Olivia Moore – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Tue, 21 May 2013 06:07:41 +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 Olivia Moore – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Menlo Park citizens continue to protest University development https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/20/menlo-park-citizens-continue-to-protest-university-development/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/20/menlo-park-citizens-continue-to-protest-university-development/#respond Tue, 21 May 2013 06:05:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077316 University administrators and local government officials continue to differ, meanwhile, on whether further revisions will take place before the project moves forward.

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Despite the University’s decision to modify its proposal for a mixed-use development project at 500 El Camino Real, many Menlo Park citizens remain unsatisfied with Stanford’s plan and have continued to publicly protest the project.

University administrators and local government officials continue to differ, meanwhile, on whether further revisions will take place before the project moves forward.

The revised proposal, which was released in April, featured several significant changes to the previous development plan, including the reduction of medical office space from 96,000 square feet to 27,000 square feet, the addition of 22 apartment units and revisions to the design of a public plaza.

Though these modifications addressed some of the citizens’ concerns, including the potential influx of traffic and a worsened housing deficit, Menlo Park resident Perla Ni, the spokesperson for a grassroots group called Save Menlo Park, said that the alterations were not drastic enough.

“No one was happy with those changes,” Ni said. “So many people believed that the revision was wholly inadequate to address the needs in the community.”

The revisions were presented at an April 16 Menlo Park City Council meeting that lasted until 2 a.m. At the meeting, the City Council formed a subcommittee composed of two members, Kirsten Keith and Catherine Carlton, to further explore the proposal.

Keith said one of the subcommittee’s primary responsibilities will be communicating with the many parties who have a stake in the issue.

“What I’m interested in doing is working with Stanford and our neighborhood groups to come up with something that will be a benefit for our community and for Stanford,” Keith said. “People don’t want to see vacant lots on El Camino Real. They want to see something done with those lots that is a benefit to Menlo Park.”

 

Citizens’ expectations still unfulfilled

While Keith said that she saw several significant improvements in Stanford’s most recent proposal, particularly with respect to the public plaza, Planning Commission Chair John Kadvany said that he, like Ni, had expected more revisions.

“Everybody was expecting something pretty significant there, and what Stanford has proposed is sort of a pitiful excuse for a public plaza,” Kadvany said. “In terms of public social space, it is just pathetic. That’s strong language, but vibrant public spaces and street life is what Menlo Park wants.”

According to Kadvany, citizens’ expectations were also not met with regards to the quantity of housing units and the installation of a hotel and senior living complex, which had been discussed at several informal meetings.

Kadvany noted that citizens were also disappointed with the fact that it would be difficult to integrate a bike and pedestrian tunnel into the current design.

“There is no expression here of any interest in contemporary design and planning issues. It’s really kind of appalling for a world-class university,” he said. “Really all they care about are the leases they get from the office space and the rents from the housing. This was designed by a spreadsheet in which the bottom line is what revenue this provides for Stanford.”

Kadvany’s sentiments were echoed by City Council member Rich Cline, who said that he was surprised by many components of the proposal at a City Council meeting in early April. Ni agreed that the University had “misrepresented its development intentions” to the City Council.

“The original representation they had made for the city was that this project would be for the desperately-needed housing in this area,” Ni said. “After receiving enormous concessions that are worth hundreds of million of dollars in development rights, they decided to change their use to office [space], which is nothing. Nobody needs more offices in this area. We need more housing.”

 

Compliance with the Specific Plan

Stanford’s proposal complies with the stipulations of the Specific Plan, a “framework for private and public improvements” to Menlo Park over the next few decades, according to the plan’s summary.

However, Kadvany said that compared to previous development projects, the plan allows Stanford far too much leeway, as there is no framework for a negotiation process if the proposal meets the plan’s criteria.

“We just gave the criteria with basically no control,” Kadvany said. “There is something called architectural control, which means the Planning Commission can critique the buildings in terms of aesthetics, but not a whole lot else. On the whole, all we have is this aesthetic dimension.”

Though Kadvany voted in favor of the Specific Plan, which was approved by the City Council in June 2012, he now argues that the process should have been designed to “give us a lot more control,” perhaps by creating additional review opportunities for large projects like Stanford’s proposal.

“We could have built in safeguards against the incredible leverage that Stanford now has in this project,” he said. “The basic parameters are fine, but the city has to have more control. You can’t give away all your negotiating power — it’s totally irresponsible. The idea that the City Council can live with this raises eyebrows, to say the least.”

While Kadvany suggested potentially revising the Specific Plan, Menlo Park resident Clem Molony, who said he went to “most of the meetings” during the four-year period over which the Specific Plan was formed, offered a more positive outlook on the process.

“Generally when a Specific Plan is done as carefully as ours was done, they thought about this and looked at the cumulative impact of all the development on traffic and figured out it is going to be okay,” Molony said.

Although Molony acknowledged the concerns of citizen groups like Save Menlo Park, particularly about traffic, he said he has faith that the City Council will “figure that out.”

“This proposal is being fine-tuned right now and the planning process is really robust,” he said. “The neighbors will find, once it’s built, that the impacts are not as terrible as all the exaggerators say. I am sure this is going to be a very beneficial project for Menlo Park.”

 

Obstacles to construction

As well as meeting with Stanford officials and community members, the City Council’s subcommittee will conduct a larger traffic study to analyze potential cut-through traffic impacts, which Keith said will take “many, many weeks.” The Specific Plan will also be reviewed by the City Council in June.

While Keith said that she expects more revisions to be made to the proposal, Managing Director of Development Steve Elliott emphasized that Stanford does not intend to make any more modifications based on citizen requests.

According to Elliott, Stanford officials have already met with representatives from Save Menlo Park, the Sierra Club, the Chamber of Commerce and bicycle advocates, as well as other Menlo Park citizens, and “have listened carefully to the community.”

Courtesy of Lucy Wicks
Courtesy of Lucy Wicks

“We’re not planning on making any more revisions. We are waiting for the city to do their work with their subcommittee and we are waiting to hear back on that,” Elliott said. “We still have to get architectural control approval for the project, we still have a ways to go to get approval, but we don’t have any plans at this time for an alternative project.”

However, Elliott noted that there are several more obstacles to be overcome before construction begins, including getting confirmation from the Planning Commission that the proposal is consistent with the Specific Plan, completing the traffic study, creating a housing agreement with the city and acquiring building permits.

“[The timeline is] pretty dependent on what the City Council and their subcommittee does and how quickly that moves along,” Elliott said. “There is a lot of uncertainty at this point so it is really hard to say when we might start construction, though we prefer to start it as soon as possible.”

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Researchers use metamaterials to manipulate light https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/14/researchers-use-metamaterials-to-manipulate-light/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/14/researchers-use-metamaterials-to-manipulate-light/#respond Wed, 15 May 2013 06:57:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077196 A research team led by Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Jennifer Dionne has made a significant step towards the eventual creation of an invisibility cloak, having designed a metamaterial that interacts with a wide range of wavelengths of light.

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A research team led by Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Jennifer Dionne has made a significant step towards the eventual creation of an invisibility cloak, having designed a metamaterial that interacts with a wide range of wavelengths of light.

Dionne collaborated with fourth-year doctoral student Ashwin Atre, fifth-year doctoral student Hadiseh Alaeian and postdoctoral scholar Aitzol García-Etxarri on a study published in Advanced Optical Materials detailing the team’s findings.

While the researchers’ design is new, scientists have worked with metamaterials — artificial materials that interact with light, magnetism or other natural phenomena in unusual ways — since 1999.

“A regular material derives its optical properties from the chemical nature of its constituent atoms,” Atre said. “In a metamaterial, we design the structure of these artificial atoms such that they interact with light in unnatural or extraordinary ways.”

According to García-Etxarri, Dionne’s team focused on developing a metamaterial with a negative refraction index in order to manipulate the path of light to “refract the wrong way,” which he said is not possible with regular matter.

“The index dictates how light will travel through a material, so if we can change that index or that property, we can now change how light propagates through a material,” Atre said. “That’s sort of the basis for the idea of an invisibility cloak, in that you can control light and force it to move around an object so it never interacts with the object itself.”

The research team worked on the theoretical metamaterial design for about two years, according to Atre, and the project was born out of the group’s investigation into how a crescent shape interacts with light.

Atre said that he and García-Etxarri focused on the use of a crescent shape in the design of meta-atoms, while Alaeian primarily investigated how transformation optics could be applied to the metamaterial.

“The crescent shape has been proposed in previous work because it has sharp tips and localizes the field of energy at the tips,” Alaeian said. “It utilizes the highly confined and large gradient field at the tips of the crescent.”

According to Alaeian, previously demonstrated metamaterials have mostly worked in regions of light with longer wavelengths, such as the microwave region. The metamaterial proposed by Dionne’s researchers would work with a much larger range of light wavelengths and colors.

“We were interested in creating something to work in the visible range of frequency,” she said. “Through this paper we tried to propose the idea, based on transformation optics, for the methodology of the design of these materials.”

Atre agreed that the primary challenge in developing metamaterials is determining how to allow for the material’s interaction with a wide range of electric and magnetic wavelengths, which is often prohibited by design complexities.

“To get a metamaterial to interact with everything from blue light through to red light and really cloak an object to visible light that we can see, [doing] that has remained a challenge and still is a challenge,” he said. “Our design is one step closer to that goal in that we have increased the bandwidth that it can interact with light so now it covers a bandwidth that is twice that of previous metamaterials.”

Moving forward, the group hopes to apply their theoretical design to the fabrication of an actual metamaterial. Researchers emphasized, however, that there are many barriers to be overcome before a real invisibility cloak can be created, such as fabricating the material over a large area and preventing the light that passes through the material from being diminished.

“What we did is [take] one step forward in one of the main challenges in metamaterials, which is their ability to work on a wide wavelength,” García-Etxarri said. “The applications are still very far away in terms of feasibility, but this is one step forward and we are happy with it.”

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Men’s tennis embarks on NCAA journey https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/08/mens-tennis-embarks-on-ncaa-journey/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/08/mens-tennis-embarks-on-ncaa-journey/#respond Thu, 09 May 2013 05:29:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077049 After a rocky season, the No. 40 Stanford men’s tennis team qualified for the NCAA Championships in Malibu, Calif., through an at-large bid and will face off against No. 20 LSU in the first round of the tournament this Friday.

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After a rocky season, the No. 40 Stanford men’s tennis team qualified for the NCAA Championships in Malibu, Calif., through an at-large bid and will face off against No. 20 LSU in the first round of the tournament this Friday.

Though the Cardinal has a 6-0 series record against LSU, the two teams have not played each other since 1998. LSU has a 15-11 record this season and lost in the first round

(AVI BAGLA/The Stanford Daily)
Sophomore John Morrissey has risen above the rest of the Cardinal team this season to secure the only individual spot  in the NCAA Championships. (AVI BAGLA/The Stanford Daily)

of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) Championships.

LSU has two nationally ranked singles players, No. 42 Chris Simpson and No. 91 Stefan Szacinski. The Tigers also have two ranked doubles teams: No. 31 Szacinski and Tam Trinh and No. 74 Simpson and Szacinski.

Stanford’s sophomore John Morrissey, who is currently ranked 50th, is Stanford’s only nationally ranked singles player. Morrissey and senior Denis Lin are ranked 54th in doubles.

Although Morrissey said that the outcome of the match against LSU will be “very difficult to call” since the teams play in different conferences, he believes that the Cardinal can pick up a victory if the team focuses on improving upon the momentum gained from the end of the season.

“[LSU] had some really good results this year and they are obviously a really good team with a lot of talented players,” Morrissey said. “We are going to try to build off some of the good performances we have put in towards the latter half of the year.”

While the Cardinal has a 12-11 season record and 3-4 Pac-12 record, the team’s conference matches have been against some of the toughest teams in the nation, including No. 1 UCLA and No. 4 USC.

Stanford was seeded fourth in the Pac-12 Championships in late April and fell to UCLA 4-0 in the semifinals after a 4-3 victory over No. 33 Washington in the quarterfinals. UCLA and USC automatically qualified for the NCAA

Championships after finishing first and runner-up, respectively, in the Pac-12 Championships.

“We definitely weren’t satisfied with how things went down there,” Morrissey said. “We were happy with the win against Washington, but definitely thought we could have done more against UCLA.”

The Cardinal has suffered narrow defeats against highly ranked teams, falling 4-3 to both No. 7 Pepperdine and No. 18 Berkeley at home at the end of the season, but was able to pull off decisive victories against lower-ranked or unranked teams, including Arizona, No. 73 Utah and No. 71 Pacific.

If the Cardinal advances past the first round of the NCAAs, they will play the winner of the match between Pepperdine, who is hosting the first two rounds of the tournament, and UC-Santa Barbara.

The Cardinal has played in all but four of the NCAA Championships held since 1977 and has won the tournament’s team title 15 times, with the most recent victory in 2000. Last season, the team advanced to the quarterfinals before falling 4-0 to Virginia.

Under Bradley Klahn ‘12 the team’s former No. 1 player, Stanford reached two consecutive NCAA semifinals in 2010 and 2011. Klahn also claimed the NCAA singles title in 2010 and was the runner-up doubles champion in 2011 with Ryan Thacher ‘12.

Stanford has had 14 NCAA singles champions, including Bob Bryan and John McEnroe ‘78, who won the tournament in 1998 and 1978, respectively.

“Stanford is definitely no stranger to doing well in this tournament, and I think that even though we are a young team, we feel that we can be extremely dangerous if we go out there and play with a lot of intensity,” Morrissey said.

Morrissey was the Cardinal’s only player to qualify for the individual portion of the NCAA Tournament, which will be held from May 22 to 27 in Urbana, Ill. The final rounds of the team championships will also be held in Urbana in late May.

“It’s a huge honor to qualify for that, and I’m really happy to be going to that tournament, but for the moment it is at the back of my mind,” Morrissey said. “I’m focusing on getting the team to Illinois as well, and hopefully we can all be there together.”

 

Contact Olivia Moore at omoore@stanford.edu.

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Researchers develop hybrid flow battery for renewable energy sources https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/05/researchers-develop-hybrid-flow-battery-for-renewable-energy-sources/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/05/researchers-develop-hybrid-flow-battery-for-renewable-energy-sources/#respond Mon, 06 May 2013 06:25:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076968 A team of Stanford researchers recently unveiled a new low-cost, high-capacity, hybrid flow battery that can stabilize fluctuations in wind and solar power to enable greater use of renewable energy sources.

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A team of Stanford researchers recently unveiled a new low-cost, high-capacity, hybrid flow battery that can stabilize fluctuations in wind and solar power to enable greater use of renewable energy sources.

The researchers published their findings in a study co-authored by Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Yi Cui, Yuan Yang M.S. ’10 Ph.D. ’12 and third-year doctoral candidate Wesley Zheng.

Cui, who began teaching at Stanford eight years ago, put together a research team to create innovative methods of energy storage, such as batteries for cellphones, laptops and electrical cars, as well as stationary forms of storage like solar cells and wind farms.

According to Cui, the new hybrid battery differs significantly from the traditional flow battery, which Cui described as “battery electrodes that are liquid and can flow.”

The team’s hybrid battery uses a new cathode with higher energy density and a solid as the negative electrode so that the battery only “half flows,” according to Cui. The researchers also eliminated the need for an ion-selective membrane, which is typically found in flow batteries and can be expensive.

“We potentially have four-times-higher energy compared to the other flow batteries that have already been developed,” Cui said. “[The new battery] stores a lot of charges, which is so important for solar storage to reduce the cost.”

Zheng, Yang and Cui began collaborating on the battery’s creation last year. According to Zheng, the project was born out of a discussion about how to improve lithium-sulfur batteries so that the sulfur would not dissolve into the electrolytes.

Zheng said that the battery was specifically designed to fix some of the problems found in other types of flow batteries, such as the high operating temperature of the sodium-sulfur battery.

“Most technologies have been developed a while back and have a lot of disadvantages,” Zheng said. “The system that we have developed here is trying to adjust to those problems. We are trying to apply the system at room temperature and work without the ion-selective membrane. It’s pretty promising technology.”

