Most Stanford students only get to meet the University’s president twice — once during NSO and again at Commencement. Jackson Beard ’17 and Amanda Edelman ’17, however, are not most Stanford students.

As the president and vice president of the ASSU respectively, Beard and Edelman have met with Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne every month for the past academic year to address the issues that they believe matter most to students. Now that the 2017 ASSU General Election is over and their successors have been chosen, Beard and Edelman — joined by Rachel Samuels ’17, their chief of staff and “third exec,” as Beard put it — sat down with The Daily for an exhaustive reflection on their term as ASSU executives, detailing the work that they have accomplished and the work yet to be done.

“I think that we’ve been as successful as you can be at Stanford in a year, and I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done and that our team has done,” Beard said.

The outgoing executives reported progress in all six areas of their Cabinet. Confronting the ever-present issue of improving mental health and wellbeing on campus, Beard and Edelman worked to redesign Stanford’s Wellness Network and to make Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) more accessible.

With regard to academic issues, Beard and Edelman pushed for greater emphasis on diversity in education, such as a more intense Engaging Diversity WAYS requirement and a proposed Diversity in the Major requirement. Their academic ideas have not been adopted. However, Beard and Edelman called the proposals “a multi-year process” in their latest email update to the student body, writing that they would work with the incoming exec team to continue pushing the ideas. In winter quarter, Beard and Edelman shifted toward advocating diversity-focused courses in conversations with specific departments.

Beard and Edelman pioneered initiatives to improve menstrual and reproductive health on campus. The executives worked closely with Women’s Coalition to place free menstrual hygiene products in restrooms in the Arrillaga Family Dining Commons and the Graduate Student Center and hope that the incoming executives will be able to expand the initiative to other buildings. Beard, Edelman and Samuels are also in the process of ordering a vending machine for emergency contraception and other health products to be placed in Old Union.

“Students can only get emergency contraception at Vaden, and Vaden closes at the times when most students actually need that emergency contraception,” said Samuels, whose brother worked to have a similar machine installed at Pomona. “It’s something I’ve been working on since I was a sophomore.”

The executives also made the stabilization of the Nominations Commission, or NomCom, one of their priorities. Through an online application process, NomCom selects students to vote alongside administrators on University committees, which discuss everything from alcohol policy to bike safety to Stanford’s climate footprint. However, NomCom had fallen into disarray due to student apathy and administrator oversight, the execs said.

“Apparently [students] had a history of not actually showing up to the committee meetings,” Edelman said. “University committees decide a great deal about the University, so it is of the utmost importance to have qualified students serve on these committees.”

Administrative “denialism”

Throughout the year, Beard and Edelman worked to change how Stanford handles matters of mental health and sexual violence. However, the executives said that the University often downplayed the seriousness of the issues, sometimes even resisting their efforts.

“For me, as a student and student leader, it was really discouraging to see an unwillingness to even consider change in any way,” Beard said. “The process at Stanford is presupposed to be as close to perfect as can possibly be achieved.”

Beard also criticized what she called “denialism” on the part of administrators regarding both mental health and sexual assault.

“There’s an idea that students who come to Stanford carry with them their own mental health issues, and it’s impossible for Stanford to address all of the mental health needs of its students,” Beard said. “Similarly, in sexual violence… I’ve literally had administrators talk to me about ‘miscommunication’ in cases where the charge is sexual assault.”

Beard added that in her discussions with administrators about sexual violence, she often heard it vaguely referred to as an “agonizing issue” without further exploration.

“But I haven’t heard anyone say, why is it agonizing? To whom is it agonizing?” Beard said. “It’s almost like a way to recognize that it’s difficult, whatever ‘difficult’ means, but that it’s not actionable.”

Samuels did not want to criticize “the administration” as a whole — she singled out for praise the administrators of the Office of Sexual Assault & Relationship Abuse Education & Response (SARA) — but she took issue with the approach of other administrators. According to Samuels, administrators often told the Execs that Stanford denies all allegations of mishandling sexual violence cases on campus.

In response to the Execs’ comments on the administration allegedly downplaying issues or resisting change, University spokesperson E.J. Miranda noted in an email to The Daily that the University “[does] not know the basis for their remarks.”

“With respect to student mental health, it has been a focus for additional support and resources for some time now,” Miranda wrote. “The University is continually working to improve its sexual violence processes for education, support and adjudication, with a pilot process now under way [sic] that was based on recommendations from students and faculty members.”

He also noted that at a town hall last Friday, Provost Persis Drell spoke on sexual assault as a “serious issue,” adding that the University will always have room to improve until sexual violence does not occur at Stanford.

Sexual violence, and Stanford’s response to it, dogged Beard and Edelman throughout their term. One of their first tasks as executives was drafting a response to former student Brock Turner’s sentencing last June; several months later, Stanford found itself in another imbroglio after it dropped attorney Crystal Riggins from a Title IX legal panel in response to her criticism of the University’s Title IX process.

Regarding Riggins, Edelman said that the executive team still doesn’t have a “coherent story.”

The University has alleged issues with Riggins’ work. But an administrator mentioned only “public comments indicating a lack of faith” in the initial email communicating Riggins’ dismissal.

“It is extremely disappointing, if not really terrifying, to have a different story from multiple people about the same thing — or the same person,” Edelman added. “It makes you understand that what you’re telling me is not true, but at the same time, we don’t know what is true.”

A new chapter

As their time at Stanford ends, all three women have big plans. Beard will return to Chicago and work for a consulting firm for two years before applying to law school; Edelman, similarly, has found work with a micro-lending nonprofit in her hometown of New York and plans to pursue an education in human rights and/or gender equity law. Samuels has committed to go to Georgetown University in the fall and pursue a master’s degree in conflict resolution.

Samuels has spent much of her undergraduate career as a part of the ASSU; in addition to serving as Beard and Edelman’s chief of staff, Samuels was a senator in her sophomore year and a campaign manager (later interim chief of staff) for John-Lancaster Finley ’16 and Brandon Hill ’16. For someone with such experience of the workings of ASSU, it is ironic that Samuels said that she “didn’t come in wanting to do student government.”

“Every single year after I finished, I was like, ‘that was good, I learned a lot, and now I’m done,’” Samuels elaborated. “I would’ve been a happier person if I didn’t do ASSU, but I don’t know if I would have been more fulfilled.”

Beard concurred, saying that she was a “less cynical, more happy person before [she] started.” She offered this advice to the incoming executives: “Be prepared to be both disappointed in yourself and proud of yourself.”

Edelman was a little more positive than her running mate, suggesting that she would do the experience over if she could and offering a few words of wisdom of her own.

“Something I would pass on is the ability to stay on point when a lot of administrators want to obscure that point,” Edelman said.

Samuels encouraged the new ASSU representatives to “find a reason to keep coming back every day.”

“The only way to make sure something is not changed is not to try,” Samuels said. “If you have the space or the ability or the position to do something that makes where you are better or makes other people’s situations better, then you should do everything in your power to make that happen.”

 

Contact Jacob Nierenberg at jhn2017 ‘at’ stanford.edu.