow Jewish students to observe these milestones in the Jewish year without missing out. Somehow, the administration seems to believe that it is acceptable for students to miss classes but unacceptable for them to miss NSO.

Stanford did institute a policy under which students could inform their professors that they would be missing class and not be penalized for doing so. However, this system was laughably inadequate. The only notification students received about this came from Rabbi Kirschner of Hillel and was sent to the “kibbitz-means-chat” email distribution list, which does not reach all Jewish students. It would have been incredibly easy for Vice Provost Brubaker-Cole, the Office of Religious Life or anyone in Stanford’s administration to send an email out to all students to explain this policy. 

Even then, the policy leaves much to be desired. Students do not always feel comfortable telling their professors that they are Jewish and wish to attend services. Requiring students to do this puts the onus on us, rather than on Stanford. It also opens the door to uncomfortable and inappropriate conversations in which professors, not realizing the importance of these holidays, pressure students to attend class. It does not help that professors seem to be under-informed about these issues. Stanford could also easily send an email to all professors explaining the significance of these holidays and the policy regarding student absences.

Other universities have accommodated Jewish students. Some universities cancel classes (as do many public schools in the United States), and others record all classes on these days. Still others record classes but allow professors to opt out of recordings, provided they warn students about this on their syllabus. There are better policies in place at other universities than Stanford’s, which is overwhelmingly inadequate. 

It is not just Jewish students who are excluded by Stanford’s policies. Stanford has chosen not to include times for Muslim students to pray in the standard class schedule. Nor are there many changes made to accommodate students who fast for Ramadan. Yet, we take nearly a month off to celebrate Christmas. Similarly, if it is possible to cancel classes for President’s Day, a holiday with no particular constituency which has degenerated into a glorified nationwide mattress sale, it must be possible to cancel classes out of respect for a deeply meaningful religious tradition. Surely my religion matters more than discounted home goods.

If Stanford is truly serious about giving students a sense of belonging and community, the administration must put in the effort necessary to accommodate Jewish students celebrating High Holy Days. I am calling on Stanford to do more. Ideally, the university would cancel classes during the High Holy Days and make similar accommodations as needed for other religions. Failing that, Stanford needs to record classes whenever religious holidays conflict with them and make it clear to professors that students may miss class or turn in assignments after the holiday ends without repercussions or negotiation.

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Stanford fails its Jewish community appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/23/stanford-fails-its-jewish-community/feed/ 0 1159037
The unbearable loneliness of being Jewish in America https://stanforddaily.com/2019/05/10/the-unbearable-loneliness-of-being-jewish-in-america/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/05/10/the-unbearable-loneliness-of-being-jewish-in-america/#respond Fri, 10 May 2019 08:24:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1154618 On Saturday, April 27 in San Diego, California, three people were injured and one person was killed. These people were attacked in a place of worship because they were Jewish. This, only a few months after 11 people were killed at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The post The unbearable loneliness of being Jewish in America appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
On Saturday, April 27 in San Diego, California, three people were injured and one person was killed. These people were attacked in a place of worship because they were Jewish. This, only a few months after 11 people were killed at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

I am Jewish, and I am so incredibly scared. Every time this happens, my phone lights up with news alerts from the New York Times and Washington Post. These alerts tell me that a synagogue or Chabad has been attacked and that people have been hurt. They do not tell me where this tragedy took place, or who was injured. So I spend frantic minutes searching, desperately, hoping that my family is safe. There’s no actual need for me to get these alerts – it’s not as if I can do anything about their content – but I keep them on out of some misguided sense about the importance of staying informed.

After Pittsburgh, I wrote that I was tired and desperately sad. After Poway, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably at random intervals in the days following the attack. I know no words to describe the fears I have. The fear that one day, my loved ones will be in danger. The fear that this is the new normal. The fear that no one seems to care.

**********************

This past week, I’ve been uncomfortably aware of how unaware the rest of Stanford’s campus is. When I try to talk about my grief, fear, and anger with my non-Jewish friends, I am met with confusion. They haven’t heard about what happened in Poway. They don’t understand why I care, given that I have no personal connections to San Diego.

This is hurtful not only because it is painful to realize that a large part of your life seems incomprehensible and even silly to your friends but also because the majority of my friends are deeply involved in social justice activism on campus. These people identify as defenders of minorities, fighters of oppression, as liberals working to dismantle unjust structures in our society. Yet their activism does not extend to Jews.

An example: I was complaining to a close friend that Stanford institutions meant to promote diversity and inclusion often overlook and ignore Jews. In this case, I’d learned that one group appeared to be unaware that Jews who are white-passing and/or of European descent may not identify as white. The context of this question is long and complicated, but suffice it to say that even the Torah sometimes treats Jews as an ethnic group and sometimes treats us as a religious group. Many Jews in the US are white-passing and have access to the privileges that come with that. Tragically, white privilege is not a very effective shield against anti-Semitism, in part because many anti-Semites do not view Jews as white. My friend, an activist and person of color who’s involved with several ethnic associations on campus, turned to me. She asked, “why does it matter?” I couldn’t respond. She continued: “I mean, there are so few of you.”

I didn’t know how to respond. How to say, there are very few Jews because we have been the victims of genocide too many times to recall? How to ask, why does the size of our group matter if we are being discriminated against? How can I reconcile this callous, unfeeling question with the caring friend I know? Can I call someone who thinks I matter so little my friend?

I am embarrassed to admit that I said nothing. I let her change the subject to something more comfortable for her, and I swallowed my questions. Months later, I can’t fully let go of my pain.

Another example: various people, including people I’ve never met before, are comfortable debating with me about whether a given incident is anti-Semitic. I’ve been told that Ilhan Omar’s innuendos about Jews and money were not anti-Semitic. I’ve been told that jokes about Jewish people’s appearance are not necessarily anti-Semitic, because “sometimes it’s true.” Most liberal people, and many conservatives, accept that general idea that only members of a marginalized group get to determine whether something is discriminatory towards their group. Very few people would feel comfortable telling a person of color that some comment wasn’t actually racist. Quite a few people are comfortable sharing their thoughts on what anti-Semitism is and isn’t with me.

One last example: sometimes, when I try to talk with non-Jewish friends about anti-Semitism, they point out that I am not experiencing “real” discrimination because I can pass as non-Jewish. These same people know that I am bisexual. They would never suggest that bisexuals do not experience discrimination because bisexuals can have heterosexual relationships. Because they understand that being forced to deny part of yourself in exchange for safety is not a privilege. They understand that being offered the choice between authenticity and safety only forces you to participate in your own oppression. Yet they ask me why anti-Semitism matters, since, after all, I don’t “look Jewish.” They don’t even pause to consider the anti-Semitism inherent in the assumption that Jews look a certain way.  

**********************

It’s not just my friends. Members of the Stanford community at every end of the political spectrum are failing to uphold basic values of pluralism and inclusion when it comes to Jews.

The Stanford College Republicans club likes to write Facebook posts about their storied history of protecting Jews, calling themselves the best ally to Jews on campus — and then inviting Dinesh D’Souza to speak here. To quote the Stanford Daily,

“D’Souza also joked about the Holocaust in a Stony Brook University talk earlier this year, falsely claimed that Adolf Hitler was not anti-gay and retweeted Twitter posts with the hashtags #burntheJews and #bringbackslavery.”

D’Souza made his career on peddling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories — the same theories that motivated the Pittsburgh shooter. And SCR brought him to campus on Stanford’s dime.

Liberal groups on campus have their own problems. Many liberal spaces on this campus, primarily student groups focused on activism, have established a clear set of criteria for Jews. Jews who are anti-Zionist (against the general concept of a Jewish state) and anti-Israel (against the current Jewish state) are acceptable. All other Jews are not. Some Jewish groups seem to have bought into this in many ways; Jewish Voice for Peace has defended this type of behavior.

This standard is unacceptable. No one would ask American citizens to disavow America, which has its own shameful history. And American citizens can affect America’s policies, unlike American Jews, who have no electoral representation in Israel. A large majority of American Jews see Israel as closely connected to them. If you decide that Jews must oppose Israel in order to meet your standards, you are writing off most American Jews.

It’s also worth noting, as Daniel Slate and Ari Hoffman have in The Daily, that anti-Zionism and anti-Israel criticisms can veer into anti-Semitic territory, often by invoking anti-Semitic tropes in ad-hominem attacks or using Palestine as a political prop for attacking Jews. I have written about critics of Israel’s problematic tendency to hold all Jews responsible for Israel.

This week, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace are bringing a cartoonist known for using anti-Semitic tropes to campus. In support of this event, some group members posted upsetting, anti-Semitic cartoons on posters around campus. SJP has since acknowledged, in an email to the kibbitz email list (which is intended to serve Stanford’s Jewish community), that it was “inappropriate” to distribute these flyers without “context.” But they have not addressed the fundamental problem: a Jewish cartoonist is using anti-Semitic ideas and narratives to attack other Jews while claiming that he is doing it for our own good. SJP has not cancelled the event.

Individuals have also made harmful mistakes. Ironically, SCR ended up being the first group to report that Kimiko Hirota, a candidate in Stanford’s most recent student election, published an anti-Semitic tweet in 2018, including retweets of a site called “Electronic Intifada.” Kimiko responded by claiming that she did not know what intifada meant when she retweeted the site’s story and did not check. How nice it must be, not to know that intifada is a term describing two bloody waves of violence between Israel and Palestine which is now used as a rallying cry for attacks on Israel, and, in some cases, Jews.

**********************

It’s not just Stanford. Jews, like many other minority groups, seem to be caught in a political no-man’s land. Republicans flirt with anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic groups like the KKK and neo-nazis. It can seem as if Democrats take Jewish support for granted because they usually pass the low, low bar of not associating with neo-nazis (although this problem is more recent, and American Jews still heavily favor the Democrats).

Jews find ourselves alone and ignored. The Democrats did not ultimately take meaningful action to discipline Ilhan Omar, U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s fifth district, when she first tweeted an anti-Semitic innuendo about Jews and money and then, less than a month later, implied that Jews have divided our loyalty between the US and Israel. Sure, Representative Omar apologized. But it turns out that she has a history of making anti-Semitic comments, apologizing and promising to educate herself and do better– and then doing it again. At this point, she’s either anti-Semitic, incapable of learning what anti-Semitism is, or both.

Republicans, meanwhile, continue to shelter white supremacists and follow Trump. Some Jews, including people I like and respect, do not think that Trump is anti-Semitic. It is true that he finally managed to fully condemn anti-Semitism following the Poway attack. But it’s also true that Trump has a well-documented record of making anti-Semitic jokes about Jews’ ability to negotiate and be accountants.

It’s not just political parties.

Last year, it became public that organizers of the Women’s March pushed out Jewish leaders and refused to disavow anti-Semitic affiliations. One leader, Tamika Mallory, once called Louis Farrakhan the “GOAT” (greatest of all time). Louis Farrakhan, for those fortunate enough to be unaware of him, has made a career out of trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes and blaming Jews for the world’s evils. Of course, these revelations only crystallized and publicized existing concerns about the Women’s March’s ignorance of and indifference to anti-Semitism.

Last week, The New York Times published an anti-Semitic cartoon seemingly without noticing. In an example of truly painful irony, climate change “agnostic” (read: denier) Bret Stephens, who was hired to be the Times’ token conservative following the 2016 election, wrote a genuinely excellent piece covering the insidious rise of anti-Semitism in America and the shameful complacency that institutions like The Times have shown in responding to the problem.

**********************

In light of this indifference, I’ve found myself turning inward to the Jewish community at Stanford. I am grateful to have the ability to do so, and the fact that I have been able to turn inward, to share these experiences with other Jews, is worth celebrating. This is not a solution, though. It is not just, nor is it wise, for me to avoid confronting my friends and fellow activists about anti-Semitism simply because I have found a community in which I do not have to do so.

But if I withdraw into the Jewish community and hide this part of myself from non-Jewish friends I am surrendering to anti-Semitism. If Jews cede the public square, we are ceding a field fertilized by ignorance and indifference to the opportunistic weed that is anti-Semitism. So I can speak up, I can be visible, I can refuse to let people call themselves my protector and ally without my consent.

I do not feel like the right messenger for this moment. I cannot remember ever believing in a divine power, although I have tried. I had to be forced to go to synagogue until recently, and I had my Bat Mitzvah only because I was told that failing to do so would hurt my family. I am not comfortable going to events at Stanford’s Chabad because men and women pray separately there. I’ve realized that part of my dislike for Judaism and everything associated with it came from the same fear I feel now, a fear created by anti-Semitism.

It is difficult to explain this fully, but I grew up knowing about the Holocaust. I cannot remember learning what genocide is; it feels as if I have always known. Just before my Bat Mitzvah, I told myself that it didn’t matter whether I went through with it or not — most anti-Semites view Judaism as an ethnicity, so if someone wanted to hurt Jews, they would go after me because of my family history, regardless of whether or not I was officially a Jew.