The battery developed by Cui’s team uses solid lithium anodes and a polysulfide catholyte in liquid form that is stored in a separate tank. Yang said that the battery’s design is unique in that the voltage range of cycling is controlled, eliminating some of the detrimental discharge effects of traditional lithium-sulfur batteries.

According to Yang, the battery is also distinguished by its high-energy density and low cost, as the materials used to create it are relatively inexpensive. Though the battery has not yet been deployed in a real energy system, Zheng estimated that it will cost $45 per kilowatt hour—less than half of the price of competing flow batteries, which can cost upwards of $100 per kilowatt hour.

“In large-scale energy storage, the most important thing is the cost and the cycle life,” Yang said. “It will stabilize the power output for renewable energy, which is its major application.”

According to Zheng, the team plans to focus on implementing the battery in solar and wind energy systems, as it could be used to store excess energy as a backup in a time of an energy deficit.

“Solar and wind energy are intermittent in nature. The disadvantage of a lot of renewable energy sources is that they cannot produce energy all the time,” Zheng said. “If you can store the energy and then produce energy from the grid, you allow these renewable energy sources to be more applicable to a lot of situations and you can allow it to play a more important role.”

Cui’s team is currently working on improving the battery’s performance, and Cui estimated that within the next three years, the team will test the battery on a real electrical grid. Cui said that he eventually hopes to make the battery available in the commercial market.

“Our plan is to understand some of the logical constraints and potential issues and then to build a bigger system so we can plug it together with the solar cell or wind device and do the real demonstration,” he said.

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Alumni Association hosts first event of Stanford+Connects tour https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/29/alumni-association-hosts-first-event-of-stanfordconnects-tour/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/29/alumni-association-hosts-first-event-of-stanfordconnects-tour/#respond Tue, 30 Apr 2013 06:13:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076837 Stanford+Connects, a four-year outreach initiative launched by the Stanford Alumni Association, recently kicked off an 18-city event tour as part of an effort to bring University content and connections to alumni communities worldwide.

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Stanford+Connects, a four-year outreach initiative launched by the Stanford Alumni Association, recently kicked off an 18-city event tour as part of an effort to bring University content and connections to alumni communities worldwide.

Courtesy of the Stanford Alumni Association
Courtesy of the Stanford Alumni Association

The tour’s first event, which took place in Scottsdale, Ariz., on April 20, featured a range of Stanford faculty and alumni speakers, including President John Hennessy and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor ’50 LLB ’52.

Approximately 300 alumni attended the five-hour event, which was hosted by Dan Klein ’90, a lecturer in the drama department and at the Graduate School of Business (GSB).

Participants listened to 10-minute micro-lectures, which Klein compared to TED talks, before attending one of four in-depth seminars led by Professor of Law Hank Greely ’74, Professor of Surgery Jill Helms, Professor Emerita of Art History Wanda Corn and Klein.

The event also featured a Q&A session with Hennessy and a discussion between O’Connor and current Law School dean Elizabeth Magill. Hennessy will attend all of the Stanford+Connects events over the next four years, traveling to cities around the world including Paris, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul, South Korea.

“We’re not fundraising, we’re friend-raising,” Klein said about the Stanford+Connects tour. “It’s about reconnecting people to Stanford, reminding them what they value in it and letting them know what’s going on today.”

Klein, who led a seminar about improvisation, has participated in events for the Alumni Association before. He became involved with Stanford+Connects last year after he was invited to a discussion about “innovative new ways” to engage alumni and help them reconnect with the Stanford community.

“I talked to some younger alumni and they said, ‘The price is kind of amazing for everything we get. We wanted to hear all the talks. It was really fun to interact with people and be here at the hotel,’” Klein said. “They seemed to all have really positive experiences.”

The Stanford+Connects initiative also includes a web component, where alumni can view Stanford-related content including articles, social media postings and videos. The website will soon host live webcasts of Stanford lectures and events.

“Stanford+Connects, as the name would suggest, is all about connection—with ideas, with fellow alumni and with the University,” wrote Howard Wolf ’80, president of the Alumni Association, in a statement. “Quite simply, Stanford+Connects will bring the best of Stanford to alumni around the world over the next four years in person and online.”

According to Wolf, Stanford’s “top faculty” will appear at Stanford+Connects events. Different faculty members will be selected for each city based on online surveys from alumni about topics that they would like to learn more about.

Wolf said that cities were chosen for the tour based on several factors, such as the size and growth of the alumni population in certain areas and the length of time since the Alumni Association last visited the region.

The next event, which will take place in Minneapolis, Minn., in May, will feature lectures by Dean of Undergraduate Admission Richard Shaw, Professor of Environmental Earth System Science Rosamond Naylor Ph.D. ’89, Professor of English Elaine Treharne and Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program Tina Seelig Ph.D. ’85.

Wolf said that while the Alumni Association has previously hosted a variety of outreach projects, he believes Stanford+Connects is unique in its “use of technology both at the events and online,” citing the use of iClickers to allow alumni to answer questions during the faculty sessions as one example of technology’s integration.

“Stanford+Connects is a more interactive outreach program than many of the past,” he wrote. “This is our attempt to mimic what is happening in many classrooms today on campus, where classrooms are being flipped and [Introductory Seminars] are some of the most popular courses at Stanford.”

Corn, who said that she has participated in many alumni lectures in the past, agreed that the Stanford+Connects event “had more variety and was faster-paced” than other alumni meetings.

After the Arizona alumni gathering expressed interest in learning more about contemporary art, Corn was invited to speak about the future of museums. She also held a seminar titled “Dressing Modern: Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Clothes.”

“I would have loved to have gone to any one of the other three breakout seminars but I had to give my own,” Corn said. “I found from talking to the alumni that they were pleased. They felt a little tugged, they said, as to which direction to go for the seminars because they found it all so interesting.”

Six student ambassadors, who also spoke to alumni about their Stanford experience, assisted the speakers and presenters. Klein, who brought two students from the Stanford Improvisers, an improvisation troupe that he coaches, said that both he and his students enjoyed attending the event.

“I loved it. It was a little bit stressful, there were 300 strangers in the audience, but it was really nicely put together and it was exciting and it was a neat location,” he said. “It was fun to get to do.”

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Morrissey follows Klahn’s big footsteps, steps up as Stanford’s new No. 1 player https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/23/morrissey-follows-klahns-big-footsteps-as-stanfords-no-1-player/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/23/morrissey-follows-klahns-big-footsteps-as-stanfords-no-1-player/#respond Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:12:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076668 With the departure of last year's two top players, men's tennis sophomore John Morrissey had big shoes to fill this season, leading a relatively young team against some of the toughest competition in the nation.

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John Morrissey had big shoes to fill on the Stanford men’s tennis team this year.

With the departure of the team’s top two players, Bradley Klahn ’12 and Ryan Thacher ’12, the sophomore stepped up to the No. 1 singles position, leading a relatively young team against some of the toughest competition in the nation.

While Klahn admitted that it “really put pressure on the entire team” when he and Thacher graduated, he was confident in Morrissey’s leadership capabilities. Klahn and Morrissey played together as a doubles team in some matches near the end of last season, giving Klahn the opportunity to pass on some of his knowledge and advice.

“[Morrissey] came to work every day and was excited to practice, and I think that’s the biggest thing about being a leader,” Klahn said. “He certainly has those characteristics of getting the work done and a great team guy and all these positives.”

(NICK SALAZAR/The Stanford Daily)
Sophomore John Morrissey (above) became the No. 1 singles player for the Cardinal with the departure of Bradley Klahn and Ryan Thacher, one of the best duos in school history. (NICK SALAZAR/The Stanford Daily)

It’s taken time for Morrissey to adapt to his role as the new team leader and No. 1 singles player, as just last spring he was playing No. 4 singles and dreaming of following in the footsteps of a confident senior with an NCAA singles title.

“Coming in as a freshman, I was playing a little bit of a follower’s role,” Morrissey said. “Brad and Ryan were our two leaders and had so much experience, so I was playing a support role and trying to do my job back there on the back courts and learn as much as I could.”

Morrissey said that adjusting to collegiate play in general has been a significant challenge, as college tennis is “completely different” from playing in the junior circuit and he has been facing tough competition at the No. 1 spot this year.

“I’m no longer playing against guys my age — I’m playing against guys who are a lot older than me,” Morrissey said. “[The coaches] taught me how to combat that and play more aggressive and change up my style.”

Klahn agreed that collegiate tennis is a “a whole different ball game,” and said that the pressure of playing in the top spot can weigh on young but experienced players like Morrissey, who may still be adjusting to the team atmosphere.

“You’re getting the best of each team every match, and you have to be really up to the task,” Klahn said. “It can set the tone for the rest of the match when the guys down at the bottom of the lineup and everyone else is just kind of looking up at you. You have to be composed and have a confident presence about you.”

While Klahn expressed confidence in Morrissey’s ability to steer the team, the Cardinal’s transition to new leadership has not come without challenges. Under Klahn, who now plays professionally, the team advanced to two straight NCAA quarterfinals and ended last year ranked ninth in the nation.

This year, the team has struggled to close out matches and will enter the Pac-12 Championships with a 3-4 conference record and a No. 42 national ranking.

Klahn has been following the team’s progress this year and said that, though this year has been a “tough time” for the team, he is optimistic that some of the closer matches will “start falling their way.”

Klahn was also impressed with Morrissey’s transition to the top position, praising his increasingly aggressive yet consistent play throughout the past two seasons.

(ALISA ROYER/The Stanford Daily)
Bradley Klahn ’12 (above) won the NCAA Singles crown as a sophomore. Though Klahn has turned pro, he continues to follow his former team closely. (ALISA ROYER/The Stanford Daily)

“[Morrissey] was always able to play really well, and I think it was just kind of gaining that belief that he could hang in there with those guys,” Klahn said. “Sometimes you may have the game to play with the top guys, but the confidence takes a little while to catch up.”

While Klahn may be traveling around the world to play in professional tournaments, he still takes time to mentor the players he left back on the Farm. Though Klahn hasn’t been able to come back to campus as often as he would like, he said that he is “always checking up” on the team, which hasn’t gone unappreciated by Morrissey.

“I still keep in touch with him, I send him messages and he watches some of my matches and gives me pointers,” Morrissey said. “He obviously has helped me a ton. I think just trying to feed off his experience and pick his brain about little things might make a huge difference in my game.”

The Cardinal’s regular season concluded with a 4-3 loss to No. 18 Cal on Saturday, and the team’s next match will come with the start of the Pac-12 Championships tomorrow. Stanford is the No. 4 seed and will be playing either Arizona or Washington, which the team defeated 6-1 and 4-3, respectively, earlier in the season.

“We know we’re a really good team, and we’ve just been a few games away from making a really big breakthrough,” Morrissey said. “We are going to go down there and hopefully make a statement and bring that forward to the NCAAs.”

Regardless of the outcome of the Pac-12 Tournament, Morrissey is looking forward to a strong season next year.

“As a team, I think there are really bright spots ahead. We are a really young team getting in a couple of good recruits next year,” Morrissey said. “I think we can look forward to a big season next year and hopefully build on everything we learned this year and the tough times and the tough losses we’ve had.”

Contact Olivia Moore at omoore ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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GSB professor studies Twitter’s value for firms, investors https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/22/gsb-professor-studies-twitters-value-for-firms-investors/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/22/gsb-professor-studies-twitters-value-for-firms-investors/#respond Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:15:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076615 Social media websites like Twitter can play a key role in increasing visibility for small businesses, according to a recent study led by Elizabeth Blankespoor, associate professor of accounting at the Graduate School of Business.

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Social media websites like Twitter can play a key role in increasing visibility for small businesses, according to a recent study led by Elizabeth Blankespoor, associate professor of accounting at the Graduate School of Business.

Blankespoor, who collaborated on the study with University of Michigan Professors of Accounting Gregory Miller and Hal White, found that companies who used Twitter to communicate with investors experienced an increase in the liquidity—the demand at market value—of their stocks.

“The big takeaway is that [Twitter] is being used as another channel to get information out, and it seems to be effective in getting information to a broader set of investors,” Blankespoor said. “This isn’t a niche area. This is something that firms can use in their normal investor communication, in combination with other ways to disclose information.”

Blankespoor emphasized that, while other researchers have studied how social media can be used to predict market returns, her team’s approach was “pretty unique” in focusing on the impact of social media in market communications.

The researchers first discussed the project in March 2009 when Blankespoor, at the time a second-year Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, offered to help Miller with research.

Once Miller, Blankespoor and White realized a shared interest in how firms communicate with their investors, the trio decided to look into the impact of relatively new forms of communication.

“We were just talking about some of the interesting changes that are occurring, and the assumptions that people make about how communication flows but how technology could change that,” Miller said. “Through those discussions, we started thinking about how this new way of being able to reach out and connect with your investors can really change things.”

The trio chose to focus on Twitter because Blankespoor said that the social media platform “really started taking off and getting a lot of attention,” and had also received coverage in investor relations publications.

“Our first response was, ‘Twitter, really? That can be used for investor relations?’” Blankespoor said. “We went and just started investigating it because we wanted to understand if this is really something that is being used and can be useful for firms.”

The team collected data from mid- to late 2009. According to Miller, collecting data from financial markets was relatively easy, but gathering Twitter data was “one of the big challenges in the paper.”

“We had to go out and learn about the structure of Twitter [and] how they kept the data,” he said. “Basically we did a combination of setting up computer programs to help pull the data down, and also used hand-collection processes where we hired [University of Michigan] students to go collect some of the data as [research assistants].”

The team presented the first version of their paper at colleges and universities across the world, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the London Business School.

Miller said that, after receiving feedback on the initial paper, the team collected more data on items such as whether links posted on Twitter impacted website traffic. In the second round of tests and analysis, the researchers focused on the benefits of using Twitter for smaller firms.

“If you’re just a slightly smaller firm, visibility issues kick in relatively soon in market cap,” Miller said. “They can’t be sure when they put information out that it is getting to everyone they want it to. What we saw was the benefits [from using Twitter] really come in for these mid-size or smaller firms.”

While Miller and Blankespoor said that their conclusions indicate that all firms should consider using social media websites like Twitter, they emphasized that their study, which will likely be published in The Accounting Review in January 2014, also offers implications for investors.

“They might want to get on Twitter, too, because this is a way to lower their search costs to get information about firms and increase the investment set that they can follow,” Miller said. “They can feel more certain about following smaller firms, and not worry that they are not getting information about them.”

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Fantasy Stock Exchange winners use trading algorithm https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/16/fantasy-stock-exchange-winners-use-trading-algorithm/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/16/fantasy-stock-exchange-winners-use-trading-algorithm/#respond Wed, 17 Apr 2013 05:34:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076504 The top three competitors in this year’s Stanford Women in Business (SWIB) Fantasy Stock Exchange (FSE) used a trading algorithm for the first time in the competition's history, allowing them to make thousands of trades and achieve daily rates of return above 20 percent.

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The top three competitors in this year’s Stanford Women in Business (SWIB) Fantasy Stock Exchange (FSE) used a trading algorithm for the first time in the competition’s history, allowing them to make thousands of trades and achieve daily rates of return above 20 percent.

The algorithm, which was created by Andrew Han ’16, Jessica Xu ’16 and Miraj Rahematpura ’16 during spring break, was applied towards the end of the 10-week competition. Han, Xu and Rahematpura were propelled to the top of the leaderboard, displacing competitors who had been in the lead for weeks.

Each of the 135 competitors was initially given $1,000,000 to make virtual trades. Han placed first with total returns of $509,750.42, winning a $300 prize from SWIB. Rahematpura came in second and won a $200 prize for his returns of $421,925.43, and Xu placed third with $397,832.56 in total returns, winning $100. The fourth place competitor, Lucas Thompson ’16, had total returns of $240,398.16.

According to Han, the algorithm is programmed to purchase high volumes of cheap and volatile stocks, such as Zynga and Groupon, wait for small gains in the price and sell the stocks to profit off these price increases.

“We found stocks that were really volatile so they were constantly changing, and since the computer could constantly update it while we couldn’t ourselves, that’s why our stocks went up a lot more than if we did it by hand,” Xu explained.

