Carl Romanos – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Tue, 04 Mar 2014 07:08:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Carl Romanos – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Asha Stanford’s Holi 2013 https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/08/asha-stanfords-holi-2013/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/08/asha-stanfords-holi-2013/#respond Tue, 09 Apr 2013 06:19:07 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076277 The post Asha Stanford’s Holi 2013 appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

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A conversation with Andrew Zimmermann, former Stanford Basketball player https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/07/a-conversation-with-andrew-zimmermann-former-stanford-basketball-player/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/07/a-conversation-with-andrew-zimmermann-former-stanford-basketball-player/#respond Fri, 08 Mar 2013 06:26:02 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075659 The post A conversation with Andrew Zimmermann, former Stanford Basketball player appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

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Four undergraduates co-found Stanford Competitive Climbing https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/19/four-undergraduates-co-found-stanford-competitive-climbing/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/19/four-undergraduates-co-found-stanford-competitive-climbing/#respond Wed, 20 Feb 2013 03:46:42 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075061 The post Four undergraduates co-found Stanford Competitive Climbing appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

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A conversation with Sadeq Saba, Head of BBC Persian Service https://stanforddaily.com/2013/01/25/a-conversation-with-sadeq-saba-head-of-bbc-persian-service/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/01/25/a-conversation-with-sadeq-saba-head-of-bbc-persian-service/#respond Sat, 26 Jan 2013 01:57:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074359 The post A conversation with Sadeq Saba, Head of BBC Persian Service appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

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Game day preparation with The Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band https://stanforddaily.com/2012/11/11/game-day-preparation-with-the-leland-stanford-junior-university-marching-band/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/11/11/game-day-preparation-with-the-leland-stanford-junior-university-marching-band/#respond Mon, 12 Nov 2012 02:01:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1072916 The post Game day preparation with The Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

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VIDEO: Election Day at Stanford University https://stanforddaily.com/2012/11/06/election-day-at-stanford-university/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/11/06/election-day-at-stanford-university/#comments Wed, 07 Nov 2012 07:14:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1072697 Democrats, Republicans and voting on the Farm.

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French-Vietnamese jazz guitarist Nguyen Le holds workshop at Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2012/11/03/vietnamese-jazz-guitarist-nguyen-le-holds-workshop-at-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/11/03/vietnamese-jazz-guitarist-nguyen-le-holds-workshop-at-stanford/#respond Sat, 03 Nov 2012 20:46:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1072548 The post French-Vietnamese jazz guitarist Nguyen Le holds workshop at Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

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Libertarian vice presidential candidate visits Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/29/libertarian-vice-presidential-candidate-visits-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/29/libertarian-vice-presidential-candidate-visits-stanford/#respond Mon, 29 Oct 2012 23:43:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1072391 The post Libertarian vice presidential candidate visits Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

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Art as activism https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/29/photography-as-environmental-activism/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/29/photography-as-environmental-activism/#respond Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:00:57 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1059816 During his career, Dawson has worked on numerous projects dealing with the environment, many of which focused on affecting people’s perception of their environment. The use of photography as a form of communication and change is a concept he attempts to pass on to his students through teaching.

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“Photography was a hobby from early on,” said Robert Dawson, an instructor of photography who has been at Stanford for 16 years. “I got my first camera when I was about 10 and that really began a lifelong love affair with taking images.”

 

The road to becoming a photographer may have begun with an old-fashioned film camera, but Dawson’s path wasn’t always so clear. In fact, Dawson majored in psychology in his undergraduate days at UC Santa Cruz.  After a stint working in psychology, he eventually realized his true passion lay elsewhere.

 

“I was interested in the psychology of creativity–why people create,” Dawson said. “I eventually made the decision that I’d rather be creative then study people being creative.”

 

Dawson then shifted directions, going on to get his graduate degree at San Francisco State in the Interdisciplinary Creative Arts program, which allowed him to combine his interests in photography and psychology. His thesis involved the use of photography as a psycho-therapeutic tool in mental hospitals. He became a teacher, but still harbored desires to hone his photography skills.

 

Meeting renowned photographer Ansel Adams was a turning point in Dawson’s growth as a photographer.

 

“He had this policy that as a young photographer if you came to his house at five o’clock on Friday and had a cocktail with him, he’d give you feedback,” Dawson said. “He was very good for me [as] a model of how he made this idea of being a photographer work in his life.”

 

By imitating Adams, Dawson learned the craft of photography, but he eventually began to move beyond Adams’ style as he realized the full capabilities of photography as a mode of social action. His experience with the Mono Lake conservation struggle truly cemented his passion for photography.

Art as activism
Renowned photographer Robert Dawson has taught at Stanford for 16 years. (Courtesy of Robert Dawson)

 

“It was kind of this epic battle between a small group of birdwatchers and the city of L.A. over the draining of this lake and eventually the birdwatchers won, which was fantastic,” Dawson said.

 

The event made him realize how photography could be used to raise awareness of a place and as a tool for environmental and political activism.

