Letters to the Community – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Thu, 25 May 2023 16:13:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Letters to the Community – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 From the Community | Letter to our comunidad about El Centro Chicanx/Latinx https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/25/from-the-community-letter-to-our-comunidad-about-el-centro-chicanx-latinx/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/25/from-the-community-letter-to-our-comunidad-about-el-centro-chicanx-latinx/#respond Thu, 25 May 2023 07:51:26 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1228896 Alma Medina, an alumnae and volunteer at El Centro Chicanx/Latinx, discusses the recent attack against El Centro Director Elvira Prieto. She writes, “I have seen Elvira’s hard work and commitment to students. I have also admired her passion for preserving our art, culture, traditions and history at Stanford. We must demand that Elvira be treated with the dignity and respect that she has earned.”

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Querida Comunidad,

The images of students carrying signs using profanity against El Centro and Centro Director Elvira Prieto and calling for staff firing from the May 5th incident during Cafecito at El Centro were devastating. Intimidation, name calling and aggressive confrontation are not how we resolve differences in our comunidad. The list of demands, protest signs and the calls to remove El Centro’s Director, Elvira Prieto, were difficult to understand and inconsistent with the spirit and mission of the Centro and Casa Zapata.

As an alumnae, Stanford volunteer and parent of two recent Stanford graduates, I have seen Elvira’s hard work and commitment to students. I have also admired her passion for preserving our art, culture, traditions and history at Stanford. I am proud to have such a strong and committed advocate for our comunidad.

In her roles as Director of El Centro and Resident Fellow of Casa Zapata Elvira has been a selfless advocate for our comunidad. Throughout her tenure Elvira has led the Centro with integrity, compassion, and humility. Elvira works hard to create a safe space for all students to gather. In her role as Director of El Centro and RF of Casa Zapata, Elvira has been a zealous advocate for increased resources, administrative support and other services for our comunidad. We must demand that Elvira be treated with the dignity and respect that she has earned.

I have known Elvira since the early 90’s doing the hard work in the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) and leading the Hunger Strike of 1994, as well as dealing with the fallout and its aftermath. These efforts eventually led to the creation of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE). Building on the legacy and the sacrifices of our ancestors and of the generations of MEChistas before us, Elvira served as a student leader in the fight for increased support services for students, culturally relevant educational opportunities, and increased resources that our comunidad enjoys today. She put her life on the line and has dedicated her career since then to preserving these precious resources. Elvira remains steadfast in her commitment to our comunidad.

During Elvira’s tenure as Director of El Centro programming, staff composition and our physical spaces have evolved to reflect the increasing diversity of our community. She has woven a beautiful tapestry rich with the colorful intersectionality of our community and based on our common values of respeto, cariño y dignidad. We must protect our resources and support those doing the hard work to preserve our place at Stanford.

We must also remember that El Centro and Casa Zapata belong to all of us. These spaces belong to the current students holding those spaces, the staff working to support them, the faculty who help build community, and to generations of alumni who risked their academic careers and personal well-being as students and continue to come back to campus year after year to give of their time, talents, and funds. El Centro also belongs to future generations who will continue to build on our legacy.

Let us learn each other’s histories and experiences and honor the struggle of those whose blood, sweat and tears laid the foundation for our comunidad at Stanford. As we have throughout our history, let’s draw our strength from one another and come together with dignity and respect to resolve our differences. El pueblo unido, jamas será vencido!

Con Cariño y Respeto,

Alma Medina

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

B.A. ’92, J.D. ‘95

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Letter to the Community | How the ASSU went wrong: A call to sign Kids with Dreams’ petition for funding https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/09/letter-to-the-community-how-the-assu-went-wrong-a-call-to-sign-kids-with-dreams-petition-for-funding/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/09/letter-to-the-community-how-the-assu-went-wrong-a-call-to-sign-kids-with-dreams-petition-for-funding/#respond Fri, 10 Mar 2023 04:04:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1223749 According to the Kids with Dream co-presidents, "the ASSU has effectively disincentivized frugality" by choosing not to accept annual grant applications under $6,600.

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To make a long story short, the ASSU denied Kids with Dreams’ annual grant and we need 15% of the undergraduate student body to sign our petition to get it back.

Now to make a short story long:

Kids with Dreams (KWD) is a volunteer student organization (VSO) that hosts community events for local kids and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. In total, KWD hosts over 100 events annually, including weekly dance, basketball and karate classes and an ongoing buddy program where we match a student with a KWD participant and plan events for the pairs to attend together, such as holiday parties, formals and talent shows. We also send student volunteers to events hosted by community organizations with similar missions and host one-off outings for our participants and their families. All of our events are free of charge and inclusive of people with disabilities of all ages. KWD was founded in 1995 and some of our participants and their families have been coming to our events for over a decade.

A huge part of our organization’s mission is to keep the KWD community consistent even as student volunteers matriculate and graduate. We rely on funding from the ASSU to sustain our programming. The ASSU funds service, athletic, arts, academic, professional and other VSOs through their grant system. Most organizations receive an annual grant, which can be accessed and spent at any time as long as the purchase aligns with the ASSU’s funding policies and with the organization’s mission.

After submitting our annual grant application in which we requested the same $5,619 for the 2023-2024 academic year as we were successfully granted for the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years, we received this message: “Annual grant applications under $6,600 are not being accepted by Undergraduate Senate at this time. Organizations are entitled up to $6,600 in standard and quick grants throughout the year, and we encourage you to apply for them to fulfill your organizational needs.”

The problem? Standard and quick grants do not fulfill our “organizational needs.”

Our annual grant allows us to budget for events responsibly over the course of the year and to have access to funds immediately when we need them. We cannot rely on these alternative grants.

Our VSO aims to enrich the lives of the individuals we serve in any way possible, which means that we accept any opportunity that is presented to us that aligns with this aim. For example, this year, we were invited to the U.S. Figure Skating National Championships as a group. That organization provided the tickets; however, transportation costs were paid by Kids with Dreams. The opportunity for families to go on an outing where they were ensured appropriate accommodations and surrounded by other supportive, accepting families and student volunteers, was a meaningful one presented to us with little notice. Over 100 KWD members attended that event, and U.S. Figure Skating distributed several skating scholarships to our organization. Having a reliable, known source of funds was required for the execution of this special event.

Similarly, Kids with Dreams was invited to table at the Palo Alto Community Advisory Council’s Resource Fair for families of children with disabilities. The event was a great opportunity to identify new potential participants and grow as an organization. We needed, with almost no notice, a budget for printing materials to distribute at the fair and for transportation for the students presenting off-campus. A known and always-accessible budget was essential in these cases and in many others. Standard and quick grants cannot replace our annual grant, as they cannot be used retroactively and must be requested for specific events. As a result, they are not a source of flexible funding. Assuming that the ASSU accepts a standard or quick grant, which is itself not a guarantee, the process is too slow to be useful — even quick grants require submission at least two weeks in advance of any spending.

Our annual grant was not denied because of its content; it was denied because the ASSU’s funding shortage has led them to specifically defund organizations with relatively small budgets.

We serve over 150 participants and their families and have over 75 active Stanford student volunteers. We do this with a small budget by acting frugally — we host events exclusively at venues that are free of charge, only serve meals at a few of our events each year, and reuse supplies, equipment and decorations year-to-year. If we had requested money to serve lunch at one more event ($500), or if we had rented the Tresidder Union Ballroom ($900) for our annual winter formal (purchases we previously avoided to keep costs low), our budget would have reached the threshold to be considered and potentially approved by the ASSU.

By choosing to adopt this funding policy to deal with their budget issues, the ASSU has effectively disincentivized frugality. Regardless of the total amount of funding requested, each VSO’s annual grant application should be considered (and scrutinized) equally. Defunding all low-budget organizations is not a solution.

The issue goes beyond simply defunding frugal organizations; the ASSU’s policies lack the consistency and transparency necessary for compliance.

Last year, the stated annual grant funding minimum was $6,000, yet we requested and were successfully granted $5,619 without issue. The ASSU asks that “VSO budgets do not increase by more than 7% for undergraduate groups,” meaning we had the ability to request a maximum of $6,012 (107% of last year’s approved budget).

This year, the ASSU increased their annual grant funding minimum to $6,600 and began enforcing a historically unenforced policy. KWD was left in a position where complying with one rule (requesting a maximum 7% increase in funding) broke another (requesting less than their new minimum).

Because the minimum funding requirement has not been enforced in the past, we were surprised that our annual grant was rejected. We reached out to the ASSU for guidance, and they advised us on Feb. 8 to resubmit our annual grant with a revised budget of more than $6,600 (making us noncompliant with their other stated policy). We received no further communication from the ASSU until Feb. 27, when all student leaders received an email informing us that “no further revisions will be accepted to [annual grant] applications at this time,” meaning that another carefully drafted KWD funding request was denied without any actual evaluation by the ASSU.

Consistent and transparent stewardship of ASSU funds would benefit every VSO and, in turn, every student. If the rules were clearer, logical and more consistently enforced, organizations could avoid wasting time drafting budgets that will not be considered and instead focus on creating compliant and responsible budgets.

We wrote this letter to the community for two reasons. One is to call your attention to the ASSU’s unfair decision-making process for dealing with their budget shortfall, conflicting funding policies and lack of transparency. The second is to humbly ask that you sign our petition to get our annual grant on the spring election ballot. We need virtual signatures from at least 15% of undergraduate students to get on the ballot. Signing takes only a few seconds: all you need to do is click on the petition link and log in with your SUNet ID to sign.

There is no community more meaningful to us on campus than this one. We will never forget participants’ excitement each time students return from winter or summer break or when a new participant turned to her mom to exclaim, “happy!” during her first KWD dance class or when a parent told us how proud she was that her teenage son, inspired by his Stanford buddy, tried salad for the first time in his life at our winter formal. KWD makes participants and volunteers alike feel embraced for being exactly who they are. What could be better than that?

The benefit Kids with Dreams provides to our community of participants, families and student volunteers is invaluable — please take a moment to sign our petition.

Tiffany Liu 23 is a senior/coterm from the East Bay double-majoring in Symbolic Systems and English and coterming in Computer Science. Emily Gurwitz ’24 is a junior from McAllen, Texas, majoring in biology. They are the co-presidents of Kids with Dreams.

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From the editor: Celebrating 50 years of The Daily’s independence https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/23/from-the-editor-celebrating-50-years-of-the-dailys-independence/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/23/from-the-editor-celebrating-50-years-of-the-dailys-independence/#respond Fri, 24 Feb 2023 01:28:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1222373 Vol. 262 and 263 Editor in Chief of The Stanford Daily Sam Catania '24 introduces a special anniversary issue of The Daily.

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Like most students in the class of 2024, I began my time as a Stanford student online, living not in my dorm room but my bedroom. During the early phases of the pandemic, it was The Daily that initially bound me to Stanford. It was an island in a sea of Zoom rooms and Canvas posts.

At that time, I understood The Daily to be simply a club. It was a place to make friends and do so while reporting the news.

But I quickly learned that The Daily is so much more than just a student organization. Unlike nearly any other student-run operation on campus, The Daily is its own business — a fully-independent California public benefit corporation with 501(c)(3) status.

That independence was solidified a half-century ago this month, and we’ve created a special edition of The Daily, which you can find in print all around campus, to commemorate our journey since then. At The Daily, we value our independence. It allows us to dive fearlessly into stories of great risk and importance. It gives us the freedom to define our own journalistic and business objectives, grow and learn, and improve. For as much as The Daily’s mission is journalistic, it is also educational. Many staffers enter The Daily having never written journalism before and graduate to work at the top newsrooms in the world.

Our position as an independent student newspaper is unique in that all of our staff are direct members of the community we report on. We sit across from our readers at dining halls. They are classmates in our courses and hallmates in our dorms. Our readers are our professors, our administrators, our parents and our alums. When we tell a story well, it has the opportunity to get the people around us thinking, to turn heads and start conversations. And if we tell a story poorly, it is our own community we may hurt; the one we care about so dearly, for it is our own.

At The Daily, we don’t take the responsibility of reporting on our own community lightly. To be fully ingrained within the Stanford community puts us closer to the stories we tell, but it also means there is additional pressure to do a great job telling them. At the risk of being cliché, I feel inclined to quote the first edition of The Daily, then called “The Daily Palo Alto.”

“True it is that The Daily will not make a great university, but just as true is it that The Daily is one of the signs of a great university. This is not a paper by a few individuals, acting in a private capacity. It is the organ of the students of Stanford University.”

This issue hopes to celebrate this important legacy and mission with exciting stories. The articles vary: one historicizes our independence and another details The Daily’s Supreme Court case against the Palo Alto Police Department. One piece recounts our printing of a fake Cal paper following the infamous 1982 Big Game, and another celebrates Daily joy by chronicling the history of our crossword. We let alums take the mic, recounting their own experiences in the issue’s opinions and Grind pieces. 

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Daily’s independence from Stanford, I hope that our community will join us in reflecting on The Daily and its core mission. Most importantly, I hope the Stanford community will continue to hold us to account for our words, push us to improve, and assist us in maintaining our independence for as long as there is a Stanford for The Daily to report on.

Sam Catania ’24 is the Vol. 262 and 263 editor in chief of The Stanford Daily.

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Letter from the editors: The Daily’s priorities this volume https://stanforddaily.com/2022/09/30/letter-from-the-editors-introducing-vol-262/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/09/30/letter-from-the-editors-introducing-vol-262/#respond Fri, 30 Sep 2022 08:21:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1208743 The executive team of The Stanford Daily welcomes you to Vol. 262. Join us as we emphasize digital content, improving our storytelling, developing our staff and fostering reader trust.

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Police raided The Stanford Daily’s building to search for photographs of student anti-war protestors in April of 1971. They threatened our sources, our journalism and our integrity. We were up to the challenge.

The raiders found nothing during their search, because The Daily had already destroyed all unpublished photos with identifiable protestors. All they found was a hardworking, mission-driven staff — a group of student journalists with grit, ready to fight for their values. A series of legal battles ensued, going all the way to the Supreme Court, that helped shape national free speech protections. The Daily separated from Stanford University in February 1973, making this volume the paper’s 50th anniversary as an independent 501(c)(3) California nonprofit corporation.

What would the police find if they unlawfully raided The Daily today? They would similarly find a determined staff with a commitment to truth, but they would also find a publication looking to the future. They would find:

  1. A digital-always publication. By applying technology to journalism’s aspirations, we are working to improve our newsroom for the modern world. Our volume will lean on the flexibility of online publication and social media to release content throughout the day, rather than just at night, so that our readers are equipped with the information they need as soon as possible. Multimedia integration will not be an afterthought, but a priority, for all of our pieces. We have redesigned our executive team to help achieve this goal. Now instead of having separate “print” and “digital” executive editors, emphasizing digital will be a focus for our entire executive team and all masthead editors.
  2. A strategy for storytelling. We’re back on campus. We’re back to in-person recruitment and onboarding. Our content should feel like it. During the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, our reporting was limited, albeit for good reason. But we haven’t forgotten where the heart and soul of student journalism lies — in on-the-ground reporting, powerful bonds with our community and a bustling newsroom that excites our journalists and inspires better content. That has been the message underlying every conversation we’ve held with our section leaders in the lead-up to this school year, and it’s the message we will continue to push.
  3. Staff development. We are nothing without our staff. Our content improves when we have consistent and well-trained contributors who develop meaningful relationships with sources, wrestle deeply with the issues on our campus and improve their creative craft. We will emphasize staff retention by instituting internal feedback systems and expanding our staff social opportunities. Staffers will develop their skills through regular workshop and speaker opportunities on cutting-edge practices in the field. With a strong staff, we will have strong content that serves the needs of our community. If you’re interested in joining our staff, you can do so here.
  4. Trust, transparency and independence. As trust in media declines, we must protect our relationship with readership and our journalistic integrity. Our executive team will be regularly penning a column to explain Daily operations and decisions to the community in the interest of transparency. We will also prioritize our business ventures in order to continue moving toward our north star goal of complete financial independence from the University. 

We hope you’ll stay tuned for an incredible volume of stories to come. Join us as we continue to do what we love: bringing news to the Farm.

Sam Catania ’24 is the Vol. 262 Editor in Chief. Born and raised in Philadelphia, he is a Symbolic Systems major. He previously served as Chief Technology Officer and wrote for News at The Daily.

Kirsten Mettler ’23 is one of this year’s Executive Editors. Originally from Connecticut, she is a Political Science major, pursuing a minor and honors in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies. At the Daily, she has previously served as a Managing Editor for Arts & Life and a desk editor in News.

Tammer Bagdasarian ’24 is an Executive Editor for The Daily, and is planning to major in Communication and Political Science. He previously served as a News Managing Editor. 

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Letter from the editors: Regarding Monday’s opinion piece https://stanforddaily.com/2022/09/27/letter-from-the-editors-regarding-mondays-opinion-piece/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/09/27/letter-from-the-editors-regarding-mondays-opinion-piece/#respond Tue, 27 Sep 2022 17:00:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1208550 We were made aware that the piece published Sept. 26 contained sentences that were either identical or extremely similar to a New York Times op-ed. The Daily immediately removed the article from our website.

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On Monday, Sept. 26 at 11 p.m., The Daily published a piece titled “From the Community | The reason elite universities are out of touch” which was submitted by a person who is not a member of The Daily’s staff. We were made aware that the piece contained sentences that were either identical or extremely similar to a New York Times op-ed. The Daily immediately removed the article from our website.

The publication of unoriginal work is wholly against The Daily’s policies and standards. The Daily regrets this error. We are undertaking an internal review to safeguard against such a thing happening again. We have barred the author from submitting future pieces and will be taking immediate steps to incorporate more thorough originality checking on all future content.

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Introducing the 2022 Stanford Daily Summer Journalism Institute https://stanforddaily.com/2022/08/25/introducing-the-2022-stanford-daily-summer-journalism-institute/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/08/25/introducing-the-2022-stanford-daily-summer-journalism-institute/#respond Fri, 26 Aug 2022 02:09:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1207233 The Summer Journalism Institute (SJI) is a two-week intern program created exclusively for incoming frosh and undergraduates at Stanford looking to dive into the exciting world of student journalism in college.

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Dear Stanford Community and incoming frosh,

The Stanford Daily is proud to introduce our 2022 Stanford Daily Summer Journalism Institute (SJI), a two-week intern program created exclusively for incoming frosh and undergraduates at Stanford looking to dive into the exciting world of student journalism in college. SJI is designed to support current and incoming Stanford students with backgrounds underrepresented in the journalism industry.

The program will include two weeks of events and workshops, ranging from news and reporting to arts and multimedia. Working alongside you will be our wonderful managing editors and affinity group leaders to guide you as you begin your journey at Stanford and with The Daily.

SJI has also established a mentorship program, where you will be paired with a student mentor to help answer any questions you have (our mentors all have different majors and interests, ranging from CS to fine arts to journalism — so there’s a ton to talk about)! We invite you to sign up if you’re interested. The program will run remotely from Sept. 4-17, and the deadline to apply is by Aug. 30.

Our application form is here.

Looking forward to welcoming you this September!

With Daily love,

Bhumikorn Kongtaveelert, Chloe Mendoza, Gheed El Bizri, Tom Quach
2022 SJI Directors

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From the community | Why we left our multicultural sorority: a call to abolish Greek life https://stanforddaily.com/2022/01/03/from-the-community-why-we-left-our-multicultural-sorority-a-call-to-abolish-greek-life/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/01/03/from-the-community-why-we-left-our-multicultural-sorority-a-call-to-abolish-greek-life/#respond Tue, 04 Jan 2022 05:34:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1189474 Former members of Stanford's chapter of Sigma Psi Zeta urge students affiliated with campus Greek life to disaffiliate and to instead form organizations subject to the same rules as every other student organization on campus.

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Dear members of the Stanford community,

The emergence of pivotal social movements such as Abolish Greek in the summer of 2020 sparked key conversations about genuine allyship, equity and safety and inspired us to critically evaluate our own role and complicity in the Greek system as ex-members of a sorority. It is with a mixture of sadness, relief, and pride that we and the majority of the active former members of the Omicron Chapter of Sigma Psi Zeta (SYZ), a multicultural and Asian-rooted sorority, decided to disaffiliate from SYZ and launch the Asian Women’s Alliance (AWA). After many discussions, we came to the conclusion that though the space SYZ created for Asian women was valuable for many, its position within the Greek system prevented it from practicing true inclusiveness, a principle that we hold most dear. Instead, we have established AWA, a University-funded voluntary student organization, which better represents our dedication to forging bonds between women of color and eradicating systems of oppression. 