Han, Xu and Rahematpura each played a different role in the algorithm’s development, with Xu researching stocks, Han writing code and Rahematpura doing the mathematical calculations. While the three used similar algorithms, they invested in different stocks and made different numbers of trades.

“The algorithm would look at stock prices, and if certain conditions held, it would buy. If certain conditions held, it would sell,” Han said. “It was sort of a learning experience for us, too. [Xu] selected a couple of stocks and we would each choose different ones that would interface with whatever combination of algorithms that we had set.”

Though Han said that he would understand if other competitors were “a little miffed” by the use of the algorithm, Thompson, who had been in the lead for four weeks before the last week of the game, thought the algorithm was fair.

“I think if you can come up with a trading algorithm that works that well, that’s awesome,” Thompson said. “Clearly it worked extremely well. If you are willing to put that amount of effort into it to come up with something like that, I have no problem with that.”

Sohaib Shaikh’16, who came in sixth in the competition, said that creating algorithms is “really what a lot of the stock market has become nowadays.”

“It is honestly about who can develop the fastest algorithm,” he said. “In the game, sure, I think it’s a completely reasonable thing for people to use [algorithms]. It is an opportunity for them to test these algorithms.”

According to Paige Gonye ’14, director of FSE, the use of a trading algorithm in the FSE is “unprecedented.” After speaking with Han, Xu and Rahematpura to ensure that they had each contributed to the algorithm, Gonye determined that the use of the algorithm, though unconventional, was fair.

“We were definitely surprised, but true to Stanford fashion there is always a new approach that students are willing to experiment with,” Gonye said. “Because they were able to prove that they each contributed something to the project and they each have said exactly what they contributed, they are entitled to the prizes.”

While Gonye said that Han, Xu and Rahematpura earned their prizes, she noted that SWIB will likely restructure the game in future years, either limiting the number of trades or creating two games—one where the use of algorithms is encouraged and one where a long-term strategy is emphasized.

“The game has continued to change and evolve over the years, but this is going to probably be a larger change than we would have made,” Gonye said. “We are trying to teach students who aren’t as sophisticated necessarily, and we want to make the game fair.”

Han said that he would participate in the game next year if SWIB decides to offer a second game that encourages the use of algorithms. However, he said that that he would be wary of using trading algorithms again in the normal competition.

“It’s kind of like a weapons of mass destruction kind of thing, one or two weeks of running the program and there’s no point in even trying anymore,” Han said. “To preserve [SWIB’s] purpose, which is to teach people the basics of investing, I wouldn’t join it.”

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Endorsing groups choose ASSU candidates https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/10/endorsing-groups-choose-assu-candidates/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/10/endorsing-groups-choose-assu-candidates/#comments Thu, 11 Apr 2013 05:18:54 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076329 As students prepare to vote in this week’s ASSU elections, some voters’ decisions will be informed by candidate endorsements from influential student groups.

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As students prepare to vote in this week’s ASSU elections, some voters’ decisions will be informed by candidate endorsements from influential student groups.

According to ASSU Assistant Financial Manager Stephen Trusheim ’13 M.S. ’14, receiving endorsements can be “path-altering” for a candidate, as endorsing groups often sway the votes of large contingents of students.

“It’s important for someone in a community to know who the people are that they can vote for who are going to support their issues,” Trusheim said. “It’s a very difficult thing to wade through 30 or 40 candidates’ platforms and figure out who is actually going to represent the issues that they care about.”

ASSU Undergraduate Senate candidate Brandon Caruso ’16, who was endorsed by the Students of Color Coalition (SOCC), Stanford Democrats, Jewish Student Association (JSA) and Queer Coalition, said that he applied for endorsements because they are “logistically very helpful” in reaching out to voters.

“When you are speaking to individuals in the dining halls or after class in their dorms, they recognize [the endorsing group] right away,” Caruso said. “Once you are elected, you stand to be [the endorsing group’s] presence in the ASSU, to make sure that [the] conversation and agenda does bring up the issues that are important to the various groups and can be represented fully in the Senate.”

 

Students of Color Coalition

SOCC has historically been one of the most successful endorsing groups. Last year, all 12 Senate candidates endorsed by SOCC were elected. In 2011, 12 of the 15 SOCC-endorsed candidates were elected, and in 2010, 10 of the 12 SOCC candidates were elected. The last four Executive slates endorsed by SOCC have also been victorious.

“SOCC has been the group to apply for, for the last three years now. They do a great job in mobilizing their base for support,” Trusheim said. “Last year, a lot of candidates who didn’t get the SOCC endorsement dropped out, because they just didn’t have the time to go up against that kind of ready-made network of people who will vote for you.”

This year, SOCC endorsed Najla Gomez ’14 and Elizabeth Patiño ’14 for Executive, and Abby Dow ’16, Angela Zhang ’16, Annalis Breed ’16, Avery Haskell ’16, Brandon Caruso ’16, Eilaf Osman ’16, Hisham Al-Falih ’16, John-Lancaster Finley ’16, Natasha Patel ’16, Ryan Matsumoto ’16 and Zane Hellmann ’16 for Senate.

 

Jewish Student Association

The Jewish Student Association (JSA) endorsed Dan Ashton ’14 and Billy Gallagher ’14 for Executive. According to JSA President Marty Zack ’14, Gomez and Patiño did not submit an endorsement application and “acknowledged they overlooked it” in an email to the group after the deadline had passed.

Gallagher is a Daily staffer and Ashton is a member of The Daily’s Board of Directors.

Zack said that he believes Gallagher and Ashton have “really excellent qualifications” for the position, referencing their “wide and deep involvement in campus activities and their commitment to Stanford.”

The JSA endorsed Brianna Brown ’16, Ben Holston ’15, Nikos Liodakis ’16, Zachary Johnson ’16, Caruso, Matsumoto, Patel, Hellmann, Dow, Breed and Finley for Senate.

“Our goals are often less specific than they are about developing a relationship with the candidates,” Zack said. “We had a few people from our own community run this year, so we were particularly excited to endorse them, especially given that the Jewish community did not have a senator in the last year.”

 

Stanford Democrats

The Stanford Democrats, the largest political group on campus, endorsed Gomez and Patiño for Executive, and endorsed Caruso, Patel, Dow, Finley and Johnson for Senate.

Nick Ahamed ’15, co-president of the Stanford Democrats, said that the group received applications from 11 Senate candidates and both Executive slates this year. Candidates were chosen based on a written application and short interview.

“First and foremost, we are looking for someone who represents progressive ideology,” Ahamed said. “Beyond that, we look for people who have specific ideas of what they want to get done as well as experience working with the ASSU.”

According to Ahamed, the Stanford Democrats placed a new emphasis this year on candidates who sought a sustained relationship with the group, as a precursor to the group becoming more involved with the Senate next year.

Ahamed noted that the endorsing panel had been impressed by Gomez and Patiño’s “activist background,” and referenced Dow’s plan to expand the Leland Scholars Program as particularly notable.

 

First-Generation Low Income Partnership

The First-Generation Low Income Partnership (FLIP) also endorsed Gomez and Patiño for Executive, and endorsed Dow, Breed, Lancaster-Finley, Al-Falih, Patel, Brown, Holston and Liodakis for Senate.

All FLIP-endorsed candidates, including nine Senate candidates and the Executive slate, were elected last year. According to FLIP president Jennifer Telschow ’13, FLIP looks for a firm commitment to the group’s issues and constituents when distributing endorsements.

“We try to figure out how much they know about our community,” she said. “They can say they want to help our community, but if they don’t know anything about it, if they don’t know anything about our group or the office we work with, then we kind of start to question if they could actually serve us and if they actually want to serve us.”

According to Telschow, Gomez and Patiño were the only Executive slate to apply for FLIP’s endorsement. Gallagher wrote in an email to The Daily that he and Ashton chose not to apply for the FLIP endorsement because Gomez was listed as the group’s contact on the Election Commission’s website.

Telschow said that Gomez has been a member of the FLIP Core for two years, and has shown a “dedication to our mission.”

“Even in their other groups that are not connected to FLIP, they are always advocating for our community and for first-generation low income issues,” Telschow said. “We’re pretty confident that they would represent our community and allow our voices to be heard, if they were elected.”

 

The Stanford Review

The Stanford Review endorsed Ashton and Gallagher for Executive, and Dow, Breed, Haskell, Matsumoto, Shivani Baisiwala ’16 (who is no longer listed on the petitions.stanford.edu website) and Revanth Kosaraju ’16 for Senate.

Judith Romea ’14, editor in chief of The Review, said that The Review’s application asked candidates about their views on “hot-button issues” on campus—such as wellness, diversity, free speech and ASSU funds—and sought candidates who would promote a simple yet effective ASSU.

“We want someone who can look at the existing student government and think, ‘Where can we find synergies within the existing structures already, and use this to solve the issues that are most relevant to the student body?’” Romea said. “We believe that Dan Ashton and Billy Gallagher are the candidates best equipped to do that.”

Romea noted that The Review was particularly wary of candidates who suggested the creation of advisory organizations that would further contribute to the ASSU’s bureaucratic nature.

“Other candidates are promising the creation of nice-sounding boards or institutions or groups, but as The Review, we have the opinion that a larger, more complicated ASSU doesn’t necessarily translate into a more effective ASSU,” she said.

 

Other endorsements

In addition to JSA and The Stanford Review, Gallagher and Ashton received the endorsement of the Stanford Student Freedom Project (SSFP), Club Sports and The Daily.

Gomez and Patiño were endorsed by the Green Alliance for Innovative Action (GAIA), iThrive, the Women’s Coalition, the Queer Coalition and the SSFP, as well as SOCC, FLIP and Stanford Democrats.

The Queer Coalition also endorsed Osman, Holston, Breed and Caruso for Senate.

Update: The Queer Coalition has included its list of endorsed candidates and the article has been updated to include those notes.

Correction: In a previous version of this article, The Daily omitted the fact that the Gomez-Patiño Executive slate was also endorsed by iThrive. The Daily regrets this error.

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Men’s tennis falls below .500 in home loss to No. 7 Pepperdine https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/10/mens-tennis-falls-below-500-in-home-loss-to-no-7-pepperdine/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/10/mens-tennis-falls-below-500-in-home-loss-to-no-7-pepperdine/#respond Thu, 11 Apr 2013 04:27:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076348 No. 41 Stanford fell 3-4 to No. 7 Pepperdine in a non-conference match on Wednesday, dropping the doubles point for the first time in five matches but picking up half of the singles matches en route to a close defeat.

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No. 41 Stanford fell 3-4 to No. 7 Pepperdine in a non-conference match on Wednesday, dropping the doubles point for the first time in five matches but picking up half of the singles matches en route to a close defeat.

Sophomore Robert Stineman lost Wednesday's decisive match against Pepperdine's Finn Tearney. (MADELINE SIDES/The Stanford Daily)
Sophomore Robert Stineman lost Wednesday’s decisive match against Pepperdine’s Finn Tearney. (MADELINE SIDES/The Stanford Daily)

The Cardinal now has an 8-9 overall record going into the end of the season, while the Waves are 19-4 with a nine-match winning streak.

“Obviously we’re disappointed because we lost and it was very close, but at the same time we know that we can compete with these top-10 teams right down to the wire, as we did today,” said sophomore Robert Stineman. “Unfortunately, we didn’t pull it out and we’re all pretty bummed about it, but moving forward it’s good to know that we are right there with these guys.”

Though the Cardinal has won the doubles point against some of the nation’s best teams, including No. 2 UCLA and No. 4 USC, the team struggled to pull off doubles’ victories against Pepperdine.

Stanford started the match with a No. 3 doubles win, as juniors Jamin Ball and Daniel Ho picked up an 8-5 victory against Pepperdine’s Mousheg Hovhannisyan and David Sofaer.

Next to finish was No. 1 doubles, where sophomore John Morrissey and senior Denis Lin fell 9-8 in a close match to Sebastian Fanselow and Francis Alcantara. The Cardinal lost the doubles point after freshman Maciek Romanowicz and sophomore Robert Stineman were defeated 8-5 by Pepperdine’s Finn Tearney and Alex Sarkissian.

“In all honesty, we should have won the doubles point. There is no reason why we shouldn’t have won it,” Stineman said. “We played good doubles today, we put ourselves in a position to win but just didn’t get it done, which is, in the end, why we lost.”

Stanford’s singles players started strong with victories in the bottom half of the lineup. On court No. 5, freshman Trey Strobel defeated Hovhannisyan 6-3, 6-4, and Lin defeated Sofaer 7-5, 6-1 at No. 6 singles.

However, these wins were quickly followed by losses at No. 2 singles, where Romanowicz fell to Tearney 6-3, 6-1, and No. 1 singles, where Morrissey was defeated 6-4, 6-4 by Fanselow.

Though the Cardinal had a chance to win if the remaining singles players pulled out victories, Pepperdine took the match on court No. 3, where Sarkissian defeated Stineman 6-3, 6-4. The last match to finish was No. 4 singles, where junior Daniel Ho defeated Alcantara in a close 7-5, 1-6, 6-4 battle.

This weekend, the Cardinal will face unranked Arizona and No. 73 Utah at home in Pac-12 conference matches. Stanford is currently 1-3 in Pac-12 play.

Stanford will play Arizona, who it defeated 5-2 last season, on Friday. The Wildcats have a 10-10 overall record and a 0-4 record in Pac-12 play after being defeated by No. 2 UCLA, No. 3 USC, No. 30 Oregon and No. 44 Washington.

“They’re a good team,” said Stineman about Arizona. “I don’t really know too much about them, but Pac-12 has been doing well overall this year. We won’t take them lightly by any means. It should be a good match.”

No. 75 Utah has a 1-3 Pac-12 record, with losses against No. 2 UCLA, No. 4 USC and No. 31 Washington and a victory against No. 43 Oregon. The Cardinal fell to Oregon last weekend but was able to pull out a 4-3 victory against Washington.

The Cardinal has performed well historically against Utah, having lost to the Utes only once in a 31-match series. Stanford clinched a close 4-3 victory over Utah on the road last year.

Stanford will face off against No. 66 Pacific on April 16 before the team’s last Pac-12 match on April 20 against No. 16 Berkeley. Stineman was optimistic about the team’s rematch against Cal after Stanford fell to Berkeley 2-5 earlier in the season and believes they can “absolutely” pull out a victory.

“We’re right in there with the top teams, and Berkeley is one of the teams that we really feel confident about our chances with,” Stineman said. “We couldn’t quite pull it out last time but we have improved a lot since then. We are looking forward to a really good battle with them.”

Contact Olivia Moore at omoore “at” stanford.edu.

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ASSU Senate discusses potential for senators to study abroad https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/10/assu-senate-discusses-potential-for-senators-to-study-abroad/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/10/assu-senate-discusses-potential-for-senators-to-study-abroad/#respond Wed, 10 Apr 2013 08:00:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076317 At their last meeting before the ASSU’s spring elections, the ASSU Undergraduate Senate debated the possibility of altering the body’s bylaws to allow future senators to study abroad during their term.

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At their last meeting before the ASSU’s spring elections, the ASSU Undergraduate Senate debated the possibility of altering the body’s bylaws to allow future senators to study abroad during their term.

According to Senator Viraj Bindra ’15, the debate first arose in the new subcommittee focused on facilitating the transition to next year’s Senate. Bindra said that the committee’s purpose is to generate recommendations for policy objectives for future senators, as well as to enable a smooth transition after the elections.

At a straw poll at the end of the meeting, senators Daniela Olivos ’15, Branden Crouch ’14, Brandon Hightower ’15 and Bindra said that they were open to the idea of letting senators study abroad during spring quarter.

However, other senators had reservations, bringing up logistical issues such as determining which senators could study abroad and whether senators abroad would be excluded from the Senate or offered the opportunity to remotely participate in meetings.

While Senator Anna Brezhneva ’15 said she believed the proposal would encourage more candidates to run for Senate, she believed it would have a negative impact on the Senate as a whole.

“At the end of the day, I think it is a bad idea because you can never predict the people who are going to leave or take a leave of absence,” she said. “I think it is important when you are running for Senate that you are committing to the full year, like we all did.”

ASSU Assistant Financial Manager Stephen Trusheim ’13 M.S. ’14 also expressed concerns about the proposal, citing the importance of having senators in attendance during the transition period in the spring.