 

Over the course of his career, Dawson has worked on numerous projects using photography to elucidate certain ideas or concepts, some of which have been featured in the Smithsonian and the Museum of Modern Art.

 

Dawson’s current “American Public Library” project aims to bridge the gaps in the divisive political and societal cultures of the United States through his portrayal of the public library institution as a unifying system. He visited 26 states, drove 11,000 miles and photographed 189 libraries while driving across the country with his son last summer for the project.

 

“One of the things I came away with was that we have much more in common as a country than what separates us,” Dawson said.

 

Some of Dawson’s other projects have included acting as photographer-in-residence for the city of San Jose, examining water pollution control. His “Farewell, Promised Land” project sought to foster appreciation for the importance of the Central Valley, where Dawson grew up.

 

The irony is that Dawson first connected to nature as a way to escape the Central Valley. As a teenager, he would go to Yosemite to find beautiful landscapes he felt were lacking at home.

 

“I felt nature was something that was pretty spectacular, and it was very moving to me,” Dawson said.

 

“I went to school at UC Santa Cruz. Built in the redwood trees, right on the edge of open meadows, you get these views of the Monterey Bay. It’s spectacular,” he added. “That was for me, the ideal.”

 

During his career, Dawson has worked on numerous projects dealing with the environment, many of which focused on affecting people’s perception of their environment. The use of photography as a form of communication and change is a concept he attempts to pass on to his students through teaching.

 

Dawson said he believes that teaching new generations to effectively use images to convey ideas is vital to the future.

 

“It’s kind of like a form of language, it’s a way of communicating ideas. We are increasingly a visually-oriented culture,” Dawson said. “Images are even more critical than what they have been in the past. This is one reason why I think our photography classes are so popular here.”

 

The introduction to photography class that Dawson teaches gives students hands-on opportunities to explore and learn photography on their own.

 

“He taught us the craft [of photography] and basically said go make art,” said Emma Joslyn ’15, a student enrolled in Dawson’s class.

 

While teaching is one means of passing on the art of photography as a tool of social activism, Dawson strives to make his unique take on the world universally accessible.

 

“I use different types of technology and different types of photography as tools,” Dawson said. “Sometimes art can be ghettoized into museums and galleries and academia and not really engaged much with the greater popular public. One reason my work tends to look the way it looks is because I like to reach a broad audience.”

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Kenneth Fields: A poetic passion https://stanforddaily.com/2012/01/30/kenneth-fields-a-poetic-passion/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/01/30/kenneth-fields-a-poetic-passion/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:02:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1056025   “You can see it’s kind of funky and disorganized, but I kind of know where things are,” said Kenneth Fields Ph.D. ’67, a longtime professor of English and creative writing. “Once in a while, I discover something I’d forgotten about.”   The room features a rustic looking armchair, an oft-used couch and a desk […]

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Kenneth Fields: A poetic passion
Kenneth Fields, a long-time Stanford professor in the English and Creative Writing Departments, attributes his success as a poet to the encouragement and inspiration from the diverse individuals he has encountered throughout his life. (Courtesy of Laura Watt)

 

“You can see it’s kind of funky and disorganized, but I kind of know where things are,” said Kenneth Fields Ph.D. ’67, a longtime professor of English and creative writing. “Once in a while, I discover something I’d forgotten about.”

 

The room features a rustic looking armchair, an oft-used couch and a desk stacked with knick knacks in charming disarray. There are books everywhere: on shelves, on the desk, on the floor. In fact, the floor space is nearly non-existent, which makes the room both look and feel even more chaotic. Also present are Fields’ energetic miniature Australian shepherds, Dot and Jinx, compounding the room’s mismatched aura of homeliness and anarchy.

 

The eccentric and cluttered nature of Fields’s office — he claims there is a trumpet stashed somewhere in the room, as well as an Australian Aboriginal didgeridoo — mirrors his unique upbringing and education, which inspires much of his writing.

 

Fields was born to a pair of farmers in Texas. He had a twin brother who died when they were only a day old.

 

“He’s buried in this little country cemetery in Texas, [and] I’ve been back there a couple of times,” he said. “It turned out that that had something to do with my psychology as it comes through in my poems.”

 

Fields moved to California as a young boy, and after finishing high school, he attended UC-Santa Barbara.

 

“I went there with no particular interests,” Fields said. “I wanted to play football; I didn’t think very far along the line –like could I be playing this when I was 70 or something.”

 

It was at UCSB that Fields found his two main passions in life, reading and writing, through the people he encountered.

 

These individuals included Homer Swander, a “wonderful” professor of Shakespeare, as well as Edgar Bowers M.A. ’49, Ph.D. ’53, a poet who studied at Stanford under the famous critic Yvor Winters. Through the encouragement of these mentors, Fields decided that he wanted to study English at Stanford.

 

After two years in the Army as part of his involvement with Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), Fields finally moved to the Farm, where he has remained for 45 years, first as a graduate student, then as a professor and poet.