I had those thoughts in 2013, which now seems incredibly long ago. At the time, I called myself ridiculous and melodramatic, because I have always lived in the United States and, as far as I knew, no one was actually going around hurting Jews in the US. That is not true anymore.

In the past year, I have found meaning and community in Judaism. But the danger posed by anti-Semitism seems more urgent now than ever, and I find myself feeling defenseless. Around me, student groups, political parties, and self-proclaimed allies ignore, excuse, and defend anti-Semitism.

If there’s a moral to be found here, it is perhaps that non-Jewish people need to care more about hatred, even if it’s directed at “invisible,” “small” minorities. I’ll be honest, though. My previous columns on anti-Semitism seem to be read exclusively by Jewish people. I’m not hopeful that a single column in a college newspaper will have any real impact. So I don’t know what the moral is, and I don’t have any solutions. I can offer only pain, fear, and anger, and that is not enough.

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post The unbearable loneliness of being Jewish in America appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2019/05/10/the-unbearable-loneliness-of-being-jewish-in-america/feed/ 0 1154618
Stanford flakes https://stanforddaily.com/2019/04/24/stanford-flakes/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/04/24/stanford-flakes/#respond Wed, 24 Apr 2019 08:00:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1153404 The experience of being flaked on, or of flaking on someone else, has come to be a quintessential part of Stanford undergraduate life. You show up to a club meeting on time to find that half of the members have just texted you saying that they are between five and 15 minutes late.  A quarter […]

The post Stanford flakes appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
The experience of being flaked on, or of flaking on someone else, has come to be a quintessential part of Stanford undergraduate life. You show up to a club meeting on time to find that half of the members have just texted you saying that they are between five and 15 minutes late.  A quarter of the members are not present and have just texted to let you know that they can’t make the meeting at all. Another quarter of people are absent without explanation.

Many of us are aware of this and accept it, with varying degrees of equanimity, as unavoidable. College students are disorganized and busy. There are few to no consequences for  being late or absent, particularly for extracurricular activities.

Yet this laxness seems to creep outward, expanding to include everything in our lives. In one of my classes this quarter, our professor was forced to move the start time back 10 minutes because more than half the class wasn’t present on time for every single class meeting for the first two weeks. At a small meeting with two faculty members, roughly a fourth of the 10 students invited were late.

Part of what makes this culture of lateness possible is that it is a culture — everyone’s doing it, to some extent. Even I, the person pedantic enough to write a column complaining about this, am late to at least one thing each week. Most quarters, at least one of my professors is habitually a few minutes late to class. All of us, it seems, realize that everyone else will be late and adjust our own arrival times accordingly, creating a positive feedback loop. It’s mutually assured lateness.

The problem is that there are actually consequences to all these delays. Meetings, classes and activities all end on time, even if no one shows up until five minutes past the scheduled start time (and half of the attendees leave early after arriving late because no one at Stanford is capable of saying “no” or realistically evaluating their capacity to be in two places at once). Ultimately, we all simply have less time together to get through an agenda, slideshow or plan (and few people adjust their plans to account for this diminished time).

It’s also perhaps worth noting that arriving late to everything and then leaving midway through is at least somewhat disrespectful. I don’t tend to put too much weight on this argument, because if you’re not careful this line of thought makes you sound like a particularly strict school teacher from the 1950s. We should accept that everyone has a complicated schedule, and that it’s not a personal insult to the professor, speaker or meeting organizer if someone arrives late and leaves early.  But it’s also good for attendees to remember that they are presumably attending the event because it was worth to them, and being on time and present for the entire event is a good way to show that.

I suppose what I’m really advocating for is a more thoughtful version of lateness. There may not be formal consequences to tardiness, but that doesn’t mean there are no consequences at all. When you’re making plans which will force you to be late, or sitting in bed for a moment longer because you know that your professor won’t actually deduct points for entering class at 9:35 a.m., it might be worth it to consider the trade off you’re making. We chose to go to classes and meetings because they are interesting, important or fun. Being late means that losing part of the interesting, important, fun event. Is telling people that you do six extracurriculars worth more than doing four extracurriculars and actually being able to consistently show up for them? Is being late to lecture worth five unsatisfying minutes of trying to fall back asleep while worrying about how much time you have left? There isn’t a universal answer here, but let’s all stop telling ourselves that tardiness doesn’t matter.

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu

The post Stanford flakes appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2019/04/24/stanford-flakes/feed/ 0 1153404
Foreign Policy in the United States https://stanforddaily.com/2019/04/11/de-cd-foreign-policy-in-the-united-states/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/04/11/de-cd-foreign-policy-in-the-united-states/#respond Thu, 11 Apr 2019 08:00:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1152422 The United States faces an increasingly urgent challenge: reevaluating how we choose and implement foreign policy. Currently, our government’s approach to foreign policy is paradoxically too democratic and not democratic enough. Presidents’ decisions to use force are strongly influenced by electoral incentives, but citizens have few opportunities to directly influence a specific decision about the […]

The post Foreign Policy in the United States appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
The United States faces an increasingly urgent challenge: reevaluating how we choose and implement foreign policy. Currently, our government’s approach to foreign policy is paradoxically too democratic and not democratic enough. Presidents’ decisions to use force are strongly influenced by electoral incentives, but citizens have few opportunities to directly influence a specific decision about the use of force and are often underinformed about foreign policy questions. This has lead to cynical political maneuvering and popular discontent. Unfortunately, no potential alternatives to the present system have been identified yet. Until such alternatives are available, we must demand that politicians at every level play by the rules established in our Constitution, even if those rules are imperfect. Allowing politicians to simply disregard laws because they find them inconvenient undermines our democracy.

For a long time, the US didn’t really want a robust foreign policy apparatus. The Constitution did create a basic set of protocols for interactions with other states; it grants Congress the power to declare war and ratify treaties and entrusts the President with commanding the US’s armed forces and negotiating treaties.

But George Washington’s Farewell Address dwelled on the danger of interacting with other countries, even as allies: “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence…the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government…The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is…to have with them as little political connection as possible.”

Isolationism continued with the Monroe Doctrine, in which President Monroe attempted to prevent European powers from intensifying their involvement in the Americas. Diverse groups, including organized labor, pacifists and feminists, opposed America’s entry into WWI. Following WWI, President Wilson proposed the League of Nations, an organization intended to forestall wars by peacefully adjudicating disputes between states. Wilson was able to convince almost every WWI participant to join— except the United States, where Republican politicians quoted Washington’s warnings about foreign entanglements and ultimately prevented the US from joining the League.

A century later, America is involved in multiple long-term armed conflicts outside the US’s borders. The American people, and America’s system for creating and enacting foreign policy, have not adequately responded to this new context.

The average American is, unfortunately, not very well-informed about foreign policy. Pew found in 2014 that roughly half of Americans can identify Syria on a map. Fewer than half of Americans knew that Rex Tillerson was Secretary of State in 2017, and only 37% knew that Emmanuel Macron was President of France. This ignorance is perhaps understandable. For many people, foreign policy is simply not that important.

When Americans vote, they often have the advantage of having experienced one or more of the policy options being debated. Most Americans will pay taxes, interact with the healthcare system and notice how social security payments impact them and their family members. This is not true for foreign policy; citizens must rely on the media, the government or online crowdsourcing for information about the situation the US is facing on the world stage. This leaves people vulnerable to manipulation; research has shown that people will react to the same information about foreign affairs differently if it is presented by a politician from their own political party or a politician from a different party. If a politician from your own party states that the United States should, for instance, intervene in Syria, you are more likely to approve of intervening in Syria. If you are presented with the same statement about intervening in Syria but told that it was made by a politician from a different political party, you will be less likely to approve of intervening in Syria.

Perhaps this lack of information and engagement isn’t too important, though. Let’s suppose that political leaders usually make the choices that their constituents would have preferred had the constituents had time to research and evaluate a given policy. If that’s true, perhaps it is alright that Americans have effectively opted out of learning about and voting on foreign policy. There is some evidence that this tends to happen. A study published in International Studies Quarterly found that personal values and ideologies strongly predict both foreign policy and domestic policy alignments. People who value conservatism are likely to be Republicans and like to support militant internationalism (meaning, the belief that using force against other states is likely to be effective). People who value universalism are likely to be Democrats and likely to support cooperative internationalism (the belief that using diplomacy and cooperation when interacting with other states is likely to be effective). So, for example, Democrat voters may not know what’s going on outside the US, but they will vote for Democrat politicians. These politicians will usually make the same foreign policy choices that the voters would have made because Democrats generally have similar values and therefore similar foreign policy preferences.

Unfortunately, this idea breaks down when you look further into the formulation of foreign policy in American today. First, both political parties are experiencing serious fragmentation. The Democratic Party includes Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom have supported military interventions (often in the name of humanitarian goals), and Bernie Sanders, who has vehemently criticized such interventions.

Second, constitutional checks and balances notwithstanding, elected representatives in Congress may not have very much control over America’s foreign policy. Increasingly, Presidents use executive agreements rather than treaties to codify arrangements with other countries. Executive agreements do not require any kind of congressional approval, so using an executive agreement in place of a treaty effectively removes Congress from the process.

Even if the President chooses to create a treaty and have it ratified, other Presidents may withdraw from that treaty without Congressional approval. President Carter withdrew from a Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan in 1978 without Congressional consent. President Bush withdrew from the US’s Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in 2002 without Congressional consent.

The Constitution might attribute the power to declare war to Congress, but multiple administrations from both parties have argued that certain types of military force, such as the use of force to protect “vital” US interests or address “imminent” threats may be used without Congressional approval or a formal declaration of war. George H.W. Bush used this justification to send troops to Somalia. Clinton used it to intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo. George W Bush used it to enter Iraq. Obama used it to intervene in Libya. Although Presidents usually do not initiate large wars  if their party does not control Congress, and may change course if Congress is intensely critical of the decision to use force; in many ways Congress has abdicated its responsibility to decide when and how the US goes to war.

Unfortunately, the President is not a good substitute for Congressional oversight. Research has shown that domestic political concerns exert significant influence over presidential decisions to use force. Presidents are more likely to use force when they are facing a presidential election in the next year. They are more likely to use force when the economy is in a downturn or their approval ratings are fallings. In short, the decision to use force is influenced by the political interests of a politician and weakly influenced by the preferences of the general population.

It is easy to view all of this as convincing evidence that American should make its foreign policy process more democratic. Yet this would put complicated choices in the hands of citizens who consistently fail to identify strategically important countries on maps. Attempting to better inform Americans about international affairs so that they might become more involved in the process is unlikely to succeed. Citizens who are better informed about foreign affairs are often less likely to change their opinions in response to new information and are more skilled at interpreting information so that it suits their preexisting beliefs. Going from an under-informed electorate to one which rationalized new information to protect preexisting beliefs is unlikely to improve the overall situation. Furthermore, attempting to educate American adults en masse and then somehow force them to continue following the news about the rest of the world is technically challenging.

Making the process less democratic, however, goes against American ideals and intensifies the risk that politicians make decisions in response to their own interests. Since politicians, especially presidents, have finite political careers, this will likely result in more policies which satisfy the public in the short term but worsen America’s position in the long term.

Until we identify a feasible, sufficiently democratic and effective way of formulating foreign policy, we should at least strive to follow the established rules, imperfect as they are. Presidents must stop usurping the power to initiate armed conflicts. Congress must find the backbone necessary to stand up to presidents and curtail the unauthorized use of force. Presidents must stop using executive agreements as weak substitutes for treaties, and Congress must insist on being included in treaty formulation (and then act in the nation’s interests when it comes time to ratify treaties, rather than using them as political poker chips or bludgeons with which to influence or attack the president). Democracies rely on the rule of law. When politicians ignore or manipulate the Constitution to suit their own ends, they undermine our democracy.

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Foreign Policy in the United States appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2019/04/11/de-cd-foreign-policy-in-the-united-states/feed/ 0 1152422
Mistreated moderators and the pervasive violence of the internet https://stanforddaily.com/2019/03/06/me-ll-mistreated-moderators-and-the-pervasive-violence-of-the-internet/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/03/06/me-ll-mistreated-moderators-and-the-pervasive-violence-of-the-internet/#respond Wed, 06 Mar 2019 09:00:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1150804 Recently, the Verge published a look inside one of Facebook’s deals with a content moderating contractor. Facebook hires these moderators to screen posts reported by users for violating their community standards. These moderators look at reported posts and decide whether to delete or allow them. Author Casey Newton was able to convince some former Facebook moderators, who are generally prohibited from discussing their work by NDAs, to tell her about their experiences. Their stories are deeply upsetting; they are routinely forced to witness extreme violence, constantly monitored and held to incredibly high standards for speed and accuracy. Accuracy is determined by how often moderators’ decisions agree with the decisions of slightly more senior moderators; more senior moderators are given a random sample of a regular moderators’ processed posts and asked to make their own judgments. At Cognizant, for example, moderators must be “accurate” at least 95% of the time. Within the Cognizant work site Newton examines, some moderators have responded to constant exposure to the worst of Facebook by buying into the conspiracy theories. One person genuinely believes the earth is flat, another has become convinced that 9/11 was not a legitimate terrorist attack, and another denies that the Holocaust took place.