Trusheim said that a proposed constitutional amendment reserving Senate seats for upperclassmen might help solve the historic underrepresentation of juniors and seniors, and suggested that if the amendment passes, the Senate “try that out” before making other changes.

Senator Shahab Fadavi ’15 agreed, arguing that while allowing some members of class president slates to study abroad works because their workload is more “seasonal,” senators need to be on campus at all times.

“We have a constant level of work, regardless of whether it is fall or winter or spring quarter,” he said. “I would say maybe even more so in spring quarter, because we have to help the next class of senators transition.”

The Senate did not come to a consensus on the issue, and agreed to continue discussion in future meetings.

Earlier in the meeting, Trusheim informed senators that fee waivers are currently above 10 percent for most special fees student groups, with between 700 and 800 undergraduate students waiving fees for all or most special fees groups.

According to Trusheim, this waiver rate is the “highest it’s been during a normal, average quarter” in his time at Stanford, though he said that the additional waivers will not affect the active budgets of groups unless they have no reserve funds.

“We’re not talking about tremendous amounts of money,” Trusheim said. “It’s probably not a big deal for most groups, but I don’t know if groups have budgeted down to every penny.”

Graduate Student Council (GSC) member Sjoerd De Ridder Ph.D.’13 also appeared at the meeting to present a bill to the Senate that, if approved, would allow the GSC to withdraw $5,000 from the Graduate Buffer Fund to advertise a concert at Frost Ampitheater in May.

Because only eight of the 13 remaining senators were present at the meeting, senators were confused about whether or not they had quorum to vote on the bill, and decided to put the bill on previous notice for a vote next week.

After a two-minute recess, senators decided that enough members were present to vote on funding bills, and approved $45,588.63 in general fees allocations and special fees modifications for 15 student groups.

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Proposed amendment to ASSU Constitution marks rare opportunity https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/08/executive-candidates-propose-amendment-to-assu-constitution/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/08/executive-candidates-propose-amendment-to-assu-constitution/#respond Tue, 09 Apr 2013 04:40:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076258 This week’s ASSU elections will mark not only the selection of the University’s student government representatives but also the opportunity to for students to amend—for only the ninth time in over 40 years—the ASSU Constitution.

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This week’s ASSU elections will mark not only the selection of the University’s student government representatives but also the opportunity to for students to amend—for only the ninth time in over 40 years—the ASSU Constitution.

This year’s proposed amendment, put forward by Executive candidates Dan Ashton ’14 and Billy Gallagher ’14, would reserve a given number of seats in the ASSU Undergraduate Senate for sophomore and junior candidates. If the amendment passes, the Senate will be responsible for determining in their Bylaws how many seats will be set aside.

Gallagher is a Daily staffer, and Ashton is a member of The Daily’s Board of Directors.

Gallagher said that he and Ashton proposed the amendment to help solve the historical problem of underrepresentation for upperclassmen in the Senate, which some current and former ASSU officers believe impedes the Senate’s effectiveness.

“I would say that the average student, especially upperclassmen, doesn’t feel like the Senate accurately or fairly represents them,” Gallagher said. “[Most senators] get elected as freshmen, and by the time they learn how the Senate works and how the school really works, it’s probably mid-fall, and by the time they are able to start working on effective change, they are almost done.”

The Senate and the Graduate Student Council (GSC) both approved the amendment for the ballot last month. If passed by two-thirds of the undergraduate population in this week’s election and if approved by either the Board of Trustees or by President John Hennessy acting on the trustees’ behalf, the amendment will go into effect.

“The [amendment’s] goal, which is to change the culture that Senate is a freshman-oriented activity, is really great,” said Senator Daniela Olivos ’15, who voted in favor of putting the amendment on the ballot. “Having to think about how Senate is more freshmen[-dominated] is a really great way to talk about this issue.”

While Olivos was strongly in favor of the amendment, some senators were less confident that it should be adopted.

“I thought there was sufficient rationale behind it to warrant referendum,” said Senator Viraj Bindra ’15, who voted in favor of the amendment. “Even by the end [of the debate], I don’t think I had a firm idea of whether or not it should definitely be implemented, but even if it was I realize there are some controls that the Senate as a body has over it, and it made enough logical sense to be put to a vote by the student body.”

Constitutional amendments are eligible to be placed on the spring ballot if they receive approval from two-third of each legislative body, or if a petition in support of the amendment signed by at least five percent of the student body is submitted to the Elections Commission.

A second proposed amendment

Gallagher and Ashton also proposed a second amendment that will not appear on the ballot, as it was withdrawn from the Senate’s consideration on March 12. The amendment originally outlined the creation of a President’s Discretionary Fund that would receive unspent money collected through student fees. The fund could then be spent at the discretion of the ASSU President.

Before withdrawing the amendment, Gallagher and Ashton revised it to stipulate that the unspent fees would instead be collected in an Undergraduate Fee Reserves Fund, with the Senate and Executive collaboratively determining the funds’ allocation.

Financial officers from various student groups spoke against the amendment at the Senate’s March 12 meeting, arguing that special fees groups sometimes need to draw into their reserve funds for last-minute events.

Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) CEO Neveen Mahmoud ’11 also argued against the passage of the bill, although she agreed that “unspent student fees are really problematic.”

“Written as is, I would be uncomfortable moving it forward without, at the very, very least, an explicit agreement about how the process will take form moving forward,” Mahmoud said.

In a recent interview, Gallagher said that he and Ashton plan to solicit student feedback and discuss the issue with the legislative bodies, and may attempt to petition 15 percent of the student body to hold a special election for a revised version of the amendment this spring.

“It’s definitely a good thing that we tabled it, because it wasn’t ready and it wouldn’t have been right to pass it yet,” Gallagher said. “But we got the discussion rolling, and that is a really good thing.”

History of constitutional amendments

The current ASSU Constitution was approved in 1969, and amendments have been passed by the student body and approved by the University President or Board of Trustees in eight elections since then. The majority of constitutional amendments were approved in the 1980s and 1990s.

The last successful constitutional amendments were passed in 2007, with the support of 94.09 percent of graduate student voters and 83.17 percent of undergraduate voters.

The first amendment stipulated that if no candidate slate received the majority of votes, the winner of the election would be decided by the “Instant Runoff Voting” procedure, and the second stated that the ASSU President and Vice President could be removed from office by a four-fifths vote from both the Senate and the GSC.

The third amendment, which was rejected by President Hennessy, would have inserted the phrase “that portion” into a clause regarding the approval of the ASSU’s budget.

Last spring, the Governing Documents Commission, chaired by outgoing ASSU President Michael Cruz ’12 and Senate parliamentarian Alex Kindel ’14, proposed a complete overhaul of the Constitution.

According to former senator Brianna Pang ’13, a special contributor to the proposed Constitution, the proposal included updates to “reflect current times,” as well as cleaner language and a specific change to align Stanford’s standard of proof policy with federal law.

The proposed Constitution also provided for the creation of the ASSU Student Legislature, which would have combined the Senate and GSC, and the ASSU Steering Committee, which would have coordinated the activities of the ASSU governing bodies and the administration.

After extensive criticism from former ASSU Executives and Senators materialized, focusing on the lack of a review period and the near-complete removal of protections afforded students accused of Fundamental Standard violations, the Senate and GSC both failed to provide the necessary two-thirds approval for the revised Constitution to appear on the spring ballot.

“After getting feedback from people and debating a lot of the issues and making it available to the public, it just fell behind the timeline, and then the next Senate never picked it up again,” Pang said. “There were just a lot of things that people disagreed on. Both legislative bodies came to the conclusion that we just weren’t ready for it.”

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Card tennis seeks first conference win https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/05/card-tennis-seeks-first-conference-win/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/05/card-tennis-seeks-first-conference-win/#respond Fri, 05 Apr 2013 07:02:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076185 Stanford (7-7, 0-2 Pac-12) hopes to earn its first conference win after back-to-back losses against No. 3 USC and No. 2 UCLA last weekend.

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The No. 47 Stanford men’s tennis team will battle No. 30 Washington and No. 44 Oregon on the road this weekend in the Cardinal’s first away matches since the Pacific Coast Doubles Tournament in early March.

Stanford (7-7, 0-2 Pac-12) hopes to earn its first conference win after back-to-back losses against No. 3 USC and No. 2 UCLA last weekend. The Cardinal will face off against Washington on Friday and Oregon on Saturday before returning home for five consecutive matches at the Taube Family Tennis Stadium to end the Pac-12 season.

Men's Tennis Vs. TCU
Sophomore Robert Stineman (above) said his squad is looking forward to the final month of the season. (Madeline Sides/THE STANFORD DAILY)

“We’re really excited for this last month. I think we’re really getting better every day in practice, and in matches we are playing better and better,” said sophomore Robert Stineman. “Hopefully, we can have a good start to the spring quarter this weekend.”

Sophomore John Morrissey, who plays No. 1 singles and doubles, said that while the team has enjoyed playing at home, the players are looking forward to this weekend’s away matches.

“It’s really different to play away, you travel and get close with the team, and I think we are really excited to go and prove a point that we can do something away,” he said. “Obviously, it’s been great to play a lot of matches at home too, but it is just a different dimension.”

Washington, which owns a 15-6 season record and a 2-0 Pac-12 record, defeated No. 71 Arizona and No. 75 Utah on the road last weekend and is currently on a six-match victory streak. The Huskies are tied with UCLA for first place in the Pac-12 standings.

“Washington’s a great team. They’ve got a lot of good players,” Stineman said. “We’re expecting a very tough match. We’re going to go out there with the same kind of intensity we had against the L.A. schools.”

Though Washington has a 4-36 series record against the Cardinal and was defeated 7-0 by Stanford last year, the Huskies hope to benefit from their home-court advantage.

“They are a very good team with a lot of good players, and we’re playing up in their house, so we’ll see how it goes,” Morrissey said. “We’re going to take it match by match and focus on the little things, and hopefully the result will take care of itself at the end of the day.”

The Cardinal can expect a challenge from national No. 21 Kyle McMorrow, who has won his last ten matches at No. 1 singles for the Huskies. McMorrow will likely face off against Morrissey, who is ranked 54th nationally.

“I know he’s a very good player and he’s obviously had some really good results, too, so I’m just going to go out there and try to do what I’ve been working on,” Morrissey said.

Following the match against the Cardinal, Washington will host No. 21 Berkeley on Saturday. Oregon will also face off against Cal on Friday before their match against Stanford on Saturday.

While Oregon has a 1-1 Pac 12 record, with a 5-2 loss to Utah and a 6-1 win against Arizona last weekend, the Ducks have a 14-3 season record and are currently 11-0 at home.

Though the Cardinal blanked Oregon last year—and has a 26-0 series record against the Ducks—Oregon boasts an extremely strong doubles lineup this year, with 14-1, 13-1 and 10-1 records for No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 doubles, respectively. The team has not lost a doubles point this season.

“Oregon is better than they have been in years past, so they are going to be a tough team to beat,” Stineman said, noting that if the Cardinal focuses on each match and brings a high level of energy, he believes they are “going to be fine.”

Morrissey agreed, referencing Stanford’s recent victories in doubles against UCLA and USC as proof that the team can “play and beat some of the best doubles teams in the country.” Morrissey added that the team is very optimistic about their remaining matches this season.

“In comparison to the start of the season, I feel like the team has improved a lot,” he said. “The freshmen have gained a lot of experience, and we’re going to need to use that experience when we are away on the road this weekend against two very difficult schools.”

Contact Olivia Moore at omoore’at’stanford.edu.

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Class2Go to merge with edX in open source online learning platform https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/02/class2go-to-merge-with-edx-in-open-source-online-learning-platform/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/02/class2go-to-merge-with-edx-in-open-source-online-learning-platform/#respond Wed, 03 Apr 2013 05:35:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076106 University administrators have announced plans to merge Class2Go, Stanford’s online course platform, with edX, a nonprofit online learning enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), producing a joint open source online learning platform that will first be available in June.

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University administrators have announced plans to merge Class2Go, Stanford’s online course platform, with edX, a nonprofit online learning enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), producing a joint open source online learning platform that will first be available in June.

The merger represents an emerging collaboration between the University and edX with the goal of developing a “massive free open source online learning platform for any university in the world,” according to a statement by University spokesperson Lisa Lapin.

Anant Agarwal, president of edX, expressed excitement about working with Stanford.

“It has been our vision to offer our platform as open source since edX’s founding by Harvard and MIT,” Agarwal told The Stanford Report. “We are now realizing that vision, and I am pleased to welcome Stanford University, one of the world’s leading institutions of higher education, to further this global open source solution.”

EdX, which was launched in fall 2012, currently hosts free online courses from Harvard, MIT and the University of California, Berkeley. The platform has announced plans to incorporate material from Wellesley, Georgetown and the University of Texas system in fall 2013, and will expand to feature international universities beginning in 2014.

On June 1, 2013, edX will become an open source platform, making its source code available to the public through the Platform Repository. Features from Class2Go, which has been an open source platform since Jan. 2013, will be integrated into the edX platform.

According to Vice Provost for Online Learning John Mitchell, Stanford’s Class2Go development team has been working with representatives from edX to ensure that the codes will be synchronized and the two platforms easily merged.

While administrators plan to focus future platform development on the new collaboration with edX, Stanford courses will still be offered on other platforms such as Coursera and iTunes U.

“We will continue to use multiple online learning platforms and determine which platform and approach best serves the educational goals put forward by our faculty and what best matches their interests,” Mitchell told The Stanford Report. “But we will focus our development efforts on a single, open source platform which makes the most efficient use of our time and resources.”

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Code.org video causes controversy among students, professors https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/02/code-org-video-causes-controversy-among-students-professors/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/02/code-org-video-causes-controversy-among-students-professors/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 05:33:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076104 A video produced by Code.org—a nonprofit foundation dedicated to increasing computer literacy—lamenting a lack of high school programming courses has sparked interest and controversy among students and professors, with some expressing concern that computer science (CS) has attained too prominent a role at Stanford.

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A video produced by Code.org—a nonprofit foundation dedicated to increasing computer literacy—lamenting a lack of high school programming courses has sparked interest and controversy among students and professors, with some expressing concern that computer science (CS) has attained too prominent a role at Stanford.

The video, which describes coding as a “superpower,” has been viewed over 10 million times since it was uploaded in February. It features Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, musician Will.i.am and basketball player Chris Bosh—among other prominent individuals—speaking about their experiences with coding.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Mehran Sahami ’92 M.S.’93 Ph.D.’99, who serves on the Code.org advisory board, said that the video was created to increase awareness of the need for computer-literate workers as well as to demonstrate the empowering nature of programming skills for the broad range of individuals featured.

“The whole message there is that the ability to program or understand principles from computing is something that is really needed on a broad basis,” Sahami said. “In the same way that we think about reading, writing and arithmetic being broadly applicable skills, we’ve moved to an age where computing is now becoming a broadly applicable skill.”

 

Computer science’s ascent at Stanford

Even as Code.org calls for greater investment in programming education, computer science has continued to advance rapidly on the Farm. It recently became the most popular major at Stanford, with over 220 students declaring during the 2011-12 academic year and—by Sahami’s estimation—more than 90 percent of students taking at least one computer science class while at Stanford.

Enrollment in the CS106A: Programming Methodology introductory course has also continued to rise, from 964 students in the 2009-10 academic year to 1,523 students last year. According to Claire Stager, manager of educational affairs in the department of computer science, 1,187 students have enrolled in CS106A this year through autumn and winter quarter, putting the course on the path to another record enrollment total.

“The CS 106 courses are made to be accessible to students across a range of majors, not just computer scientists and not just engineers,” Sahami said. “We strongly believe that it is good for everyone to have some computing skills, and so we try to make our classes accessible to everyone.”

Sahami attributed the recent rise in student interest in computer science to a variety of different factors, including the revision of the computer science curriculum to create 10 different tracks, the increasing value of programming skills on the job market, and a change in public perception about coding.

Alexander Atallah ’14, a computer science major and an officer in the Stanford chapter of the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), echoed Sahami’s sentiments. As an incoming freshman, Atallah had planned to major in economics but changed his mind after realizing that computer science aligned with his interests and after discovering the resources available for computer science majors at Stanford.