We value the foresight that the founding mothers of SYZ demonstrated in 2003 in carving out a space for Asian women to connect, enriching the Stanford community’s awareness of nuanced Asian and Asian-American identities. Past and current members of SYZ were deeply dedicated to one another and continue to be inspired by the depth of each other’s intelligence, empathy, and passion for giving back to our communities. 

And yet, we would be remiss not to acknowledge the ways in which we at the Sigma Psi Zeta Sorority relied on harmful practices that characterize much of Greek life. We were not immune to imposing secrecy on members in regards to the specifics of pledging and other rituals, using fees punitively, judging prospective members by their attire or perceived social capital, or restricting membership to give off the impression of exclusivity. A common occurrence during recruitment was coaching current members to skirt questions about the commitment the sorority entails so that rushees would have to join the sorority before fully understanding what they were signing onto. We believe this practice violates the principles of informed consent and blurs the lines between encouragement and coercion. 

Reflecting upon the consequences of being in SYZ allowed us to realize that our precious community of Asian women was housed in the wrong vessel. Two of the very few spaces dedicated specifically to Asian women on Stanford campus were sororities. As a result, they remained shrouded in secrecy and barred by hundreds of dollars in quarterly fees. Ultimately, we decided the right path forward was to transplant our community and mission and to leave Greek life behind.

Throughout our disaffiliation process, we have heard criticisms that we would like to take time to address here. 

First, the argument stands that Greek life can only be changed from within. To counter this claim, it is critical to recognize that fees and secrecy pledges are the lifeblood of Greek organizations. Organizations that rely on these things cannot be fully equitable or progressive, because embodying any of those traits requires transparency, and transparency threatens the very business model that Greek life depends on. 

Furthermore, both informal expectations of loyalty to one’s fraternity or sorority and official secrecy pledges nearly always work to protect the perpetrator in instances of hazing, sexual assault, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and other sources of harm. The preservation of white supremacy is baked into the very DNA of Greek life. And at the end of the day, we realized that we could not meaningfully reform a white supremacist institution.

Second, people have suggested that Greek life forges bonds like no other. However, we would argue that it was the people who joined SYZ who created those bonds, rather than the Greek system that the organization belonged to. Moreover, if organizations are relying on exclusionary and pressure-inducing practices such as rush and pledge to forge such bonds, we question the validity of that approach. 

In addition, the internal bonds between fraternity and sorority members are strengthened when their organization is housed — a privilege given to these students simply for being selected to join an exclusive social club. We call for the University to unhouse all the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and Inter-Sorority Council (ISC) Greek organizations that are currently housed on the Row and enjoy exclusive privileges that are available to no other student organizations, such as private chefs, guaranteed housing by bypassing the traditional draw process, designated spaces to host mixers, and more. The commitment that the University has made to continue Greek housing further demonstrates that Stanford still upholds such oppressive systems.

Greek organizations, if they continue to operate, should be treated like any other student organization — bound by the same policies, offered the same opportunities. Through this process, the genuine communities bonded by shared values and interests will survive and thrive. By contrast, organizations bonded only by privilege and exclusivity will fail — and perhaps such organizations ought never to have existed in the first place. We understand that many who join Greek life do so seeking community, and call on all IFC and ISC members and Potential New Members (PNMs) to disaffiliate and to instead join or form organizations that will be subject to the same rules as every other student organization on campus.

Asian and Asian-American women in the U.S. have the peculiar experience of being caught between being invisible and enduring both racist and sexist harassment. The identity of the Asian woman is one that is objectified, made invisible, and downplayed in America’s extensive history of anti-Asian violence, imperialism, and policymaking. We will broach these painful subjects and more in the Asian Women’s Alliance. But at the same time, we will instill pride and joy in our diverse cultures, educate ourselves and others about how the Asian-American community is far from homogeneous, and take steps to combat the racism and sexism that have harmed Asian-American women for centuries. While AWA is meant to provide a space of joy, friendship, and mentorship, and foster ethnic pride and awareness for Asian women, we welcome and encourage allies of all identities to join our community to learn about the complexities of the Asian and Asian-American experience. Greek life may have brought us together, but we are evolving beyond it and we hope you’ll join us. 

— Elizabeth “Betsy” Kim, Kavita Selva, Liza Hafner, Minh Nguyen

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From the community | Stanford should get serious about building Asian American Studies https://stanforddaily.com/2022/01/03/from-the-community-stanford-should-get-serious-about-building-back-asian-american-studies/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/01/03/from-the-community-stanford-should-get-serious-about-building-back-asian-american-studies/#respond Tue, 04 Jan 2022 05:25:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1188722 Members from the Stanford Asian Pacific American Alumni Club write that Stanford undervalues its Asian American Studies program. As a result, they argue it is losing brilliant instructors who can teach in the program.

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This series from the community features members of the SAPAAC Asian American Studies Coalition from different generations, sharing their first-hand experiences as Asian Americans on campus. Visit www.sapaac.org (Stanford Asian Pacific American Alumni Club) to find out more about the coalition’s efforts to advocate for Asian American Studies at Stanford.

We urge Stanford to provide funding and resources to hire and retain a diverse body of faculty to teach Asian American Studies (AAS) courses. We graduated Stanford as AAS majors in the early 2010s and experienced the program’s institutional challenges. Especially given the recent departure of Dr. William Gow — who taught several popular courses, including Introduction to Asian American Studies — we are disappointed that a decade after our graduation, difficulties attracting and retaining instructors who teach AAS courses persist.

To this day, AAS at Stanford cannot hire its own tenure-track faculty. AAS depends on professors from other departments and lecturers, primarily from other universities, to teach courses. When we were students, the quantity and availability of AAS classes each year was uncertain. The breadth of courses was limited. Few instructors taught more than one AAS class a year or could provide stable, long-term mentorship in the field. 

We had to be very intentional to major in AAS. We wanted to study a field driven by social justice and that teaches our histories. Majoring in AAS at Stanford, however, comes with institutional challenges. To ensure we completed our AAS major in addition to our other academic and extracurricular interests, we designed and redesigned four-year academic plans meticulously, with the support of many outside the program, such as the Asian American Activities Center, starting from the end of freshman year or the beginning of sophomore year. This process included self-advocating for independent research units so we could meet unit requirements and seeking mentors from other disciplines to conduct our research. This careful calculus is not possible for many students. Many peers told us that they were discouraged from majoring, minoring or taking a class in AAS because of these institutional hurdles.

Majoring, minoring or taking a class in AAS at Stanford should not be difficult.

Even more frustrating was when Stanford denied tenure to Professor Stephen Sohn in 2013. Professor Sohn was an Assistant Professor in English who taught many classes cross-listed with AAS. He was well-published and a mentor to us and countless other students. He won numerous awards for his teaching, including the Walter J. Gores Award, which is Stanford’s highest award for excellence in teaching. Students and communities rallied around reconsideration of Professor Sohn’s case for tenure, but his case was not reopened. Professor Sohn left Stanford in the summer of 2014.

Stanford’s professed goals of increasing faculty diversity, teaching inclusive curriculum, and developing global leaders is lip-service.

In 2018, we started hearing about a wonderful new professor who was teaching AAS courses, and that students were very excited about him. Dr. Gow dramatically helped increase the number of AAS majors and minors, and he taught foundational courses like “Introduction to AAS,” which had not been taught in over a decade.

Funding for Dr. Gow’s AAS courses was scarce and cobbled together from different sources. Dr. Gow was initially hired on a one-year contract through American Studies. The initial job announcement in American Studies did not request any AAS courses, and it was Dr. Gow who proposed that he teach them. AAS and History provided the additional funding that enabled Dr. Gow to teach AAS courses. Further, at the end of the academic year, Dr. Gow did not know if his position in American Studies would be renewed. AAS cannot and should not be sustained this way.

It is clear that Stanford drastically underfunds AAS. With an endowment of $41.9 billion as of October 2021, Stanford itself should be funding multiple tenure-track positions and multiple full-time lecturers in AAS, and any additional fundraising monies should be used for endowed chairs and programming. Instead, Stanford has so far not provided funding for even one full-time lecturer position in AAS. It is an embarrassment that Stanford depends on alumni donations, financial good-will from departments and the initiative of individuals who offer to teach AAS courses just to eke out one or two foundational AAS courses a year.

Dr. Gow left Stanford for Cal State University, Sacramento (Sac State) in the summer of 2021. Sac State recognized the importance of attracting and retaining faculty like Dr. Gow, and offered him a tenure-track AAS position. In response, Stanford offered Dr. Gow a three-year Associate Director position of AAS. The position had a reduced teaching load, but could later disappear, at which point Dr. Gow only might be able to return as a lecturer on a limited-term contract. After it was announced, Sac State’s Ethnic Studies Department felt the applicant pool was so strong that it asked to hire a second tenure-track AAS position, which the Cal State University administration approved. Therefore, Sac State was able to give two tenure-track job offers: Dr. Gow and Dr. Wendi Yamashita. At the time, Sac State already had three tenure-track positions in AAS along with a number of full-time lecturers. 

In contrast, Stanford, an institution that conducts and publishes research about the benefits of ethnic studies, has no tenure-track or full-time lecturers in AAS. 

Professor Sohn left Stanford nearly seven years ago. He continues to mentor us and others, however, by advising us about navigating the workplace as young professionals and connecting us with his undergraduate students who are interested in learning more about our careers. Professor Sohn is currently an endowed chair at Fordham University, and his latest book won the 2020 Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Humanities and Cultural Studies. By failing to retain Professor Sohn, Stanford deprived generations of Stanford students incredible opportunities to learn and conduct cutting-edge scholarship. We can only imagine the loss that comes with Dr. Gow’s recent departure.

Stanford is losing brilliant instructors who can teach AAS, and actively facilitates that attrition.

Stanford has a history of undervaluing the contributions of professors who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) or whose scholarship focuses on BIPOC people, such as Aishwary Kumar and Akhil Gupta. If Stanford capitalizes on the labor of instructors in fields like AAS and wants to practice what it preaches regarding its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, then it needs to treat the people who teach these courses with respect and offer competitive packages that attract and retain them.

There are many ethical, academic and competitive reasons to hire and retain a diverse body of faculty to teach AAS courses at Stanford, especially when the University is located in California, where ethnic studies is a required class to graduate from high school and from Cal State Universities and community colleges. In the end, it is up to Stanford to stop systematically undermining AAS and start a good-faith investment in faculty who contribute to its vibrancy. Anything less is an affront to Stanford’s students and scholarship.

Victoria Yee, Esq. (she/her) graduated Class of 2013 with a B.A. in Asian American Studies with honors, a minor in Chinese, and an M.A. in Sociology. Thuy-Van (Tina) Hang, M.D. (she/her) graduated Class of 2012 with a B.A.S. in Asian American Studies with honors and Biology.

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Letter from the CTO: Requesting your feedback on our website https://stanforddaily.com/2021/10/11/letter-from-the-cto-requesting-your-feedback-on-our-website/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/10/11/letter-from-the-cto-requesting-your-feedback-on-our-website/#respond Tue, 12 Oct 2021 03:16:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1186046 The Daily’s Tech Team is going to make some big changes to our site. In order to make this project a success, we need your feedback and suggestions!

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I’m Sam Catania, The Stanford Daily’s chief technology officer.

Now more than ever, The Daily’s website is a critical tool to inform our community. People visit our site half a million times a month to check the latest headlines, get sports scores, learn what students think, stay up to date with the arts, laugh at our humor articles and more.

While our current website has served us and our community well, it sometimes falls short of creating the experience we hope to deliver to our readers. Our homepage format is static, meaning the layout does not always reflect the importance of the day’s stories. Backend limitations prevent our writers from adding interactive features to their pieces to make content more visually engaging. And as we create more multimedia content, we’ll need better ways to display it.

For these and countless other reasons, The Daily’s Tech Team is going to make some big changes to our site. To make this project a success, we need your help! That’s why we’re excited to announce a brand new website suggestion and feedback form. We want to hear your thoughts about our website, and this form is the place to put them. Anything submitted within the next two weeks will help guide our design and development process. After that, we’ll check the form periodically for tips.

For accessibility-related improvements or concerns specifically, please reach out to our dedicated accessibility email: accessibility@stanforddaily.com. You can read more information about our web accessibility commitment here.

We cannot make a website that meets your standards and needs without hearing from our readers. So, please fill out the form, and we’ll do our best to take your feedback into account! Though we can’t guarantee your suggestion will be implemented, we encourage you not to hold back feedback, even if it might not seem feasible! You can submit the form as many times as you would like.

We’re looking forward to reading your thoughts and feedback!

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From the Community | Surviving storms with the narrative self https://stanforddaily.com/2021/07/28/from-the-community-surviving-storms-with-the-narrative-self/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/07/28/from-the-community-surviving-storms-with-the-narrative-self/#respond Wed, 28 Jul 2021 15:43:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1184032 Narrating one’s story should be a vehicle for agency, self-possession, and identifying oneself as a member of a community, writes Christy Hartman.

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I was intrigued reading the opinion piece, “The Pitfalls of the Narrative Self,” in which Hannah Kim poses a vital question: What happens when society is filled with people who narrate their own stories with themselves as the main character? However, when I reached the article’s culminating insight — Maybe self-understanding is like happiness; if you have to actively pursue it, you’re doing it wrong. All the more reason to stop telling stories about ourselves to make sense of who we are — I no longer felt intrigue, but a rolling wave of grief that I couldn’t shake. I would like to offer another way of thinking about the narrative self.

I arrived at Stanford in 2011 after a long summer in Delaware providing hospice care for my father. I was twenty-three years old with no inclination towards nursing, and about as outside of my comfort zone as the character in “Juno” (2007) who gets pregnant at 16. Her dad asks: “Hey, big puffy version of June bug. Where you been?” Juno replies: “Oh, just out dealing with things way beyond my maturity level.” 

After my father died that October, I was lost. At night, when I tried to sleep, my heart raced; during the day I felt intermittent sharp chest pains. For months after, during the night my body would startle awake. Had I missed a dose of meds? A call for help? Twice, I awoke certain that his dead body was on top of mine, smothering me. Everything as far as my imagination could travel was emptiness. This emptiness frightened me and I sought to relieve it. I hooked up with a friend, notably, not my partner. This only caused more suffering, though it was a distraction from the original source of pain. 

I went to the library and looked for a book that would stop the world from spinning. My father’s sudden illness, care and death was a life-altering disturbance. The library’s selection of psychology books left much to be desired. I felt desperate. I had been busy being strong for my father, but now that it was my turn to fall apart, I didn’t know how. Who would care for the caretaker, and how could I even ask for that? I moved to California to try to work things out with my partner, who was my one foothold. But when I arrived at Stanford, I found that working with the Storytelling Project was much more powerful than support from one individual.

Often, we don’t have a space for meaningful reflection and personal inquiry. This space can be created by telling your story, but it is a huge risk of vulnerability to let someone in, especially for those with unmourned, unwitnessed experience. At that point, I had not even witnessed my own experience. So much had happened in a short time that I had not been able to inhabit my feelings while carrying out the work of the day. Storytelling is a way to process dense experiences that need time and space. It took almost a year before I opened up and shared my story with a staff producer. Every question she asked felt like a pressure release valve. She was patient and gentle, and we worked together to tell my story over five or six months. She was the first person who sat with me in a quiet room and asked, What was it like? And if I became lost in minutiae, she guided me towards metaphor. 

Working in this method, my personal story became rich with universal motifs. Rather than feeling like my grief was the worst grief of anyone who had ever lived, I began to identify with other women who had undergone such trials. Many young women lose those they care for, and I learned this because they shared their stories. I began to see something of myself in all women who have come before me, who have sacrificed their bodies and dreams of a life that “should have been.” I see myself in my father, who struggled to ask for help after he was diagnosed. 

Before working with Natacha, I carried my story around, allowing a sense of injustice, grief and rage to underpin everything I did. Afterwards, I wasn’t magically better but I felt less alone. By being honest and compassionate about my own suffering, I stopped holding on to it. I fear a world where society is filled with people who are not narrating their own stories. Without self-understanding, we are liable to carry unprocessed, unexamined narratives around for our entire lives, thinking and acting from a place of wounding, be it guilt, grief, loss, betrayal, doubt, loneliness, depression, despair, obsession, addiction, anger, fear, angst or anxiety. 

I tell stories not to reinforce narratives, but to get down in the mud with them, to work experiences deeply, to become less haunted, and pass between a stuck place and movement, where new ways of seeing are possible. Over-identification with narrative or fantasy or victimhood may be unproductive. But more commonly, I meet students who have just left behind whatever identity they had in high school and are experiencing something like I did after my dad passed; that groundless emptiness. We re-learn our place in the world through relationality and curiosity. 

Self-inquiry gives students permission to be curious about who they want to be now. Giving experiences shape, narrativizing them, is a way to connect feelings and experience, interior and exterior, not to build a persona, but to make meaning. We ask questions like, When did you know x to be true? Students enter a process that Jad Abumrad, host of the Radiolab podcast, affectionately calls being lost in the German forest, an incoherent state characterized by questioning that doesn’t immediately produce an organized answer. Deep in the forest during narrative inquiry, a student may arrive at a place far from their original inquiry, now asking something more like: Who/what am I? 

Self-understanding is hard-won in this forest. We take back the mic from ideas that have been piled on us by friends, parents, teachers, even ourselves. We all inherit erroneous and inadequate narratives that have proved false but still influence our imaginations. Without self-inquiry, we will never get to choose what is ours. Narratives about who we are affect creativity, our understanding of the self and the way in which global problems play out. Because nothing happens in a vacuum. Narratives drive economic inequality, species loss, climate change and social conflict. Coming into a narrative self means seeing things as systems, seeing broad patterns and greater complexity, which then leads to a capacity for engaging the stories we are presented with.

The work of re-weaving narratives leaves us less wounded and gives us greater access to be with what is happening as it happens. I’m excited about narrative storytelling as a medium of empowerment. My goal for storytelling is to increase relationality. It’s also the goal of many organizations devoted to helping people develop narrative capacity, like the Stanford Storytelling Project, StoryCraft, Narrative 4 and Voice of Witness. 

Too many narratives are inadvertently sublimated in service to individualism and capitalism. This slow violence manifests in the world when we don’t actively pursue self-understanding. We must communicate our experiences to start hard conversations. Narrating one’s story should be a vehicle for agency, self-possession and identifying oneself as a member of a community. 

Consider the writings of community organizer Marshall Ganz, whose work in narrative is rooted in the movement from me to we, telling personal narratives that communicate values and inspire public action. Narrative storytelling is a critical tool for surviving transition times, when we are forced to adapt to new conditions. 

Thinking critically about my place in the world requires expanding my awareness. As I do, I can see the entire web of life itself. I see the parts of “my” story as interchangeable with others. Because I no longer strongly differentiate between self and other. When I hear your story, it becomes part of me. And when you read this story about me it becomes part of you. And the more I heal, I don’t feel that I am my narrative. But it does matter what I make of it.

Disclosure: Though I work for the Stanford Storytelling Project, my views do not represent the views of the project. 

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From the opinions editor: SCR’s attacks on individuals https://stanforddaily.com/2021/05/27/from-the-opinions-editor-scrs-attacks-on-individuals/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/05/27/from-the-opinions-editor-scrs-attacks-on-individuals/#respond Fri, 28 May 2021 06:02:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1183117 Many of us at The Daily were not only dismayed but frustrated to learn of our former colleague and classmate Emily Wilder ’20’s firing from the AP following tweets by the Stanford College Republicans. We were frustrated because, through our time at Stanford and at The Daily, and especially in our reporting on and engagement with the College Republicans, we could see the pattern in the group’s cynical tactics and had thought we could trust an organization like the AP not to fall for them.