The post Mistreated moderators and the pervasive violence of the internet appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Recently, The Verge published a look inside one of Facebook’s deals with a content moderating contractor. Facebook hires these moderators to screen posts reported by users for violating their community standards. These moderators look at reported posts and decide whether to delete them or allow them. Author Casey Newton was able to convince some former Facebook moderators, who are generally prohibited from discussing their work by NDAs, to tell her about their experiences. Their stories are deeply upsetting; they are routinely forced to witness extreme violence, constantly monitored and held to incredibly high standards for speed and accuracy. Accuracy is determined by how often moderators’ decisions agree with the decisions of slightly more senior moderators; more senior moderators are given a random sample of a regular moderators’ processed posts and asked to make their own judgments. At Cognizant, for example, moderators must be “accurate” at least 95 percent of the time. Within the Cognizant work site Newton examines, some moderators have responded to constant exposure to the worst of Facebook by buying into the conspiracy theories. One person genuinely believes the Earth is flat, another has become convinced that 9/11 was not a legitimate terrorist attack and another denies that the Holocaust took place.

Reading Newton’s piece was odd to me because it was eerily similar to the experiences of censors in China, which I am currently researching for a literature review. China has made all website owners liable for content on their website, so the vast majority of censorship is actually performed by employees of social media sites. Website employees tasked with moderating content at Beyondsoft, a Chinese techservices company contracted by social media platforms, and Cognizant, an American company contracted by Facebook, are required to lock their phones in small lockers while at work and perform content moderation using computers with limited capabilities. Both companies ask that workers screen a dauntingly high number of posts per day, although Beyondsoft’s targets are higher (it’s difficult to compare exact numbers because Facebook posts may be longer than the ones Beyondsoft screens).

There are, however, some interesting differences between Facebook moderators’ work and that of Chinese social media censors. Although both companies have training programs, Beyondsoft’s program must teach employees about censored information. Many employees learn about the 1989 Tiananmen Square Demonstrations for the first time during Beyondsoft’s training. Chinese employees are required to have in-depth, detailed knowledge of all of the most controversial parts of Communist Party of China (CCP) history, and they are expected to use that knowledge to censor social media in order to protect the CCP.

Yet that cognitive dissonance might be less overwhelming than the trauma Facebook’s moderators experience. Newton reports that many of her sources found their work depressing, anxiety-inducing and horrifying. It is apparently not uncommon for employees to use alcohol, marijuana or other drugs to get through a day of screening posts. Dark humor, including jokes about self-harm, is common at Cognizant.

Last year, for my PWR 1 class, I wrote a paper on white supremacy on 4chan. A surprising number of mass shootings are committed by individuals, usually young cisgender white men, who spent a great deal of time on websites like The Daily Stormer or 4chan’s /pol/ board (a word of warning: Both of those sites contain graphic and disturbing content, and I would not recommend visiting them). Dylann Roof credited online white supremacy with inspiring his actions. Perhaps foolishly, I attempted to gain insights about why white supremacy appeals to people and even convinces them to commit terrible crimes. I attempted to do this by reading and analyzing content from 4chan’s /pol/ board.

Because this project was of my own design, and I was able to choose when and how to read the messages I collected, my experience was likely a great deal less severe than that of Cognizant employees. It was still frightening and deeply unpleasant. I learned a new vocabulary of hate, an entirely new language of slurs and insults designed to reinforce bigotry. I learned that white supremacists are at once creative in their expressions of hatred and utterly original in the content of their ideas.

I did, to some extent, accomplish my goal. I learned that these communities seem to offer users a sense of power, uniqueness and support, as long as the user is male and white. They offer a prepackaged sense of purpose (to protect the white race) and identity (a member and protector of the white race). But I also found myself constantly sad, anxious and frustrated; finishing the paper offered an enormous sense of relief and alleviated most of my malaise, but I can’t quite leave it behind.

I haven’t visited 4chan or any of the other sites I researched in nearly a year. Nevertheless, I cannot forget that every one of the posts I read was written by a human being, who can vote and buy a gun. I am living in the same America I was before this project, but now I am playing a never-ending guessing game. I look around and try to find the /pol/ users, The Daily Stormer viewers, the people who spew hateful things online and then go to the grocery store as if nothing’s wrong. I can’t find them, but now I know they must be somewhere, and I can’t quite stop looking.

I don’t know how to fix our internet problem. Bigotry and violence have permeated every platform, from 4chan to Facebook, and asking people to monitor this deluge of posts means subjecting human beings to nonstop hate. It’s clear that Facebook should be paying people more, pressuring them less and providing better mental health services. But that doesn’t really fix the problem. The source of moderators’ trauma will not change, no matter how well  Facebook treats them.

At the risk of sounding un-American, I might suggest learning from China. Many Chinese social media platforms preemptively prevent people from posting content that contains certain words. Others automatically delete posts with those words. Facebook and other companies can simply ban obviously offensive terms (thanks to my excursion into 4chan, I have a long list of terms that no one except white supremacists use). Freedom of speech is important, but it only extends to the government, meaning that the government cannot censor private citizens’ speech but private companies can. Private companies are not under any obligation to provide a platform for bigotry.

Ultimately, though, the internet seems to be an expression of society — particularly, the parts of society that people don’t like to bring up face-to-face. If social media platforms want to prevent the worst parts of society from running rampant on their sites, they must either employ moderators, and subject those moderators to traumatizing posts, or somehow eradicate bigotry and violence in society as a whole. Looking at that choice, it’s not hard to see why Facebook chose the moderators.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

The post Mistreated moderators and the pervasive violence of the internet appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2019/03/06/me-ll-mistreated-moderators-and-the-pervasive-violence-of-the-internet/feed/ 0 1150804
Accessibility to healthcare and education in rural towns https://stanforddaily.com/2019/02/20/accessibility-to-healthcare-and-education-in-rural-towns/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/02/20/accessibility-to-healthcare-and-education-in-rural-towns/#respond Wed, 20 Feb 2019 18:12:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1149961 Recently, in a class called “Health and Healthcare Systems in East Asia,” we read Doctor Stories by Dr. Kenjiro Setoue. I strongly recommend both the class and the book, but right now I would like to focus on an issue the book raises: Should governments devote disproportionate resources to providing public goods to people living […]

The post Accessibility to healthcare and education in rural towns appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Recently, in a class called “Health and Healthcare Systems in East Asia,” we read Doctor Stories by Dr. Kenjiro Setoue. I strongly recommend both the class and the book, but right now I would like to focus on an issue the book raises: Should governments devote disproportionate resources to providing public goods to people living in remote communities?

Setoue is a Japanese doctor who moved to Koshiki Island in 1978. Originally, he planned to stay for six months, but he ended up staying there for more than 30 years. When he arrived, Setoue was the only doctor on an island of 4,000 people. By the time the book was published, Setoue was no longer the only doctor on the island, but the island’s population had dwindled to less than 3,500.

The vast majority of the people left on the island are retirees whose children have moved to the mainland for educational and work opportunities. The island no longer has a high school, so the few children born on the island are forced to go to the mainland relatively early in their lives.

Setoue’s book focuses on the challenges of providing healthcare in such an environment. When Setoue arrived in 1978, the island had a single medical clinic with an operating room but no general anaesthesia. Any emergency surgery or surgery on patients who could not be moved to the mainland was performed without anaesthesia. Even once Setoue was able to to get access to better facilities and equipment, the island’s geography presented serious challenges. Even now, helicopter evacuations can only be conducted if the weather is favorable and often take a long time. Setoue must therefore handle a wide range of surgeries, often while under immense pressure.

Setoue is under pressure even when no one is injured; he explains his tradition of checking in with vulnerable residents before leaving the island and occasionally canceling a family visit or visit to a medical conference because he didn’t want to leave someone on the island without a doctor. One elderly resident habitually called Setoue before public holidays to ask if he would be leaving the island.

For Koshiki Island, maintaining doctors in every specialty or enough doctors for Dr. Setoue to leave the island without fear isn’t entirely feasible. Most of Koshiki’s residents are retirees, so the island’s tax base isn’t exactly limitless.

This restrains other public services as well; the island has already lost its high school, and if current trends continue it may no longer be feasible to have a middle school. This is a self-perpetuating cycle; the lack of a high school likely dissuades young families from moving to or staying on Koshiki, which causes the island to have fewer children, which makes it harder to maintain educational services.

This problem doesn’t just apply to Japanese islands. Small rural towns in America are also struggling with decreasing access to healthcare and education.

Communities around the world do not have enough people or enough tax revenue to justify maintaining hospitals or public schools — from a strictly economic point of view. But what about an ethical point of view? Is it the responsibility of the state or national government to support these communities even once doing so requires spending far more per resident than is spent on urban or suburban residents? Is it the responsibility of residents to accept that their choice of location causes them to have less access to certain services?

This is complicated in part by traditional ideas about certain lifestyles and services. America has a strong tradition of revering farmers, small towns and “traditional” ways of life. For many people, rural small towns, despite their shrinking population, represent the “real” America. Furthermore, many people view access to healthcare and education as human rights or at least more morally important than other services. Very few people think the government should ensure access to shopping malls, but hospitals and schools are different.

As so often happens, I don’t actually know what the right answer is here. I think that some towns, towns located in especially remote areas or with especially small populations, probably will experience more difficulty getting healthcare and education. But I don’t think that we should write off towns simply because they no longer break even from a strictly economic point of view. Deep down, I hope that changes like online physician consultations and virtual schools will relieve some of this pressure. But I suspect that there are limits on this; online doctor’s visits cannot eliminate the need for emergency surgery, and virtual schools make it hard for children to learn social skills.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

The post Accessibility to healthcare and education in rural towns appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2019/02/20/accessibility-to-healthcare-and-education-in-rural-towns/feed/ 0 1149961
The shutdowns will continue until laws improve https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/29/the-shutdowns-will-continue-until-laws-improve/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/29/the-shutdowns-will-continue-until-laws-improve/#respond Tue, 29 Jan 2019 09:00:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1148819 Our government now has enough funding to remain open until Feb. 15. President Trump and Congress plan to use this time to continue arguing about funding for Trump’s wall. Frankly, I do not believe that they will reach an agreement by then. These are the same people who failed to reach a compromise, initiated the […]

The post The shutdowns will continue until laws improve appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Our government now has enough funding to remain open until Feb. 15. President Trump and Congress plan to use this time to continue arguing about funding for Trump’s wall. Frankly, I do not believe that they will reach an agreement by then. These are the same people who failed to reach a compromise, initiated the longest government shutdown in history and continue to fail to compromise throughout that shut down. Their track record is, to say the least, not encouraging.

While everyone in Washington is arguing about funding the wall, let’s take a moment to appreciate how avoidable and ridiculous government shutdowns are. Other countries do not pull this kind of political stunt. Surely the United States could avoid doing so if we put some effort into it.

In 1889, Emperor Meiji promulgated the first Japanese constitution. The Meiji Constitution stipulated that Japan’s new deliberative body, the Diet, had the power to approve or reject annual budgets. However, if the government reached the end of the year and the Diet had not yet approved a budget, the budget approved in the year before was automatically enacted. This failsafe was meant to preserve the power of the Emperor by allowing the Emperor to access funding even if the Diet refused to approve his budget. Ultimately this plan backfired, as state expenses increased quickly and the Emperor became less willing to accept older, and therefore smaller, budgets.

The United States could enact a similar mechanism. The most durable, and perhaps most legitimate, way to do so would be to ratify a constitutional amendment stipulating that all funding packages last for one fiscal year and that the previous year’s funding package is automatically enacted if Congress and the President fail to agree on a new package. But ratifying amendments is a long and arduous process, and Congress has grown accustomed to funding packages with flexible lengths.

Another option is to adopt new procedural rules in Congress. For instance, if a simple majority (as opposed to a two-thirds majority) passes a budget, and the President vetoes it, the Senate and House of Representatives could require that all members vote to override the President’s veto if failing to do so will shut down the government or if the government has already been shut down. This option has disadvantages; in some ways it subverts the constitutional process for vetoing and overriding vetoes, and congressional procedures are relatively easily changed.

There are other solutions. Congress could impose a time limit on budget negotiations (the UK Parliament is only expected to spend four days debating the national budget) and stipulate that the latest budget passing automatically come up for a vote after a certain number of days. Congress could pass laws reducing the salary of any congressperson who is in office when a government shutdown begins. Government employees could refuse to work without pay en masse. Government agencies could direct their employees not to work when the government has been shut down. Frankly, anyone in a management position in government should probably recognize that their employees are being taken advantage of and stand up to Congress on their behalf.