“It’s pretty easy to get involved with things in CS. It’s just everywhere,” he said. “It’s not something that I personally want to do forever—I can’t see myself sitting down in front of a computer for the rest of my life—but it’s a way for me to penetrate an industry that I’m interested in.”

 

Controversy over computer science’s prominence

With the recent popularization of coding through the Code.org video and movies like The Social Network, some critics have claimed that the glamorization of computer science has resulted in many students pursuing the subject for the wrong reasons.

Atallah, who described the Code.org video as “sensationalist, to some extent,” said that he believes that the presence of celebrities in the video may have an unintended effect.

“It was just trying to get the message out through people that most viewers would recognize. The fact that it did that made coding look a lot more glamorous,” Atallah said. “The reality is that a lot of people just become programming monkeys.”

Ayush Sood ’14, a computer science major and president of ACM at Stanford, agreed that the video was “overglamorous.” According to Sood, many computer science students serious about the subject itself and less interested in financial success were upset with the video’s portrayal of computer science as a means to an end.

“All the stuff that they showed in the video is true, but to get to that level where you are working for Facebook or you are working for Dropbox or you are working for Airbnb, you really have to have a passion,” he said. “Sure, it’s a glamorous way to get rich, but there is a lot of failure in there, too.”

While Sahami said that he would recommend that Stanford establish a computer science requirement for all students, Sood claimed that too many students enroll in computer science courses with many “just there to finish the program.”

“I think everyone should have the exposure to CS and have that experience, but a lot of people end up taking it because there is this mentality that everyone has to take it, which I think is not true,” he said. “Just because everyone is doing it doesn’t mean it’s a reason to take it.”

 

Humanities’ discontent

By contrast, Professor of Classics Richard Martin said that he believes that learning languages like Greek and Latin “does more for you” than coding, and that coding and the humanities are “on entirely different levels.”

“I think the real difference is that when you study humanities, you are doing something for yourself beyond the material and beyond the immediate,” he said. “It’s not a head-to-head contest because the humanities [are] so much more necessary than coding.”

While Martin said that the popularity of computer science at Stanford is understandable, given the University’s history and location in Silicon Valley, he described a detrimental effect on the composition of undergraduate applicants, of which only 10 to 12 percent express an interest in the humanities.

“The real danger these days is that students don’t apply to Stanford if they are interested in hardcore humanities subjects. They think Stanford is simply a technical university,” he said. “I’m happy to let computer science have all the buildings and money they want, as long as they don’t take anything away from the humanities.”

After watching the Code.org video, Martin expressed confusion as to why the video was created considering computer science’s ongoing popularity.

“ I guess it’s driven by the market—they want a lot of human tools to basically code for them to help them make money, to be the most cynical about it,” he said. “My problem with it is that it sounds like this magic ticket to a job [and] a great life, and nobody seems to talk about the intellectual value of coding in and of itself.”

Martin also took issue with a quote from President John Hennessy on the Code.org website, in which Hennessy encourages all students to learn how to code.

“I would like to see him and his peers in the administration come out and say how important it is for everybody to do humanities, let alone Greek and Latin, just to kind of right the boat [and] to make it even-keeled again,” Martin said.

Martin advocated making a similar promotional video featuring speakers attesting to the power of the humanities as a means of reducing the disparity between the humanities and computer science at Stanford.

“What you’re not going to convince people [of] is that, if they [study] humanities, they will get a cool job where they can play ping pong in the middle of the day and have massages, which the [Code.org] video plays up as well.”

 

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Men’s tennis kicks off Pac-12 play against No. 2 USC https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/28/morrissey-stanford-mens-tennis-kick-off-pac-12-play-against-no-2-usc/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/28/morrissey-stanford-mens-tennis-kick-off-pac-12-play-against-no-2-usc/#respond Fri, 29 Mar 2013 06:30:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076017 The No. 49 Stanford men’s tennis team will play host to No. 2 USC tomorrow in the Cardinal’s first official match of the Pac-12 season.

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The No. 49 Stanford men’s tennis team will play host to No. 2 USC tomorrow in the Cardinal’s first official match of the Pac-12 season.

(DON FERIA/isiphotos.com)
Playing at the No. 1 singles slot for Stanford, John Morrissey (above) hopes to avenge his loss to USC’s Emilio Gomez earlier this season as the Cardinal takes on the Trojans in Los Angeles. (DON FERIA/isiphotos.com)

Stanford, carrying a 7-5 record, is currently on a four-match win streak, having recently clinched victories at the Taube Family Tennis Stadium against Saint Mary’s, Nevada, Boise State and Furman. All of the Cardinal’s victories this season have been at home.

USC has had a more successful season thus far, with a 17-2 record. The Trojans have won four consecutive national championships and beat the Cardinal 6-1 in Los Angeles on Feb. 9.

Freshman Nolan Paige, who is ranked 88th in the nation, picked up Stanford’s only victory of the day during the February match against USC, defeating Max de Vroome 4-6, 7-5, 1-0 at No. 4 singles. The Cardinal almost took another point at No. 5 singles, where sophomore Robert Stineman lost a close match to USC’s Michael Grant 3-6, 7-6, 0-1.

USC’s victories in the other singles and doubles matches were more decisive, with no Stanford player or team winning more than five games.

“That match was pretty tough,” said sophomore John Morrissey. “It is never easy to play down there, but I thought there were some pretty good performances.”

Morrissey, who is ranked 54th in the nation, lost 6-2, 6-1 to USC’s Emilio Gomez at No. 1 singles. He was also defeated 8-2 at No. 1 doubles with senior Matt Kandath. USC has seven nationally ranked players, while the Cardinal has two.

Earlier in the season, USC picked up victories against No. 4 UCLA, No. 15 Berkeley, San Francisco and UC-Irvine, among other teams, during an 11-match winning streak. The team’s first defeat came against No. 1 Virginia in the championship round of the ITA National Team Indoor Championships, and the Trojans suffered their only other loss against UCLA later that week.

While Morrissey acknowledged that USC has a strong record, he believes that the Cardinal has a good chance of pulling out a victory on Friday, citing the benefits of a home court advantage.

“When we have these teams come into our stadium we feel like we can beat anybody,” he said. “The team is really determined to make a statement, so I think it’s a really great opportunity for us.”

Morrissey said that although the team is relatively young, they have been steadily improving throughout the season and are ready to put their new skills to the test against some of the nation’s best players.

“If we do the things that we are working on in practice, play with intensity and do the right things on the court, hopefully the result will take care of itself in the end,” he said. “I think we have a good few advantages. We just have to go out there and do it on the court.”

Following the match against USC, the Cardinal will play No. 4 UCLA at home on Saturday before a series of matches against No. 29 Washington and No. 42 Oregon on the road next weekend.

Though the Cardinal will face some of the toughest competition of the season during the next two weeks, Morrissey expressed confidence in the team’s chances of picking up victories.

“We feel good, we are ready to step up now against the big teams and show how hard we’ve worked and get the payoff from all the effort and time we’ve been putting in,” Morrissey said. “We feel ready, we’re prepared and, hopefully, all goes well.”

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The Daily Brief: Tuesday, March 26 https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/26/the-daily-brief-tuesday-march-26/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/26/the-daily-brief-tuesday-march-26/#respond Tue, 26 Mar 2013 23:02:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075979 Researchers make a breakthrough in solar cells and the School of Medicine receives a $7 million grant for childhood cancer research

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SIMES researchers develop new solar energy chips | Researchers at the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) have developed a solar energy chip that is 100 times more efficient than previous iterations. The new solar device has an efficiency of two percent – compared to a few hundredths of a percent previously – and utilizes a photon-enhanced thermionic emission (PETE) process that captures heat as well as light for conversion into electricity.

School of Medicine receives $6.9 million grant | Researchers at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and the School of Medicine have received a $6.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder, a high-risk form of childhood cancer. The disorder, which is caused by immune-suppressing medications, can occur in children who have had an organ transplant. The study will focus on ways to predict and detect the disorder in its early stages.

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Citizen coalition pressures Board of Trustees on tenant tax dispute https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/12/citizen-coalition-pressures-board-of-trustees-on-tenant-tax-dispute/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/12/citizen-coalition-pressures-board-of-trustees-on-tenant-tax-dispute/#respond Wed, 13 Mar 2013 06:55:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075818 A citizen coalition called Fair Share at Stanford is pressuring the Board of Trustees and University officials to intervene in a tax dispute involving one of Stanford’s tenants, alleging that the tenant has unjustly withheld millions of dollars in taxes from Santa Clara County. The University has declined to involve itself in the case.

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A citizen coalition called Fair Share at Stanford is pressuring the Board of Trustees and University officials to intervene in a tax dispute involving one of Stanford’s tenants, alleging that the tenant has unjustly withheld millions of dollars in taxes from Santa Clara County. The University has declined to involve itself in the case.

The tenant, a retirement community in Palo Alto called Vi, signed a 75-year land lease with Stanford in 2000 and opened in 2005. Vi operates 10 retirement communities across the country and was founded by Penny Pritzker JD ’85 MBA ’85.

Madeline Sides/ THE STANFORD DAILY
Madeline Sides/ THE STANFORD DAILY

Mike French, a research analyst at the Unite Here labor union and one of the leaders of the coalition, said that 135 citizens have signed a petition urging the University to ask Vi to drop a lawsuit against Santa Clara County. Vi sued the county because of dissatisfaction with county assessments that value the Vi facility at more than double Vi’s own appraisals, causing a significant increase in property taxes.

An unusual case

Vi has filed appeals for property taxes paid from 2005 to 2012, alleging that the property is worth significantly less than the county’s assessment. In 2011, Vi’s appeals for its first three years of operation appeared before the county’s Assessment Appeals Board. Appeals for Vi’s 2008-12 property taxes are still pending.

While the county assessed the property’s value at $370 million for 2005-07, Vi argued that during these three years, the property was worth $200 million. After a three-day hearing, the Appeals Board concluded that the property should have been valued at $480 million during this time and issued $12 million in value-increase bills to Vi. These bills are due on April 10.

In response to this ruling, Vi filed a lawsuit against the county in the Superior Court of California in September 2012. The case is currently in pre-trial stages.

According to Robert Nakamae, Santa Clara County’s deputy counsel and the county’s representative in the lawsuit, it is “unusual” that the case has progressed to court.

“The county gets thousands and thousands of these applications for changed assessment, and very, very few of them end up in court,” he said. “We do get cases where taxpayers are unhappy, but sometimes they figure [a lawsuit] is not worth going through.”

Nakamae said that Vi sued because “they were not happy with the decision” made by the Appeals Board, but declined to comment on the merit of the case.

Based on the typical timeframe of proceedings for similar cases, Vi’s case may not appear in court for 12 to 18 months, according to Nakamae. If Vi prevails, the case will likely return to the Assessment Appeals Board, and the county will not immediately issue Vi a refund.

Petitioners’ interaction with Stanford

French, who represents workers in the hospitality industry, said that Unite Here did not “go looking for this tax issue,” instead discovering the dispute while conducting other research. The union decided to mobilize after determining that the case had a direct effect on its workers.

“For every motion Vi makes, every time they write another brief, the county has to respond,” French said. “That is more money and more resources going to the appeals, money that could really, really help the public schools.”

French said that, although Stanford is seen as the “crown jewel of Santa Clara County,” the University’s inaction has led many citizens to question why the University is not “holding their business partners to a higher standard.”

“It’s on Stanford’s campus. Stanford’s name is on the tax bill,” French said. “They’ve got this business partner that isn’t paying their fair share, and they’ve kind of thrown up their hands.”

According to French, Stanford has received a total of $57 million in rent from Vi as of 2011, making Stanford’s decision not to intervene more distressing.

Susan Muysenberg, a Campbell, Calif., resident who signed the petition, also expressed disappointment that Stanford has not intervened in the case.

“Stanford is considered to be quite up there, academically, and it’s also considered a very wealthy campus,” Muysenberg said. “To try to get out of supporting the community is a scandal. It’s a controversial issue, so they are trying to hide and say, ‘It doesn’t concern us.’”

The citizens’ petition was delivered to several members of the Board of Trustees, as well as to Director of Government and Community Relations Larry Horton ’62 M.A. ’66, in February. French subsequently received a written response from Vice President for Public Affairs David Demarest that stated that, for property tax purposes, Vi is considered to be the owner of the property.

“It is our understanding that this property tax dispute is being addressed through the appropriate administrative and legal processes,” Demarest wrote. “Stanford has no standing to be involved and no right to interfere in the dispute between Vi and the County.”

Demarest declined an interview with The Daily, reiterating that Stanford was “not a party” to the issue.

John Freesemann, a pastor in San Jose who signed the cover letters to Horton and the Trustees, said that he was disappointed by Demarest’s response, having hoped that the University would investigate the issue.

“I think any corporation—and Stanford is a corporation—that hides from carrying out civic responsibility is perceived badly,” he said. “When [Stanford] has a for-profit corporation that is paying them rental money, they need to be sure that they say to that corporation, ‘You need to be a good citizen.’”

Freesemann also expressed concern over Pritzker’s links to both Stanford and Vi. Pritzker, a member of the University’s Board of Trustees, sits on the board of the Hyatt Corporation and signed the land lease on behalf of Vi in 2000.

“Any time that a board member who is a part of another entity has a potential to rule on the validity or legality of that other entity, I think they should recuse themselves at the very least,” he said.

Legality of Vi’s appeal

Hank Greely ’74, professor of law, argued against Stanford intervening in the case, emphasizing Vi’s right to independently contest the decision of the county’s Assessment Appeals Board.

“If you’ve got a right to judicial appeal, you’ve got a right to judicial appeal,” Greely said. “A jury may have already decided that a defendant was guilty of a crime, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have a right to appeal that verdict.”

Greely said that “barring extraordinary circumstances,” a party to a legal contract should not forfeit its right to an appeal.

“Yes, the appeal is going to cost the county time and money, but it is also going to cost Vi time and money, and citizens have a right to have government actions reviewed,” he said. “The idea that Stanford should put pressure on a tenant to forgo that right seems to me kind of far-fetched.”

Nakamae agreed that Vi has the right to sue the county, despite citizens’ concern that the lawsuit is a waste of the county’s time and money.

“They can pay that money and file that lawsuit. I don’t think it’s fair for me to say that they are wasting my time doing it,” he said. “Do I want them to do it? No, but they have a right to do it.”

Representatives from Vi in Palo Alto, Vi’s corporate offices and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, the law firm representing Vi, all declined to comment.

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Senators struggle with Constitutional amendments https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/12/senators-struggle-with-constitutional-amendments/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/12/senators-struggle-with-constitutional-amendments/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 06:15:18 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075854 At the ASSU Undergraduate Senate’s March 12 meeting, senators struggled with two amendments to the ASSU Constitution. One amendment was withdrawn after extensive debate, while the other was initially approved for the spring election ballot before senators realized it hadn’t received the necessary two-thirds approval.

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At the ASSU Undergraduate Senate’s March 12 meeting, senators struggled with two amendments to the ASSU Constitution. One amendment was withdrawn after extensive debate, while the other was initially approved for the spring election ballot before senators realized it hadn’t received the necessary two-thirds approval.

Both amendments were put forward by ASSU Executive candidates Billy Gallagher ’14 and Dan Ashton ’14 and had been on previous notice at the Senate meeting last week. Gallagher is a Daily staffer, and Ashton is a member of The Daily’s Board of Directors.

The first amendment

The first amendment would have, if approved by voters, allocated all unspent student fees money into a Senate reserves fund, called the Undergraduate Fee Reserve Fund, at the end of each year. Before a revised version was sent out Tuesday morning, the money would have instead been allocated to a President’s Discretionary Fund.

Gallagher and Ashton spoke to senators and visitors about the purpose of the amendments and the alterations that were made to them, beginning with the amendment to create the Undergraduate Fee Reserve Fund.

“The bill just recognizes that there’s this enormous problem that there is $600,000 in student funding that isn’t spent every year,” Ashton said. “It gives the Senate the ability to figure out what to do with it.”

During open forum, Hunter Kodama ’14, the incoming financial officer of Dance Marathon and a peer advisor at Student Activities and Leadership, spoke against the amendment.