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Many of us at The Daily were not only dismayed but frustrated to learn of our former colleague and classmate Emily Wilder ’20’s firing from the AP following tweets by the Stanford College Republicans. We were dismayed at the AP’s troubling decision and its evasive reasoning. We were frustrated because, through our time at Stanford and at The Daily, and especially in our reporting on and engagement with the College Republicans, we could see the pattern in the group’s cynical tactics and had thought we could trust an organization like the AP not to fall for them.

The College Republicans’ primary engagement with the broader Stanford community in the past several years has been twofold. First, the group invites controversial right-wing speakers to campus, inevitably rekindling debates about free speech and whether pernicious ideologies should be given a platform. The group frames any opposition to or protest against such events as an attack on free speech, even as no speaker invited by the College Republicans in recent history has been disinvited from a Stanford event. 

Second, the group engages in smear tactics against individuals by publicizing old social media or other public posts, almost invariably presented in bad faith and accompanied by extreme characterizations. The group presents these posts as evidence that the individual in question holds distasteful leftist ideologies and is thus unfit for holding some position or office, whether it be residential assistant, undergraduate senator, dean of students or journalist for a national publication. 

At the same time as the group targets individuals and insists they be punished for their putatively objectionable speech, the group complains when its own speech is not welcomed in its preferred forums. The group has written that by declining to publish op-eds from the College Republicans that contravene our editorial policies, The Daily “aids and abets violent actors on the left through its dishonesty and its attempts to hide information from the public by omission.” This despite the fact that the group has consistently found a welcome forum for their op-eds in The Stanford Review and that The Daily only began declining submissions when the College Republicans consistently failed to work with editors in good faith to revise submissions for publication.

The implicit stance of the College Republicans is clear: it is an unacceptable contravention of free speech when The Daily and the Stanford community declines to platform and calmly debate whatever opinions they have to share. At the same time, it is unacceptable when those who voice opinions the College Republicans find objectionable are allowed to keep their livelihoods without retribution. Right-wing viewpoints that the left finds objectionable must be promoted and elevated in the interest of free speech. But those leftists and left-wing viewpoints that the College Republicans find objectionable cannot be left unpunished. 

Those familiar with the College Republicans’ bad-faith tactics, including Wilder herself, have suggested that one way to counteract them is to pay the group no attention. It is clearest to see how this could work in the context of speakers invited by the College Republicans. If, instead of protesting and condemning them, the broader community simply ignored such events, each event would no longer be subject to volleying op-eds, spectacle and the inevitable attention that controversy gathers. 

But more and more, and especially in Wilder’s firing, we see the limits of such a response. Even when, like in the recent case of an undergraduate senator running for reelection, a smear campaign leads to no substantive action, it remains an attack on an individual, with all its attendant harm. And defense against the College Republicans’ smear tactics depends, to some degree, upon the community’s familiarity with their methods. The College Republicans’ tactics thus can still be highly effective with those who are either unable or unwilling to see the basic motives of the group — notably those outside the Stanford community who know them only as an undergraduate Republican group. In Wilder’s case, when the group’s attacks were elevated by right-wing outlets, the AP bowed to a smear campaign attempting to link a 22-year-old news associate based in Arizona with its Middle-East reporting — and fired her.

Those of us at Stanford who have observed the College Republicans at work for the past several years can see that they have only the power they are afforded by those who legitimize their tactics. But this is not enough as long as the group can convince organizations beyond Stanford, such as the AP and right-wing outlets, that their power and influence is real and threatening. This influence, as long as it is legitimized and thus made real, will continue to chill the voices of those in the Stanford community. 

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. 

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Letter to the Community: On Palestine https://stanforddaily.com/2021/05/23/letter-to-the-community-on-palestine/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/05/23/letter-to-the-community-on-palestine/#respond Mon, 24 May 2021 03:47:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1182853 Members of the Stanford community write to condemn Israel's actions toward Palestinians.

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We, the undersigned members of the Stanford community, condemn in the strongest terms possible the state of Israel’s systematic destruction of Palestinian property, homes and lives. The recent expulsion of Palestinians from their rightful homes in Sheikh Jarrah — which, along with Israel’s violent attack on peaceful worshippers at al-Aqsa mosque during the holy period of Ramadan, has precipitated the violence we see unfolding — is but one part of an unbroken history stretching back to the 1948 massacre of over 100 Palestinian men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin. Then, as now, Zionists reached beyond UN-mandated borders to expel and kill Palestinians and illegally seize their land. In the recent decade, Israeli policies have become even more aggressive.

The 2018 “New Basic Law of Israel” makes three fundamental claims:

  1. The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established.
  2. The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.
  3. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people. 

With terrible clarity then, Israel has declared itself an ethno-nation and converted acts illegal under international law (such as annexing Palestine land, undertaking the collective punishment of Palestinians, abrogating its responsibilities as an occupying power, denying Palestinians in exile their human right to return, et cetera) into legitimate (in solely its own view) manifestations of its “self-determination.” We in the United States are all too familiar with how a similar evocation of “Manifest Destiny” legitimated genocide against Indigenous peoples.

Such single-mindedness of purpose makes Israel’s attested commitment to the “equality” of all citizens a lie. Despite this attestation, more than 51 discriminatory laws imposed by Israel against Palestinians have not been removed from the books and are still enacted regularly. “Equality” cannot possibly exist in an ethno-state whose very existence has been declared an apartheid state by Human Rights Watch. This apartheid takes the form of separate roads, resources, electrical systems, schools, curtailed freedom of movement for Palestinians.

In a recent piece in the New York Times (“Palestinian Refugees Deserve to Return Home. Jews Should Understand”), Peter Beinart, Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents, draws the connection between the historical Nakba and the present day:

Why has the impending eviction of six Palestinian families in East Jerusalem drawn Israelis and Palestinians into a conflict that appears to be spiraling toward yet another war? Because of a word that in the American Jewish community remains largely taboo: the Nakba.

The Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic, need not refer only to the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled in terror during Israel’s founding. It can also evoke the many expulsions that have occurred since: the about 300,000 Palestinians whom Israel displaced when it conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967; the roughly 250,000 Palestinians who could not return to the West Bank and Gaza after Israel revoked their residency rights between 1967 and 1994; the hundreds of Palestinians whose homes Israel demolished in 2020 alone. The East Jerusalem evictions are so combustible because they continue a pattern of expulsion that is as old as Israel itself.

In Gaza in particular, Friends of the Earth, an environmental organization, found such deplorable conditions that it issued a report entitled, precisely, “Environmental Nakba”:

The observer mission witnessed numerous examples of expropriation of land and water resources and heard testimonies of officials, researchers, local people and environmental activists. We observed industrial sites with little or no controls on emissions, untreated sewage piped from urban developments onto open land and streams and waste hills from decades of uncontrolled dumping. We heard of the destruction of trees and the polluting of agricultural land and surface water. This report documents some of these observations, and provides some suggestions for collaborative projects in Palestine, either by further researches or solidarity support for the affected communities.

The carnage we see today cannot be excused through any notion that Israel has a right to “protect itself.” Its violent and often deadly expulsions of Palestinians from their homes, its armed attack on ordinary Palestinians and others worshipping during Ramadan — these actions logically extend to Palestinians the right to defend themselves first.

The disproportionate violence perpetrated by Israel — whose possession of high-tech defense systems, armaments and war equipment is in large part funded by American taxpayers — is inexcusable, as is the United States’ continued diplomatic protection of illegal Israeli actions.

We reject any attempt to portray this as the fault of the Palestinian people, and deplore the slaughter of innocent men, women and children, and the crippling of an already weak Palestinian infrastructure. We urge everyone to refuse to be complicit with Israeli “business as usual,” and to consider endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, begun by over 170 civil organizations in Palestine. This non-violent form of protest, consciously modeled after the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, allows people of principle worldwide to act in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The government of South Africa has in fact come out in support of BDS — Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu were early and vocal supporters of the movement. 

BDS and more generally protests against Israel’s persistent violation of international law and international human rights are not the purview solely of “radicals” or leftists. Full or partial divestment from Israel has been declared by religious groups such as the US Mennonite organization, the Presbyterian Church, USA, United Church of Christ, the pension fund of the United Methodist Church, several Quaker branches (American Friends Service Committee) and others. The Palestinian cause has received the support of Jewish groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem

The financial sector too is wary of investing in businesses in the Occupied Territories both because of their illegality and their instability — just two examples: Bill Gates divested from a British firm for its connections with Israeli security forces; a major Dutch pension firm has also divested. Those fighting for Palestinian rights now include groups like the Movement for Black Lives, and labor unions have refused to unload and transport goods from the Occupied Territories. The analogy between anti-Black racism and the persecution of the Palestinians has been the subject of much commentary. 

We join all those working for basic human rights and the respect of international law in condemning Israel for its brutality and violence, and pledge solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Signed,

Umniya Najaer PhD Student in Modern Thought and Literature
Marci Kwon Assistant Professor, Art History
Tobias Wolff, Professor of English
Jonathan Rosa Associate Professor of Education & Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity
Usha Iyer Assistant Professor, Art and Art History
Martabel Wasserman PhD Candidate
Sharika Thiranagama Associate Professor of Anthropology
Suhaila Meera PhD candidate
David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor & Professor of Comparative Literature
Vaughn Rasberry, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
Jean Ma Associate Professor, Art
Thomas Hansen Professor of Anthropology
Patricia Alessandrini Assistant Professor, Music/CCRMA
Kabir Tambar Associate Professor, Anthropology
Olamide Abiose JD/PhD Candidate in Neuroscience
Joshua Cobler Class of 2020
Kerem Ussakli PhD Student, Department of Anthropology
Nina Dewi Toft Djanegara PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology
Shikha Nehra PhD Student, Department of Anthropology
Nataya Friedan PhD Candidate in Anthropology
Aaron Sherman Hopes PhD Candidate in Anthropology
Laura Ng Stanford PhD candidate
Anna Bigelow Associate Professor, Religious Studies
Priya Satia Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History
Tom Mullaney Professor of History
Jessica Femenias Undergraduate
Alyssa Phd Student
Layo Laniyan Undergraduate ‘22
Saad Lakhani PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology
Marguerite L. De Loney PhD Candidate, Anthropology
Rush Rehm Professor, Classics and TAPS
Siddharth Patel PhD Civil and Environmental Engineering (2019)
Shane Denson Associate Professor, Art & Art History
Selby Wynn Schwartz, Lecturer, Program in Writing & Rhetoric
Duana Fullwiley Associate Prof of Anthropology
Grace Zhou PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology
Emre Daglioglu PhD Candidate/History
Pavle Levi Professor, Film Studies
Jacob Daniels PhD Candidate
Charles Kronengold Assistant Professor, Music
Jason Beckman PhD Candidate, East Asian Languages and Cultures
Tony Kramer, Facilities Coordinator, TAPS
Serkan Yolaçan Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Lalita du Perron Associate Director, Center for South Asia, Stanford
Christine Xiong PhD Student, Department of English
Elis Imboden DFO, Dept. of Art & Art History
Cynthia Garcia Modern Thought and Literature, PhD Candidate
Young Jean Lee Associate Professor, TAPS
Veena Dubal Alumnus
Meade Klingensmith Ph.D. Candidate, History
Elliott Reichardt PhD Student in Anthropology
Néstor L. Silva PhD candidate, Anthropology
Shirin Sinnar, Professor of Law
Adela Zhang, PhD candidate
Jessica Zhu Undergraduate ‘24
Cat Sanchez PhD Student, Sociology
Grace Huckins PhD Candidate, Neurosciences
Isabel Low PhD Candidate, Neurosciences Program
Michael Hayes Genetics PhD Candidate
Rosaley Gai PhD Student, East Asian Languages and Cultures
evan alterman PhD candidate, Slavic languages/literatures
Carolyn Stein Undergraduate Student, ‘23
Ban Wang Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures
Mikael Wolfe Assistant Professor of History
Ayodele Foster-McCray PhD Student, Anthropology Department
Faatimah Solomon Undergraduate Student, ‘21
Micah Olivas PhD Student, Department of Genetics
Shantanu Nevrekar Ph.D. student, Department of Anthropology
Rishika Mehrishi PhD Candidate, Theater and Performance Studies
Sanna Ali PhD Candidate, Communication
David Song Ph.D. candidate, GSE
Branislav Jakovljevic Professor
Caroline Daws PhD Candidate, Biology
Brian Cabral PhD Candidate, Education
Shizza Fatima MA International Education Policy Analysis
Victoria Melgarejo Graduate student
Sajia Darwish MA student, Education
Angela Garcia Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology
Vehbi Tandogan MA, International and Comparative Education
Deniz Cenk Demir Ph.D. Student
Saurabh Khanna PhD candidate, Education
Catie Connolly PhD Student, Education
Danielle Greene PhD Candidate, Education
Nikolaj Ramsdal Nielsen PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature
Miriam S Leshin PhD candidate, GSE
Munir Gur PhD Student in Ethnomusicology
Kemi Oyewole PhD Candidate in Education
Mary Markley Undergraduate, ’23
Andrew Fitzgerald PhD Candidate, Communication
Davíd Morales` PhD Student in Education
Faith Kwon PhD Candidate, Graduate School of Education
Chloé Brault MacKinnon PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature
Sunny Trivedi PhD Candidate, Graduate School of Education
Minju Choi PhD student, Education
Nathaniel Ramos BS ’21, MS ’22 CEE
Kevin Nuno PhD Candidate in Cancer Biology
Richzeska A.S. Fandino Undergraduate Student ’24
Josh Gagne PhD Sociology
Apollo Rydzik PhD student, Sociology
Karla Roman Undergraduate, ‘24
Kassandra Roeser PhD Student, Sociology
Tyler McDaniel PhD Student, Sociology
Jieun Song Ph.D. student, Graduate School of Education
Iris Zhang Stanford Sociology
seungah phd candidate
Niki Nguyen MA Sociology ’21
Lydia Wei Undergraduate Student
Amanda Lu PhD Candidate, Graduate School of Education
Mudit Trivedi Assistant Professor Anthropology
Xingyu Li Ph.D. candidate, GSE
Justine Modica PhD Candidate, History
Jasmine Reid Anthropology PhD
Katerina Gonzales PhD Candidate in Earth System Science
Madison Bunderson PhD Student in Education
Vivian Zhong PhD Candidate, Bioengineering
Briana Mullen MA POLS, MPP
Miranda Diaz Undergraduate ’23
Andrea Nightingale Professor of Classics
Jingyi Li PhD Candidate, Computer Science
James Ferguson Susan S. and William H. Hindle Professor of Anthropology
Kimberly Higuera PhD Candidate, Sociology
Alexa Wnorowski PhD Candidate
Carmen Thong PhD in English
Amy Hontalas Ph.D. candidate – sociology
Oswaldo Rosales Graduate School of Education
Tania Flores PhD Student, Iberian and Latin American Cultures
Rebecca Gruskin PhD Candidate, History
Maura Finkelstein Anthropology PhD alum
Zack Al-Witri, Staff
Monika Greenleaf, Associate Professor, Slavic and Comparative Literature
Hana/Connor Yankowitz B.A. Candidate, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Ge Wang Associate Professor, Music
Isabel Salovaara Graduate Student
Nadine Jawad Medical Student
Aneeqa Abid UG student
Nadine Jawad Medical Student
Tai Anthony McMillan Student
Jaymee Sheng MS ’21 MS&E

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. 

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Letter to the Community from the Jewish Student Association https://stanforddaily.com/2021/05/20/letter-to-the-community-from-the-jewish-student-association/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/05/20/letter-to-the-community-from-the-jewish-student-association/#respond Fri, 21 May 2021 03:22:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1182758 This continued conflict in Israel and Gaza, as well as our tense campus climate, exists in a context of widespread antisemitism and Islamophobia. We urge Stanford faculty, community leaders and students to hold space for our entire Stanford community.

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The Jewish Student Association (JSA) thanks the ASSU for recognizing the stress caused by the escalating conflict in Israel and Gaza for many students. Their statement rightfully offered support to all students affected by the ongoing turmoil in the region. It was an impressive demonstration of leadership that we should all seek to emulate.

We share aspirations for a peaceful resolution to the conflict where all Israelis and Palestinians can live in safety and dignity, and many of our community members are engaged in activism and intercommunal efforts to make this vision a reality. We are concerned that much of the rhetoric circulating on social media and on campus fails to recognize the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination, the role of Israel in Jewish identity and the security of Jews around the globe and the scale of the threats that Israel faces. 

We must draw a distinction between criticism of the Israeli government and the unacceptable rejection of Israel’s right to defend itself or to exist as a Jewish nation. While we welcome challenging conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these conversations must make space for diverse perspectives.

The current and continued conflict in Israel and the Palestinian Territories is driven by more than just two peoples with longstanding and legitimate claims to sacred land. We urge the Stanford community to listen to both Israeli and Palestinian voices and to educate themselves about the conflict’s connections to the broader geopolitical context of the region. Complexities can’t be reduced to infographics, which flatten the lived experience of all peoples involved and limit paths to connection and resolution. Please avoid sharing or promoting harmful misinformation. We encourage dialogue on the conflict and recognize the tremendous opportunity Stanford provides to students to engage with others who hold different beliefs and experiences.

This continued conflict in Israel and Gaza, as well as our tense campus climate, exists in a context of widespread antisemitism and Islamophobia. We urge Stanford faculty, community leaders and students to hold space for our entire Stanford community. JSA hopes that students will work together during their time here to learn how to respectfully communicate with one another about challenging issues and differing perspectives. Though we may not be able to have a tangible impact on the situation in the Middle East in our current positions, we can set an example of treating each other with the respect and openness necessary to come closer to peace.

– The Stanford Jewish Student Association Executive Board

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Letter to the Community: The ASSU’s vaccination survey https://stanforddaily.com/2021/05/13/letter-to-the-community-the-assus-vaccination-survey/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/05/13/letter-to-the-community-the-assus-vaccination-survey/#respond Fri, 14 May 2021 03:47:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1182441 The ASSU reached out to students to better understand COVID vaccination rates and a few other related items.

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Dear Stanford Community,

The ASSU is committed to ensuring that student voices are solicited and accurate data is available when decisions are made at the University. So, the ASSU reached out to students to better understand COVID vaccination rates and a few other related items. Here are the results of that survey. Thank you to the 1,020 undergraduate students who responded.

General Takeaways

  • 71% of respondents who are on campus self-reported as fully vaccinated (two weeks past final dose) 
  • By June 11th, 96% of respondents who are on campus self-reported that they will be fully vaccinated
  • 98% of respondents who could possibly be on campus during the summer self-reported that they will be fully vaccinated by June 12th (summer quarter starts on June 21st)
  • Nearly all respondents (96%) are comfortable sharing their vaccination status with Stanford
  • For those respondents who are off campus, 67% self-reported as fully vaccinated and 93% self-reported that they will be by June 11th

Current Vaccination Rates

The chart below shows the cumulative number of respondents who currently live on campus or come to campus frequently who self-reported that they will be fully vaccinated by the given date. 

Letter to the Community: The ASSU’s vaccination survey
The rate is currently 72% and will be 96% by June 11th

Summer Vaccination Rates

The chart below shows the cumulative number of those who responded that they will be on campus during the summer (or hope to be on campus during the summer, such as juniors and seniors who applied for on-campus housing but have yet to hear back) who self-reported that they will be vaccinated by the given date. Note that summer quarter starts on June 21st, meaning 98% of respondents attending summer quarter self-reported that they will be fully vaccinated by then. 

Letter to the Community: The ASSU’s vaccination survey
The rate is currently around 70% and will be 98% by the start of Summer Quarter

Vaccination Record Sharing 

We also asked how comfortable respondents would be sharing their vaccination status with Stanford. Almost all were comfortable (96%), while only a few (1.5%) were “Extremely Uncomfortable.” Those who are uncomfortable fear discrimination against those who aren’t planning to get vaccinated, have a general view that medical information is private, possess anxiety that vaccines are only authorized under an emergency use authorization and have a general distrust of sharing information with the University after “[the University’s] lack of transparency and honest communication with students over the past year.”

Desired Relaxations

Respondents are very eager to see some on-campus restrictions lifted once public health conditions allow. Some of the more common items requested, particularly for those who are vaccinated, were increased access to studio and music spaces, reversal of social gathering size limits, removal of outdoor mask mandates, increased gym access, reinstatement of senior class events, opening of the eateries inside Tresidder, reduction in testing and health check requirements, resumption of club activities, relaxation of religious event restrictions and the resumption of some in-person classes.