There are options besides allowing people to take the entire federal government hostage in pursuit of their own goals. Yet the United States has not seriously considered structural changes to our legislative process or to bureaucratic policies, even after a shutdown which lasted more than a month. Instead we’ve talked about whose fault this is and whether the Democrats should cave on funding for the wall simply to get the government open again (they should not–rewarding behavior ensures that it will happen again). So perhaps it’s time to stop letting politicians lead the conversation. Instead, we need to focus on long-term solutions.

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post The shutdowns will continue until laws improve appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/29/the-shutdowns-will-continue-until-laws-improve/feed/ 0 1148819
Not everything is a moral decision https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/17/me-asl-not-everything-is-a-moral-decision/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/17/me-asl-not-everything-is-a-moral-decision/#respond Thu, 17 Jan 2019 09:00:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1148341 I think a lot about morals. It’s difficult to explain why, per se, but I do. In this moment, however, I find myself incredibly tired of them. I’m sure we’re all tired of talking about New Year’s resolutions by now, but the number of people online and in real life who seem to need to […]

The post Not everything is a moral decision appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
I think a lot about morals. It’s difficult to explain why, per se, but I do. In this moment, however, I find myself incredibly tired of them. I’m sure we’re all tired of talking about New Year’s resolutions by now, but the number of people online and in real life who seem to need to tell me about their resolutions (or intentions or goals or unnamed thoughts) continues to impress.

Part of my objection is society’s unending insistence on attaching moral values to any lifestyle choice one could possibly make. It is good to eat vegetables and bad to eat processed foods. It is good to exercise and bad to sit and watch TV.

Sometimes this works in your favor, I suppose. Having the moral high ground is always satisfying. Yet everyone, at some point or another, loses the high ground. And then the whole system comes down on you, feeding feelings of shame and inadequacy.

And somehow this whole system affects you even when you know it’s not logical. Yes, eating certain foods and engaging in certain behaviors can lead to a longer life and decrease the amount of time we spend suffering from physical limitations. But our society is organized around the idea that everyone has the right to choose for themselves what they value most in life. If someone prefers not to exercise and accepts the potential risks that follow that decision, that decision affects them and perhaps their loved ones. So why should society as a whole have the right to censor them?

Occasionally, when I bring this up, people tell me that certain lifestyle choices lead to higher healthcare costs for society as a whole. There are two issues with this. First, if we go down that road, we also need to ostracize everyone who drinks frequently, smokes, uses illegal drugs or engages in any activity that doctors don’t recommend. Second, I’ve never heard of anyone experiencing serious pain because of someone else’s medical bills. I suspect that a lot of this is a polite way for people to say, “I think that being thin is important and morally good, and I think that the only way to be thin is through a stereotypically healthy diet and regular exercise (and that anyone who has those things will automatically be thin).” Which is ridiculous— plenty of thin people don’t have healthy lifestyles, as any time with college students will tell you. Plenty of people with healthy lifestyles aren’t thin. And being thin has no inherent moral value whatsoever.

More concerning to me, though, is the need to announce all of these choices to everyone you know. In my limited working experience, I once spent some time working in a team of undergraduate students, spending a large amount of time with the same people. It became regular for every student to announce what exercise they had done that day and to either celebrate their progress or make excuses for not exercising that day. If one person reported running so many miles, someone else had to report running that many miles plus one the next day. When we ate together, everyone had to comment on the nutritional value of their meal — and often other people’s meal. One person said, “You know, [insert food I was currently eating here] is like super high calorie.” He didn’t say this once; he said this at least weekly and often every other day. This did not appear to bother the other members of our team.

This doesn’t only happen among young students working closely together. It happens between friends, among families — really anywhere that people interact. And it is not harmless. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reports that 30 million people suffer from an eating disorder in the U.S. As many as 65 percent of American women ages 25 to 45 report having engaged in disordered eating at some point in their lives. Untold numbers of people waste time feeling ashamed of not going to the gym every day.

And even people doing everything “right” don’t benefit — not really. They must constantly report their good choices, reaffirm their own worthiness by judging the less good.

So, instead of a resolution, here’s the plan: We all stop perpetuating this ridiculous system. Stop telling your friends and coworkers and family members about your latest workout or salad or cheat day unless they tell you that they want to know. Give yourself permission to stop feeling ashamed of the “wrong” choices but, more importantly, stop monitoring and passing judgments on other people’s choices.

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Not everything is a moral decision appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/17/me-asl-not-everything-is-a-moral-decision/feed/ 0 1148341
Discussion section confessions https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/12/me-asl-discussion-section-confessions/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/12/me-asl-discussion-section-confessions/#respond Mon, 12 Nov 2018 09:00:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1146663 Discussion sections and seminar classes are unavoidably weird. The professor or TA running the show is incredibly knowledgeable about the class’s subject, but they spend hours listening to undergraduate students who may or may not have done the reading offer their own analysis. Participating in these sorts of classes makes me uncomfortable not because I’m […]

The post Discussion section confessions appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Discussion sections and seminar classes are unavoidably weird. The professor or TA running the show is incredibly knowledgeable about the class’s subject, but they spend hours listening to undergraduate students who may or may not have done the reading offer their own analysis. Participating in these sorts of classes makes me uncomfortable not because I’m a quiet  person but because I talk too much.

Avid Daily readers may remember Rachel Ochoa’s recent article on the dynamics of seminars. I would like to extend her comments a bit. Personally, I’ve spent a lot of time in classes where few or no students volunteer to participate or answer questions on a regular basis. I am intimately familiar with the feeling of sitting in a dead-silent room after an instructor asks a question and no one attempts to answer it.

I’m not sure why this is a problem. Most of the students I’ve met at Stanford have a lot of interesting things to say. All of them are more than capable of doing the assigned readings and understanding them. Some readings might be harder than others, and everyone has tough weeks when readings for certain classes get pushed to the bottom of the to-do list (or, I hope everyone does, because I do). But this dramatic reluctance to speak up is consistent throughout various classes I’ve taken this quarter.

It’s difficult to know how to respond to these silences. Admittedly, I tend to wait about 30 seconds and then raise my hand. It’s possible that my threshold for awkward silences is lower than most. It’s also entirely possible that I am too uninformed to know what I don’t know – that I am so bad at understanding the readings that I don’t realize I’m not understanding. I may or may not have stress dreams about that scenario. Maybe other students are happy to know an answer or have an opinion without sharing it. That’s certainly a possible difference, given that I joined The Daily in order to write this column and share my opinions. I am not a silent thinker.

Recently, though, I’ve been worried about my relatively high participation. On one level, most seminars or discussion sections give students a participation grade, and it’s reasonable for me to do everything I can to improve that grade. On another level, what if I’m hurting other students’ grades? What if some of my classmates are waiting for 35 seconds of silence before they feel comfortable answering the question? What if I’m saying something they planned to say? What if I’m taking up space in a way that pushes out other people?

I’ve tried to change the way I participate in class to address these concerns. I let the silences last longer before jumping in. I’ve gotten much more strict with myself about answer length – I am quite familiar with the type of student who makes their answers into mini-speeches, and I know that it’s not a great way to make friends or invite others to speak up. Ultimately, though, I can’t force everyone else to talk if they don’t want to. I also probably shouldn’t assume that their reasons for not participating are negative ones, or have anything to do with me. Perhaps it’s enough to accept that I like to participate a lot and other people don’t, and that’s alright.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Discussion section confessions appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/12/me-asl-discussion-section-confessions/feed/ 0 1146663
Confronting anti-Semitism on campus https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/30/confronting-anti-semitism-on-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/30/confronting-anti-semitism-on-campus/#respond Tue, 30 Oct 2018 08:00:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1145873 On Saturday, 11 people were killed at the Tree of Life synagogue by a man who told law enforcement officers, “I just want to kill Jews.” As a Jewish person in America, I don’t know how to react to this tragedy. On Saturday I cried. On Sunday I found out that this is the synagogue […]

The post Confronting anti-Semitism on campus appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
On Saturday, 11 people were killed at the Tree of Life synagogue by a man who told law enforcement officers, “I just want to kill Jews.”

As a Jewish person in America, I don’t know how to react to this tragedy. On Saturday I cried. On Sunday I found out that this is the synagogue that my family members went to while they lived in Pittsburgh, and that the Rabbi of that synagogue married my aunt and uncle. Then I cried some more.

It is heartbreakingly easy to define the history of the Jews as a story of brutal, but just short of, complete genocides against us. We have multiple holidays dedicated to remembering times in which various groups attempted to destroy us, but did not completely succeed (Chanukah celebrates Jews reclaiming the Second Temple in Jerusalem after being forced to worship in secret; Purim celebrates a story in which a Jewish woman and her father outsmarted a government official attempting to murder all Jewish people in the Persian empire). I grew up learning about the Holocaust, pogroms and the Jewish Diaspora. You would think that this constant awareness of persecution and danger might make it easier to grapple with Saturday’s events. It doesn’t feel that way.

Instead I am heartbroken, angry and tired. Above all, I am terrified that this will inspire further attacks. I have no profound insights about the nature of human suffering or hatred. I have no insights at all. I don’t really know what else there is to say.

This weekend, it was comforting that many American politicians issued statements condemning the murder of Jewish people. It was comforting that Stanford held a vigil to mourn the victims of this attack.

It was infuriating that Trump retweeted Dinesh D’Souza, a known anti-Semite, less than three days after anti-Semitism killed 11 people. It was infuriating to read on Monday morning that the Stanford College Republicans (SCR) applied for a grant from Stanford to host D’Souza this January.

To quote The Stanford Daily story on D’Souza:

“D’Souza also joked about the Holocaust in a Stony Brook University talk earlier this year, falsely claimed that Adolf Hitler was not anti-gay and retweeted Twitter posts with the hashtags #burntheJews and #bringbackslavery.”

Sure, D’Souza claims that he accidentally retweeted #burntheJews. But I’m suspicious of anyone who “doesn’t notice” that particular hashtag. And the tweet with that hashtag came to D’Souza’s attention because it contained a trailer for his new movie. If fans of your movie are promoting it using that hashtag, something is very, very wrong.

I cannot let my tuition money and my school be used to promote anti-Semitism. I invite you to sign a petition asking the Stanford undergraduate student senate to deny SCR’s funding request. I invite you to sign a petition calling for Stanford Office of Community Standards to investigate the SCR. Inviting D’Souza is a slap in the face to Jewish people at Stanford, particularly after this weekend. The individuals responsible for this misguided plan must be held accountable.

D’Souza and bigots like him did not directly participate in the Pittsburgh shooting. But they promote and enable anti-Semitism throughout society, and that anti-Semitism causes attacks like this one. We cannot allow D’Souza to use Stanford to promote hatred and further endanger freedom of religion and American Jews.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Confronting anti-Semitism on campus appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/30/confronting-anti-semitism-on-campus/feed/ 0 1145873
‘Pokémon Go to the polls’ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/16/me-asl-pokemon-go-to-the-polls/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/16/me-asl-pokemon-go-to-the-polls/#respond Tue, 16 Oct 2018 08:00:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1144948 Just for a moment, let’s remember 2016, and one of the my favorite quotes of all time: Hillary Clinton, at a July 2016 rally in northern Virginia, donning a brightly colored knit blazer, telling you to “Pokémon Go to the polls.” Clinton’s delivery was key here — she delivered this line with the anger of […]

The post ‘Pokémon Go to the polls’ appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Just for a moment, let’s remember 2016, and one of the my favorite quotes of all time: Hillary Clinton, at a July 2016 rally in northern Virginia, donning a brightly colored knit blazer, telling you to “Pokémon Go to the polls.” Clinton’s delivery was key here — she delivered this line with the anger of a parent telling her child to go to bed, and the hesitance of someone who has never played or discussed Pokémon Go.

There is, however, a larger issue with this quote: American’s persistent reluctance to actually vote. Only 6 in 10 Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election, and 4 in 10 voted in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections. There are a lot of potential explanations; some people don’t vote because they haven’t been able to register to vote. Others have been purged from voter rolls (if you want to get very angry very quickly, look up Georgia’s last minute voter suppression efforts, which included putting 53,000 registrations on hold, a policy initiated by the Republican candidate for governor in this year’s race). Some people have work or other obligations which prevent them from going to the polls. Some people feel uninformed about how to register to vote, how to vote, who to vote for or why their vote matters. Young people are likely to move around the country and therefore feel disconnected from local politics. Campaigns are likely to focus on people who habitually vote, creating a cycle in which voters are targeted by information urging them to vote and therefore do so, while non-voters do not receive that information and continue to not vote.

Of course, as with so many things in America, education and economics also matter. People with higher levels of education or higher earnings are more likely to vote. Despite high education levels, Stanford students are part of the problem; fewer than one in five eligible voters among Stanford students actually voted in the 2014 midterm elections. This year, student groups have mobilized to change that. Stanford in Government has held voter registration events (including a registration event featuring free tacos last spring) and left flyers and “Stanford Votes” badges all over campus.