Kodama said that there are “very valid reasons” why special fees groups can benefit from having large reserves funds and cautioned the Senate against voting the amendment onto the ballot.

“Putting it on the ballot is a very bad idea because it runs the risk of a bad bill ultimately still passing by a technicality,” he said. “The system that exists right now is 40 years old, and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t change it – I think it is broken to an extent. But we shouldn’t be changing 40-year system in matter of two weeks.”

Several visitors at the meeting, including Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) CEO Neveen Mahmoud ’11, expressed concern that the bill would raise student fees and result in what Mahmoud referred to as “irresponsible short-sighted fiscal management.”

“Lack of responsibility is particularly important when we are at a place where we get so many resources we are underutilizing, but that doesn’t mean we should err on the other side and go crazy,” Mahmoud said. “It’s problematic to enact policy that will diminish or erase the influx of buffer fund money without policy about how it will be maintained.”

Gallagher and Ashton decided to withdraw the bill until the student body could discuss it during spring quarter. Gallagher said that they planned to reintroduce the amendment to either the current Senate or the new Senate in hopes of holding a special spring election to vote on it.

The second amendment

The second amendment stipulated that the joint bylaws of the Senate and Graduate Student Council (GSC) can determine that a number of seats on the Senate are reserved for upperclassmen each year. A previous version had explicitly set aside five seats for upperclassmen.

Senators and visitors also voiced concern about the second amendment and argued that setting aside Senate seats specifically for upperclassmen would not solve the problem of the low number of upperclassmen running.

Senator Kimberly Bacon ’15 said that most current senators decided not to run again because many of them want to study abroad next year. Two years ago, the Senate passed a bill mandating that senators remain on campus for the entirety of their terms.

Others argued that upperclassmen avoided running for Senate for other reasons, including the fact that the Senate has a reputation for being ineffective.

“One thing I think would be cool is if all of you all changed about how you talk about Senate, shit would change,” Tianay Pulphus ’13 said. “If you use the statement, and we all use it, that the ASSU doesn’t do anything – when we talk about it like that – that is what we speak into existence.”
Eight senators voted in favor of the amendment, four voted against it and one, Christos Haveles ’15, abstained. After the meeting ended, senators realized that the ASSU Constitution states that an amendment must receive the approval of two-thirds of the Senate in order to be placed on the ballot.

The Senate currently has 13 members, and the amendment would therefore need nine votes in favor to pass. According to Senator Lauren Miller ’15, the Senate will hold a virtual meeting in 72 hours to vote on the bill again to “make sure everyone is aware of the consequence of their vote” and potentially place the bill on the spring ballot.

“We have always been using the other standard of two-thirds present and voting,” said Daniela Olivos ’15, adding that the change of standard for constitutional amendment approval “should have been stated beforehand.”

Olivos said that if the bill does not pass during the virtual meeting, Gallagher and Ashton can petition five percent of the undergraduate population in order to have the amendment appear on the ballot.

Funding bills

The Senate also voted on nine funding bills that had not been previously approved by the Appropriations Committee, including two special fees budget modifications and seven general fees bills. According to an email sent out by Appropriations Committee Chair Nancy Pham ’14, the committee “did not have enough time to meet with the groups” before the meeting. Pham was not present for voting on eight of the nine bills.
Representatives from the student groups requesting funding appeared at the meeting to answer questions from senators. None of the submitted funding bills were modified, and the Senate passed all of the bills that were voted on, totaling $15,524.49 in general fees allocations and $8,439.43 in special fees budget modifications.

The Senate passed funding bills from the Viennese Ball Committee, Students for a Sustainable Stanford, Kappa Sigma, Seneca International, SwingKids, Spicmacay, Sigma Theta Psi and Stanford Dragon Boat.

An additional general fees funding bill from the International Undergraduate Community for $430 was sent to the Senate’s mailing list during the meeting. Senators passed the bill two minutes after it was sent out.

Though Publications Board Chair Kathleen Chaykowski ’13 had already left the meeting and senator Ismael Menjivar ’15 had a question about whether or not the publication needed to provide an estimate of costs from the copy factory, senators unanimously passed a $1,518 Publications Board bill for El Aguila.

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Back-to-back wins for men’s tennis https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/10/back-to-back-wins-for-mens-tennis/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/10/back-to-back-wins-for-mens-tennis/#respond Mon, 11 Mar 2013 06:26:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075768 The No. 49 Stanford men’s tennis team defeated unranked Boise State 4-3 on Sunday, marking its second-straight victory after a dominating 7-0 performance against Furman on March 7.

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The No. 49 Stanford men’s tennis team defeated unranked Boise State 4-3 on Sunday, marking its second-straight victory after a dominating 7-0 performance against Furman on March 7.

“They were a tough, great team. They came out with a lot of enthusiasm,” Stanford freshman Nolan Paige said about Boise State. “[But] we just had enough to win.”

Stanford sophomore No. 45 John Morrissey lost a narrow contest to Boise State's junior No. 30 Andrew Bettles, but the Cardinal held on to defeat the Broncos on Sunday
Stanford sophomore No. 45 John Morrissey lost a narrow contest to Boise State’s junior No. 30 Andrew Bettles, but the Cardinal held on to defeat the Broncos on Sunday. (StanfordPhoto.com)

The Broncos (6-8, 1-1 Mountain West) clinched a 6-1 victory against San Francisco on Saturday, their third-straight win before losing to the Cardinal (5-5). Stanford now has recovered from a streak of four-straight losses to go into a two-week hiatus level on the season and will return to match play Mar. 25 against Nevada.

The match was extremely close from the beginning, with the first two doubles matches split and the third going to a tiebreak.

Paige and fellow freshman Trey Strobel, Stanford’s No. 3 doubles team, were the first to finish, with an 8-3 win over Boise State’s freshman Toby Mitchell and senior Filipp Pogostkin.

No. 1 doubles was next to finish, with Boise State’s junior pairing of Andrew Bettles and Nathan Sereke edging out a 9-7 victory over Stanford senior Denis Lin and sophomore John Morrissey.

In the third doubles match, freshman Maciek Romanowicz and sophomore Robert Stineman defeated the Broncos’ sophomore Garrett Patton and redshirt senior Scott Sears 9-8. Romanowicz and Stineman were down 4-1 in the tiebreak, but came back to win the doubles point for Stanford.

Strobel was the first singles player to finish, beating Patton 6-1, 6-4 at No. 6 singles. Though Strobel’s win put the Cardinal up 2-0, Boise State got on the scoreboard after freshman Thomas Tenreiro defeated junior Daniel Ho 6-3, 6-2 at No. 5 singles.

Paige, who is currently ranked No. 91 in the nation and played No. 2 singles for the Cardinal, was the next to finish, beating Sereke 6-4, 6-1.

At No. 1 singles, Morrissey lost a close match to Bettles, who is ranked No. 30 in the country. Bettles, who has a 9-4 record in dual matches this season, beat Morrissey 6-4, 7-6.

The Cardinal was still leading 3-2 after Morrissey’s loss and a win at No. 3 singles by Romanowicz, who defeated Scott Sears 6-4, 7-6, clinched the match.

Though Stanford had already won, the battle for the last singles point continued, with a close three-set match between Stineman and Pogostkin at No. 4 singles. Though Stineman started off strong, the two players split sets and Stineman fell in the tiebreak for the third, losing the match 6-4, 2-6, 6-7.

The Cardinal’s recent victories mark a comeback from a losing streak that characterized the middle of the season. Though the team boasted a 3-1 record after its first four matches, with victories against Sacramento State, Texas Tech and BYU, it was defeated by No. 57 TCU, No. 3 USC, No. 2 UCLA and No. 24 UC Berkeley in the next four dual contests.

Looking forward, Stanford has a chance to further improve its record with a series of matches scheduled for spring break. All four of these will be played at home, with the Cardinal facing off against Nevada, Saint Mary’s, USC and UCLA in the last week of March.

Paige expects the first match, against unranked Nevada on Mar. 25, to be close.

“It’ll be a tough test. We’ll see what we can do,” Paige said. “We’re looking to get a strong start and build off this match.”

After the contest against No. 73 Saint Mary’s on Mar. 27, the team will face a tough challenge against USC on Mar. 29 and UCLA on Mar. 30 to open the Pac-12 season.

Though the Cardinal lost 6-1 to USC and 7-0 to UCLA in early February, Paige is optimistic about the team’s chances against the two powerhouses.

“We’ve gotten a lot better,” Paige said. “We’re building towards it and we can’t wait to play those guys.”

Contact Olivia Moore at omoore ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Men’s tennis breaks losing streak with sweep of Furman https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/07/mens-tennis-breaks-losing-streak-with-sweep-of-furman/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/07/mens-tennis-breaks-losing-streak-with-sweep-of-furman/#respond Fri, 08 Mar 2013 07:17:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075683 The No. 49 Stanford men’s tennis team clinched a decisive 7-0 victory at home against unranked Furman on Thursday, ending a four-match losing streak and bringing their season record to 4-5. “This is a match we should win every time, but it’s also a match we needed to win,” sophomore Robert Stineman said. “We feel […]

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The No. 49 Stanford men’s tennis team clinched a decisive 7-0 victory at home against unranked Furman on Thursday, ending a four-match losing streak and bringing their season record to 4-5.

“This is a match we should win every time, but it’s also a match we needed to win,” sophomore Robert Stineman said. “We feel really good about getting back on the right track, and hopefully this could be the start of a good run.”

The match marked the Cardinal’s first victory since it faced BYU on Feb. 1. The Cardinal fell to TCU, UCLA, USC and Cal in its last four dual matches but performed well last weekend at the Pacific Coast Doubles Tournament, where two of the Cardinal’s five teams made it to the semi-finals.

According to freshman Nolan Paige, the team’s success at the doubles tournament “absolutely” contributed to their strong performance against Furman yesterday.

“We’re such a young team, and I think we’re just really coming into our own and getting better with every single day and gaining confidence,” Paige said. “We’re really going to be a team to look out for in the future.”

Sophomore Robert Stineman
Sophomore Robert Stineman cruised past Furman’s Jacob Behal 6-1, 6-0 as Stanford swept Furman Thursday. (ALISA ROYER/The Stanford Daily)

Although doubles matches are typically played first, the singles matches were prioritized due to worries that the match would be rained out. However, the players were able to finish all of the matches uninterrupted.

Sophomore Robert Stineman, who played No. 4 singles, was the first to finish, dropping only one game in a 6-1, 6-0 victory over Furman’s Jacob Behal.

“I thought I was hitting the ball very clean and was able to work on a lot of the stuff I had been practicing these past couple weeks,” Stineman said.

Freshman Maciek Romanowicz was the next to finish, clinching a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Joel Cook at No. 3 singles.

Paige, who played second singles, defeated Furman’s Alex Christ 6-4, 6-4 to put Stanford within one victory of the match.

“I served really well, and I was able to make a lot of balls and keep it going and gut out a good victory,” Paige said. “[Christ] was serving really big.” 

Sophomore John Morrissey, Stanford’s No. 1 singles player, beat Furman’s Andrew Mellon 6-2, 6-1 to take the match. Morrissey’s dominating performance was followed by victories at No. 5 and No. 6 singles by junior Daniel Ho and freshman Trey Strobel, respectively.

The Cardinal also swept the doubles matches with wins from senior Denis Lin and Morrissey at No. 1 doubles, Paige and Strobel at No. 2 doubles and junior Jamin Ball and freshman Anthony Tsodikov at No. 3 doubles.

The Furman match was the first of a series of six consecutive home matches, and Paige said the team is looking forward to the upcoming matches at the Taube Family Tennis Stadium.

“There’s no tennis stadium like ours,” Paige said. “Every time we get to play in our stadium, it’s amazing.”

The Cardinal looks to pick up another win against Boise State at home on Sunday. Boise State, which is 5-7 on the season, is currently unranked and has lost four of its five away matches this season.

“We’re going to try to have the same mindset that we had today, just be very focused and have the right attitude when we step out on the court,” Stineman said. “Hopefully we can do the same thing on Sunday against Boise State. They’re a very good team, and it should be a good one.”

Paige was also optimistic about the team’s future performance and said that although the team is relatively young, they are improving with every match.

“We’re working hard every single day. That’s one thing the coaches say all the time, how hard we work and how dedicated we are,” Paige said. “Good stuff is going to come.”

Contact Olivia Moore at omoore “at” stanford.edu.

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Stanford grad Ernest Moniz nominated as next U.S. Secretary of Energy https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/05/stanford-grad-ernest-moniz-nominated-as-next-u-s-secretary-of-energy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/05/stanford-grad-ernest-moniz-nominated-as-next-u-s-secretary-of-energy/#respond Wed, 06 Mar 2013 07:55:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075603 President Barack Obama has nominated Ernest Moniz Ph.D. '72, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) physicist, as the next U.S. Secretary of Energy.

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President Barack Obama has nominated Ernest Moniz Ph.D. ’72, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) physicist, as the next U.S. Secretary of Energy.

If the Senate approves Moniz’s nomination, he will replace incumbent Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. Chu worked as a professor of physics and applied physics at Stanford from 1987 to 2008, and plans to return to the University this spring after four years in office.

Moniz, who was born in 1944, earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Boston College in 1966 and a doctorate in theoretical physics from Stanford. He became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1973, and was chair of the MIT department of physics from 1991 to 1995.

From 1995 to 1997, Moniz served as the associate director for science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Clinton administration. He was also the Under Secretary of Energy from 1997 to 2001. In 2006, Moniz became the first director of the MIT Energy Initiative, where he has worked on a variety of interdisciplinary projects related to environmental issues.

At MIT, Moniz is currently the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems and Director of the Energy Initiative and the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment. He also serves on the Board of Directors for ICF International, a consulting firm with clients in the energy market, among other industries.

When announcing the nomination, Obama called Moniz a “brilliant scientist” and said that he hopes the Senate approves the nomination “as soon as possible.”

“Most importantly, Ernie knows that we can produce more energy and grow our economy while still taking care of our air, our water and our climate,” Obama said.

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Prominent individuals weigh in on ASSU divestment debate https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/04/prominent-individuals-weigh-in-on-divestment-debate/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/04/prominent-individuals-weigh-in-on-divestment-debate/#comments Tue, 05 Mar 2013 07:34:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075531 As the ASSU Undergraduate Senate prepares to discuss for the third straight week a bill put forward by Students for Palestinian Equal Rights (SPER) supporting selective divestment from Israel, SPER and the Stanford Israel Alliance (SIA) have both received outside statements of support from prominent individuals, including Nobel Prize winners and congressmen.

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As the ASSU Undergraduate Senate prepares to discuss for the third straight week a bill put forward by Students for Palestinian Equal Rights (SPER) supporting selective divestment from Israel, SPER and the Stanford Israel Alliance (SIA) have both received outside statements of support from prominent individuals, including Nobel Prize winners and congressmen.

SPER has received statements of support for their campaign from a number of prominent social justice advocates, including Nobel Peace Laureates Mairead Maguire and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

SIA’s supporters include Congressmen Eric Cantor and Charles Rangel and Nobel Prize winners Roger Kornberg Ph.D. ’72, professor of structural biology, and Al Roth M.S. ’73 Ph.D. ’74, professor of economics.

The Senate will vote on the bill at tomorrow’s meeting. If approved, the bill would pledge the Senate’s support in urging the Board of Trustees to reconsider endowment investments in eight companies — including Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin and Motorola — that allegedly cause “substantial social injury.” The Senate heard student presentations on both sides of the issue at their last two meetings.

In a letter addressed to the ASSU, Tutu said that he has supported similar campaigns on several other college campuses and compared the situation in Palestine to apartheid in South Africa.

“No matter what detractors may allege, students pushing for divestment are doing the right thing. They are doing the moral thing,” Tutu wrote in his letter. “These students advocating divestment from Israel’s occupation today are helping to pave that path to a just peace, and I heartily endorse their divestment move, encourage them to stand firm on the side of what is right and urge others to follow their lead.”

In Roth’s statement on the SIA website, he said that he opposes divestment from Israel and opposes singling Israel out for human rights violations.