Some of the text comments reflected a general feeling of what can only be described as annoyance that the University was perceived to be putting more stringent requirements on students who are vaccinated than the CDC recommends. On the other hand, a few respondents expressed a desire for campus restrictions to stay in place, citing public health concerns. 

Thanks!

As always, your feedback, opinions and questions are welcome. Please keep in mind that the ASSU does not make decisions about campus restrictions and that many are set by county and state guidelines. We encourage you to make smart and safe decisions and wish you the very best for the rest of your spring quarter. Feel free to reach the ASSU at assu.stanford.edu.

Sincerely yours,

Jonathan Lipman, ASSU Undergraduate Senator
Emily Park, ASSU

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. 

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Letter to the Community: The future of Outdoor House https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/20/the-future-of-outdoor-house/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/20/the-future-of-outdoor-house/#respond Wed, 21 Apr 2021 05:32:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1181414 Our application imagined a theme house which removes recreation from the spotlight in favor of education, reflection, and action. We believe deeply that spending time in nature makes us healthier and happier, helps us become better people, and can form relationships that last a lifetime.

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To the Stanford Undergraduate Community:

For those unfamiliar, Outdoor House is a student-run community focused on amplifying wellness and forging strong friendships through a shared passion for outdoor recreation. Our community started as a theme house in 2015 and over the years became one of the most popular undergraduate housing options. Be it a campfire in our courtyard, a hike in the Santa Cruz mountains, pre-dinner frisbee, a sunrise surf mission or bad karaoke in the climbing gym, we try to make the most of every day through spontaneous adventure. For many of us, it’s been a dream come true.

The day that ResX was announced, and the CoRL theme house review process along with it, our student team banded together to create a formal application for Outdoor House to become an Academic Theme House (UTH-A) under the new residential system. The team includes past house members, students who were lined up to staff or reside in the house for the 2020-2021 year and some folks who simply believe in the value of our community.

As we prepared our application, we took a hard look at the systemic problems that Outdoor House has perpetuated. We recognized that despite our desire to be an inclusive community, Outdoor House has been a center of whiteness, wealth and privilege on the Stanford campus. Centered on expensive hobbies, the house has not shown enough regard to the people we exclude, the land on which we recreate or perspectives outside the mainstream interpretation of outdoor recreation. We realized this was an opportunity to reorient our community, and create a space actively opposed to the harmful norms of “outdoorsiness” in America.

Our application imagined a theme house which removes recreation from the spotlight in favor of education, reflection and action on the issues of racial and environmental justice in the outdoors. We believe deeply that spending time in nature makes us healthier and happier, helps us become better people and can form relationships that last a lifetime. But for these benefits to be distributed equitably, for our community to be truly inclusive, we realized that we must attend less to the ways we recreate, and focus more energy toward creating a culture better than the one we have inherited.

We explain all of this because the Outdoor House which our application imagined is drastically different from the Outdoor House which you may have known. Understanding our vision is crucial to grappling with the fact that the Undergraduate Residences Governance Council (URGC) did not accept our application for theme house status. Upon the rejection of our application, our wonderful faculty and staff team leaped to our support, and we wrote to the URGC addressing their concerns and requesting an opportunity to appeal this decision. However, our request to appeal was denied. The reality is simple: Outdoor House is unhoused.

Though this is tough news, we do not consider this to be a mortal blow to our community. We are optimistic that with the growing support of our faculty and staff team, we will have an excellent shot at getting rehoused in 2022. In the meantime, we have a plan to continue our mission of education, recreation and inclusive community during the upcoming school year. If any student believes that Outdoor House could be the community for them, we urge them to aim for neighborhood T in the upcoming draw. By making this neighborhood the center of outdoor recreation on campus, we can expand our community to accommodate the huge amount of interest we know exists surrounding our theme. So please, join us. Our residential experience is limited only by the scope of our collective imagination.

With hope for our dream, and certainty in the adventures to come,

The Outdoor House Student Team:
Eric Bear
Eleanor Glockner
Drake Kirby
Doug Klink
Page Proctor
Anna Quinlan
Sean Roelofs
Kyra Whitelaw

With thanks to our faculty/staff team:
Sue Lowley, Director of the Stanford Adventure Program
Rob Dunbar, Keck Professor of Earth Sciences
Alex Accetta, Executive Director of Recreation and Wellness
Nate Farrington, Coordinator of Outdoor Experiences for the Stanford Adventure Program
Jeff Schwegman, Assistant Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences
Alyson Chun, Assistant Director of the Stanford Adventure Program
Jorge Ramos, Associate Director for Environmental Education
Laura Jones, Director of Heritage Services and University Archaeologist

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. 

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Letter to the Community: The spring ASSU survey https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/18/letter-to-the-community-the-spring-assu-survey/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/18/letter-to-the-community-the-spring-assu-survey/#respond Mon, 19 Apr 2021 04:15:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1181312 The 325 survey responses can help us better understand the concerns of the student body, especially during a year when the majority of the student body is virtual, thus making connections more difficult.

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Dear Stanford community, 

We as your current ASSU Executive leadership want to update you on the survey that was administered at the end of winter quarter to solicit feedback on the determining factors for your on-/off-campus living and enrollment decisions for spring quarter. Though similar in certain respects to the Axess Quarterly Check-In Hold Survey in its focus on enrollment and living status, our survey also invited your comments through providing textboxes to elaborate on your selected answers. In advance of juniors, seniors and students with special circumstances living on campus this spring, we also included questions to gauge your level of familiarity with various aspects of Stanford’s spring COVID-19 Response. After a survey period of one month, we received 260 complete responses (325 total), with a wave of 65 new responses after our most recent all-campus email on Sunday, April 11. 

An important disclaimer about our results is that the low sample size means that we cannot draw any substantive conclusions, as 325 data points hardly represent the full range of Stanford student experiences during the remote year. At the same time, 325 responses can help us better understand the concerns of the student body, especially during a year when the majority of the student body is virtual, thus making connections more difficult. We are grateful to the 325 students who took time to engage with the ASSU and have taken note of themes that arise across multiple responses.

The survey is skewed toward juniors and seniors, who constitute 43% of all responses, and underrepresents our graduate student population as well as students on leaves of absence or gap years. We recognize that our stated emphasis on gathering feedback, questions, comments and concerns in advance of the return to campus likely contributed to the over-representation of students enrolled full-time or living on campus this quarter. We saw an increase in the number of graduate student responses in this past week since promoting it in our recent all-campus email, but the overall data is undergraduate-focused. 

General Takeaways 

To respect confidentiality, we have chosen not to include more detailed comments from the survey and instead will rely on high-level visualizations. The spring 2021 ASSU COVID-19 Response survey received 325 responses (as of April 17) distributed across the academic cohorts as follows: 

Letter to the Community: The spring ASSU survey
The Spring 2021 ASSU COVID-19 Response survey received 325 responses(as of April 17th) distributed across the academic cohorts as follows: 55 Frosh (1st year), 51 Sophomore (2nd year), 75 Junior (3rd year), 68 Senior (4th year), 1 Masters (>= 5th year), 68 Graduate Student, and 1 Other.
  • One out of two survey respondents planned on living on-campus this quarter 
  • 84% indicated that they are full-time enrolled for spring quarter; 6% are taking a flex-term; 9% taking a Leave of Absence and one student taking a gap year before their freshman year 
  • Academics, Mental Health & Wellbeing and Social Life were the top three determining factors among surveyed students for on-/off-campus living decisions 
  • Covid-19 Safety and Regulations, Mental Health & Wellness and Affordability were the top three ASSU issue areas selected as relevant to student spring quarter plans 
  • On average, students expressed a moderate to low level of confidence (6/10) in their knowledge of the Campus Compact, Stanford COVID-19 Guidelines, Santa Clara County Guidelines, Stanford Campus COVID-19 Testing Protocols, Stanford Health Check and Households, and a similar confidence level (5/10) for familiarity with Campus Safe Zones

We thank all of you who completed the survey and especially those of you who took the time to comment on your particular considerations for campus living and enrollment. You can review more comprehensive data visualizations for the ASSU spring survey results here. While some students indicated interest in a spring COVID-19 webinar or town hall in the survey, the ASSU and selected Office of the Vice Provost for Student Affairs (VPSA) panelists decided to cancel the town halls scheduled for this Wednesday (4/14) and Thursday (4/15) due to a low anticipated turnout. In light of the cancellation, the ASSU Spring survey will remain open for students who wish to let us know about how Stanford’s COVID-19 response informs their academic and living situations.

With love,

Vianna Vo, ASSU Executive President
Chris Middleton, ASSU Executive Vice President
Jianna So, ASSU Executive Chief of Staff

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Open letter to returning students from your community https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/11/open-letter-to-returning-students-from-your-community/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/11/open-letter-to-returning-students-from-your-community/#respond Mon, 12 Apr 2021 04:58:03 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1180960 This quarter, we urge everyone to prioritize safety, health, and honesty for the well-being of ourselves, each other, and the whole community.

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Dear returning Stanford community members,

As your student representatives, many of whom currently live on campus, we are happy that you have been able to return this spring! This opportunity to return results from community efforts and is a win for us all.

While students living on campus have experienced some parts of campus life — we still do laundry in the laundry rooms, some of us get food from the dining halls and we hear the bell tower chime on quiet evenings — we miss life on campus as it was. We miss Treehouse; we miss visiting community centers; we even miss riding through the Circle of Death (although perhaps not biking in the rain). Like you, we are excited for life on campus to begin edging closer toward normal and to share this space, beloved by many, with more members of our community. However, we need to work together to continue caring for our community, balancing our desires for independence and social interaction with the responsible behavior required for protecting all of our safety and mental well-being. For these reasons, we want to speak directly and frankly to you so that, as you arrive and join us, we can continue keeping Stanford safe for everyone.

As you settle into a rhythm for the quarter, we want to emphasize the importance of prioritizing community health and well-being in your personal decisions. That means each of us must value others’ discomfort as we would value our own, recognizing that risks that seem okay to one person may be unacceptable to others. Weekly student COVID-19 cases recently dropped to zero for the first time since November, which is a success we want to maintain. But this success will only be possible with conscientious community effort. We recognize that everyone on campus has agreed to adhere to the Campus Compact, but we urge everyone to make decisions that are respectful of all community members.

In pursuit of these goals, we are putting forward four community norms for everyone in the on-campus community this spring:

First, get tested twice weekly. This is a requirement of the Campus Compact, but more importantly, testing is incredibly necessary for the community. It allows for the rapid identification of positive cases, which in turn protects us all. Getting tested twice weekly is one of the best ways to care for your friends and community. As a reminder: testing is free, nearby and easily accessible. Even after you get vaccinated, being tested twice weekly will continue to protect us all against new variants of COVID-19. (More information here.)

Second, be honest. If you engage in potentially unsafe behavior, please inform anyone you plan to be in close contact with in the time before your next two consecutive negative test results. We should all practice this kind of honesty. Putting others in potentially unsafe situations without their knowledge is at minimum disrespectful, if not immoral. Let the other party decide what feels safe for them. Everyone should respect their friends’ boundaries, provide opportunities to make fully-informed decisions and encourage others to do what feels safe, even when this involves temporarily distancing.

Third, normalize minimizing contact or canceling social engagements if you’re experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms, no matter how small. While FOMO (fear of missing out) is real, we have all witnessed the impact that unsafe contact can have on others. Especially with the spread of new variants, the end of this pandemic rests on each of us, as does the welfare of our community. We need to protect each other; sometimes this will involve being unconventional in the ways we socialize in order to keep each other safe. 

Lastly, if you are not getting enough safe opportunities to socialize, advocate for more. Instead of engaging in unsafe socializing, let’s work together to develop systems that safely provide the social outlets and support that we need on campus. Every group signing this letter continues to advocate for more safe-socializing opportunities. While our events are improving with time and experience, we know there is more we can all do. Remember that your voices and actions are important, and, whether you choose to reach out to CAs, RAs, deans or student representatives from the groups signing this letter, expressing your concerns is the first step toward better social experiences for all.

A final note about why your behavior is important to others: On the whole, students on campus have worked to safeguard both individual and community health, and these efforts have prevented the kinds of situations that would require harsher enforcement of the Compact by the University. Evidence of “superspreader” events or spikes in cases would jeopardize this progress and potentially jeopardize the opportunity for other students to return to campus in the fall.

As we enter the second year of a pandemic that has taken so much from so many, we understand the need for social interactions outside of Zoom. However, these interactions must be conducted responsibly, with respect for everyone’s health and safety. This quarter, we urge everyone to prioritize safety, health and honesty for the well-being of ourselves, each other and the whole community.

Sincerely,

COVID-19 Graduate Student Advisory Committee to VPSA:

Jamie Fine, PhD Modern Thought and Literature, Co-Chair

Cat Sanchez, PhD Sociology, Co-Chair

Ayinwi Muma, PhD MS&E, GSAC Member

Lucy Xu, PhD Biology, GSAC Member

Jason Beckman, PhD Student, GSAC Member

ASSU Graduate Student Council:

Kari Barclay PhD ’21, GSC Co-Chair

Latifah Hamzah, GSC Councilor

Brooks Benard, GSC School of Medicine Representative 

ASSU Undergraduate Senate:

Micheal Brown ’22

Emily Nichols ’23

Gabby Crooks ’23

Alain Perez ’23

Princess Vongchanh ’23

Daryn Rockett ’23

Michaela Phan ’23

Kobe Hopkins ’22

Tim Vrakas ’21

ASSU Executive:

Vianna Vo ’21 & Chris Middleton ’21, ASSU Executives

Will Shan ’22, ASSU Executive Cabinet

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.

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Letter from the editors: Introducing the community contacts form https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/06/letter-from-the-editors-introducing-the-community-contacts-form/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/06/letter-from-the-editors-introducing-the-community-contacts-form/#respond Wed, 07 Apr 2021 06:47:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1180800 We're launching a community contacts form to better source from diverse voices within the Stanford community.

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The Daily is committed to publishing thoughtful, in-depth content from a diverse range of sources and forming strong connections with the Stanford community and other stakeholders. At The Daily, we strive to ensure that our coverage reflects the needs of our community and includes previously underrepresented voices and perspectives.

As a result, we have launched the inaugural community contacts form, which seeks to bolster inclusivity and diversity in our coverage by building a network of people from a variety of backgrounds whom we can call on when writing articles that impact their lives and identities. This form is a place for you to tell us what you are interested in speaking to us about, whether that’s racial justice initiatives, the experience of being a frosh on campus or Title IX policy. 

The form should only take a few minutes to fill out, and asks you about your affiliation with any organizations that you would like to speak on behalf of as well as any topics that The Daily can reach out to you for perspective on when sourcing for an article.

For example, if you are an international student, you might let us know that you want to talk about how travel restrictions due to COVID-19 are impacting your Stanford experience, or if you are an advocate for racial justice on campus or someone who attended a protest, you might let us know that you are willing to share your thoughts on the University’s newest racial justice initiatives.

Everyone has a unique perspective to offer. We’d love to talk to you and would really appreciate your filling out this form if you’re willing to be interviewed by The Daily the next time we’re working on a story that is relevant to your interests, identities or areas of expertise.

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Letter to the community: The ASSU’s Greek life survey https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/06/letter-to-the-community-the-assus-greek-life-survey/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/06/letter-to-the-community-the-assus-greek-life-survey/#respond Tue, 06 Apr 2021 16:58:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1180774 The Greek Life Committee seeks participation in its survey on the state and future of Greek Life at Stanford.

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Dear Stanford community,

In the Fall of 2020, the ASSU Undergraduate Senate voted to pass a resolution supporting the dehousing of Greek organizations on campus. As a result of the resolution passing, the ASSU Executive created a Special Greek Life Committee tasked with developing a survey that would assess overall undergraduate student opinions and attitudes towards Greek Life and using the information collected to inform future Stanford administrative decisions on Greek social and residential matters. 

The Greek Life Committee is composed of two ASSU Senators, 2 members from Abolish Stanford Greek Life, 1 IFC representative, 1 ISC representative, and consulting members from the Stanford administration. Together, over the course of several months, the committee worked diligently to produce a comprehensive, unbiased, forward-looking survey to capture students’ feelings of both existing concerns within the Greek system and areas of potential growth. 

The Greek Life Committee officially launched the survey on Tuesday, April 6th and will be continuing to gather responses for the next few weeks. We very much hope for your participation. Undergraduates should have received a link via email.

We wish you all the best this Spring Quarter!

– The ASSU Greek Life Survey Committee

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.

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Letter from the editor: Regarding Saturday’s tweet https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/05/letter-from-the-editor-regarding-saturdays-tweet/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/05/letter-from-the-editor-regarding-saturdays-tweet/#respond Tue, 06 Apr 2021 06:13:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1180769 This situation does not reflect the organization we are working to build, and the failures it revealed underscore how far we still have to go.

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On Saturday, the Twitter account for The Occasionally, The Daily’s humor section, put out a tweet that linked the ASSU executive race to the movie Godzilla vs. Kong. 

The tweet alluded to a Fountain Hopper report about the ASSU executive race. It responded to a separate tweet about the movie by presenting a conflict reported in the FoHo between two candidates, both of whom are Black, as a conflict between Kong and Godzilla.

We published this tweet thoughtlessly, and without consideration of its racist implications. I deeply apologize for the racist imagery that the tweet put forward, particularly given the anti-Black history of the King Kong figure as a hypersexualized caricature of Black men. I am so sorry for the harm it has caused the Black community and the students referenced in the tweet. I also apologize that it took students from the Black community to raise concerns before The Daily took action on the tweet, and that our initial response to the community member who flagged the tweet was hasty and insensitive.

As editor-in-chief, I take full responsibility for this. I also want to make clear that while the tweet was published on the humor section’s platform, it was not written by humor writers or editors. 

I have spoken with both students referenced in the tweet, as well as members of our staff, on concrete ways to address what happened. On Saturday night, as a first step, we posted a public apology to the humor section’s Twitter account and apologized individually to the students referenced in the tweet. 

We are planning to hold anti-bias training for the entire editorial staff, to address the ignorance that was at the root of the tweet’s creation. We are also working to draft clearer humor and social media policies, to make explicit that content like this does not belong at The Daily and to improve the conduct with which we interact with the community on all of our social media platforms. We have also suspended the Twitter account the tweet was posted on; we will not bring this account back at least until new policies are in place and all staffers have undergone training.

I know this does not undo the damage done. I want to reiterate how sorry we are, both to the Black community and to the specific students referenced in the tweet. This situation does not reflect the organization we are working to build, and the failures it revealed underscore how far we still have to go. We are thankful to the Black community for holding us accountable for the harm we’ve caused, and we welcome additional input from its members on steps forward.

Contact Erin Woo at eic ‘at’ stanforddaily.com.

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Opinion | Letter to the Community: ASSU virtual elections https://stanforddaily.com/2021/02/07/letter-to-the-community-assu-virtual-elections/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/02/07/letter-to-the-community-assu-virtual-elections/#respond Mon, 08 Feb 2021 03:56:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1177710 The ASSU is proud to continue our annual elections, despite the challenges that an entirely virtual environment poses.

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Dear Stanford Community,

The ASSU is proud to continue our annual elections, despite the challenges that an entirely virtual environment poses. We encourage everyone to participate, whether by running for a position or by voting. Below, we outline the processes that will take place this year. There are three different processes:

  • Candidate elections: Students may run for and vote for positions on the Undergraduate Senate, Graduate Student Council, Class President slates or ASSU Executive.
  • Annual grants: Voluntary Student Organizations (VSOs) seeking funding need to gain student approval.
  • Referendums: Students may propose legislation to be adopted by the ASSU. The ASSU may also propose legislation.

Why should you participate? The ASSU distributes $2 million annually to various VSOs. Senators and GSC members approve funding requests throughout the year, but this is an important step in keeping student groups well-funded from the start. Your elected representatives will also be working with Stanford administrators and advocating for your interests. As an example, this quarter we have been working to improve the decision-making process for next quarter’s on-campus housing. 