These efforts probably will increase turnout, which is great. In general, participating in democracy is a good thing. But there’s also room for concern. Stanford students’ chances of voting decrease as the distance from Stanford to their home state increases. Maybe those students are realizing that they no longer live in their home state for most of the year and therefore aren’t really affected by its policies.

For instance, I’m from Pennsylvania, but in the past 12 months I’ve probably spent two months or less actually in  Pennsylvania. I still voted in this year’s midterm election using an absentee ballot, but I’m not sure that doing so is fair — to me or anyone else. On some level, I am more currently connected to California than I am to Pennsylvania, and I may remain so for as long as I spend the majority of my time here. Is it fair to me that I am expected (or, depending on your home state and the state in which you go to college, required) to vote in local elections for my home state, while living in a state without representation? Is it fair to people living full time in Pennsylvania that I have a say in the policies that will not affect me personally?

Here’s an example: California, unlike Pennsylvania, has propositions on the ballot. This year, voters in Palo Alto will decide whether to enact Proposition F, which would make the city responsible for regulating health care costs. This proposition could save consumers money, but it might also drive every healthcare provider out of Palo Alto. Now that I live in Palo Alto, I rely on health care providers in Palo Alto. Yet I can’t vote on a proposal which may completely reshape healthcare in this area.

While we’re asking about fairness, is it fair that Stanford students, who are extremely likely to become habitual voters after they graduate, are being spoon-fed voter registration forms and reminders? Don’t get me wrong, we all should be voting, and it’s ridiculous that we don’t. But Stanford could also focus more on registering R&DE employees or recent immigrants to the U.S. who live in the Bay Area or any number of less advantaged groups who are less likely to vote. Instead we are focusing on the people who are most likely to have the resources and time to figure this out for themselves. Maybe it’s time to reevaluate how college students vote and how college groups promote voting.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post ‘Pokémon Go to the polls’ appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/16/me-asl-pokemon-go-to-the-polls/feed/ 0 1144948
We should be ashamed of Paul Ryan https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/17/we-should-be-ashamed-of-paul-ryan/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/17/we-should-be-ashamed-of-paul-ryan/#respond Thu, 17 May 2018 12:00:42 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1142460 House Speaker Paul Ryan announced this year that he won’t be seeking reelection, because he wants to spend more time with his family. Announcing the decision, he said “I like to think I’ve done my part.” And he has done his part—in creating a more unequal, unsustainable, bigoted America. A long time ago, in 1998, […]

The post We should be ashamed of Paul Ryan appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
House Speaker Paul Ryan announced this year that he won’t be seeking reelection, because he wants to spend more time with his family. Announcing the decision, he said “I like to think I’ve done my part.” And he has done his part—in creating a more unequal, unsustainable, bigoted America.

A long time ago, in 1998, Paul Ryan was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time. For more than a decade after Ryan arrived in Washington, he was part of a small group of far-right representatives. His vehement opposition to social programs like Medicare and Medicaid was abnormal and mildly concerning to the rest of the Republican caucus. Gradually, though, the Republican party shifted farther right, helped along by the Tea Party and Congressmen like Ted Cruz. In 2015, when Speaker John Boehner resigned and the Republican caucus tapped Ryan for the speakership, there were concerns that he was not far enough right.  

The large scale political slide to the right, combined with the breach of decorum and standards that is Donald Trump’s presidency, makes it hard to remember exactly why we should be ashamed of Paul Ryan, but it’s time to remember. House Speakers don’t vanish into thin air when they stop running for reelection. Even Newt Gingrich, the first speaker to be sanctioned by the House following an ethics committee investigation which found that he had illegally claimed that a class he taught had status as a charity for tax purposes, clawed his way back onto the political scene to run for president, spew Republican talking points on Fox News, and support Trump.

So this is almost certainly not the last we’ll see of Paul Ryan. As we wait for his retirement, Fox News appearances and inevitable presidential campaign, let’s review some of his greatest hits.

During the Obama administration, Ryan had a borderline unhealthy obsession with budget deficits. He spent an impressive amount of time blocking anything that required money to be spent by the US government. He called himself “Paul Ryan Deficit Hawk.” As in, on Fox News, he said the words “Paul Ryan Deficit Hawk is also a growth advocate. Paul Ryan Deficit Hawk knows you have to have a faster-growing economy, more jobs, bigger take-home pay.

Luckily for Paul Ryan Deficit Hawk, morals can change. Even ones that you use to create your own superhero name (to be fair, Paul Ryan Deficit Hawk is the worst possible knock off of Hawkeye anyway). Last year, Ryan was one of the key players in passing Trump’s new tax plan. You know, the one that cuts taxes on the rich and corporations but only gives the middle class temporary cuts and happens to increase the US Federal budget deficit by at least $1.7 trillion. Further back, Ryan also supported George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which have increased the budget deficit by roughly $5 trillion.

Those of us who understand basic math might notice that tax cuts increase the budget deficit unless they are accompanied by large spending cuts. And those large spending cuts have to be extraordinarily large. Currently, the federal government is already in debt. When the government has a budget deficit, that means there isn’t enough money to cover spending, so the government borrows money, which adds to the debt. That debt, like any other type of debt (student readers might find this particularly relatable), accrues interest. As the US continues to cut taxes and run deficits, our debt grows, as do the minimum necessary interest payments on that debt.

So Paul Ryan never actually wanted to balance the federal budget and get us out of debt. Or he might have, back in 1998, but he certainly doesn’t any more. Now, it would be more accurate to call him Paul Ryan Tax Cut Hawk. That’s not entirely fair, though: he does oppose some tax cuts. Specifically, he opposes refundable tax credits for the poor.

Of course, let’s not forget that Paul Ryan co-sponsored a bill with Representative Todd Akin called the Sanctity of Life Act. The bill, which failed, was an unabashed assault on women’s right to choose whether to have a baby. Representative Todd Akin, who eventually failed to win an election, is an unabashed assault on human decency. He’s that crazy guy from 2012 who said “If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down,” meaning that women don’t conceive unless they wanted to have sex.

Paul Ryan’s record on LGBTQ issues is just as bad. As Speaker, he’s blocked debate and voting on legislation that would extend federal anti-discrimination protections to cover people who experience discrimination because of their LGBTQ identity. He’s opposed same-sex marriage, allowing openly LGBTQ people to serve in the military, and legislation on anti-LGBTQ hate crimes.

Paul Ryan may be able to speak in full, coherent sentences. He may even be able to pretend that he cares about marginalized groups. But that should not and cannot be enough for us to pretend that he is a good person. Ryan was part of the far-right fringe that pulled the Republican party away from centrist policies. As Speaker, he refused to stand up to Donald Trump. Throughout his career, he’s prioritized tax cuts and the desires of rich people while ignoring women’s rights, LGBTQ people and poor people. His legacy is shameful, and he deserves to be told that.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post We should be ashamed of Paul Ryan appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/17/we-should-be-ashamed-of-paul-ryan/feed/ 0 1142460
The right to be forgotten https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/30/the-right-to-be-forgotten/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/30/the-right-to-be-forgotten/#respond Mon, 30 Apr 2018 12:00:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140221 Sarah Myers discusses the idea of a right to be forgotten online and what it means in our increasingly digital world.

The post The right to be forgotten appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Since 2014, citizens of the European Union have had the right to be forgotten: to request that search engines remove certain results about them if the information provided by those results are “inadequate, irrelevant or excessive in relation to the purposes of the processing.” The internet has made our pasts permanent, and certain citizens of the EU wanted to be able to forget (or at least distance themselves from) parts of their pasts.

The EU court uses a restrictive definition of the right to be forgotten and chose an odd group of actors to enact this right. Under the EU’s ruling, people have the right to make information about themselves (for instance, about past court cases in which they were involved) difficult to find by asking that search engines remove certain results. The individual is required to provide justification for removal of the results, and the search engine (not a court of law or a state bureaucracy) determines whether that justification meets the court’s criteria. However, the websites which actually published said information are not asked or required to remove that information.

So the EU’s right to be forgotten isn’t really a right to be forgotten — it’s a right to be difficult to find. Even that is doubtful — any particularly persistent person can continue publishing the information you’d like to suppress under different domain names in order to keep the information on Google (it’s easier and faster to buy a new website domain name than it is to submit right to be forgotten requests and have them enacted).

The right to be forgotten also empowers tech companies — something that people outside Silicon Valley are increasingly leery about. This is a sticky situation, to be fair. The EU doesn’t want to process requests to be forgotten because this would require funding and employees, and because the optics of a state telling private companies what to put on their websites are awful. Instead, the EU chooses to prioritize the right private companies have to free speech, invariably placing an individual’s right to be forgotten at the mercy of a private company.  

The EU’s ruling represents the first recognition of the right to be forgotten by a state (or, more accurately, set of states). It’s a weird sort of right. It didn’t need to be discussed until recently because anyone truly desperate to forget part of their past or prevent new acquaintances from learning about their past could simply move. Without the internet and digital records, moving to the next state over, or perhaps the next country over, was enough to be forgotten.

But that ability to be forgotten isn’t necessarily a right to be forgotten— the fact that people in the past were able to escape their past doesn’t necessarily mean that they deserved to do so. Let’s say that I take a forensic science class and somehow make the professor absolutely hate me. In a fit of rage, my professor uses his expertise to frame me for a gruesome murder. America’s lamestream media jumps on the story of a murderous Stanford student. Six months later, I use my new forensic science knowledge to prove my innocence but by that time, the story is old news. Going into my senior year, I realize that any potential future employers are going to see stories about my alleged murderous rampage on page 1 of Google. Logically, I submit a request for those results to be removed.

That seems pretty reasonable. Let’s try another example. Various college students (Stanford’s own Brock Turner, who was protected by the administration and swimming team!) have been accused of sexual assault. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that at least some of them actually did sexually assault someone — but some didn’t. Let’s say one such student, 20 years after allegedly sexually assaulting someone else, decides to run for Senate. Their obvious first move is to make any incriminating information from college as hard to find as possible. Should Google remove results about their alleged crime?

On the surface, this question could seem easy — if the Senate hopeful was found guilty of sexual assault, Google should laugh in their face. If they were exonerated, Google should remove results about the case. But many cases like this don’t make it to court. They are often adjudicated only by the university where the perpetrator is currently enrolled. Universities are notoriously bad at determining guilt or innocence in this type of case and may never reach a verdict at all. Should search engines be responsible for investigating decades-old alleged crimes? Should they assume innocence and allow a possible rapist to keep their crime a secret?

You and I probably aren’t going to end up in either of those situations. But there is a spectrum of difficult questions between them. All of us are increasingly likely to end up in that spectrum. For instance, the majority of American adults and teenagers use social media. People my age post selfies and vacation photos — and the occasional photo from a party. Some parents post potentially embarrassing photos of their children, ranging from goofy to legitimately shaming. Unless Americans have some kind of heretofore undiscovered supply of foresight, most of us are going to end up regretting some of our social media use. Should Google sweep our indiscretions and oversharing under the carpet?

This very article, just like my other articles for the Daily, and the articles I wrote for my high school newspaper, will become a permanent part of my digital identity as soon as it is published. I’ll be the first to admit that that can be a daunting thought. It’s fun to laugh at Ted Cruz’s college theatrical performances until you realize that, to some people, your actions will be just as worthy of ridicule. It feels dishonest to censor myself for the sake of a faceless future employer (and foolhardy, given that I have no idea what future-me will find embarrassing), but it’s also impossible to ignore the permanency of my words. Will I someday find myself asking Google to remove results from the Daily from my search results?

There are limits on our right to suppress the past and there are limits on the right of our past to determine our future. The EU established the right to be forgotten, more than the U.S. has done, but its policy has flaws. Limits on the right to be forgotten should probably be determined and applied by all of us, not tech companies. We, as individuals, should probably accept some responsibility for moderating our tendency to overshare and perhaps we should consider the long term impact of our online activity. Between those two ideas lie a host of difficult questions, and it’s time to stop ignoring them.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post The right to be forgotten appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/30/the-right-to-be-forgotten/feed/ 0 1140221
Confessions of a liberal https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/13/confessions-of-a-liberal/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/13/confessions-of-a-liberal/#respond Fri, 13 Apr 2018 12:00:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139331 It’s 2018, but I’m going to say it anyway — the 2016 election made me angry. I was angry that 62 million Americans voted for a man who, in my opinion, was — and still is — bigoted, underqualified, selfish and power hungry. Every time Trump makes an offensive remark, uses his platform to create […]

The post Confessions of a liberal appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
It’s 2018, but I’m going to say it anyway — the 2016 election made me angry. I was angry that 62 million Americans voted for a man who, in my opinion, was — and still is — bigoted, underqualified, selfish and power hungry. Every time Trump makes an offensive remark, uses his platform to create and spread verifiably false statements, strips away regulations designed to protect us, creates chaos in government or initiates dangerous international crises, I think of my 62 million fellow citizens who put him in the White House.