“Despite the long running low intensity war that persists, and the moral and practical complications of occupation, I think people at Stanford should question whether they believe that Israel has a worse human rights record than its neighbors, or that Palestine would become an island of liberal democracy on the Arab map if only peace could be achieved,” Roth wrote.

Yoav Shoham, a computer science professor, and Larry Diamond ’73 M.A. ’78 Ph.D. ’80, a political science professor and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, have also written statements in opposition to SPER’s bill on the SIA website. The late Daniel Pearl ’85’s father, Judea Pearl, wrote a statement opposing the SPER bill, and a petition from Stanford alumni received more than 700 signatures.

“We urge you to resist attempts by the [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] special interest group to hijack the Senate’s agenda and distract it from its important work,” wrote Michael Jacobs ’77 in a letter on the SIA website in support of the alumni petition to oppose the SPER bill.

Maguire and Tutu’s letters in support of the SPER petition were joined by 11 other statements from scholars, students and interested parties, including “The Color Purple” author Alice Walker, Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, Professor of History Joel Beinin and Professor of Comparative Literature David Palumbo-Liu.

SPER also received a letter of support signed by representatives from 86 Palestinian college councils and youth organizations, who wrote that they “live under an oppressive system of colonial control.”

“Stanford students have always been at the forefront of innovative and value-based actions that have pushed the human race forward,” the letter said. “It is in your hands at Stanford to see that the tide finally turns across campuses in the United States to ensure that companies are held accountable for continuing to support the violation of Palestinian human rights.”

Representatives from student groups such as Chabad at Stanford, the Jewish Student Organization and J Street U Stanford have also spoken out in opposition to the divestment bill, criticizing it as an attack on Israel.

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A3C student survey probes feelings on faculty diversity https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/04/a3c-student-survey-probes-feelings-on-faculty-diversity/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/04/a3c-student-survey-probes-feelings-on-faculty-diversity/#respond Tue, 05 Mar 2013 07:33:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075548 Undergraduate representatives of the Asian American Activities Center recently sent out a new student survey on faculty diversity in an effort to inform and advance advocacy efforts for a broader range of backgrounds within the faculty body, according to involved students.

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Undergraduate representatives of the Asian American Activities Center recently sent out a new student survey on faculty diversity in an effort to inform and advance advocacy efforts for a broader range of backgrounds within the faculty body, according to involved students.

The online survey, which was created by Van Anh Tran ’13 and Michael Tayag ’13, was sent to several Asian American student mailing lists. The survey involved a series of questions about academic and research interests and asked students whether or not they were satisfied with the current course offerings in the Asian American Studies program. The survey also solicited student feedback on what other courses they would like to see the program offer.

Tran and Tayag worked with David Palumbo-Liu, director of the Asian American Studies program, to formulate the survey questions. They plan to present the results to members of the Faculty Diversity Initiative (FDI), which was created in 2007 with the goal of recruiting diverse scholars focused on the study of race and ethnicity and fostering faculty diversity.

“We just want to see what kind of research and academic interests students have, so that would support the faculty diversity committee in identifying what kind of candidates they should look for,” Tayag said.

According to 2013 statistics released by the University, non-minorities compose 74 percent of Stanford’s faculty. Although Asian faculty members are the best-represented minority, they constitute only 14 percent of Stanford’s faculty.

Albert Camarillo, professor of history and special assistant to the provost for faculty diversity, said that while the University considers how potential hires would contribute to campus diversity, faculty searches “vary widely” in their success in finding diverse candidates.

“The historically underrepresented groups continue to be very underrepresented,” Camarillo said, adding that the progress in cultivating faculty diversity has been “slow and very modest.”

Tran said that students are “really aware” of this slow progress and emphasized that the survey was created in order to help “get the process rolling more.”

Both Tran and Tayag said that they were particularly concerned with the number of Asian American faculty members in humanities and social science departments. Tran, who is pursuing an honors thesis in public history, said that she has been disappointed by the scarcity of faculty with Asian American research interests.

“My adviser doesn’t know much about my field specifically,” Tran said, adding that though this made the process “difficult,” her adviser was supportive and helpful.

According to Tran, most Asian American faculty members currently teach in the School of Medicine or the department of engineering. Tran said that though the department of sociology last year considered a series of Asian American candidates, none of them were ultimately hired.

“A lot of the time when the University does things, students don’t have too much of a say,” Tran said. “This is something that affects us a lot, so for me, this is just showing how much students care about the subject.”

Camarillo praised the student survey, noting that any information gathered on the topic of faculty diversity is helpful.

“It’s important to know how students view the faculty,” Camarillo said. “Are they engaging with faculty from diverse backgrounds? Do they feel there needs to be more faculty of diverse backgrounds in the classroom? That is all useful.”

According to Tran, 30 students have participated in the survey so far. Although Tran and Tayag have not yet decided how they will release the survey results, Palumbo-Liu expressed hope that the findings are widely published.

“I think it’s a very good idea to have a survey like this, because then you operate on the basis of better information rather than just hearsay or assumptions about how people feel about things,” he said.

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Stephen Trusheim talks ASSU elections, future https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/03/stephen-trusheim-talks-assu-elections-future/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/03/03/stephen-trusheim-talks-assu-elections-future/#respond Mon, 04 Mar 2013 07:38:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075499 Trusheim has held many different positions within the ASSU during his time at Stanford, including a stint as Elections Commissioner in 2011.

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ASSU Assistant Financial Manager Stephen Trusheim ’13 M.S. ’14 has held many different positions within the ASSU during his time at Stanford, including a stint as Elections Commissioner in 2011. With the deadline for declaring intent to seek ASSU office under a week away, The Daily sat down with Trusheim to discuss this year’s elections and the ASSU’s future.

Courtesy of Stephen Trusheim
Courtesy of Stephen Trusheim

The Stanford Daily (TSD): What has been your involvement with the ASSU?
Stephen Trusheim (ST): My freshman year, I was involved with Frosh Council, which in those days was much more tightly connected to the ASSU. My sophomore year I was the Elections Commissioner, as well as on the Sophomore Class Cabinet for the first half of the year. [In my] junior year, I was the Chair of Student Life and my title kind of shifted around depending on what I was exactly doing at the time, but more or less just working with [former ASSU President] Michael Cruz [’12] on issues about student life. This year, I am the Assistant Financial Manager of the ASSU and I am also on Senior Class Cabinet.

TSD: What do you think about the number of candidates who have declared this year? 
ST: It’s about standard. One Executive slate is a bit low… It’s weird that not even the Chappie [the Stanford Chaparral] is running against them. The number of senators is pretty average, the number of GSC (Graduate Student Council) reps is pretty average, special fee groups are up a little bit, but they are always up before petitions come in, and some of them don’t make it.

TSD: Have the elections changed in any significant way during your time at Stanford? 
ST: My freshman year was the first year petitions.stanford.edu was a thing… It has had interesting impacts on how the elections work because everyone petitions online now and campaigns online… before that website everyone petitioned on paper.

I personally think that it makes the elections a little bit more issues-focused. You actually have a chance to sit down on your own time and read about the candidates and read about the issues if you so desire… If you are very interested in ASSU elections, you can sit down and really focus on what you want to do in this election as a voter.

TSD: What do you think the ASSU is doing well?
ST: We’ve done a very good job of being invisible… a lot of the services that the ASSU provides and a lot of the things that the ASSU does have just become part of the culture at Stanford. You expect to have these things, and that’s wonderful.

We fund 150 student groups and all you have to do to get money is sit down with them for a half hour and you can get up to $6,000 for your student group… That’s an amazing opportunity that the ASSU actually enables, it doesn’t have to happen.

I think that Nominations Commission is another one of those really important, really in-the-background sorts of things where we have the ability and the right and the opportunity to appoint students to sit on… committees that really make change at this University… It is really those boring pieces of the ASSU that I think function the best, the parts of the ASSU that do work every year and you never hear about it unless you are deeply involved or part of that process.

TSD: What do you think the ASSU needs to improve on?
ST: I think the ASSU needs to have an affirmative vision for the future. We need to say what we want our student life to look like and work towards it. A lot of the ASSU right now is kind of reactive. Suites [Dining] gets shut down, so the ASSU starts dealing with Suites. There’s the whole deal about classes at 8:30 so the ASSU starts dealing with classes at 8:30… I would love to see the ASSU… really work towards a goal and a place we want to be instead of just reacting.

I think we need to improve the services we provide to student groups on the SSE [Stanford Student Enterprises] side of things… student groups are very frustrated with the way our accounting systems work… We need to have better institutional memory. We really need to not lose four months every year because people are getting up to speed on what it is that we do.

TSD: What are the biggest challenges facing the ASSU going forward?
ST: The biggest problems we are going to have are apathy and the fact that a lot of these things are going to be hard work. Everyone is very apathetic towards the ASSU unless they are messing up, in which case they hate it… No one really likes the ASSU, ever.

I don’t blame them, that’s totally fine… even though the vast majority of Stanford students are incredibly intelligent people who could solve problems, they are not inclined to try to solve problems for the ASSU… Everyone wants change, but no one wants to be the people to do it, because why would you work for the ASSU?

TSD: Do you have any predictions for this year’s election, or anything that you would like to see from the candidates or the voters?

ST: Something bad is going to happen in the last week of the election. I have no idea what it is going to be, but for the past three years there has always been something bad that happened in the last week of the election… I want really good, really passionate representatives who are willing to work hard on Senate. I have faith in [ASSU Executive candidates Dan] Ashton [’14] and [Billy] Gallagher [’14] to get things done and I hope they get complemented by solid undergraduate senators who are also willing to deeply consider problems and help out with their solutions.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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Senate extends elections declaration deadline, discusses divestment https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/26/senate-extends-elections-declaration-deadline-discusses-divestment/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/26/senate-extends-elections-declaration-deadline-discusses-divestment/#comments Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:30:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075355 At the Feb. 26 meeting of the ASSU Undergraduate Senate, senators passed a bill to extend the ASSU elections declaration deadline from March 1 to March 8.

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At the Feb. 26 meeting of the ASSU Undergraduate Senate, senators passed a bill to extend the ASSU elections declaration deadline from March 1 to March 8.

Senator Lauren Miller ’15, one of the authors of the bill, said that she was concerned that so few students had declared to run for several positions, with a particularly notable shortage of class president slates. Miller also expressed concern that several special fees groups missed the Feb. 18 deadline to submit budgets because of difficulty contacting financial managers.

“It came to our attention that there isn’t really that representative of a pool for elections right now, and this takes care of special fees too,” Miller said. “We feel like there was a miscommunication all across the board.”

While several members of the Senate agreed with Miller, representatives from Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) noted that extending the deadline for special fees would create administrative hassles and potentially raise student fees.

“Extending the deadline so more people can make it just results in higher student fees,” said SSE CEO Neveen Mahmoud ’11. “The statistics show that a group getting voted down on the ballot is highly unlikely.”

Senator Garima Sharma ’15 argued that it was not the Senate’s job to reprimand students for missing the special fees deadline, a statement contested by Mahmoud.

“You’re not anyone’s mother, but you are a governing body—you were voted here by the student population,” Mahmoud said. “I generally don’t think it’s a responsible move to say that it’s not your responsibility to regulate. That’s what you were elected to do.”

Elections Commissioner Brianna Pang ’13 took issue with extending the deadline for Undergraduate Senate candidates, referencing the fact that 23 candidates have declared for 15 Senate positions.

“By definition, it is already a competitive race for Undergraduate Senate,” she said. “On behalf of the candidates who have been on their game and petitioning, I don’t think that deadline extension is necessarily fair.”

Several senators argued to the contrary, including Viraj Bindra ’15, who emphasized the benefits of a more competitive Senate field with more candidates from which voters can choose. Sharma agreed, adding that extending some deadlines and not others would cause confusion.

The Senate ultimately approved the bill to extend the election declaration of intent and petition-gathering deadline to March 8, with an amendment to push back the special fees budget submission deadline to March 1. The Graduate Student Council will vote on the bill at their meeting tonight.

 

NomCom, Suites and divestment

In other business, senators approved a bill to appoint seven members to next year’s Nominations Committee (NomCom). Miller said that this year’s NomCom is “really representative” of the student body, as it contains undergraduates, graduate students and a Ph.D. student.

The Senate also put a bill on previous notice authored by Daily columnist Miles Unterreiner ’12 M.A. ’13 and sponsored by Bindra. If approved at next week’s meeting, the bill will express the Senate’s opposition to Residential Education’s (ResEd) decision to end the student-run Governor Corner Dining Societies and pledge the Senate’s support of Suites Dining’s chefs.

At the meeting, Unterreiner addressed questions from senators and visitors about his four-part article and the response he has received from ResEd.

“There is massive student support for this,” Unterreiner said. “Pretty uncontroversially, this would be a good bill for the Senate to support.”

The Senate also heard a presentation from Alon Elhanan ’14 in opposition to the selective divestment presentation made last week by Omar Shakir ’07 J.D. ’13, founder and co-president of Stanford Students for Palestinian Equal Rights (SPER).

Shakir’s presentation urged senators to pass a bill encouraging the Board of Trustees to reconsider investments in companies that Shakir said violated human rights and international laws. While Shakir argued that divestment was a humanitarian issue, Elhanan disagreed.

“A lot of people argue that it’s the only neutral option. In my opinion, it’s not neutral, it’s inherently political,” he said. “It’s impossible to separate selective divestment from what is going on in Israel and Palestine.”

Representatives from a variety of student groups, including the Muslim Student Awareness Network, Stanford Students for Queer Liberation, the Black Student Union and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) attended the meeting in support of the bill.

“We are not trying to blame anyone or ostracize anyone, but there is a system in place here that we are participating in, and that system is depriving Palestinians of their health,” said Elizabeth Goodman, a Ph.D. candidate in mathematics representing Stanford Students for Queer Liberation.

Other groups, including the Jewish Student Organization, Chabad at Stanford, the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science and J Street U Stanford had representatives speak against the bill.

Doria Charlson ’13, president of the Jewish Student Association, spoke in opposition to the bill, arguing that it would “irrevocably change the Stanford community” for the worse.

“It’s been increasingly uncomfortable to identify as a Jew on this campus,” Charlson said. “We don’t know how divestment will affect the Middle East, but we do know how it will affect what is going on here with us in this room. We’ve seen the harm divestment can and has caused on this campus.”

At the end of the meeting, senators voted to table the bill until next week and offered attendees the chance to speak with senators individually outside of the meeting.

“Hopefully we’re going to have a decision by next week. I know there’s some talk of senators feeling like they’d like to ask questions,” Miller said. “We’re really going to try to limit it to making a decision next week or having questions from senators, but discussion is definitely done in our meetings.”

 

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Men’s tennis loses fourth straight https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/25/mens-tennis-loses-third-straight/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/25/mens-tennis-loses-third-straight/#respond Tue, 26 Feb 2013 07:58:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075317 The No. 28 Stanford men’s tennis team suffered its third consecutive loss on the road this Sunday, falling 5-2 to No. 12 Cal (5-4) in a non-conference match. The Cardinal (3-5) lost to the Golden Bears for only the 17th time in the 105 times the teams have faced off.

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The No. 28 Stanford men’s tennis team suffered its fourth consecutive loss this Sunday, falling 5-2 to No. 12 Cal (5-4) in a non-conference match. The Cardinal (3-5) lost to the Golden Bears for only the 17th time in the 105 times the teams have faced off.

The match started well for the Cardinal, as Stanford took the doubles point with victories from freshman Nolan Paige and junior Jamin Ball at No. 2 doubles and freshman Maciek Romanowicz and sophomore Robert Stineman at No. 3 doubles.

Men's tennis loses fourth straight
Sophomore John Morrissey (above) and the Stanford men’s tennis team lost to Cal 5-2 in a non-conference match up. (NICK SALAZAR/The Stanford Daily)

Stanford’s No. 1 doubles team, sophomore John Morrissey and senior Denis Lin, fell 8-4 to Golden Bears Christoffer Konigsfeldt and Campbell Johnson, currently the No. 14 duo in the nation.

The Cardinal’s lead faltered when the singles matches began. On court one, Morrissey lost 6-3, 6-0 to No. 82 Ben McLachlan.