This year’s elections will be different, since they will be conducted entirely virtually. Here is some information on the changes we are making:

We are working with the Registrar’s office to relax voter and candidate eligibility as much as possible, in compliance with the ASSU Constitution. Due to the new flex terms and increased need for leaves of absence, there is some confusion as to who can run for office and who can vote this year. Elections are being postponed until spring quarter. We will announce voter eligibility as soon as possible, to provide prospective candidates ample time to determine whether they are running for office.

If you are running for office, filing an annual grant petition or filing a referendum petition, the filing period will be March 10-19. The form and relevant information can be accessed here. If you are a prospective candidate, please read the Candidate Guide. This provides information on all-virtual campaigning.

At the beginning of Week 1 of spring quarter, eligible voters will receive an email containing personalized links to their ballots. Please do not share these links with others. This ballot will be for candidate primaries, annual grant petitions and referendum petitions. This first step was formerly known as the “petitioning period,” and has been changed for clarity. All candidates (except GSC candidates) must go through the primaries. Voters may vote for as many candidates as they would like during the primaries, and in order to advance, candidates must receive a certain number of votes.

This ballot will also contain annual grant petitions. When the ASSU recommends an annual grant amount that differs from the group’s requested amount, the group may file a petition to be placed on this ballot. If the VSO gets at least 15% of the relevant Association population (either graduates or undergraduates), they will proceed to the General Election ballot for approval at the funding amount they requested. If not, they will proceed to the general elections with the amount recommended by the ASSU.

Lastly, the primaries ballot will contain student referendum petitions. In order for referendum petitions to proceed to the general elections, the following criteria must be met:

  • Advisory referenda: These refer to initiatives whose purpose is to express an opinion, or to take such symbolic action as may be incidental to the expression of that opinion. These petitions must garner signatures from at least 5% of the relevant Association population.
  • General initiatives: To seek the enactment of general legislation, a petition must garner signatures from at least 10% of the relevant Association population. Legislation affecting both graduate and undergraduate populations must gather signatures from 15% of the entire Stanford student body in order to obtain general election ballot access.
  • Special election referenda: In order to call a special election on a specific issue, a petition must bear the signatures of at least 15% of the relevant Association population.

At the end of Week 5 of spring quarter, all eligible voters will receive links to their individualized general election ballots through their Stanford email addresses. Please do not share these links. These ballots will be for the general elections, where eligible students will vote for candidates, Annual Grant Approvals and referenda that pass the primaries. The general elections are the final elections of the year, and will determine who is elected into office for the undergraduate Senate, Graduate Student Council (GSC), Class President slates and ASSU Executives. Elections are decided via ranked-choice voting, or multiple choice voting. This ballot will also contain Annual Grant Approvals. If VSO’s are able to get a majority of “yes” votes on the general ballot, they will receive an ASSU Annual Grant for the following year at the amount listed on the ballot. Lastly, this ballot will contain Student Referendum Approvals and ASSU-proposed Referenda. If a majority of the votes cast are “yes” votes for these referenda, then the proposed legislation will be adopted.

For more information, please check out our website. If you have any questions or concerns, please email Edwin. 

Best,

Edwin Ong ’23, ASSU Elections Commissioner

Cricket X. Bidleman ’21, ASSU Director of Communications

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. 

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Letter from the editors: Introducing Vol. 259 https://stanforddaily.com/2021/01/31/letter-from-the-editors-introducing-vol-259/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/01/31/letter-from-the-editors-introducing-vol-259/#respond Mon, 01 Feb 2021 04:32:06 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1177401 The Daily's Vol. 259 executive team is committed to making The Daily a more accessible and inclusive organization and to ensuring our coverage reflects the needs of our community.

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We’re Erin and Layo, and we’re honored, humbled and beyond excited to serve as the editor-in-chief and executive editor of The Stanford Daily’s 259th volume. 

As the pandemic and its myriad inequities continue to confront Stanford, we reflect on how the community — and our coverage of it — has changed. We reflect on students raising over $300,000 for laid off service workers, on queer students losing the safe space of campus once being back home, on international students facing continuous precarity, on the community reimagining itself in new and expansive ways. It is clear that our coverage has not only shifted, but must continue to shift, in the wake of such upheavals. In this, we affirm our commitment to making The Daily itself a more accessible and inclusive organization and to ensuring our coverage reflects the needs of our community, broadly defined. 

We’re excited to announce the inaugural Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team within The Daily, as well as the establishment of a public editor. The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team will spearhead efforts to recruit a staff reflective of the communities we cover — and efforts to ensure that staffers from underrepresented backgrounds feel supported and thrive within our newsroom. The public editor will help hold The Daily accountable, both in our efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion and in the rest of our work: Starting Friday, their weekly columns will examine the decisions we make in our staffing and in our reporting, providing explanations where possible and criticism where warranted. 

We’re also in the process of reaching out to community stakeholders — from community organizations to activist groups to workers’ unions — and building relationships that will ensure that we are a publication for all parts of the Stanford community. Along those lines, we want to hear your feedback. Whether there are areas we could better spotlight in our coverage or specific initiatives you would want to see implemented, we both actively seek out and deeply value your perspectives. You can always leave your feedback at this community feedback form or contact us directly at erinkwoo ‘at’ stanford.edu, olaniyan ‘at’ stanford.edu and eic ‘at’ stanforddaily.com. 

And here’s a little bit more about us: Erin is a senior from Atlanta, Ga. studying communication and creative writing. She is a former staff development director and news editor for The Daily. Layo is a junior from Houston, Texas, studying English and Black studies with a specific interest in medical humanities and disability studies. He is the former editor of Opinions and has served on the Editorial Board since Vol. 256. 

We’re deeply grateful to work alongside a strong staff committed to keeping our community informed and engaged, and we look forward to working with stakeholders across all corners of Stanford to make The Daily a publication that truly centers the needs of our community. 

With love and gratitude,

Erin Woo, Vol. 259 Editor-in-Chief

Layo Laniyan, Vol. 259 Executive Editor

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The Daily is now pre-moderating all comments on our website. I’m sorry it’s taken this long. https://stanforddaily.com/2020/12/06/the-daily-is-now-pre-moderating-all-comments-on-our-website-im-sorry-its-taken-this-long/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/12/06/the-daily-is-now-pre-moderating-all-comments-on-our-website-im-sorry-its-taken-this-long/#respond Mon, 07 Dec 2020 02:55:06 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1175783 The Daily has switched to pre-moderation of its website’s comments sections, after years of unacceptable comments being allowed to sit on our site unchecked.

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Thank you to former Opinions Editor Jasmine Liu ’20, current Opinions Desk Editor Rachel Lauren D’Agui ’22 and everyone else who has ever spoken up about unacceptable content in The Daily’s comments sections. You all laid the foundation for the change that has been made this year.

The Daily has switched to pre-moderation of its website’s comments sections, after years of unacceptable comments being allowed to sit on our site unchecked.

As recently as last school year, discrimination, misinformation and personal attacks could be left untouched for months in the comments sections of articles. These comments caused harm to members of our community that cannot be undone. All of the comments made last year happened under my watch, as vice president of The Daily in fall/winter and president in winter/spring.

I am sorry about my inaction on this front. It was entirely inexcusable. We’ve known for years at The Daily that people use our comments sections to lob hate. In the past, we took a generally passive approach of deleting comments that violate our standards when they were brought to our attention, instead of reviewing and deleting them before our readers and writers could be subjected to them. To require that someone come across a hurtful comment and report it, instead of deleting the hurtful comment before it could be seen, was deeply irresponsible and dangerous.

This school year, the executive team and I have carefully watched the comments and removed those that violate our policies in a much more timely manner. But this isn’t enough.

Even if a problematic comment is visible for only a short time, anyone who views the page in that time frame is subjected to it. Furthermore, the content of that briefly visible comment, potentially containing damaging information or lies, could be spread in other comments, and on other platforms like social media, even after the original comment is deleted.

We do receive many thoughtful and respectful comments on our website, and we are thankful for the time that readers take to contribute to discussions in a manner that is consistent with our standards. Pre-moderation does not mean that it will be any more difficult to leave comments like this on our website. However, it may take some time for comments to appear, depending on the date and time they are left, because we will be reviewing each comment individually.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns.

Contact Holden Foreman at hs4man21 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Letter to the community: Sharing our community’s needs https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/29/letter-to-the-community-sharing-our-communitys-needs/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/29/letter-to-the-community-sharing-our-communitys-needs/#respond Fri, 30 Oct 2020 04:52:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1174362 The ASSU is dedicated to advocating for the needs of all Stanford students. We recognize that our experiences only represent a fraction of many perspectives.

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Dear Stanford community, 

The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is dedicated to advocating for the needs of all Stanford students. We recognize that our experiences only represent a fraction of many perspectives. To better inform our advocacy priorities for the 2020-21 school year, the Executive Cabinet solicited your input on some key issue areas. We want to thank everyone who drafted, beta-tested, took and/or publicized the survey during the last two months. This project was Herculean in scope and even amidst a tumultuous election and midterm season, we still engaged many of our peers. 

General Takeaways: 

The Fall 2020 ASSU Community Needs survey got 498 complete responses distributed among the class years as follows: 

1st Year2nd Year 3rd Year4th Year5th Year6th Year≥7th Year
1591049168322712

Each year, the ASSU Executives designate key issue areas to be advocated for by the Executive Cabinet. The following sections are divided based on these priorities:

Executive Communications (N = 351): 

  • 38% of students said they keep up with the ASSU Executive Cabinet by all-campus emails, while 25% and 20% of students keep up with the ASSU Executive Cabinet via The Daily and email lists, respectively
  • 21% of students said they had heard of the Basic Needs Coalition while only 8% expressed awareness of @SVFreeStanford

Affordability (N = 346) / Basic Needs (N = 456): 

  • Approximately 10% of undergraduate and graduate students had days where they did not eat because they did not have enough money for food even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • 30% of undergraduate students, 47% of coterms/graduate students and 50% of post-docs responded that living and studying at Stanford is not affordable. 
Letter to the community: Sharing our community’s needs
Figure 1. A bar chart showing the percent of students by affiliation (undergraduate, coterm/graduate, postdoc, other) and their frequency of responses regarding the affordability to live and study at Stanford. 

Community Responsibility (N = 209): 

  • 43% of students agreed that there was sufficient public transportation
  • Only 8% of students agreed that they were familiar with avenues to support campus workers
  • Concerns students reported hearing from campus workers included campus safety, job security, and instability due to lack of income related to COVID-19

Covid-19 Response (N = 327): 

  • Students reported being comparatively less satisfied with the university’s Communications, Financial Aid / Financial Aid Communications and Community Building and Social Support
  • Students reported being comparatively more satisfied with the university’s Testing Policies and Procedure, Academic Policies and Internship and Work Opportunities
  • 47% of respondents (N = 120) indicated that they are moderately, very, or extremely concerned for their personal health and safety while living on campus.
  • 81% of respondents (N = 236) indicated that they would probably or definitely get a COVID-19 vaccine if it were made available to them at no cost.

Disability Advocacy (N = 117): 

  • 23% of students reported having a disability
  • 89% of students said that their disabilities are invisible
  • 81% of students with disabilities said that their disabilities affect their virtual lives a moderate amount

Environmental Justice & Sustainability (N = 246): 

  • Pushes for institutional changes that affect Stanford’s environmental and racial justice impacts (e.g. ethical investments) is the most important EJ&S issue area for 78.3% of students 
  • 88% of students reported feeling moderately or extremely prepared to make sustainable choices 
  • 57.1% of students are familiar with My Cardinal Green. 

International Student Advocacy (N = 168) 

  • Most respondents really think having an immigration lawyer is important. 
  • Although a huge percentage of teaching teams are accommodating to students across different time zones, some are not. Students may have to drop classes or take them at weird times. 
  • Students think Bechtel needs huge improvement to better serve students, especially on the office’s understaffing problems.
  • International students urgently need social and mental health support right now. 

Mental Health & Wellness (N = 339): 

  • 38% students reported academic anxiety as the biggest influence on Stanford students’ mental health, with internship/job/research stress a close second at 34% and 22% financial hardship. 
  • 50% of students indicated familiarity with CAPS and 23% with the Bridge while 18% expressed no familiarity with or distrust of on-campus providers 
  • 72% of students perceived the general student body’s mental health as highly functioning, but mentally ill while 43% said highly functioning, not mentally ill

Racial Justice (N = 281): 

  • 25% of students reported that their race factors into interactions with others at Stanford on less than a weekly or daily basis 
  • 68.1% of students think that race is not discussed or factored in enough at Stanford.
  • 44% of students feel that they understand the University’s Acts of Intolerance protocol moderately or very well  
  • 68.6% of students have not taken a course related to ethnic studies at Stanford.
  • 48.3% of students disagree with the statement “Stanford prioritizes Black studies” 

Sexual Violence Prevention (N = 187): 

  • 50% of students disagree with the statement “Stanford’s sexual violence prevention policy is clear and comprehensible” 
  • 73% of students reported distrust in Stanford’s sexual violence reporting offices
  • 44% expressed that COVID-19 has impacted how safe they feel in their place of residence
  • Students expressed desire for clear communication and policies and services from the Title IX and SHARE Offices and better funding for CST 

Honor Code & Integrity Reform (N = 356): 

  • 96% self-reported no Honor Code violations since April 2020
  • 30% of students reported being unaware that live or expert “homework assistance” programs (Chegg, Yahoo Answers, Stack Overflow, etc.), constitute Honor Code violations 
  • 37% said students should not at all be responsible for reporting Honor Code violations 
  • 17% reported witnessing or experiencing an FS violation since April 2020
  • 69% of students surveyed feel that Fundamental Standard violations in virtual spaces should be taken as seriously by the University as those in physical spaces

As always, your feedback and questions are welcome. The ASSU Executive Cabinet is here to support you and to advocate for the best possible policies across the key issue areas illuminated above. If you have any questions, or if you want to see more information, please refer to this link or/and reach out to me at natfran@assu.stanford.edu

Sincerely yours,

Natalie Francis, Director of Executive Communications

(on behalf the Executive Cabinet) 

Contact Natalie Francis at natfran ‘at’ assu.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. 


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Letter to the community: #EndSARS letter of solidarity https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/26/letter-to-the-community-endsars-letter-of-solidarity/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/26/letter-to-the-community-endsars-letter-of-solidarity/#respond Tue, 27 Oct 2020 06:39:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1174083 Stanford is home to many Nigerians and members of the African community. It is important that we come together to support each other and to fight for the liberation of Nigerians and Black people around the world. It is essential that we use our privilege to support all members of our community and those around the world.

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[Tw: Violence, assault, police brutality]

Dear Stanford Community,

We hope all of you are taking care of yourselves the best you can. This week has been painful for our African community, as we navigate the crises in Nigeria, Cameroon and countries around Africa. Currently, Nigeria is experiencing large waves of protests due to the actions of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). Over the past few years, SARS has extorted, assaulted, harassed and murdered numerous Nigerian civilians, causing the public to take a stand against police brutality and in favor of government reform.

Stanford is home to many Nigerians and members of the African community. It is important that we come together to support each other and to fight for the liberation of Nigerians and Black people around the world. It is essential that we use our privilege to support all members of our community and those around the world.

This past weekend, the Stanford Nigerian Student Association held #ENDSARS: An Hour of Action — students phone-banked, petitioned and sent emails to Nigerian senators and embassy leaders. We highly encourage all students to continue these efforts. Here is a list of resources where you can learn how to donate, send emails and sign petitions for the end of SARS. This list includes a social media toolkit you can use to share resources and show support.

We stand in solidarity with our Nigerian community. We are deeply sorry for the hardships you are enduring. As you continue to fight, please remember to take care of yourselves. Take walks, rest, watch some movies or call your family members. Find time to replenish yourselves by doing things you enjoy.

We ask that everyone support the Nigerian community. To our University administration, we demand a statement of solidarity, academic accommodations and emotional support resources for the Nigerian and African community at Stanford. We ask that the Stanford student body, faculty, staff and administration share information and encourage others to join the movement. Do phone-banking to help. Sign petitions to show your support. Donate money and supplies if you can. Take some time to aid in the fight for liberation — every effort means a lot. As we continue this fight, remember that we’re in this together. None of us are liberated until we all are.

Thank you,

Micheal Brown, Undergraduate Senate Chair

Danny Nguyen, Undergraduate Senate Deputy Chair

Emily Nichols, Undergraduate Senate Director of Communications 

Oluwatamilore Awosile, Co-President of Stanford Nigerian Students Association 

(On behalf of the Undergraduate Senate)

Contact the editors of opinions at opinions ‘at’ stanforddaily.com.

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. 

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Letter to community: ASSU and VPSA letters on 5150 policy change https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/14/letter-to-community-assu-and-vpsa-letters-on-5150-policy-change/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/14/letter-to-community-assu-and-vpsa-letters-on-5150-policy-change/#respond Thu, 15 Oct 2020 04:40:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1173635 Yesterday, the Daily announced the Associated Students of Stanford University's (ASSU) work with the Student Affairs office regarding changes to the 5150 policy, which is in place to protect people’s mental health in emergency situations. This is a change many mental health advocates (including ASSU presidents and vice presidents) have been working toward for years.

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Content warning: mental illness, hospitalization

Dear Stanford Community,

Yesterday, The Daily announced the Associated Students of Stanford University’s (ASSU) work with the Student Affairs office regarding changes to the 5150 policy, which is in place to protect people’s mental health in emergency situations. This is a change many mental health advocates (including ASSU presidents and vice presidents) have been working toward for years. In the past, students placed under 5150 holds would be handcuffed, escorted out of CAPS and transported in the backs of police cars. This experience can be traumatizing and heightens feelings of fear during the hospitalization process. With the new policy, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) will be first responders to these situations instead. We hope that this new plan will help students feel more comfortable promoting their well-being, since seeking mental health support exhibits incredible bravery.

Communicating policy changes with transparency is one of our priorities. We hope that by sharing this news, along with Student Affairs’ letter to us below, we can uphold these values. We want you to understand how much progress this means for students, and — though there’s still progress to be made — student engagement and advocacy can bring about positive change. We are thankful for all the student and administrative labor that went into making this change a reality, and encourage others to continue working towards the change they want to see on campus. Though realizing a vision of a better, more inclusive Stanford can take time — years and decades, even — we know incremental change can inspire long-term impact for future Stanford students.

At the same time, we recognize that ambulance costs can still deter students from seeking proper treatment. The note from Susie and Bina (again, included below) indicates that financial support will be provided. We intend to work with Student Affairs to clearly communicate the process surrounding this. Affordability should not be a barrier to keeping students safe. 

Thank you for allowing us to represent you. We will continue working toward a better, safer, more comfortable environment for everyone. We are hosting a Q&A session with VPSA and CAPS next week to address your questions and concerns.  If you’d like more details as they become available, please sign up here.

With love,

Vianna Vo, ASSU President

Chris Middleton, ASSU Vice President

Jianna So, Chief of Staff

Cricket X. Bidleman, Director of Communications

Dear ASSU Executive leadership,

We are writing today to follow up on our conversation last week. We are deeply appreciative of our collaborative working relationship, and we are grateful to partner with you on discussing different options for transporting students who are experiencing a mental health crisis from campus to a hospital. We also want to express our gratitude to the many students in and outside of the ASSU who have been committed to raising this issue and addressing this challenge. We are writing to follow-up on our progress and to describe our next steps.  

The need to transport an individual to an emergency room for further evaluation (commonly referred to in California as a 5150 hold) is an acute and critical incident. In California, by law, the only persons who can place an individual on a 5150 protective hold are peace officers and certain mental health and medical professionals. 

In our past practice, a student would be evaluated by a police officer or a mental health and/or medical professional, and then transported to an emergency room by the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (DPS). We’ve been actively working to find new options to help support students through what is a challenging time. Moving forward, and effective immediately, DPS will respond, but most transports to a hospital for a protective 5150 hold will be provided by an ambulance, generally from the Palo Alto Fire Department. 

As with any transport by ambulance, there is a fee. We believe that in most cases, students’ health insurance will cover this fee minus any out-of-pocket, required premiums or co-pays. We do not want fees to deter people from seeking care or calling for assistance when someone is in distress. Please know that we will work with students who have serious financial concerns so that the ambulance payment is not a deterrent to receiving care.