When Trump tried to cut the very social programs many of his supporters rely on, I wasn’t nearly as angry as I should have been. They voted for him, they should experience the consequences of their actions. When Trump’s tariffs lead China to enact tariffs on American goods which specifically targeted Trump voters, I couldn’t help but feel a vicious stab of satisfaction.

Suddenly, I understand articles about polarization in America all too well. I’ve read about Democrats and Republicans having unfavorable views of each other. I’ve heard that political preferences now also correlate with living preferences and a host of seemingly unrelated variables. Somehow, though, I convinced myself that this trend wouldn’t affect me.

I like arguing with people who aren’t liberals. A few of my relatives support Trump. Sure, it happens that those relatives live in Florida, while the rest of my extended family lives in the Northeast, but they’re still part of my family. In my head, those details, along with a completely unjustified faith in my own empathy, were enough to reassure me that polarization was something that happened to other people.

I was very wrong. My anger at Trump and everything he’s done since entering the 2016 presidential election easily transferred to everyone who voted for him, or even refused to vote for Hillary (sure, she’s not my favorite, but it was obvious that not voting or voting for a third party candidate would help Trump). That anger convinced me that people who voted for Trump, or even live in an area which voted for Trump, somehow deserve to bear the brunt of his incompetence and disregard for other people.  

That’s not alright. First, anyone who lives in a pro-Trump area but doesn’t support Trump is obviously having a tougher time than me (someone who lives on a college campus in California). They don’t deserve to be screwed over more than they already have been.

Finding empathy for Trump supporters is harder. 62 million Americans voted for Trump — even after he promised to cut the programs many of his own supporters rely on; even after he threatened to start a trade war (and multiple news organizations, including CNN and the right-leaning Wall Street Journal, explained how a trade war would hurt most Americans); even when Trump promised to bring factory and mining jobs back without explaining how he would overcome the automation of such jobs. 

Those people are adults, who presumably had access to at least some information about Trump and his platform. I am not willing to excuse them of responsibility for this by claiming that they are victims of economic anxiety, or that they were simply misinformed or that this is all Facebook’s fault. Frankly, I do not understand how anyone can make those arguments.

If you truly believe that economic anxiety, misinformation or social media are enough to dupe 62 million voters, so much so that those voters are no longer responsible for their choices, then I find it difficult to understand how you support a democracy in which those voters are required to participate. Democracy is about popular participation, not participation by a specific group. That means everyone gets a voice, but it also means that everyone is treated as a fully-fledged, autonomous person, who is responsible for how they choose to use their voice. Treating Trump voters as easily manipulated sheeple deprives them of personhood and undermines the idea of popular participation in democracy. It’s patronizing and exposes one’s own lack of regard for the average American.

Furthermore, I am not going to cop out of finding empathy for people whose decisions I vehemently oppose by arguing that those people are somehow not responsible for their decisions. I also refuse to let myself feel vindictive and spiteful towards 62 million people.

So what will I do? There must be some way to reconcile blaming someone for America’s present calamity, while feeling sorry that the calamity is causing them pain.

When I asked my friends about this, one quoted something on the internet: You are only required to respect someone else’s opinion if that opinion respects your existence. To that person, supporting Trump means that you support his bigotry and do not respect the existence of women, people of color, non-Christian people, poor people, disabled people or LGBTQ+ people. My friend cannot see how you can have true empathy for people who hate you — or why you should.

My friend may be right, but I don’t want to believe this. Recently, in a class called Rules of War, Reverend Scotty McLennan gave a guest lecture. He was speaking about pacifism, and, in preparation for his lecture, students were asked to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Nonviolence and Racial Justice.” Dr. King argues in this essay that finding and developing an unconditional platonic love for all human beings is vital to one’s own happiness and to progress for society as a whole.

Unconditional respect and care for all humans is an appealing ideal. It allows me to be angry at my fellow citizens while still respecting and empathizing with them. It allows me to care about Trump supporters without excusing their choices or relieving them of responsibility. It’s also really hard. I’ve been trying to find this love, and I will keep trying. I am forcing myself to think about and remember the specific individuals who are hurt by Chinese tariffs or social program cuts, rather than lumping the occupants of Trump country into a faceless and bigoted mass. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail, but at least I am trying.

This solution is, admittedly, imperfect. I’m unavoidably playing into the stereotype of a bleeding-heart liberal and, more importantly, focusing on my internal dialogue doesn’t necessarily translate into becoming a more empathetic person or taking action to help people.

It happens that I was able to put this into practice, or at least attempt to, while applying for summer internships and jobs (every college student’s favorite pastime). I initially refused to consider any positions in areas which voted heavily for Trump, or in organizations which focus on helping populations which tend to support Trump.

However, after realizing how easily I’d let myself dismiss all Trump supporters, I went back to the internships I’d dismissed and started writing cover letters. I didn’t get an offer for any of those positions, and I’m more than willing to admit that I deserved those rejections. But l am doing my best to look for ways to help organizations which help people in rural and right-leaning areas. (Feel free to email me with suggestions!)

As I’ve tried to be more empathetic to Trump supporters, though, I’ve run into another question: Are my efforts a betrayal of all the people Trump has harmed (often far more egregiously than he has harmed his supporters)? Am I betraying immigrants and asylum seekers and trans people? Ultimately, I don’t think so. Empathy is not zero-sum, nor is my energy. I can volunteer for multiple charities and attempt to help multiple groups. I will likely choose an event aimed at benefiting refugees over one aimed at raising money for rural workers hurt by tariffs if the two directly conflict, but that sort of conflict hasn’t come up yet.

Empathizing with people with whom I disagree is sometimes difficult, but achievable. Empathizing with people who voted Donald Trump into office about the ways in which Donald Trump has harmed them is much more difficult. If I give up, though, I will be allowing Trump not only to enact terrible policies and undermine democracy as we know it, but also to damage my own humanity. Dr. King wrote about using love to humanize our opponents and ourselves. Our capacity for empathy is what makes us human and, I believe, what makes democracy work. That’s worth saving.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu

The post Confessions of a liberal appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/13/confessions-of-a-liberal/feed/ 0 1139331
Room for hope https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/05/room-for-hope/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/05/room-for-hope/#respond Mon, 05 Mar 2018 13:00:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137698 Inspired by Samantha Power's visit to Stanford Sarah Myers discusses historical and contemporary activism with and without a central authority and goal, and the benefits of each form.

The post Room for hope appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Ambassador Samantha Power visited Stanford this week to speak about “resistance in darkness” and “diplomacy after darkness.” She was invited by the Ethics in Society Program in partnership with the Tanner Lectures on human values. I attended the first lecture on activism during dark times.

The takeaway from Power’s lecture was that America has made terrible mistakes before and recovered from them, and activism can be effective even in those times. Ambassador Power used examples from American history – Japanese internment camps, the House Un-American Activities Committee, inaction in the face of the AIDS epidemic – to explore how individuals can influence policy outside of elections.

More than 120,000 Japanese-Americans, including Stanford students and professors, were imprisoned during WWII. They were forced to move to makeshift camps, often losing their homes and property to looting and vandalism, despite a complete lack of evidence that any Japanese-Americans had engaged in treasonous activities.

A small nonprofit organization called the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council worked to identify Japanese-American college students or high school graduates planning to attend college, convince colleges outside the West Coast to accept them and then convince the government to allow them to leave the camps in order to continue their education. The Council didn’t end internment but that wasn’t their goal. Instead, they made it possible for more than 4,000 Japanese-American students to continue their education.

There are similar stories of small but effective activism during the Red Scare and AIDS epidemic. University of Chicago Chancellor Robert Maynard Hutchins refused to be cowed into submission by Illinois’ mini-House Un-American Activities Committee and protected UChicago students and faculty from a witch hunt. Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) worked to pressure the federal government to move more AIDS-related drugs through the FDA’s approval process and allocate more funding to AIDS-related programs.

These examples are good reminders that the United States has made grave errors before. But they are reminders that American activists have been able to mitigate those errors, removing some students from internment camps, protecting some students and professors from being fired or jailed, and forcing the US government to devote more resources and manpower to fighting AIDS.

However, the activism Power described is markedly different from the activism we’ve seen since Trump was elected. The most obvious example of this would be the Women’s March. The march was actually several marches, taking places in multiple cities around the world and including a total of roughly 2.5 million people worldwide. It was an astounding demonstration of how unpopular Trump and the misogynist, racist, Islamophobic and xenophobic positions he represents truly are. The march didn’t have concrete goals. It did not identify specific areas for change. There was little to no defined leadership. The march was an amazingly large but at times self-contradictory movement.

In those respects, the march was very similar to other movements in recent years. Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street both eschewed traditional structures and paradigms for activism. They held demonstrations, but they did not create centralized organizations, nor did they offer painstakingly specific demands and goals. National Japanese American Student Relocation Council had a small, organized group of people who constantly wrote to people around the country to ask for specific favors – asking university officials to accept specific students, asking government officials to allow those students to leave the camps and so on.

In contrast, students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) have intentionally and publicly organized themselves. Following an attack by a fellow student in which 17 people were killed, a group of students formed a campaign to promote gun control. They have returned to the tradition of announcing and continually reiterating goals – their key term is common sense gun control – selecting representatives to engage with the media and generate publicity and organizing large-scale demonstrations. They are targeting specific politicians and doing their best to keep media attention focused on debating gun control.

The question is: Which type of activism works? Or, more accurately, how can you determine which type of activism is better suited to a given issue?

On some level, it is understandable that the first Women’s March did not have a clear platform — Trump had not actually taken office yet, so most of what the marchers were protesting was the nebulous but nonetheless enormously harmful set of -isms and -phobias he represents. The second Women’s March was slightly more goal-oriented and focused on encouraging women to run for public office and vote. That makes a lot of sense; trying to mitigate the power inequality between men and women in politics by organizing behind women politicians and their campaigns is an effective form of activism for this specific situation.

The MSD students are in a different situation. Like the Student Relocation Council, they can identify specific laws and people who are responsible for the problem they’re working to fix. They can target those specific policies and individuals, so a more traditional approach seems logical.

Ambassador Power’s lecture was inspiring and exceedingly well done. However, I would like to offer a small addition: There is room for hope not only because America has lost its way before or because activism has worked before, but because activism is evolving. We have more options for taking action and more history to learn from. Let’s use them.

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu

The post Room for hope appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/05/room-for-hope/feed/ 0 1137698
Hamsters on wheels (just keep spinning) https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/16/hamsters-on-wheels-just-keep-spinning/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/16/hamsters-on-wheels-just-keep-spinning/#respond Fri, 16 Feb 2018 11:00:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1136920 Are you in college? If not, are you planning to be or have you been in the past? Did you graduate or is it likely that you will graduate? If yes, why? Why did you go to college and why did you get or not get a degree? Longtime Quagmyers readers may have noticed that […]

The post Hamsters on wheels (just keep spinning) appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Are you in college? If not, are you planning to be or have you been in the past? Did you graduate or is it likely that you will graduate? If yes, why? Why did you go to college and why did you get or not get a degree?

Longtime Quagmyers readers may have noticed that I do my best to avoid writing about “university life.” That’s partly because there are no longtime Quagmyers readers – I just began writing this column last fall because I am a freshman. Writing about the college experience without any real experience in college seems a bit premature. Additionally, though, writing about the college experience and producing anything worth reading requires more introspection than I generally possess.

Recently, though, a friend of mine started texting me about college. They asked some annoyingly prescient questions about why anyone goes to college and made some compelling arguments about why they aren’t in favor of college, for themselves or others. That caused me to start thinking about college, and here we are.

Most people enjoy college- meeting new people, learning new things, having more freedom than in high school. Even people who do not enjoy the experience as it happens later remember it in a positive light. That rosy lense of retrospection (a real psychological term!) can lighten the burden of crushing student debt. But some people, including my friend, don’t enjoy college, as a student and even as a graduate. And even the people who do enjoy college might start to question its worth as bill after bill comes due, for decades after the experience fades.

To be honest, I am not going to discuss America’s student loan crisis in depth right now, partly because it makes me too angry (I suppose I should be glad that Trump and Stanford visitor Betsy DeVos are on the case, in that they are cutting loan forgiveness programs). More importantly, though, I am not an expert on student loans, and my opinion on them is under-informed at best. So I will say that student loans are unreasonably and abusively large and hard to pay off, and that many college students are spending valuable time worrying about college loans and will be forced to take jobs they don’t want in order to pay off those loans.

The fallback response, the one I texted my friend, is to point out that getting a job without a college degree is becoming harder and harder. Diplomas, especially ones with fancy names at the top, pay well. That’s what I told my friend, more or less: work hard now, stomach the classes you don’t love, and it all works out in the end.

My friend was quick to reply: what works out? Sure, a college degree is nice, but what comes next? Does graduating suddenly make me qualified to go out and live my dreams? What if those dreams don’t pay my bills (like student loan bills, for instance)? Also, when and how do I develop dreams to live? The story many college students are told, or tell themselves and each other, is that you graduate college and find a good (well-paying, moderately interesting) job. If you like it, you spend the rest of your life doing that and devoting your free time to whatever you want. If you’re feeling ambitious, you do that for a few years, build a nest egg, and then go backpacking through the Andes (or something) – rinse and repeat.