“There were lots of people around who were interested in writing, and I guess I just stayed with it,” Fields said. “I thought I was good at it, and it’s what I loved doing.”

 

Fields has numerous books of poetry, including a collection of blank verse sonnets entitled “Classic Rough News.” Now, Fields is working on a novel, tentatively called “Father of Mercies.”

 

“I essentially consider myself a poet,” he said. “How I got into the novel, I don’t know — probably half of the English professors in the world have a secret novel in their desk drawers.”

 

With this breezy spirit as a writer, one might argue it follows that Fields appreciates improvisation as an important aspect of writing. In fact, improvisation is a big part of one of Fields’s other hobbies: photography.

 

“I love the sense of shooting from the hip and seeing what the camera sees as an artist,” he said.

 

At the same time, Fields’s image of himself as a writer has never been clear-cut, he said, and his encounters and relationships with a wide variety of individuals during his long tenure at Stanford have affected his perspective.

 

“Lots of different people have come and gone,” Fields said. “Just being around other writers, the combination of younger writers coming in as fellows and my colleagues, has had a big effect on how I think of myself as a writer.”

 

The most important time to Fields, however, was his years in college that sparked and nurtured his still-developing passion for writing. He holds that teachers need to model the excitement they have for their disciplines so that students can truly become enthralled by their experiences in the classroom, as he once was.

 

“The key is to look for something that moves you,” he said.

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Rollout! https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/25/rollout/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/25/rollout/#respond Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:00:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1051059 A crash, a bang, and a giggle woke Lauren Miller ’15 at 6:15 a.m. The dawn light seeped into the dorm room through the blinds as the cacophony in the hallway grew. She heard a flurry of hushed chatter before all went silent. Suddenly, the door roared with pounds and cheers of Stanford students.

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Rollout!
(SERENITY NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily)

A crash, a bang, and a giggle woke Lauren Miller ’15 at 6:15 a.m. The dawn light seeped into the dorm room through the blinds as the cacophony in the hallway grew. She heard a flurry of hushed chatter before all went silent. Suddenly, the door roared with pounds and cheers of Stanford students.

“Sweatshirt, shoes, keys!” voices outside thundered.

Dazed and confused, Miller creaked the door open. A troupe of neon and spandex-adorned people crowded her doorway. “It was so early, I couldn’t even comprehend what they could possibly be there for,” said Miller. They introduced themselves as the Frosh Council. Lauren Miller was their newest addition.

Before she could comprehend what had happened, the troupe grabbed her and darted to the next dorm. Soon enough, Miller was standing at the door of the next victim, banging and clamoring just as others had to her door.

After the Frosh Council completed their dorm-to-dorm frolic, their final task was a sprint to the quad.

There’s something about bonding in the middle of that grand courtyard that you can’t get from inside a classroom, Miller said. “It means so much more than a congratulatory e-mail.”

After getting to know her new friends from some icebreaker games, Miller ate breakfast with the rest of the Frosh Council. She appreciated the setting, the people and the early morning bonding of the Frosh Council. After finishing her breakfast at 8 AM, Miller made her trip back to her dorm to get ready for an early-morning exam. The communal craziness came to the end.

Although every group does it a little differently, the basic concept of rollout is the same: an initiation in which someone is involuntarily taken from their room and compelled to hang out with their new group. Through this initiation process, these roll outs help build a strong extracurricular foundation.

As Miller conducted her own rollouts, she came to appreciate this early-morning awakening.

She was now part of a community of people, a group committed enough to plan and perpetrate this early-morning adventure. As she became familiar with her fellow council members, she said she couldn’t help but feel a strong sense of camaraderie.

“Last year’s Frosh council did the roll-outs and they got me excited to be a part of such a committed and enthusiastic group of people,” Miller said. The upperclassmen raved about their experience in the group, recounting the friends and memories they made, all while climbing up lounge windows and crawling through laundry rooms.

Rollouts also serve to secure allegiances. Competing groups that attract the same talented candidates try to roll out individuals before other, similar groups.

“Gaieties roll outs happened on a Friday while A capella groups did roll outs the day after, on Saturday,” said Annika Grangaard ’12, Vocal Director at Gaieties. “This definitely has some impact on where people end up.”

This tradition has ensued for decades. While back for alumni weekend, Branner alumni from the late ‘80’s discussed how rollouts have changed.

In their time, rollouts were rare and reserved for special inaugurations, the alumni agreed. They were conducted, for example, when new members pledged fraternities and sororities, or when new RA’s found out about their positions. On Valentine’s Day, suited-males in the dorm would roll out pajama-clad females. They walked them to a dining hall, which they had decorated before, and enjoyed a romantic breakfast.

Apart from the excitement of it all, the origin of rollout remains a mystery. Asking various longstanding campus figures will lead to speculation, sympathy and sometimes, outright evasion. Maybe their origin is a confidential secret known only to the founders of each group. Maybe no one truly knows how or why rollouts began. In any case, rollouts are a Stanford tradition, a cultural oddity and expedient bonding opportunity that keep the Cardinal spirit alive.

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