We are evaluating additional alternatives — such as a multi-disciplinary mobile crisis team — for addressing student mental health concerns on campus. These opportunities will take more time to develop and will require the identification of additional resources. We look forward to our continued discussions on these topics. 

Thank you for elevating this to a top priority to be addressed early in this academic year. We see this as a great deal of progress in a short period of time. Please keep in touch with us on any other concerns that may arise as we change this practice. We look forward to continuing discussions with you on how we can best respond to students and their wide range of mental health needs.

Sincerely,

Susie and Bina

Susie Brubaker-Cole, Vice Provost for Student Affairs

Bina Pulkit Patel, Director, Counseling and Psychological Services

Contact Vianna Vo at viannavo ‘at’ assu.stanford.edu, Chris Middleton at cmiddle ‘at’ stanford.edu, Jianna So at jiannaso ‘at’ assu.stanford.edu, and Cricket X. Bidleman at bidleman ‘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. 

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Letter to the community: Welcoming VP Chris Middleton to the ASSU exec team https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/04/letter-to-the-community-welcoming-vp-chris-middleton-to-the-assu-exec-team/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/04/letter-to-the-community-welcoming-vp-chris-middleton-to-the-assu-exec-team/#respond Mon, 05 Oct 2020 03:21:01 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1173182 We are so excited to share that Chris Middleton (he/him) has been confirmed as the new vice president after voting in the Undergraduate Senate and Graduate Student Council. There is no doubt that his contributions to our work will be incredibly impactful, both within the ASSU and every community on campus.

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Dear Stanford community,

First, we want to thank you for your patience at the start of this academic year as we have transitioned to our new executive team. We are so excited to share that Chris Middleton (he/him) has been confirmed as the new vice president after voting in the Undergraduate Senate and Graduate Student Council. There is no doubt that his contributions to our work will be incredibly impactful, both within the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) and every community on campus.

As shared in previous Daily articles and our last letter to the community, Chris graduated from Stanford in 2016 with a B.A. in psychology, and is now a third-year law student. When asked about his passions and goals for this school year, Chris shared that he is “especially focused on and passionate about addressing mental health issues caused by social isolation (on-campus and around the world); meeting students’ basic needs now and in the future; working with the University to create policies to support the Black community and Stanford; and using student input to improve preparing for future emergencies that the Stanford community might face. Central to these plans is better leveraging input from students (testimonials, data, etc.) to shape the policies that impact current and future students.” After leaving Stanford, Chris will be working at a law firm in San Francisco and then serving as a law clerk for a federal judge in Alabama from 2022-2023.

Finally, we would like to thank you for sending us comments about all of the final candidates. As you know, civic engagement is now more important than ever, both in and outside Stanford. Off-campus, it’s important to vote in local and federal elections — though getting immediate results can be difficult at that level, together we have the power to help create better futures for ourselves and for generations to come. When it comes to Stanford community engagement, your involvement directly shapes our work, so we will always seek and appreciate your feedback. The appointment of Chris to our executive team is a great example. Through your comments, it became clear that Chris is widely known as a passionate advocate for undergraduates and graduates alike. Comments shared that Chris has never been afraid to express “his deep love for his community” through arranging events that “support students emotionally, academically, and professionally,” and serving as a mentor for both undergrad and grad students. Other comments stated that they were “immediately impressed” by Chris’ “thoughtfulness, kindness, and openness” and their understanding that “he knows right from wrong, and he listens.” Perspectives and stories like these solidified our confidence in Chris’ incredible ability to step into the vice president role. 

Throughout the rest of our term, Chris’ drive and passion will make our advocacy even more inclusive, effective and sustainable. We look forward to incorporating his vision into shaping a better Stanford. Thank you so much for your input, and we hope you all stay safe and healthy.

In community,

Vianna Vo (she/her), ASSU President

Christopher Middleton (he/him), ASSU Vice President 

Jianna So (she/her), ASSU Executive Chief of Staff

Cricket X. Bidleman (she/her), ASSU Director of Communications

Contact Vianna Vo at viannavo ‘at’ assu.stanford.edu, Chris Middleton at cmiddle ‘at’ stanford.edu, Jianna So at jiannaso ‘at’ assu.stanford.edu, and Cricket X. Bidleman at bidleman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Letter to the community: College students and COVID-19 https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/04/letter-to-the-community-college-students-and-covid-19/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/10/04/letter-to-the-community-college-students-and-covid-19/#respond Mon, 05 Oct 2020 03:17:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1173170 With so many challenges affecting communities everywhere, we sought to uncover how college students are redefining their views on engaging with their geographic home communities as they returned home.

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Dear fellow students,

Our names are Sai and Sameer. We are two undergraduates who, like many of you, went back to our hometowns in March as school shut down. For many students, returning home during a global pandemic has been difficult, to say the least. We (and many of our fellow upperclassmen) spent our first years at Stanford building a community unlike that at home — a sense of place and purpose that we shared exclusively with those on campus. When we returned home, we felt surprisingly disconnected from our neighborhoods and we wanted to understand if this was a shared experience.

While most media attention regarding COVID-19 has focused on high-risk groups, this pandemic has derailed the lives of many youth, too — 8.8% of all COVID-19 cases in the United States are patients from age 0 to 24, 1.4 million students were displaced out of school and there are now over 7.7 million unemployed youth. Indeed, these factors have had psychological impacts, and up to 14.4% of young adults are now displaying signs of poor mental health. The COVID-19 pandemic has pressured college students while they are trying to develop their identity, values and ambitions.

Beyond the turbulence caused by COVID-19, we are also amid major social and political unrest with surging Blacks Lives Matter activism concerning issues of racial inequity and police brutality. To some extent, these issues must have affected how you view your place in society and you must be feeling their effects on your education.

With so many challenges affecting communities everywhere, we sought to uncover how college students are redefining their views on engaging with their geographic home communities as they returned home. With fellow Stanford undergraduates, we started researching how college students’ perspectives on community are changing. We started by sending an initial survey to 423 college students from Stanford and other institutions that gave us initial insights into how students typically engaged with their neighborhood. From the quality and diversity of opinion in responses in the survey, we selected seven students from these various institutions to participate in in-depth interviews. These interviews helped us further understand each student’s unique thoughts on community and how they were impacted during their time at home. We identified two important, qualitative trends:

First, interviewees did not see their home communities during quarantine as conducive for community engagement. Several interviewees believed they had low social standing in their neighborhoods because of their young age and considered their ideas less important than those of older community members. Additionally, some students felt the non-permanence of their current living situations discouraged engagement in their home communities. With future plans of employment or the prospect of returning to college campuses, many interviewees believed that rooting themselves in their hometown was not worth the effort. Rather, maintaining college connections during the pandemic was seen as more beneficial than (re)forging connections back home. These findings raise questions, however, about mobilizing young members of the community during times of crisis. With organizations like UNICEF outlining guides to engage youth in COVID-19 responses, can we truly expect highly effective youth involvement if college students do not feel actively attached and involved in their home communities?

Second, we saw that interviewed students within neighborhoods with a strong racial minority presence — particularly Latinx, South Asian and East Asian —  felt isolated by different community norms (e.g. views on household involvement in the community). Some interviewees from these communities echoed statements like “self-reliance is built into [our] culture” and “neighborly connection is not of interest.” Such communities seem to place less emphasis on openness and extraversion. In neighborhoods where members prioritize their nuclear family or cultural values of households differ with those of neighbors, community engagement seems less prevalent, confirming some aspects of prior research dedicated to exploring this further (here and here). For the many members of our Stanford community who identify with one or more of these racial minorities, you may have been feeling a similar disconnect in your hometowns. If so, know that you are not alone.

While we have identified interesting perspectives on youth-community relations during the pandemic, we do not have all the answers and our work does not encompass every student’s experience. Yet, we all can likely relate to the fact that COVID-19 has challenged us in new ways. College is a time when people develop our values and sense of identity outside of home. Returning home amidst this “renaissance” is a major shock, and it appears that many of us have resultantly felt like an outsider at home. So, as you continue through the academic year, take a look back at how this quarantine impacted your definition of community and your relationship with your hometown. College students encompass a large but neglected group in most news coverage of COVID-19. Yet, with an upcoming presidential election and necessary socio-political activism surging, quarantining at home may dramatically affect how youth turn out to champion the causes that matter to them and our nation.

Sincerely,

Sai ’21 and Sameer ’22

We would like to thank our team of peers from Stanford — Clara Kelley, Chelsea Chen and Haiwen Gui — for their contributions that made this project possible.

Note: We want to acknowledge that the results of our study are not generalizable across all populations, and there are many individual experiences that we may not have sampled or learned about during our investigation. We hope this op-ed serves as a launchpad for reflection and discussion about different experiences surrounding community engagement during the era of COVID-19.

Contact Sameer Sundrani at sundrani ‘at’ stanford.edu and Sai Maddineni at smaddineni ‘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.

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Letter to the community: Voting is a civic duty https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/27/letter-to-the-community-voting-is-a-civic-duty/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/27/letter-to-the-community-voting-is-a-civic-duty/#respond Mon, 28 Sep 2020 04:38:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172857 So, vote for the party and candidate of your choice, but by all means vote.

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An earlier version of this letter appeared in the Sept. 19, 2018 Stanford Daily.

As the three deans responsible for overseeing the education of the largest number of Stanford’s students, including all of its undergraduates, we write again, in a presidential election year, to urge you, regardless of your political affiliation, to register and to exercise your right to vote.

Our right to vote is hard won. It took centuries of struggle to establish this right — for property-less men, for African American men, for women and, in 1971, for all U.S. citizens over the age of 18. The right to vote is fundamental to protecting, asserting and expanding our other rights. Almost all of the social and economic rights Americans enjoy today — including Medicare and Medicaid, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Clean Air Act — exist because citizens elected public officials who voted to enact them.

But low numbers of American citizens exercise their right to vote and, unfortunately, voters in the 18-29 age range are less likely to vote than any other qualified age group. Stanford students, faculty and staff have been working hard to increase voter turnout, which was very low in some earlier election cycles. According to the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE), only 48.1% of eligible Stanford undergraduates, graduates and post-doctoral fellows voted in the 2016 presidential election. NSLVE calculated that less than 20% voted in the 2014 mid-term elections. Because of the hard work of many people at Stanford, voter registration among students had a jump up in 2018. But we can do even better. If you have not yet registered to vote, please do so as soon as possible because state deadlines are approaching. Just go to: https://www.stanfordvotes.org/.


Here, we offer five main reasons for voting:

  1. We build and sustain our democracy with votes. Through our votes, we express what we as citizens think is in our collective interests; we empower officials to act in our name to promote those interests.
  2. It’s the power of the vote that keeps our elected officials accountable.
  3. If only some people vote, elected officials are likely to give less weight to the interests and views of non-participants. Studies show that young voters, along with citizens with lower levels of income and education, are less likely to vote.
  4. It is sometimes said that no one person’s vote makes a decisive difference. But each person’s vote makes our democracy more representative of the will of its citizens. In close local elections, small numbers of votes can be decisive.
  5. Our country (and our world) faces very significant challenges that require the action of government: climate change, inequality, racial injustice, global conflict, terrorism and poverty. Individual action, however well motivated, cannot compare to what can be accomplished by the actions of large state institutions. It is essential for you as a citizen to vote on the basis of your informed views about those candidates who offer the best public policy responses to these challenges.

This fall, the School of Humanities and Sciences is also sponsoring a series of panels bringing faculty expertise to bear on some of the issues that U.S. democracy confronts today. You can view and register for the series here (you are free to join any of the sessions). At the first session approximately 1000 Stanford students, faculty and staff tuned in.

Of course, you can certainly do more — along with others, including those U.S. immigrants who are not eligible to vote — to help to make our society and our world better. We do not mean to suggest that the only way for you to be involved in questions of public concern is by means of a vote. But it is a way, and perhaps the most important way.

So, vote for the party and candidate of your choice, but by all means vote.

Debra Satz, Dean, School of Humanities and Sciences
Jennifer Widom, Dean, School of Engineering
Stephan Graham, Dean, School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences

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.

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Letter to the community: ASSU VP candidate public comment period https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/22/letter-to-the-community-assu-vp-candidate-public-comment-period/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/22/letter-to-the-community-assu-vp-candidate-public-comment-period/#respond Wed, 23 Sep 2020 02:27:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172731 As the ASSU continues its work while carrying Munira’s vision, we’ve gotten the opportunity to interview incredible candidates to fill the ASSU Vice President position and are in the final round of interviews with the following candidates: Mea Anderson, Christian Giadolor, and Chris Middleton.

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Dear Stanford Community,

Over the past few weeks, the ASSU has been going through a significant transition period. Following Munira Alimire’s decision to step down from the ASSU executive president position, we have been focused on building our team to match the considerable need for institutional advocacy work at this time. During this change, we remain committed to advocating for your needs, especially around the Campus Compact, housing security, affordability issues, protections for sexual assault survivors on and off campus and support for international students. 

As the ASSU continues its work while carrying Munira’s vision, we’ve gotten the opportunity to interview incredible candidates to fill the ASSU vice president position and are in the final round of interviews with the following candidates: Mea Anderson, Christian Giadolor and Chris Middleton. Their bios are included below. We are excited to uplift their incredible organizing work and commitment to working towards a more just and inclusive Stanford. 

We invite you to submit comments on these candidates as we move forward by emailing president@assu.stanford.edu before a candidate is selected on Sunday, Sept. 27. Though pressing student needs necessitate a fast-paced selection process, we want to include the community’s voice in our decisions as best we can.

Again, please get to know the final candidates below. We are humbled by the opportunity to work with such inspiring student leaders.

With love,
Vianna Vo, ASSU Executive President

Jianna So, ASSU Executive Chief of Staff

Letter to the community: ASSU VP candidate public comment period
Letter to the community: ASSU VP candidate public comment period

Mea Anderson (they/she) is a senior majoring in African and African American Studies with minors in Spanish and linguistics. Mea is passionate about developing solidarity networks for students of marginalized identities in order to dismantle the systemic barriers that prevent equitable access to Stanford resources. Throughout their time at Stanford, Mea has staffed and held leadership roles for the Office of Student Engagement, Stanford ResEd, the Black Community Services Center, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Xi Beta Chapter and more. Mea plans to utilize the skills in leadership and community building that they have gained from each of these experiences to advocate for students’ needs through the 2020-21 ASSU vice president position.

Letter to the community: ASSU VP candidate public comment period

Christian Giadolor (he/him) is a senior studying political science and has extensive ASSU experience — from being a SAPling to working on the past two elections, most notably as the outgoing elections commissioner. During his tenure, Christian presided over the first virtual general election in Stanford history and reversed a multi-year decline in voting turnout. This summer, Christian led advocacy efforts in his hometown for racial justice, successfully securing reforms at the city council, school district and police department levels while doing so in one of the most conservative communities in the country. Christian applied to be vice president so that he could work shoulder-to-shoulder with ASSU President Vianna Vo to ensure continuity during these challenging times and is guided by the principle that all students should be served effectively by the ASSU, whether they are on campus or remote. On a personal note, Christian enjoys tracking hurricanes, following the NBA playoffs and was a contestant on Stanford Survivor and Stanford Love is Blind.

Letter to the community: ASSU VP candidate public comment period

Chris Middleton is a proud FLI alum (B.A. ’16) and current third-year student at Stanford Law School. Throughout his time at Stanford, he has enjoyed the opportunity to support current students as a member of the undergraduate/graduate student staff in the FLI Office, as an alumnus and as a student advocate. He decided to apply to the VP position because he hopes to leverage his varied experiences at Stanford to support the ASSU — and the Stanford community — in navigating a truly challenging time. Chris is a fierce believer that meaningful inclusion of student voices in decisions that impact students are critical to making good decisions and preparing students to be engaged leaders. If appointed, Chris would be particularly excited to focus on: 1) addressing mental health issues caused by social isolation on campus due to the compact; 2) meeting students’ basic needs; 3) developing the University’s statement of support for Black members of the Stanford community into tangible policies and practices; and 4) planning for future emergencies that the Stanford community might face. 

Contact Vianna Vo at viannavo ‘at’ assu.stanford.edu and Jianna So at jiannaso ‘at’ assu.stanford.edu. 

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Letter from the editors: Introducing Vol. 258 at The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/13/letter-from-the-editors-introducing-vol-258-at-the-stanford-daily/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/13/letter-from-the-editors-introducing-vol-258-at-the-stanford-daily/#respond Mon, 14 Sep 2020 06:51:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172189 This volume, many things are changing — not just in the world we cover, but within The Daily.

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We’re Charlie and Jackie, the editor-in-chief and executive editor of The Stanford Daily’s 258th volume. 

We’re humbled, honored and thrilled to carry on The Daily’s work of keeping our community informed and engaged, while providing opportunities for learning and growth to students. We’re lucky to have a fantastic staff of hundreds of students working on myriad projects meant to serve our audience.

This volume, many things are changing — not just in the world we cover, but within The Daily. A focus of our collective efforts is in making The Daily a more inclusive and accessible organization. In addition, with campus still largely shut down, we won’t return to printing a hard-copy newspaper until January, assuming the plan for frosh and sophomores to return to campus then holds. 

But even with our staff strewn about the world and facing the impacts of such a difficult era themselves, we’ll keep working to bring you thorough reporting, thoughtful commentary and much more. 

Along the way, we want to hear from you. Submit personal narratives here, op-eds to opinions ‘at’ stanforddaily.com or letters to the editor to eic ‘at’ stanforddaily.com. Or consider submitting a tip or joining our team

And here’s a bit more about us. Charlie is a junior from the suburbs of New York City studying computer science and linguistics, and passionate about journalism and technology. A member of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, he was one of two heads of The Daily’s news section last school year, and edited the section’s academics beat before that.

Jackie is a senior from Richmond, Virginia, studying political science and psychology with a particular interest in the social-psychological underpinnings of citizenship and political exclusion. She is the former editor of The Grind and has also enjoyed working in The Daily’s social media, satire and news sections.

We’re looking forward to being in touch with you all and we hope to hear from you.

Charlie Curnin, Editor-in-Chief, and Jackie O’Neil, Executive Editor

Contact Charlie Curnin at ccurnin ‘at’ stanford.edu and Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Letter from the editors: Promoting equity at The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/09/letter-from-the-editors-promoting-equity-at-the-stanford-daily/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/09/letter-from-the-editors-promoting-equity-at-the-stanford-daily/#respond Wed, 09 Sep 2020 17:37:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172054 The Daily has fallen short. But we love journalism because we believe in its power to share yet-unheard stories, and to hold the powerful to account. We are committed to realizing that mission. And we are committed to building an inclusive organization where all Stanford students can find a home.

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In the last few months, the disparate harms caused by the pandemic and police brutality have brought into focus the breadth, depth and depravity of racism in American institutions.

The Stanford Daily has participated in systems of racism in America. We have overlooked considerations of equity in our coverage and in our organization. We have failed to cover properly topics important to underrepresented communities at Stanford. We have failed to recruit and retain a diverse staff and support students from backgrounds historically excluded from journalism. 

We want to renew previous editors’ expression of solidarity with the Black community, reaffirm that Black lives matter and express our commitment to improving. After a series of conversations with Daily staff members over the last few months, our team is taking the following steps toward becoming a more equitable organization and publication. 

  • In our content, we’ll implement a focus on equity coverage, aiming to produce reporting and personal essays on marginalized communities on campus and the experiences of students with diverse identities. And to ensure ethical and conscientious reporting, we’ll emphasize considerations of equity and journalistic ethics in staff training.
  • To build a diverse staff and inclusive community, we’ll redouble our efforts to recruit new staff members thoughtfully and intentionally. To ensure recruits have a warm welcome into The Daily’s large team, we’ll organize new staff members into orientation groups, with older Daily staffers acting as mentors. And to track our progress in diversifying our staff, we’ll continue conducting demographics surveys, reporting key takeaways from the results. 
  • To help our staffers engage with identity-centered communities through journalism, we are fully covering the cost of membership for Daily staff members to join journalism affinity organizations.
  • To give back to our community and share our expertise widely and in a way as financially accessible as possible, we’ll host a series of free educational workshops open to the public. And to promote financial accessibility internally, in winter we’ll launch the pilot of a new scholarship program, planned by past Daily leadership, that compensates a small number of staff members who may face financial barriers to devoting large amounts of time to our organization.
  • Within The Daily, we’ll continue discussions about considerations of equity so we remain mindful of them throughout the volume. And beyond The Daily, we’ll work to strengthen relationships with campus stakeholders. 