That story doesn’t work as well if you don’t like the idea of holding down a palatable but not amazingly wonderful 9 to 5 for a few decades but also don’t have a grand dream. In fact, that plan starts to look downright awful if you don’t want the cubicle or the mountaintop. My friend doesn’t have a mountaintop to dream of right now, and he doesn’t like cubicles.

The outlook gets worse if you take into consideration all the time and effort student put into getting into college. Stanford students have put enormous amounts of time and energy into getting here. So have students at every other college- as much as “elite” students like to pat each other on the back, people can and do put just as much work into getting into and attending a state school. Once they get to college, those students are contending with trying to pay the bills while getting good grades while figuring out what to do after college.

All of that work is supposed to be worth it because it gets you into college which gets you a degree which gets you a job… you get the picture. But how much work is delayed and uncertain gratification worth?

To be more honest than an opinions writer ever should, I do not know what to tell my friend. I’m lucky enough to enjoy the experience of being a college student- at Stanford, no less. I’m also optimistic (read: delusional) enough to think that my planned major and career will actually be the major and career I end up with, and that being here is the best way to reach my goals. But my friend is more pessimistic (read: realistic) than I am. What should students like them do? Can I or anyone else really ask people to pay exorbitant fees for an unpleasant experience in the service of nebulous, delayed gratification?

Contact Sarah at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu

The post Hamsters on wheels (just keep spinning) appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/16/hamsters-on-wheels-just-keep-spinning/feed/ 0 1136920
The state of the response to the State of the Union https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/02/the-state-of-the-response-to-the-state-of-the-union/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/02/the-state-of-the-response-to-the-state-of-the-union/#respond Fri, 02 Feb 2018 11:00:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1135983 It’s the silliest job in politics, giving the opposition party’s response to the president’s State of the Union address. Marco Rubio attempted to deliver a rebuttal to Obama’s State of the Union in 2013 and couldn’t take the heat, leaving the audience with a wonderful video of him drinking water from a child-sized water bottle. […]

The post The state of the response to the State of the Union appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
It’s the silliest job in politics, giving the opposition party’s response to the president’s State of the Union address. Marco Rubio attempted to deliver a rebuttal to Obama’s State of the Union in 2013 and couldn’t take the heat, leaving the audience with a wonderful video of him drinking water from a child-sized water bottle. Democrat Steve Beshear tried to counter Trump’s first State of the Union in 2017 by delivering his response from a diner and instead produced one of the weirdest backdrops for a speech ever.

Personally, I am completely in favor of State of the Union responses, because they are one of the few opportunities left in American politics for creativity. To be sure, that creativity usually backfires in absolutely terrible ways, but that’s why I like it.

For party leaders, though, the State of the Union response is a headache of epic proportions. Whichever party doesn’t control the White House is forced to find a party member ambitious enough to accept the political risk and notoriety that accompanies the job, but not ambitious enough that choosing them will upset the delicate balance of competing interests within the party. This person must embody the party without seeming like they were chosen to specifically embody the party, and they must communicate the party’s platform while undermining that of the president.

To top it all off, the response to the State of the Union is delivered directly following the State of the Union itself. The intention is to draw in viewers from the State of the Union, but let’s be realistic here: How many Americans make it through the entire State of the Union? Of the viewers still present by the end of the speech, how many actually fell asleep five minutes into the speech and are still sleeping peacefully by the time the response comes on? And, if anyone is still awake, do they really want another speech about the exact same issues?

That last point raises another tough question: Should the response actually attempt to rebut what the president said? Doing so requires either predicting what the president will say about a multitude of issues, writing responses for each issue, selecting the appropriate responses and then somehow weaving them into a coherent narrative. Or, of course, the response can be given without a pre-written speech, which adds a whole new level of uncertainty. Alternately, the response can be pre-written and independent of the State of the Union. That tends to improve the quality of the speech, but it makes it strange to call it a response.

Here’s another problem: Who, exactly, is this speech meant to persuade, and what is it persuading them of? Different political parties have different approaches to winning elections: Republicans have a habit of appealing to their base, while Democrats prefer to campaign for the so-called “undecided” voters. Are either of those demographics watching the State of the Union? If so, what do they want to see in a response? To be honest, I don’t know, and multiple Google searches failed to turn up an answer (but feel free to email me if you know!).

In the absence of data about target demographics, we do have data on the effect of the State of the Union itself. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that it’s a traditionally boring speech watched by very little of the population, the State of the Union has a small and largely temporary effect on public approval of the president. Although some of the legislative goals or requests put forth in State of the Union addresses make it into law, those goals and requests are often communicated to lawmakers before and after the speech itself, so it’s unclear how or why this particular speech affects their likelihood of success.

All of this is to say, I think it’s time to reimagine the response to the State of the Union. This is a hard argument for me to make, given the wonderful awkwardness of the whole event, but I’m doing it for America. If politicians want to give a response, then by all means they should. Democrats and Republicans should realize, however, that they do not have to coordinate such a response. If Democrats, for instance, really want to respond to Trump, they need to do something more newsworthy than an awkward response speech. Perhaps declare that next Tuesday is “Fact-Check the State of the Union Day” and devote an entire day to carefully responding to Trump, with the benefit of an entire week of preparation and research? Maybe spend the day tweeting awkwardly timed GIFs of Trump giving his speech accompanied by captions pointing out logical or factual problems with the speech? The point is, many of the problems surrounding the response speech stem from self-imposed time and structure constraints. It’s time to reinvent the response to the State of the Union.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post The state of the response to the State of the Union appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/02/the-state-of-the-response-to-the-state-of-the-union/feed/ 0 1135983
Human error vs. technical difficulties https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/19/human-error-vs-technical-difficulties/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/19/human-error-vs-technical-difficulties/#respond Fri, 19 Jan 2018 11:00:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1135280 Recently, an Amtrak train traveling a new route from Seattle to Portland derailed, killing three people. So far, it’s been reported that the train was going 80 mph in a 30-mph zone. Trains don’t get speeding tickets, but there are supposed to be safeguards in place to regulate their speeds. These safeguards can be run […]

The post Human error vs. technical difficulties appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Recently, an Amtrak train traveling a new route from Seattle to Portland derailed, killing three people. So far, it’s been reported that the train was going 80 mph in a 30-mph zone. Trains don’t get speeding tickets, but there are supposed to be safeguards in place to regulate their speeds. These safeguards can be run by people or by computers. Systems run by computers are able to step in and slow down speeding trains, while systems run by humans cannot. Unfortunately, a computer speed control system had been installed in this particular section of track, but had not yet been activated.

This is a good example of the limits of technology meant to keep people safe. As the world becomes more connected, safeguards meant to protect people from tech (and vice versa) become more and more commonplace. Unfortunately, these safeguards aren’t necessarily becoming more effective.

Amtrak knows that computer-run systems are safer; it’s why a computer-run system had just been installed along the section of track where the crash took place. According to Amtrak, the system simply wasn’t yet operational. That raises an awkward question: Why didn’t the company wait to open the route until the speed control system was working? Admittedly, some older routes still use human-run systems, so doing without the computer isn’t completely crazy, but opening a new route with a system known to be less safe still seems unnecessarily reckless.

Of course, there’s also the awkward question about how a fully trained Amtrak employee accompanied by a second employee (who was meant to be getting firsthand experience as part of their own training) could possibly think that going 80 mph in a zone marked for 30 mph was a good idea. Two human errors in judgement combined to create a tragedy.

Electronic medical records (EMR) systems demonstrate this problem depressingly well. EMR systems are meant to collect and store patients’ medical information, including information about past illnesses, past and current medications, test results, other doctors the patient has seen and the patient’s family’s medical history. This information can be vital to ensuring that patients aren’t taking medications that conflict with one another and that they receive the best possible care. In order to make sure that all that important information is safe, EMR systems are designed to have extraordinarily high numbers of warnings. Changing a patient’s address requires clicking “okay” on at least two warning messages. Adding medications, past illnesses or test results requires clicking through multiple warning messages and entering one’s login credentials.

As someone who has used EMR systems, I have a lot of experience with clicking “okay” on a warning message without reading or noticing the message. My experience isn’t necessarily universal; I’ve discussed it with doctors and nurses, but haven’t found a full-scale study confirming that a large portion of medical professionals routinely ignore error warnings. That being said, I’m willing to semi-confidently predict that this is a common problem.

Mindlessly clicking through error warnings is more time-efficient but ultimately reckless. Some warnings contain important information, including alerts telling the user that the information they’ve just entered is illogical or telling the user that they’ve just deleted information, which they might not have meant to delete.

Sometimes, safety features fail. More often, humans fail to enact safety measures. It’s time to fix that, starting with Amtrak.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Human error vs. technical difficulties appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/19/human-error-vs-technical-difficulties/feed/ 0 1135280
Keystone XL: More pipeline, more problems https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/24/keystone-xl-more-pipeline-more-problems/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/24/keystone-xl-more-pipeline-more-problems/#respond Fri, 24 Nov 2017 11:00:07 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1133853 Happy Thanksgiving! You’ve probably already given thanks for your family, your friends, your food — now might be a good time to give thanks for not living in certain parts of South Dakota (unless you do, in which case you have my sincere condolences). The residents of Amherst, South Dakota recently woke up to find […]

The post Keystone XL: More pipeline, more problems appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Happy Thanksgiving! You’ve probably already given thanks for your family, your friends, your food — now might be a good time to give thanks for not living in certain parts of South Dakota (unless you do, in which case you have my sincere condolences). The residents of Amherst, South Dakota recently woke up to find that 210,000 gallons of oil had leaked from the Keystone XL Pipeline and flooded grasslands in private property near the town.

The Keystone project was controversial from its very inception. The idea behind the project is simple: Alberta tar sands in Canada have a lot of oil. The U.S. likes oil, but doesn’t like buying it from the Middle East. Keystone XL, the story goes, connects Alberta tar sands to Nebraska and increases the amount of oil available to the U.S. from non-Middle Eastern sellers. Fun but unimportant fact: This pipeline is called Keystone XL because the plain old Keystone pipeline already exists. Keystone XL connects the same endpoints as Keystone but uses an alternate route and will have a larger capacity.

That story had a few plot holes. First, life finds a way — and so does oil. People in the industry and out of it repeatedly noted that oil companies were using rail transport to get oil from Alberta to America prior to construction of the pipeline. Thus, the project was never going to increase the amount of oil entering the U.S. by a large enough amount to affect prices.

Additionally, the Alberta tar sands do contain oil, but they also contain fragile ecosystems which are seriously damaged by oil extraction. And even after the oil is extracted and refined, its use further damages our environment as a whole. Allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to go forward is a tacit commitment to further development of the Alberta tar sands, and thus a tacit commitment to further damaging our environment for the sake of cheap energy. Once, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the U.S. was modelling itself as a leader in the world’s fight against climate change. Good thing we don’t have to worry about that anymore, I suppose.

The last thing, and originally the most powerful argument for the pipeline’s construction, is the same thing it always is: jobs. Jobs for good, hard-working Americans, to be precise. Unfortunately, Keystone XL doesn’t actually have very many jobs to offer. The funny thing about construction jobs on projects like building a pipeline is that they are (if everything works out alright) temporary. Only 35 permanent jobs will be created by Keystone XL.

Ultimately, the pipeline was never going to improve the American economy. It was not going to create jobs or improve oil prices. The structure itself was clearly at risk for disastrous oil spills, and the oil transported in the pipe will be used in ways that increase air pollution and exacerbate global warming.

Americans, for reasons I can’t pretend to understand, continued to support Keystone XL. The Pew Research Center found that roughly 66 percent of respondents wanted the projected to go forward.

After last week’s spill, I naively assumed that Keystone XL’s slow creep through the American heartland would slow down, at least temporarily. Nebraska’s Public Services Commission was due to make a decision on whether to allow the pipeline to be built, and it seemed impossible for a committee focused on the public’s best interests would say yes to a pipeline that had just spewed oil all over the countryside. The mainstream media egged me on, publishing articles like “Keystone pipeline spill injects new uncertainty into Nebraska decision.”

We were wrong. The commission voted yes.

Admittedly, it was a qualified yes. The commission approved the project but did not approve the preferred route, adding confusion and costs for TransCanada (the company financing this mess). Furthermore, there are still major hurdles standing between Keystone XL and completion, including activist opposition in court and more regulations and red tape.

So we can all be thankful for bureaucracy and rules! It might be good to do something in addition to that, though. Voting against politicians who support Keystone XL and other fossil-fuel promoting projects is a great start.