We are lucky to be backed by an outstanding team of staff members, and we are grateful for their eager contributions to this plan’s formation and implementation.

The initiatives outlined here are in no way comprehensive. We will continue to evaluate, adjust and expand our efforts to make The Daily a home for all students and a resource for our entire community. 

The Daily has fallen short. But we love journalism because we believe in its power to share yet-unheard stories, and to hold the powerful to account. We are committed to realizing that mission. And we are committed to building an inclusive organization where all Stanford students can find a home. It is an imperative for us, one that will make us a stronger organization. And our community deserves the best we have to offer. 

Charlie Curnin, Editor-in-Chief, and Jackie O’Neil, Executive Editor

Contact Charlie Curnin at ccurnin ‘at’ stanford.edu and Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Letter to the community: On care and struggle https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/06/letter-to-the-community-on-care-and-struggle/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/06/letter-to-the-community-on-care-and-struggle/#respond Mon, 07 Sep 2020 03:00:41 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1172025 There are only so many times I can write “We stand in solidarity” before it starts looking less meaningful. So right now, I’m not the ASSU Director of Communications. I’m just Cricket, writing to my Stanford family.

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Content warning: racism, police brutality

Dear Stanford Community:

I’m stepping out of my role with the ASSU because I can’t write an official statement. There are only so many times I can present you with resources before people begin skipping over them. There are only so many times I can write “We stand in solidarity” before it starts looking less meaningful. So right now, I’m not the ASSU Director of Communications. I’m just Cricket, writing to my Stanford family.

Two weeks ago, I woke up to the news of Jacob Blake, who was shot seven times by a police officer while walking toward his van, where his children were sitting. The police officers nearby had supposedly seen him holding a knife, but the Wisconsin Department of Justice hasn’t said whether this was true. Blake managed to get up after the officers used a stun gun on him. While he was walking toward his van, an officer grabbed the back of his shirt and shot him. Seven times. There was no weapon in the van. Fortunately, Blake is alive, though he may be permanently paralyzed.

If the officer was close enough to grab the back of Blake’s shirt, why didn’t they tackle him? If for some reason the first shot was necessary, why did the officer feel it was acceptable to fire six more times? Why hasn’t the officer been arrested yet, and why haven’t the other officers been fired? This was almost certainly an act of racism, and was definitely another instance of police brutality. At the time of my writing this, there had been no acknowledgement by the White House, which was hesitant (at best) to acknowledge the severity of COVID-19 and Hurricane Laura. But this is wrong, regardless of politics. Racism is wrong, but it’s still prevalent. Police brutality is wrong, but it’s becoming increasingly rampant. 

On reading this news, I cried for a while. I’ve tried drafting something several times, but I failed to come up with something adequate. I still don’t know what to say. Can I write something that resonates with everyone? Can I write something capturing my feelings? Probably not. I’ll settle with this:

We talk about how victims’ relatives are impacted. We talk about how victims were/are related to people who are undeservingly traumatized. Blake’s children had to watch as he was shot. He and his family have to battle with the legal system in order for justice to be served. But as his sister reminds us, we forget to talk about how every victim of racism and police brutality is human.

We’re all human. And yet we still haven’t overcome racism and discrimination. Racism and police brutality are affronts to Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in that they violate that common humanity. I would do everything I could to prevent my relatives from being subjected to this treatment, and I’m sure most people feel similarly. 

I feel broken. I’m shocked that officers could subject anyone to this kind of treatment, where the intended consequence was clearly murder. I feel compassion for Blake, his immediate relatives, and anyone who has been subjected to discrimination. I feel horrified that the White House finds crimes like this acceptable enough to not require acknowledgement — at this point, lack of action on their part is synonymous with endorsement of the continuation of police brutality. And this truth is one that I’ve been aware of for a long time. It’s one that activists and revolutionaries have been fighting to change since before this country’s inception. The events of this year have proven that this vision of common humanity is anything but universal, and the road to attaining it is long and winding.

So what can we do? Take some time off work and school. Remember that it’s okay to feel sad, frustrated and angry, depressed, afraid, or anything else you’re feeling. It’s good that we still have the capacity to feel. Talk to some people who aren’t nearby. After interviewing someone virtually for a podcast, I got really emotional. When we’re isolated like this, we often forget how necessary companionship is in order to stay healthy. So have some conversations with no purpose other than talking and listening. When fall quarter begins, remember that it’s okay to take classes satisfactory/no credit — I know I will be. Grades are far less important than taking care of yourself, and grad schools unwilling to accept that aren’t worth attending. Faculty need to remember that adjustments to assignments or grading policies may be a good idea. If extraordinarily horrible events like this continue, flexibility is a sign of respect and caring for students. Often, learning at an institution like Stanford is less academic, and more about recognition and acceptance of one’s limits. We often convince ourselves that we need to do everything — from clubs to research to classes. At an institution like Stanford, there’s a pressure to take advantage of every opportunity available to us, and we often don’t know how to say no. But this current moment is not normal, and it makes no sense to operate as such. This fight will be long and arduous, and care is as important as advocacy — care for loved ones, care for your communities, care for yourself. 

When elections are here, anyone eligible to vote should vote for the candidates they feel will promote positive change. Regardless of political beliefs, it’s time for police brutality to stop. It’s time for racism and discrimination to end. It’s time for people to recognize that everyone is human, and should be treated accordingly. But that battle for that common humanity as a long one, and it’s important to take care of yourself too. 

Love,

Cricket X. Bidleman, ’21

Contact Cricket X. Bidleman at bidleman ‘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. 

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Letter to the Community: It’s time to end Greek life at Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2020/08/06/letter-to-the-community-its-time-to-end-greek-life-at-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/08/06/letter-to-the-community-its-time-to-end-greek-life-at-stanford/#respond Thu, 06 Aug 2020 17:27:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1170862 Now is the time to not just reflect on these organizations’ roots and problematic positions on campus, but also to actualize real change and not merely reforms. We can’t keep pretending that the system will magically or naturally fix itself. Nor can we pretend that a system built on the premise of elitist exclusion will ever be inclusive.

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Abolish Stanford Greek is a growing coalition of Stanford students and alumni committed to ending the presence of Interfraternity and Inter-Sorority Council Greek chapters on Stanford’s campus. We believe these Greek chapters perpetuate white supremacy in addition to furthering a culture of misogyny, ableism, classism, homophobia, heteronormativity and elitism on campus that goes against the values Stanford claims to support.

After years of inadequate reforms and burdensome efforts, predominantly led by Greek members who are first generation, low income, LGBTQ+, and/or people of color, we are organizing to abolish this system, which was designed to institutionalize privilege and divide us. To be clear, we draw a distinction between organizations in the Interfraternity and Inter-Sorority Councils (IFC/ISC) and those of Multicultural Greek Council (MGC) and African American Fraternal and Sororal Association (AAFSA) governing councils. MGC and AAFSA organizations provide an incredible community for BIPOC students, and should not be considered in our call to action. All further references to “Greek life” describe IFC and ISC organizations.

We are following the lead of folks who have been calling to abolish Greek life for years, even decades. As much as Greek life has been harmful to some members within the system, it ultimately has been a sore that has harmed communities across Stanford. We acknowledge that we are joining this movement late, but we are now calling to abolish Stanford Greek life in the hopes of contributing to positive change. 

Amongst Stanford students, and especially those in Greek life, there is a mentality that Greek life is somehow “different” at Stanford — that we don’t condone the overt racism of Southern chapters or don’t associate with the racist origins of the national organizations. This is not true. Stanford is not exceptional. From the personal stories published on the @DearStanford Instagram account to the numerous op-eds in The Daily over the years, it is abundantly clear that Greek life has caused irreparable harm to the Stanford community. Earlier this year, Lizzie Ford ’20 detailed her own racist and classist experiences within her ISC chapter. Today, we echo her call for the end of Greek life at Stanford. Given everything from the repeated instances of non-Black Greek affiliated students using the n-word in social settings to the Greek system’s protection of sexual assault perpetrators, it’s time to stop making excuses and organize to abolish a violent and antiquated system. Only then will we realize institutional change. 

Stanford Greek life is inseparable from its roots, its national affiliations and its history of harm on this campus. As colleges became more diverse after the Civil War, fraternities required members to be white, Protestant, and even “Aryan” to prevent Black, Jewish, and other marginalized students from joining their ranks. These racist chapters still exist and thrive today. Earlier this summer, alumnus Rep. Joe Kennedy disaffiliated from Stanford’s Kappa Alpha Order, a chapter founded by members of the Confederacy. 

While these organizations no longer limit membership to white Christian students, they still uphold white supremacy. For example, many continue giving preference in recruitment and leadership to students who are “legacies” and have family members with prior ties to the organization, thereby perpetuating white privilege even to this day. An organization founded on white supremacy, toxic masculinity and heteronormativity cannot be reformed, as we’ve learned through personal experience. 

Many of us in Abolish Greek Stanford were not only a part of Greek life during our time at Stanford but also worked to make our chapters and the community as a whole more equitable and inclusive, only to be met with apathy and resistance. Reform efforts over the years have been consistently dismissed or failed to take hold. ISC and IFC Greek life must be abolished. Of course, the burden for initiating these has also fallen on the few FLI, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC students in the organizations. Five years ago, California State Senate candidate Jackie Fielder ’16 published an op-ed explaining why she deactivated while she was ISC President, after encountering institutional efforts against her proposed changes to make ISC recruiting more accessible to low-income students like herself.

After little change, enough is enough. We are frustrated that members of color are often treated as indistinguishable tokens of diversity within their own organizations. Frustrated that sororities are forced by their leadership to continue relationships with fraternities whose members have harmed so many students in order to uphold social standing. Frustrated that the same few people have to not only call out but fight leadership when a bigoted theme for an event is suggested. Frustrated that we have to beg our national organizations to state they will accept trans students as members. Frustrated that the same few people have to call out chapter leadership for appropriating Native culture. Frustrated that every year, leadership and membership is predominantly white. Frustrated that our fellow members cannot be bothered to pronounce the names of members correctly, even after years of our membership. Frustrated that frat parties are filled with non-Black members saying the n-word and justifying its acceptability as part of a song lyric. 

As white America belatedly reckons with the systems of white supremacy that undergird police brutality and perpetuate racism at every level of government and American society, Stanford’s IFC and ISC organizations choose to look the other way. For those organizations that have acknowledged their racist histories and promised to use their privilege for progress, we ask you to heed your own words and disband your chapters. Consider this op-ed a public response to the statements that many chapters released pledging to be “better allies” and asking for “accountability.” Now is the time to not just reflect on these organizations’ roots and problematic positions on campus, but also to actualize real change and not merely reforms. In addition to the countless instances in which ISC/IFC organizations have caused harm on campus, their existence alone as chapters of national Greek organizations is tacit consent to white supremacy. 

In addition to its social harm, Stanford Greek life perpetuates material inequality on campus by allocating preferable housing options to members of ISC/IFC via frat and sorority houses. Sigma Nu and Phi Psi enjoy prime real estate on the lower row, TDX and Kappa Sigma are conveniently nestled behind Tressider. Sororities are slightly less centrally located, but still benefit from the general advantages that come from living in a self-op – a private chef, endless snacks, and two-room doubles. As a result, non-Greek students are more likely to be relegated to the margins of campus.  Given the demographics of these Greek organizations, and the fact that students have to pay expensive dues to join, these advantages are funneled towards the white and wealthy. 

None of this is acceptable and we can’t keep pretending that it is. The internal changes we’ve been trying to implement for years have not led to meaningful improvements in the inclusivity of our organizations or in our individual experiences as marginalized students. We also can’t keep pretending that the system will magically or naturally fix itself. Nor can we pretend that a system built on the premise of elitist exclusion will ever be inclusive.

We do want to acknowledge that some Stanford ISC/IFC chapters have also provided important community spaces for folks from marginalized communities. We do not wish to discount those experiences. Moving forward, we want to reimagine what types of community spaces we can create that still support students from marginalized communities but are not entrenched in the intolerant structure of Greek life. 

While we do not and cannot speak for all historically marginalized communities, based on our experiences, IFC and ISC organizations are incongruent with Stanford’s community goals and values of diversity and inclusion. As the Black Lives Matter movement grows in strength and Stanford’s own recruitment and residential life plans are disrupted due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, now is the time for Stanford to abolish Greek life for good. 

As Stanford alumni, today we are launching the @abolishstanfordgreek Instagram account and petition to call for an end to Greek life at Stanford. If you have a Greek life experience that you would like to anonymously share with @abolishstanfordgreek, please fill out this form

To each chapter and individual who posted a statement claiming allyship, we challenge you to demonstrate your allyship by joining our call to action and signing on to this open letter to the administration calling on Stanford to abolish Greek life, voting within your chapter to disband yourselves, and deactivating. The current list of signatories is by no means all encompassing as it is a live list. This open letter to the community is merely a starting point, and we welcome you to join our list of signatories here. You can view the most up to date list of signatories here.

Sincerely,

Abolish Stanford Greek

Contact the writers of the letter at abolishstanfordgreek ‘at’ gmail.com.

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. 

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Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results https://stanforddaily.com/2020/07/28/letter-to-the-community-assu-grading-survey-results/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/07/28/letter-to-the-community-assu-grading-survey-results/#respond Tue, 28 Jul 2020 15:49:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1170584 Key takeaways from the ASSU's survey on grading policy for Fall Quarter 2020.

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Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results

Dear Stanford Community,

The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is committed to ensuring that student voices are solicited and heard when decisions are made at the University. As we all know, next year will bring many challenges (as this past quarter has so clearly demonstrated) and at all points throughout the process, the ASSU hopes to ensure that student opinions and perspectives are front and center. The Faculty Senate will decide the grading basis for the coming months on Thursday and this document presents the key insights from a student body wide survey administered on the subject. You can find the full, albeit less polished, survey results here

Thank you to all students who responded to the survey. As of July 28th, there were 3,717 responses  (118,328 words of textual responses!) distributed among class year as follows:

Key TakeawaysLetter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results

  • The student body is divided between Optional CR/NC and Universal S/NC, but there is a clear dislike of regular grades and Honors/S/NC.
  • Inviting students to apply for an exception to return to campus did not succeed in removing all barriers to learning.
  • Few students are planning to take a leave of absence, though many remain undecided and the data suggests Universal S/NC would result in the highest enrollment.

How did Spring Quarter Go?

There were a number of key takeaways on students’ perspectives about learning and grading during Spring Quarter:

  1. Students on average were happy with Spring Quarter grading, rating it on average halfway between an Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results and Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results on a scale of Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results with a standard deviation of 1.19 emojis.
  2. 67% of respondents said that Zoom was a barrier to their learning and most students felt Zoom classes were too long. Students on average self reported being able to concentrate over Zoom for 62 minutes, much shorter than the length of the proposed 80 minute class length for next year. Indeed, students who faced other barriers to their learning were on average able to concentrate for even less time.
  3. Some students who were initially opposed to S/NC for Spring quarter, found themselves very thankful for it. Students noted that the S/NC grading system was very beneficial to their mental health during a time when they were separated from friends and Stanford’s support structure. Others reflected that they misjudged the difficulty of online learning. Many remarked at how surprised they were by the extra burden of being at home. Students also noted that many of their friends at peer institutions were unhappy with regular grading during the same time period. Others reflected that they would have struggled to maintain normal academic output given world events such as the death of George Floyd and its aftermath.
  4. Other students remain unhappy with S/NC. In particular, frustration was high among:
    1. students who felt their GPA was essential for applying to further opportunities
    2. rising seniors who felt as though Spring was their last significant opportunity to showcase their abilities
    3. students who had already front loaded difficult classes in earlier quarters
    4. students who come from under-resourced high schools and initially struggled to adjust to the rigor of Stanford, and felt that Spring was a particularly important opportunity to showcase an upward trajectory
    5. students who felt they were “not getting their money’s worth”
    6. students who were disappointed that their hard work went unrewarded at the end of the quarter
  5. 34% of students found it difficult to be motivated in the absence of grades. This manifested in a difficulty for individuals themselves, but also a frustration that other students were not incentivized to prepare for class discussions, contribute to group projects, and attend class. In particular, many of these students emphasized that the lack of graded cumulative final exams was harmful to their learning as it removed incentives for them to “go the extra mile” and ensure they had mastered the material. Another common theme was students struggled to find motivation after they reached the passing threshold in a class. It was also clear that those who are planning to pursue future opportunities where GPA is a relevant factor found that the lack of grades was a barrier to their learning at the highest rates.
  6. S/NC didn’t fully eliminate learning inequity: Some respondents noted that many students in conducive learning environments took advantage of the S/NC grading to take more difficult and a greater quantity of classes. 

Barriers to Learning

The chart below shows the barriers students faced in the Spring:

Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results

The data suggests that inequity in learning situations will continue in the Fall, only slightly diminished and that those with the most barriers to their learning struggled the most with online learning.

Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results

Looking to the Fall

As we approach the Fall, there is every reason to believe that students will continue to face challenges:

  • COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the country (8% of students reported that they or a loved one were infected during the Spring).
  • The University will be embarking on an ambitious and challenging experiment to bring students back to campus during the pandemic. Modeling from Cornell (Cashore et. al.) suggests that 280 undergraduates might be infected while on campus over the course of the quarter. 
  • The economic fallout caused by the pandemic is worsening for many (15% of respondents reported financial insecurity during the Spring)
  • Online learning is inferior to in person instruction (77% of students either found it difficult to learn over Zoom or will be off campus next year and reported that being off campus was a barrier to their learning)
  • Campus support services are diminished and student communities are divided

Despite the challenges, there is reason to believe next year could be less tumultuous than the Spring:

  • The University plans for some undergraduates and, importantly, those with dangerous and/or unstable home situations to be on campus. However, the data suggests that a significant number of students who faced equity barriers will spend a portion of next year learning off campus, despite this measure (see chart above).
  • There is much more known about the virus and despite the horrors it inflicts and we know much about how to prevent its spread. 
  • The University has had more time to prepare for this upcoming year.

Grading Preferences

The two charts below show general preferences for the grading basis. The first shows the average number of stars out of 5 assigned to each. The second shows the average ranking position (where 1 is the highest rank possible/most preferred). As you can see, students prefered Universal S/NC when asked to assign stars and preferred Optional CR/NC when asked to rank options — both by small margins.

Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results
Letter to the Community: ASSU Grading Survey Results

There were a number of other key implications for grading:

  1. A regular grading scheme is quite unpopular overall. Regular grading was particularly unpopular with students who struggled to learn over Zoom during spring quarter and faced barriers to their learning. Even students who care significantly about their GPA prefer Optional CR/NC. 
  2. While there was no clear preference for Optional CR/NC or Mandatory S/NC, students with equity barriers and students who struggled learning over Zoom preferred Universal S/NC and those hoping to pursue future opportunities prefered Optional CR/NC. All agree that courses taken for CR would need to count for requirements in order to make an Optional CR/NC basis viable. Honors/S/NC was unpopular and confusing to many students. A list of other grading schemes that were suggested can be found in the Appendix of the full report.
  3. Frosh and Juniors don’t have a clear preference, transfers and seniors prefer Optional, and Sophomores prefer S/NC. Grad students are less passionate about grading, but prefer Universal S/NC.
  4. Among students who are still determining their plans for next year, those who reported that the grading basis would affect their plans particularly disliked regular grading, suggesting a negative impact on enrollment if chosen. Further, the data suggests, a Universal S/NC grading scheme would lead to the highest enrollment overall and higher enrollments of students who face the most difficult circumstances. However, Universal S/NC would lead to lower enrollments of students who desire to pursue future opportunities that consider GPA as a material factor.

Leaves of Absence

Few responded they had plans to take a leave, but many (around 25% of Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors) remain undecided. A small methodological note is that there is likely a response bias at play: those who are planning to take a leave would have less of an incentive to complete the survey.

As always, your feedback, opinions, and questions are welcome. Ultimately this decision will be made by the Faculty Senate, and the ASSU is here to support you and to advocate for the best possible policies. Feel free to learn more about the Faculty Senate or request to watch Thursday’s meeting at https://facultysenate.stanford.edu.