You can also donate to groups like the National Resource Defense Council and Tar Sands Blockade are taking energy companies to court in order to use the laws we have today to protect the environment, and lobbying for more protective legislation. Projects like Keystone XL increase corporate profits at the expense of the public good, and it’s time to stand up for ourselves and our environment.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Keystone XL: More pipeline, more problems appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/24/keystone-xl-more-pipeline-more-problems/feed/ 0 1133853
More problems than time https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/17/more-problems-than-time/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/17/more-problems-than-time/#respond Fri, 17 Nov 2017 11:00:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1133649 You’ve heard about #MeToo, you’re moderately aware that President Trump visited Japan and China recently and you read BuzzFeed thinkpieces every once in awhile. In other words, you’re moderately well-informed. You’re also not reading this article: Segments of the population who aren’t particularly interested in the news don’t generally find themselves in the depths of […]

The post More problems than time appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
You’ve heard about #MeToo, you’re moderately aware that President Trump visited Japan and China recently and you read BuzzFeed thinkpieces every once in awhile. In other words, you’re moderately well-informed. You’re also not reading this article: Segments of the population who aren’t particularly interested in the news don’t generally find themselves in the depths of The Daily’s opinions section.

But those of us who do self-identify as news junkies, who religiously read The New York Times and pride themselves on knowing what’s going on inside and even outside of the U.S. – what are we so excited about?

My day starts with The Washington Post – it used to start with The New York Times morning briefing, but this summer I made the bold decision to take a walk on the wild side of liberal news sources. Thanks to consistent — some might say obsessive – reading and watching, I can tell you about all sorts of problems. I can tell you about the famine in Yemen – and the one in Saharan Africa. I can tell you about Germany’s struggles with clean energy and about the ICC’s ongoing struggle to fairly police and build relationships with African governments.

All of that is nice, on some level. Having a widespread, even if superficial, knowledge of current events is a good way to convince people – including professors – that you’re an educated and informed person. In the end, though, that’s all that I’m achieving.

Almost none of the people who read about famines will do anything to help the people who are actually starving. Maybe they don’t have the time or money necessary to do so; maybe they don’t know how; maybe they quite simply don’t feel a desire to help. That last one is often written off. People like to skate over the fact that millions of viewers or readers will learn about a war, or a natural disaster, or a terrorist attack and feel badly for the victims without feeling any particular need to help those people.

It’s hard to be satisfied with the current situation. Society as a whole pays a great deal of money and goes to a great deal of trouble in order to find out bad news, but our collective ability to respond to that news in productive ways is marginal at best.

Changing that situation is not simple. Perhaps each of us can individually pledge to take action after reading every news story. That’s not likely to work, though. Individual pledges are seldom effective (see New Year’s resolutions). Furthermore, the chances that individual readers independently find and engage with organizations or actors who are effectively working to improve a particular situation are slim at best.

Another option is to embrace firewalls for online news – in order to read an article, readers would have to pay one to five cents, with proceeds going toward organizations identified by the article’s author. Unfortunately, as many news outlets have already learned, most people are not willing to pay for online news. Although the knowledge that fees are going towards a worthy cause might increase the likelihood that people fork over the money, charitable firewalls could just as easily further discourage readers from acknowledging or learning about problems that they aren’t personally experiencing.

Reporters could integrate recommendations for reader engagement into their stories. If, for instance, I wrote about falling standards in journalism, I could recommend that readers support organizations like ProPublica. That example brings up an important concern, though – news reporting is meant to be impartial and unbiased. Most reporters probably aren’t encouraged to send their readers to other news outlets. Furthermore, reporters recommending that readers donate to or support organizations could become the subject of popularity or influence contests among charitable organizations.

To be honest, I don’t have a solution here. I will likely continue to inundate myself with news stories and rarely take action to fix the problems about which I’m reading, and I don’t know how I can change that or how society as a whole can convince me or anyone else to go beyond three minutes of concern. I can attempt to set goals for myself – look for a way to positively impact at least one issue a month, for instance. I urge you to do the same, and to do so publicly. Changing societal norms about how we consume and respond to news about current events requires a great deal of effort and a great deal of publicity, but it is worth it.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post More problems than time appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/17/more-problems-than-time/feed/ 0 1133649
Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and fine lines https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/03/anti-semitism-islamophobia-and-fine-lines/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/03/anti-semitism-islamophobia-and-fine-lines/#respond Fri, 03 Nov 2017 08:00:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1132434 If I ask you to think about anti-Semitism, you’ll almost certainly think about Nazis, Neo-Nazis and perhaps the KKK. You might picture the first or second white supremacist march in Charlottesville, and you might even remember that Donald Trump is no friend of Jewish people. You would miss one of the key components of modern […]

The post Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and fine lines appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
If I ask you to think about anti-Semitism, you’ll almost certainly think about Nazis, Neo-Nazis and perhaps the KKK. You might picture the first or second white supremacist march in Charlottesville, and you might even remember that Donald Trump is no friend of Jewish people.

You would miss one of the key components of modern anti-Semitism: liberal people who think that they are standing up for the rights of Palestinians. I’m going to need to be very clear and very careful here because this issue has turned into a mess of resentment and accusations (for a case study right here at Stanford, see the Jewish Voice for Peace’s op-ed in The Daily last Thursday and an alumna’s response from this Monday).

Here we go: Supporting Palestine is not anti-Semitic. Whether that means advocating for a Palestinian state, advocating against the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestine or something else entirely, supporting Palestine is not anti-Semitic. Even if that means that you oppose the state of Israel.

However, equating Jews with Israel is anti-Semitic. Assuming that all Jews support the government of Israel, blaming Jews for the decisions made by Israel’s government, implying or assuming that all Jews are Islamophobic or should be responsible for anything the Israeli government does is anti-Semitic.

This should make logical sense: The vast majority of Jews do not live in Israel. They probably do not want to live in Israel. They have absolutely no say in how Israel’s government conducts its foreign policy. Even Jews who live in Israel may not agree with the Israeli government. The majority of Americans would be infuriated if everyone they met assumed that they supported Donald Trump.

The two Daily articles I mentioned earlier, for anyone who bothered to read this piece but hasn’t followed this back and forth, concern an event held on Monday, Oct. 16. The event was a presentation by Reservists on Duty held at Stanford’s Chabad. The speakers were veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces who identify as Muslim, Druze, Christian and Bedouin. The Jewish Voice for Peace belatedly objected to this event, saying that Reservists on Duty is an Islamophobic group.

Frankly, I do not care about Reservists on Duty, I do not care about Jewish Voice for Peace, and I wish that I didn’t have to care that they are having a catfight in this paper. I’m Jewish, and I have already spent far too long explaining what anti-Semitism is and why being Jewish does not mean that I support Israel. I am tired of people interrogating me about my personal views on Israel and Palestine and tired of having to prove that I’m not Islamophobic. I will not share those views in this article because I am explicitly making the point that I shouldn’t have to.

The point here is not to add my two cents to the Reservists vs. Voice argument or to involve myself in the Israel vs. Palestine vs. one-state vs. two-state (etc.) argument. I am writing because anti-Semitism on college campuses is something that I have to care about, and, because of that, I have to care about Stanford’s mini-controversy.

College campuses in America are very liberal. They’re also a great deal more anti-Semitic than most people realize. In 2016, more than 1,200 anti-Semitic incidents were reported on American college campuses. In the first quarter of 2017, reports jumped by 86 percent. In 2016, the NYC-based American and Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner published its first report on the 40 most anti-Semitic college campuses in the U.S. Columbia, Princeton, Vassar and UCLA have all had high-profile anti-Semitic incidents or patterns of anti-Semitism.

Some of this is just garden-variety anti-Semitism, the kind of thing that causes people to make jokes about Jews and money or to enjoy Holocaust jokes. A lot of it, though, is caused by conflating Judaism with supporting the Israeli state as it currently behaves. Students learning about Palestine and Israel’s actions in Palestine get upset. They can’t help Palestine or hurt Israel, but they can blame and attack their Jewish classmates.

Stanford is not exempt from this. Between Oct. 18-21, someone drew a swastika on Stanford’s Business School. Similar incidents occurred on campus between December of last year and April of this year, and again in September.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that Jewish Voice for Peace is involved in these incidents or blaming the group for the problem. Jewish Voice for Peace and Reservists on Duty have both done reprehensible things in the name of their respective causes (see the articles written by both sides in The Daily if you’re interested).

I am suggesting that all of us need to be careful about remembering where impassioned political arguments end and anti-Semitism begins.

So far, Stanford has been able to weather the occasional swastika. In fact, Stanford associate professor Ari Kelman found that most Jewish students on California college campuses do not feel attacked and do not think there is a problem. That’s great.

In order to continue that, though, students need to remember the separation between “Jewish” and “pro-Israel.” So let’s take a moment, separate from political discussions, to remind ourselves and each other that anti-Semitism is not as simple as name-calling or inappropriate jokes. It is also blaming Jews for faults of the Israeli state and holding Jewish people accountable for problems out of their control and halfway across the world.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and fine lines appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/03/anti-semitism-islamophobia-and-fine-lines/feed/ 0 1132434
Textbook capitalism https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/20/textbook-capitalism/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/20/textbook-capitalism/#respond Fri, 20 Oct 2017 08:00:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1131423 The average American college student spends $1,200  on textbooks and supplies per year, according to the College Board. I probably don’t have to tell you that, though — most of The Daily’s readers are American college students. That number is obviously unreasonable, but what can anyone actually do about it? Universities, students, professors, experts who […]

The post Textbook capitalism appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
The average American college student spends $1,200  on textbooks and supplies per year, according to the College Board. I probably don’t have to tell you that, though — most of The Daily’s readers are American college students. That number is obviously unreasonable, but what can anyone actually do about it?

Universities, students, professors, experts who write textbooks and textbook manufacturers all have the opportunity to decrease costs, but so far little to no serious efforts have been made to rein in prices. Unfortunately, Stanford is just as complicit — if not more so — as any other college. According to an email sent to PSYCH 1 students this fall, Stanford professors are explicitly told that they cannot recommend that their students buy textbooks anywhere other than the campus bookstore, even though many books are available new or used for much lower prices on Amazon or at other online stores.

Although the Stanford Bookstore advertises that it has a price-matching program, promising discounts if students can find a book available for a lower price somewhere else, students can only use that discount if they find a lower price on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble — any other retailer is not eligible. To make matters worse, the discount only applies to students willing to engage in the negotiation process, and it doesn’t affect the price of the book for anyone else. And students have only one week after the first class of any course to return any textbook they bought for it. This makes no sense at a school with a three-week shopping period.

Students have failed to stand up for themselves and each other. If every college student in America decided not to buy textbooks that cost most than $70, or even $100, and stuck to that decision, it’s true that prices would not immediately fall. However, textbook companies would be forced to justify their pricing to the American public at large, and colleges would be forced to consider how textbook prices impact their students. But organized and sustained action by college students is unlikely and unfair — for some students, risking disciplinary action or lower grades would directly jeopardize financial aid or their ability to graduate.

So what’s a cash-strapped student, or a student who can afford books but wants to help others, to do? Straightforward solutions include renting books (only if no online access is required), reselling your used textbooks as cheaply as possible, sharing textbooks and sharing your login information for online workbooks with students who will be taking the same class next year. If you’re feeling particularly bold, drop some hints to your professors about the high price of taking their class.

Professors also can do more to mitigate this issue. Your professor may be genuinely surprised to learn about the price of the books they assign — a study by the Connecticut Board of Governors for Higher Education published in 2006 found that only 58 percent of Connecticut state schools’ faculty knew how much the books they selected for their classes cost. Some classes may be impossible to teach without very specific and unavoidably expensive books, but most aren’t. And, at the risk of endorsing illegal activities, most professors have access to both the books they want their students to read and a copy machine or digital scanner.

That last idea raises a legitimate concern — how much textbook creators should be paid for their work. Unfortunately, though, the money you pay for textbooks almost never goes to the person or persons whose work you’re using. It’s impossible to say precisely how much money authors make from every textbook, but the National Association of College Stores estimates that the average textbook creator can expect to receive only 11 cents of every dollar spent on their book.

These authors aren’t all victims, though. In a world where it is increasingly easy to self-publish books in electronic and print formats, authors who choose to publish through textbook companies rather than retaining the rights to their work are choosing higher prices for students and lower compensation for themselves. This isn’t to say that these experts want to hurt students — just to point out that their decisions are unintentionally doing so.

Going forward, it’s easy to imagine a more fair and efficient system, in which all books are published electronically by the people who write them and sell for reasonable prices. Without textbook manufacturers as middlemen, authors could be paid more even as students paid less. E-publishing is easy to do and significantly reduces production costs. Furthermore, if all textbooks were published electronically, only students who truly needed a hard copy would print their books out, saving paper and reduce colleges’ carbon footprints.

As we await the e-publishing utopia and the lower prices it should bring, students, university administrators, professors and authors should take steps to lessen the absurdity of this situation and help students who can’t afford their books. A nationwide textbook boycott isn’t feasible, but going out of your way to help your classmates or students certainly is.

 

Contact Sarah Myers at smyers3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Textbook capitalism appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/20/textbook-capitalism/feed/ 0 1131423