Sincerely yours,

Jonathan Lipman ’21, ASSU Undergraduate Senator (he/him)

Contact Jonathan Lipman at jlipman ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Letter from the opinions editors: Our editorial values https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/29/letter-from-the-opinions-editors-our-editorial-values/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/29/letter-from-the-opinions-editors-our-editorial-values/#respond Tue, 30 Jun 2020 02:52:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1169787 Last month, we wrote that the point of The Daily’s opinions section is to provide a forum for Stanford community members to discuss what matters and why. As we expressed then, we are committed to publishing a range of opinions, and we never decline an article only because we disagree with its position. But our […]

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Last month, we wrote that the point of The Daily’s opinions section is to provide a forum for Stanford community members to discuss what matters and why. As we expressed then, we are committed to publishing a range of opinions, and we never decline an article only because we disagree with its position. But our editorial standards also encompass a commitment to considering and honoring the dignity and humanity of individuals and groups that make up the Stanford community. 

On June 19, we received an op-ed that did not meet these standards. This op-ed, submitted by the Stanford College Republicans and subsequently published in revised form in The Stanford Review, advanced racist claims and contradicted the values that our opinions section and our paper are committed to upholding. As a result, we ultimately declined to publish their submission. 

The op-ed in question repeated misinformation about antifa and levied unsubstantiated allegations of terrorism against protesters. It misrepresented violent riots and looting, advancing a racist narrative of widespread and unprompted protester violence without any mention of police brutality. It privileged police accounts of controversial legal cases without qualification at a time when police testimony is being revealed as unreliable and discriminatory.

We are writing this to make a clear statement to the Stanford community that the opinions section will not be used to promote disinformation and discriminatory messaging. We will publish debates and viewpoints that we disagree with. We will seek to foster discourse not just across party lines but, more importantly, across communities and ideologies. But we will not platform anti-Blackness. We will not publish racism. 

Both this section and the paper as a whole have made mistakes in the voices we have and have not amplified and the stories to which we have and have not paid adequate attention. This statement expresses our commitment to grow and improve. We will work to maintain and reaffirm the basic dignity of every member of our campus community. And this begins with what we will and will not publish. 

Claire Dinshaw and Adrian Liu, Volume 257 Opinions Editors
Layo Laniyan and Megha Parwani, Volume 258 Opinions Editors

A previous version of this article erroneously included a redundant paragraph from an earlier draft. The Daily regrets this error.

Contact the opinions editors at opinions ‘at’ stanforddaily.com.

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Letter to the Community: Summer and full-time job opportunities https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/26/letter-to-the-community-summer-and-full-time-job-opportunities/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/26/letter-to-the-community-summer-and-full-time-job-opportunities/#respond Fri, 26 Jun 2020 16:13:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1169714 The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many changes for student life: From shifting to a quarter of online classes to reimagining an entirely different 2020-2021 academic year, campus life has been uprooted. In addition to academic disruptions, however, another significant challenge students are grappling with is an unstable job market, both for summer internships and full-time […]

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many changes for student life: From shifting to a quarter of online classes to reimagining an entirely different 2020-2021 academic year, campus life has been uprooted.

In addition to academic disruptions, however, another significant challenge students are grappling with is an unstable job market, both for summer internships and full-time jobs. Companies across the country have retracted offers and cancelled internship programs. 

The Humanities and Sciences Careers Task Force, created to help better prepare students for life after Stanford, has recently concentrated its efforts on helping Stanford students find summer internships and full-time jobs. Comprising Stanford alumni, parent volunteers, University administration, student representatives and employees from Bridging Education, Ambition & Meaningful Work (BEAM) and the Stanford Alumni Association (SAA), the task force has focused primarily on harnessing the aid of Stanford’s vast alumni network. 

As a result of this effort, we have already been offered over 300 summer internships for Stanford students, and almost 150 have been posted. New internships, jobs and project opportunities are being posted to Handshake daily, and hundreds more alumni have offered to provide mentoring and career advice. We appreciate the challenges of the summer job hunt even in good times, and we are extremely humbled by the widespread show of compassion and support from the Stanford community during this extremely challenging period.

We are writing this letter to highlight for students the many job opportunities listed below. We have summarized the following internship and mentorship options to assist you:

  1. Look for jobs and internships: Alumni Sourced Opportunities — View job, internship and one-time project opportunities posted by alumni on Handshake, as well as available job and internship postings on alumni company websites.
  1. Connect with alumni and career mentors: Stanford Alumni Mentoring — Connect with, and learn from, alumni from a broad array of majors and careers.
  1. Build on your professional skills: BEAM Summer Boot Camp — Sign up for a 6-week program that will help you build professional skills, learn about industries and roles and connect with employers and alumni in a supportive environment. The boot camp is open to all current Stanford students and recent graduates and is free of charge.

These postings are unique in that they have been sourced and created by alumni and parents who are personally invested in helping Stanford students succeed. We encourage students to check the internship and mentorship opportunities frequently, as these lists are growing daily. 

We know that the current economic climate has made finding summer and full-time jobs incredibly difficult, but we hope you can find opportunities from the many resources the H&S Task Force has helped create with the assistance of BEAM and SAA. We encourage you to explore the opportunities available to you, reach out to this network and connect with the wider Stanford community. 

— Cami Katz & Elizabeth Lindqwister, on behalf of the Humanities and Sciences Careers Task Force 

Contact Cami Katz at camikatz ‘at’ stanford.edu and Elizabeth Lindqwister at liz ‘at’ stanforddaily.com.

Elizabeth Lindqwister is The Daily’s deputy editor.

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.

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Letter to the Community: What we’ve been doing at Students for Workers’ Rights https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/26/letter-to-the-community-what-weve-been-doing-at-students-for-workers-rights/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/26/letter-to-the-community-what-weve-been-doing-at-students-for-workers-rights/#respond Fri, 26 Jun 2020 16:03:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1169715 We at Students for Workers’ Rights (SWR) apologize that it’s taken us so long to update the community on our campaign for contracted workers. We spent April and May anxiously corresponding with service workers about promised pay that had yet to arrive, and we struggled to communicate changes because of the persistent opacity of Stanford […]

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We at Students for Workers’ Rights (SWR) apologize that it’s taken us so long to update the community on our campaign for contracted workers. We spent April and May anxiously corresponding with service workers about promised pay that had yet to arrive, and we struggled to communicate changes because of the persistent opacity of Stanford administrators. Right after UG2 workers finally received their promised pay continuance, the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin compelled us to spend our energy in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. It’s our conviction that the struggle for Black liberation and the struggle for labor justice are intimately intertwined

Our campaign for Stanford to pay benefits and wages to its laid off contracted workers led to an enormous community response, including over $150,000 in mutual aid raised for workers, over 5,000 signatures on a community petition and a press conference covered by the SF Chronicle and the Washington Post. We are deeply grateful, too, for the various ways that communities continued supporting contracted workers through COVID-19 — from a faculty letter of support, community fundraisers and even Zoom workouts for workers’ rights. Thanks to this community effort, Provost Persis Drell sent an email to the student body on April 14 promising that contracted firms would be “supported in maintaining income and benefits for [their] employees through June 15,” a promise that has since been extended to August 30. This victory is tremendous, and is a testament to the collective power that can be marshaled when students and workers stand together.

However, following Provost Drell’s commitment, SWR remained skeptical. While the pay continuance policy was announced to the student body, workers themselves had not been informed about the policy change. In fact, not only was the policy not announced to workers, but the disbursement of funds was continually delayed. UG2 workers were not paid until six entire weeks after Provost Drell’s announcement. In addition, ambiguities about the difference between contracted workers and vendors left some workers without pay, such as Bon Appetit workers employed at the Graduate School of Business.

To hold the administration accountable, SWR worked with other activist allies and concerned students, including members of the ASSU, to meet with Elizabeth Zacharias, head of University Human Resources, and Provost Drell. We asked Zacharias and Drell questions such as how many contractors the University employed and who was in charge of ensuring that contracted workers would get paid. Neither Zacharias nor Drell answered these questions, both telling us that they did not know who was in charge of enforcing pay continuance. This is deeply concerning, as Zacharias and Drell have essentially divested themselves of the responsibility to implement the announced pay continuance policies.

Zacharias’ and Drell’s evasive responses to our inquiries gesture to a systemic issue of subcontracting on college campuses, where Stanford has the dubious status of being a pioneer. The University hired the janitorial contracting firm ABM in 1921, making ABM the first janitorial contractor in America to clean a major college campus. Although advocates of subcontracting gesture to it as a tool for maximizing labor efficiency, subcontracting is a profit-maximizing strategy that undercuts the security and collective bargaining power of workers. By subcontracting out labor, campuses like Stanford shift the responsibility to provide benefits such as healthcare plans, paid sick and vacation leave, and retirement funds to contracted firms. They also wash their hands of labor violations that occur against workers, which are attributed to contracting firms. 

SWR is grateful to the immense community support for contracted workers that emerged through the spring, and we call on members of the Stanford community to join us as we keep fighting — for hazard pay for UG2 employees, for accountability and transparency in subcontracting and against the prospect of layoffs during the upcoming academic year. To stay updated with SWR’s campaigns, you can sign up to join our mailing list or follow us on social media (Twitter: @stanford_swr; Instagram: @stanfordswr; Facebook: stanfordswr).

— Ethan Chua, on behalf of Students for Workers’ Rights

Contact Ethan Chua at ezlc327 ‘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. 

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Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/16/letter-to-the-community-results-of-the-assu-survey-on-quarter-preferences-for-next-year/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/16/letter-to-the-community-results-of-the-assu-survey-on-quarter-preferences-for-next-year/#respond Wed, 17 Jun 2020 04:43:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1169509 Dear Stanford Community, The ASSU is committed to ensuring that student voices are solicited and heard when decisions are made at the University. As we all know, next year will bring many challenges (as this past quarter has so clearly demonstrated) and at all points throughout the process, the ASSU hopes to ensure that student […]

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Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year

Dear Stanford Community,

The ASSU is committed to ensuring that student voices are solicited and heard when decisions are made at the University. As we all know, next year will bring many challenges (as this past quarter has so clearly demonstrated) and at all points throughout the process, the ASSU hopes to ensure that student opinions and perspectives are front and center. As the first item, the ASSU reached out to get input on when students wish to be on campus next year and related issues. 

Here are the results of that survey which speak to the ideas, aspirations, and preferences for next year. The results have been shared with the administration and hopefully they are taking them into consideration as they proceed with planning. You can find the underlying data tables here if you wish to peruse them yourself. 

Thank you to all students who responded to the survey. There were 2,699 responses  (1,536 textual responses — 51,917 words!) distributed among class year as follows:

Incoming Frosh: 674. Rising Sophomore: 736. Rising Junior: 633. Rising Senior: 639.

In particular, the text responses added significant nuance and reflected the great care and thought so clearly put into them. 

General Takeaways

There were a number of overarching themes in the responses that were consistent across years:

  • Summer quarter is by far the least desirable — only 3.2% of students marked it as their first or second choice and more than 80% of students marked it as their fourth choice.
  • Respondents wish to be on campus with the grades adjacent to them or with frosh.
  • Respondents are split almost 50-50 whether being on campus contiguous quarters or being on campus the quarters they expressed the strongest preference for is more ideal, but responses clearly highlighted that moving in/out and traveling to/from campus multiple times represents a significant burden for many students, particularly FLI and international students.
  • A portion of students do not wish to return to campus at all and hope to continue with online learning throughout the entire year.
  • Respondents articulated that whichever path the administration chooses; it should take steps to mitigate concerns for students who are affected. Examples cited include investing time and money to help students find internship opportunities during other parts of the year and providing library books and scanning services for seniors who need to remotely finish theses.

Class Preferences

The chart below shows the relative preferences of different class years for different quarters.

Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year

There are a number of key takeaways to highlight in the data:

  • While all years strongly disprefer Summer, Frosh have the strongest negative preference, followed by Juniors, Seniors and then Sophomores
  • Sophomores and Juniors desire Spring about equally
  • Frosh prefer Fall and Winter
  • Frosh, Juniors, Seniors all similarly prefer Winter, with Juniors most preferring it and Sophomores least preferring it
  • Seniors do not desire Fall, and Sophomores desire Fall slightly more than Juniors

Who Is Assigned Summer?

Assuming no change is made to the overall plan, summer is the most difficult quarter to allocate. While all class years have distaste of a relatively similar magnitude, there was a bit of variation with Frosh being the most averse, then Juniors, and finally Seniors and Sophomores with similar preferences:

Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year

The survey also illustrated why each grade was so reluctant to select summer:

  • Frosh cite a loss of internships/research opportunities. They also cite the need for time to build community and friendships before weathering 24 weeks of remote learning
  • Sophomores cite a loss of internships/research opportunities
  • Juniors strongly cite a loss of internship opportunities as many believe these internships define their entire career prospects! This theme was very consistently communicated in  the written responses
  • Seniors: Two split camps. ~25% see it as an opportunity to have one last fun quarter that might not require social distancing and could also increase the likelihood of a traditional, in-person graduation at the end of the Summer. ~75% are strongly against Summer due to conflicts with jobs, grad schools, other programs or a planned break before entering the professional world. The other reason cited is a need to be on campus other quarters to finish theses

In addition there were a few reasons generally given why summer was undesirable:

  • Lack of air conditioning
  • Concern about weaker course offerings because Profs won’t wish to teach

Many have asked, “Based on the survey data, what is the ideal layout?” In truth, there is no clear answer based on the survey data since summer was so undesirable. One must use reasoning other than this survey to allocate the summer. However, once two years are chosen to be on campus during the summer, the rest of the year falls nicely into place based on respondents’ preferences. Woe unto thee who will ultimately need to decide who is stuck with summer quarter.

Scenarios Given Summer Configurations

You can find the calculated ideal layout for the rest of the year given a summer configuration in the appendix. The calculations seek to maximize overall preferences and prevent students from receiving their fourth choice. The model also minimizes the number of move ins/outs needed and each year was given the opportunity to spend their two quarters on campus with a different second class year.

Exceptions

Another theme that emerged is the importance of allowing individual students to be granted an exception to be on campus during a different quarter than their class year. A full list of exception criteria suggested through the survey can be found in the appendices. 

As always, your feedback, opinions, and questions are welcome. Ultimately this decision will be made by the administration, but the ASSU is here to support you and advocate for the best possible policies. Feel free to write directly to the administration at academic-continuity@stanford.edu or reach the ASSU at assu.stanford.edu.

Sincerely yours,

Jonathan Lipman, ASSU Undergraduate Senator

Contact Jonathan Lipman at jonathan.lipman ‘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. 

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Appendix 1: Preferred configuration given summer allocation

These tables show the best configuration assuming that a given two classes will be on campus in the summer. The twin modeling objectives were to satisfy overall preferences and prevent people from receiving their fourth choice. Assumptions: the configurations minimize the number of move ins/outs needed and each year was given the opportunity to spend their two quarters on campus with a different second class year.

Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year
Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year
Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year

Appendix 2: Respondents’ suggested reasons for an exception

In addition to the main determination of who will be on campus based on class year, there were a number of proposals for special circumstance that might warrant an exception. All of the submitted circumstances are listed here:

  1. Student Staff
  2. VSO Leadership Roles
  3. Athletics (both Club and Division 1)
  4. If you live near campus, can you attend on campus activities and classes?
  5. Inequity in learning opportunity while at home (no quiet spaces, internet access, etc…) or non supportive home circumstances
  6. Homelessness, housing insecurity, food insecurity, families without resources to support students at home or abusive/dangerous home situations
  7. Low income students who have urgent need for on campus jobs or income from summer internships
  8. Health status — immunocompromised or family health situations
  9. Participation in extracurriculars which require in-person participation like theatre shows, SSI, LSJUMB, Solar Car, ROTC, dance groups, etc…
  10. Honors theses or other research that requires physical presence (labs) or library access
  11. International students who are in significantly different time zones/visa/entrance restrictions, international students staying in between or for contiguous quarters because of transit issues/cost, or international students who cannot get a visa in time for the fall
  12. Participation in NSO, Frosh 101 or other Frosh centric Fall activities as an upperclass student
  13. Class offerings to fulfill major requirements (particularly for disciplines requiring in-person instruction like Art, ME, Chem, etc…)
  14. Students who otherwise wished to go abroad during the quarters they were assigned to
  15. Greek life rush/other new member recruitment
  16. Scholarship funding tied to certain quarters
  17. Students who rely on on campus/in-state medical or psychological care
  18. Section leading or TA-ships
  19. Plans to graduate early
  20. Immovable summer commitments (nationally required military service or summer training before grad school)
  21. Severe mental health/suicide concerns from loneliness off campus or home situation
  22. Enrollment in graduate classes that require in person participation (GSB project classes, etc…) or Co-Term requirements

Appendix 3: Raw data

Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year
Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year
Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year

Appendix 4: Merged preferences

Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year
Letter to the community: Results of the ASSU survey on quarter preferences for next year

Appendix: 5 Alternative Ideas Proposed By Respondents

  1. Allocating when people will be invited onto campus with a draw like system so that friends groups could stay together
  2. Let students who are remote enroll in a more part-time fashion across all four quarters 
  3. Allocate people based on academic disciplines
  4. Life in “pods” based on housing that live, go to classes, and socialize together in isolation from the the rest of campus — give everyone free backpacks/t-shirts/wristbands/necklaces with their pod color.
  5. Students who are staffing can live on campus even if they are not taking classes
  6. Plan to have three classes during the spring when the disease has hopefully let up so that only one class has to be there during the summer
  7. Construct temporary housing during fall so capacity can be increased to three grades for winter and spring
  8. Seniors should be on campus three quarters since they are graduating, and each other class is there one quarter meaning no summer
  9. Re-purpose part of EVGR to house undergraduates to increase capacity
  10. Figure out how to organize community for Stanford students grouped in locales around the world. i.e. have all Atlanta based students form a physical community while not on campus

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In solidarity with the Black community: A letter from the editors https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/03/in-solidarity-with-the-black-community-a-letter-from-the-editors/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/03/in-solidarity-with-the-black-community-a-letter-from-the-editors/#respond Wed, 03 Jun 2020 21:25:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1168941 We do not pretend to fully understand the experiences of Stanford’s Black community, but we know we can do more to diversify our coverage, engage with our community respectfully and make our organization as welcoming to Black community members as possible.

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The Stanford Daily stands in solidarity with the Black community. We acknowledge that it’s easy to make a statement of support — it’s harder to back that up with action. In this historic moment, we have a particular obligation to report and publish on the ongoing movements and protests. However, we have an even greater responsibility to listen to and support the community we serve. Black communities are making themselves heard around the world — and we are listening, with a commitment to amplifying these perspectives in our publication not just in times of crisis, but at all times in the future. We recognize the power of journalism and our ability to use our platform to uplift Black voices and narratives.

We also recognize the responsibility that such power brings. To that end, we acknowledge the difficult relationship between the media and Black community members, particularly at Stanford. We do not pretend to fully understand the experiences of Stanford’s Black community, but we know we can do more to diversify our coverage, engage with our community respectfully and make our organization as welcoming to Black community members as possible. We acknowledge that we have not adequately addressed these measures in the past, but this is no excuse for inaction in the present. The Daily would be nothing without its readers, its contributors and its critics, and we welcome any feedback on how we can more proactively share voices from Stanford’s Black community in the future. Doing so will be a priority moving forward.

Right now, though, our publication joins millions of Americans in demanding accountability for police violence and participating in the ongoing struggle for racial justice. The Daily’s editorial board has compiled a non-exhaustive list of resources and materials specific to the Stanford community and the Bay Area. Included are links to donate to bail funds, find essential readings in African and African American studies and act in other important ways to engage the Stanford community in a more lasting effort toward racial justice. We are using these resources to reflect, educate and better The Daily for our Stanford community — we hope you share in this goal. 

Read the Editorial Board resources article here.

Holden Foreman ’21, editor-in-chief
Liz Lindqwister ’21, deputy editor
Claire Dinshaw ’21, opinions editor
Adrian Liu ’20, opinions editor
Layo Laniyan ’22, opinions desk editor

Contact the editors at opinions ‘at’ stanforddaily.com.

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. 

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