“Personally, I was a little disappointed. I definitely didn’t serve as well as I had hoped, and that was something I had been working on for the last few weeks,” Morrissey said. “It’s just a learning experience and I’m going to hopefully work on that and have it ready for the tournament this weekend and matches next week.”

Stanford regained the lead when freshman Anthony Tsodikov beat Cal’s Wyatt Houghton 6-4, 6-3 at No. 6 singles. However, the Cardinal’s fate was sealed with the losses of the No. 2 through No. 5 singles players: Paige, Romanowicz, Stineman and Ball.

The matches were all extremely close, as both Romanowicz and Stineman had three-set battles and Paige and Ball brought their second sets to tiebreaks.

“The team showed a lot of heart, we definitely had some opportunities,” Morrissey said. “We won the doubles point and had some opportunities with singles that maybe we didn’t capitalize on, but the team fought incredibly hard and gave it our all.”

The Cardinal will have a chance for redemption on April 20, when it will play Cal at home in a match that will count for the Pac-12 conference standings.

Morrissey is hopeful that they will clinch a victory, as he said that the team has been improving throughout the season.

“At the end of the day, we are still a very young team,” Morrissey said. “We are just gaining experience with every match and we’re getting better with every match, so when they come over here in a month’s time we’re going to be ready, hopefully.”

The Cardinal is on the road again this weekend, traveling to La Jolla, Calif., to compete in the 124th annual Pacific Coast Men’s Doubles Tournament. Stanford players have claimed the title in the past two years, as Bradley Klahn ‘12 and Ryan Thacher ‘12 took back-to-back victories. The tournament will feature some of the best collegiate players in the nation.

“It is a prestigious event. It is the oldest tournament in the United States and there have been some great names that have won that tournament, so it is really tough competition,” Morrissey said.

According to Morrissey, the tournament often involves two or three doubles matches a day. Morrissey said the event is an opportunity to work on “some things we might not get to work on” in a regular match situation, where the main concern is often the singles matches or the team’s total.

“La Jolla is always a fun event,” Morrissey said. “We usually don’t really get to focus solely on doubles, so it’s a nice event and it’s something a little different.”
Contact Olivia Moore at omoore ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Declining ASSU candidate numbers cause concern https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/24/declining-assu-candidate-numbers-cause-concern/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/24/declining-assu-candidate-numbers-cause-concern/#respond Mon, 25 Feb 2013 07:44:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075281 As the number of students seeking elected office in the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) continues to decline, current ASSU officers have expressed concern about the trend’s significance for the future of Stanford’s student government.

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As the number of students seeking elected office in the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) continues to decline, current ASSU officers have expressed concern about the trend’s significance for the future of Stanford’s student government.

Only 16 students have declared their intent to run for the Undergraduate Senate (UGS), and none have declared intent to run for the Graduate Student Council (GSC) with just five days left before the March 1 declaration deadline. One slate has declared for senior class presidents, and no slates have declared for any of the other class president positions.

On Sunday evening, the first serious slate, Billy Gallagher ’14 and Dan Ashton ’14, declared for the ASSU Executive.

Gallagher, a former Daily editor in chief, said that he decided to run after witnessing the strong reactions to his farewell editorial and Miles Unterreiner  ’12 M.A. ’13’s long-form article on Suites Dining. Gallagher said that, if elected, he and Ashton would work on making sure that the administration takes student feedback seriously when making decisions.

“There are so many people who deeply care about Stanford and about the community, but they don’t necessarily feel like they can make a big impact, or they don’t feel like administrators will listen to them,” Gallagher said. “I think everybody saw that students are upset and want to fight for things they care about, but they don’t know what’s the most effective way to have their voices heard.”

Though Gallagher is currently a Daily staffer, he said he would give up the position if elected.

 

Lack of interest

This year’s candidate numbers represent a drastic decline from previous election years. In 2008, there were six Executive slates, six class president slates, 39 Senate candidates and 19 GSC candidates.

Assistant ASSU Financial Manager Stephen Trusheim ’13 M.S. ’14, who served as ASSU Elections Commissioner in 2011, said that the number of candidates running for office has decreased every year during his time at Stanford.

According to Trusheim, campaigns have also become less contentious, with the exception of last year’s Executive race.

“For the most part, the other campaigns are kind of relaxed, and I think that’s probably a good thing,” he said. “It does show that perhaps there’s not a lot of really passionate, dedicated people wanting to spend their time on, let’s say, the Senate versus their own student organizations.”

Trusheim said that low candidate numbers pose a particularly significant problem for the GSC, even though GSC candidates are not required to collect petition signatures in order to run. According to Elections Commissioner Brianna Pang ’13, this policy was enacted to encourage more graduate students to run for the GSC.

“I think [GSC members] don’t do a very good job of reaching out to their populations,” Trusheim said. “If a single candidate doesn’t do a good job but for some reason there is no one else voted onto the job at the GSC, they totally lose touch with that population and it’s a downward spiral.”

In the three ASSU elections Trusheim has witnessed, there have never been enough candidates to fill the GSC. If too few candidates declare to run for the GSC, current members can suggest other students to fill the position, and the GSC votes whether or not to accept the nomination.

Roshan Shankar M.S. ’13 M.P.A. ’14, the current GSC secretary, said that last year’s elections were disappointingly uncompetitive, particularly for the district representative positions. Shankar said that lower candidate numbers have resulted in less passionate campaigns and decreased visibility for the GSC.

“For last year, if you contested and you were representing a separate group, you were basically guaranteed your spot,” he said. “When I ran, no one did a campaign. The slates were put up, we had our statements and people who were interested enough read it and voted for you.”

Shankar said that he was also concerned with declining voter turnout for GSC elections. Only 1,047 graduate students voted in last year’s election, a 29.1 percent decline from the 2011 voter number and an almost 50 percent decrease from the 2,053 graduate students who voted in 2010.

According to Shankar, the GSC might attract fewer candidates because graduate students are more likely to seek off-campus positions and often have other priorities, such as doing research or finishing a dissertation. Shankar said that he believes the Undergraduate Senate has been more successful in inspiring competitive elections.

However, Senator Viraj Bindra ’15 said that he believes low candidate numbers are also a problem for the Senate, adding that he would have liked to see more candidates run for Senate last year.

“If I’m being entirely honest, I would not have voted for myself in my current form back then, and I think a large part of that is due to the fact that there were not enough serious and aware candidates for Senate,” Bindra said. “A lot of my platform, especially in retrospect, was very buzzworthy without a lot of substance to it.”

Bindra said that he believes the Senate could benefit from candidates with strong ideas and more experience with the ASSU, and said that the ideal Senate would have five sophomores, five juniors and five seniors.

“I do think that the ASSU could be much stronger and could operate much more effectively if there were more people running, if there was more of a choice,” he said. “I would have liked to see a stronger batch of candidates run.”

ASSU President Robbie Zimbroff ’12 M.A. ’13 and Vice President William Wagstaff ’12 M.A.’13 said that they were not particularly concerned by lower voter turnout, but were somewhat troubled by decreasing candidate numbers.

“At a certain point, you have to get people to run,” Zimbroff said. “If there are eight Senate candidates and one Exec slate, you would like to have a bigger pool than that.”

Wagstaff agreed, adding that he believes some potential candidates are discouraged from running because they are not “student government types.”

“Being in this position helped me realize that there are different pockets on campus, and people do different things,” he said. “As long as you are a regular kid, I think you can be helpful.”

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After two-week break, men’s tennis returns against Cal https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/21/after-two-week-break-mens-tennis-returns-against-cal/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/21/after-two-week-break-mens-tennis-returns-against-cal/#respond Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:45:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075196 After disappointing losses against UCLA and USC on the road, the No. 28 Stanford men’s tennis team is looking to move back to .500 on the season in Sunday’s nonconference match at No. 12 Cal.

The clash between the Cardinal (3-4) and the rival Golden Bears (4-4) is predicted to be one of the closest of the season.

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After disappointing losses against UCLA and USC on the road, the No. 28 Stanford men’s tennis team is looking to move back to .500 on the season in Sunday’s nonconference match at No. 12 Cal.

The clash between the Cardinal (3-4) and the rival Golden Bears (4-4) is predicted to be one of the closest of the season.

Men's Tennis Vs. TCU
Sophomore Robert Stineman (above) and the Stanford men’s tennis team will try to even their record against Cal this weekend. (MADELEINE SIDES/The Stanford Daily)

Though Cal has had a more successful season thus far, Stanford has had more time to prepare for the matchup. Cal spent the weekend at the National Tennis Indoor Championships in Seattle, while Stanford did not qualify for the championships and has enjoyed a two-week break from match play.

“It’s going to be a full week for Cal between their matches this weekend and when we play them on Sunday,” said sophomore John Morrissey. “The main advantage that we get from not playing this weekend is that we had a large chunk of time to really prepare and work on things and improve our game.”

Sophomore singles player Robert Stineman agreed, saying that while it’s been “mellow” having a break on back-to-back weekends, the team is “ready to get back into competition.”

“We’ve been working hard, training really hard,” Stineman said. “We’ve been focusing on stuff that we felt needed to improve based on our previous matches, especially the matches down in L.A.

Morrissey and senior Matt Kandath will anchor the top of the Cardinal’s lineup in both singles and doubles. As a duo, the pair is 7-5 overall this season. In singles, Morrissey has a 4-2 record at the No. 1 spot while Kandath has won two of six matches at the No. 2 position.

Freshman Nolan Paige earned Stanford’s only victory last weekend on court four against USC. Paige has alternated between the No. 3 and No. 4 positions this year and is likely to meet either Campbell Johnson or Gregory Bayane of Cal.

At the National Tennis Indoor Championships, Cal was defeated 0-4 by No. 4 Ohio State on Feb. 15 but clinched a victory over No. 11 Florida in the first round of the consolations.

In the second round of consolations, Cal lost 4-3 to No. 8 Oklahoma after Cal’s Nikhil Jayashankar lost in a three-set battle at sixth singles.

Last season, the Cardinal decisively defeated Cal at home 6-1 and away 5-2, and Stanford’s series record against Cal is 88-16. However, the Cardinal’s 0-2 record in away matches this season does not bode well for a victory—Golden Bears are 3-0 in home matches during the regular season.

While Stanford may have dominated Cal last year, Stineman said that losing two seniors this year and having a team with so many freshmen and sophomores might pose a challenge.

“We’re a young team this year, that’s for sure,” Stineman said. “We are really looking to rely on the experience we gained this fall and in the beginning of this season.”

The Cardinal’s chances may depend on whether or not several of Cal’s best players are able to recover from injuries. After the team’s loss to Ohio State on Feb. 15, Cal head coach Peter Wright said that both Ben Lachlan and Chase Melton were suffering from injuries, though both played in the Feb. 16 match against Florida and the Feb. 17 match against Oklahoma.

“The No. 1 player, Ben Lachlan, had a really good season last year [with] some really big wins,” Morrissey said. “He is a dangerous player, so in his day he can make it tough for everybody.”
Riki Lachlan, who usually plays doubles with his brother Ben, was injured at a Feb. 8 match against USC and hasn’t played since. The Lachlans are ranked as the No. 22 doubles team in the nation.

Regardless of whether or not Lachlan makes a recovery, Morrissey is confident that the Cardinal has a good chance of coming back from Berkeley with a victory.

“I think it’s going to be a very close match. They always are,” Morrissey said. “Last year we had a tough one when we went over to Cal, but we managed to pull through. I think everyone is really looking forward to it.”

Contact Olivia Moore at omoore ‘at’ stanford.edu 

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Thiel Fellowship attracts Stanford applicants https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/20/thiel-fellowship-that-funds-college-drop-outs-attracts-stanford-applicants/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/20/thiel-fellowship-that-funds-college-drop-outs-attracts-stanford-applicants/#comments Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:11:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075083 More than 100 Stanford students have applied for the Thiel Fellowship, a program founded in 2010 by entrepreneur Peter Thiel '89 J.D. '92 that offers students $100,000 to drop out of college for two years and pursue a project of interest. Three Stanford students have been accepted to the Fellowship in its two classes thus far.

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Photo courtesy of Ross Gillfillan
Photo courtesy of The Thiel Foundation

More than 100 Stanford students have applied for the Thiel Fellowship, a program founded in 2010 by entrepreneur Peter Thiel ’89 J.D. ’92 that offers students $100,000 to drop out of college for two years and pursue a project of interest. Three Stanford students have been accepted to the Fellowship in its two classes thus far.

According to Thiel Fellowship Program Director Danielle Strachman, Thiel created the program to encourage young entrepreneurs and researchers to take a chance on their ideas instead of following a traditional career path.

“It is safer to go out and get an investment banking job,” Strachman noted. “Most people aren’t going out and doing something risky and innovative because they no longer really have the time or the capital to spend on those things. For some fellows, it was really just a godsend to be able to have this time.”

Among the Fellowship’s Stanford contingent, Tom Currier  ’13 and Ph.D. candidate Andrew Hsu joined the first class of 21 fellows in 2011, and Omar Rizwan ’16 was accepted to the second class of 20 fellows in 2012.

Hsu, who founded an educational gaming startup called Airy Labs, graduated with three degrees from the University of Washington at age 16. In 2007, he enrolled as a Ph.D. candidate in Stanford’s neuroscience program and was in the fourth year of the program when he left to accept the fellowship.

While Hsu was the first Thiel Fellow to raise venture funding, Airy Labs has since been the subject of controversy. Large cuts were made to the company’s workforce last year, and a number of ex-employees have complained that Hsu was an inexperienced and unreasonable manager.

Currier, who left Stanford after his sophomore year to become a Thiel Fellow, has avoided such scrutiny to date. The alternative energy company that he launched in 2010, Black Swan Solar, was in the first class of StartX, a Stanford-exclusive startup accelerator. Currier cofounded a new company, Campus, in December of 2012.

Rizwan, Stanford’s most recent Thiel Fellow, was accepted into the program while still in high school. He delayed his participation to enroll in Stanford in 2012, but left at the end of fall quarter after realizing what he wanted to do with his fellowship.

“I really liked my time at school and made a lot of good friends there, but I was excited to use what I learned there to build some stuff on my own that people could actually use,” Rizwan said.

Rizwan said that his interest in different models of education led him to apply for the fellowship and that he hopes to explore his ideas in a “free-form way” during his two years as a fellow.

“I think there is a lot of value to the college experience socially and academically, but I also think the format of classes can be kind of constraining,” he said. “It will be good to build some tangible projects and products that can actually go out and affect the real world, which is sort of difficult to get if you are just sitting down and doing homework and taking exams.”

Rizwan has traveled extensively around the country to develop his project. He applauded the program’s flexibility in allowing fellows to pursue their interests. According to Strachman, fellows are not required to stay in the Bay Area, though they do meet monthly with a personal advisory board and have a formal review with the Thiel Foundation every three to four months.

“It’s been really great. The Foundation is very supportive,” Rizwan said. “As long as you’re confident in your project and you feel like you are learning things and you’re driven, it’s a great experience.”

Alice Fang ’15, vice president of the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) Freshman Battalion, expressed her desire to follow in Rizwan’s footsteps.

Fang is currently in the second round of the fellowship’s application process. She applied with the intention of developing a science journal she founded while in high school. She first heard of the fellowship in the fall of 2011 when Thiel spoke at an event hosted by BASES. Fang said that she was attracted to the program for many of the same reasons she chose to enroll in Stanford.

“It has that spirit of what education today can be like, and it’s not like a format that everyone follows, it’s sort of going out there and being entrepreneurial,” she said.

Although Fang downplayed her chances of being selected as a fellow, she said she would accept the fellowship without hesitation.

However, some students questioned whether or not the program provides a more valuable experience than a Stanford education.

Andrew Han ’16 said that he first heard of the Thiel Fellowship in high school but noted that he likely wouldn’t apply to the program even if he was qualified.

“The idea is that they are paying you to drop out of college, and $100,000 isn’t that much money to start up a business,” Han said. “As smart as you are, I feel like college is a time of personal development and personal growth, and I think foregoing it is very proud, almost to the point of arrogance.”

Han said that he views the Thiel Fellowship as a “two-year paid vacation” and believes that the Silicon Valley legend of dropping out of college to start a business can be dangerous if over-reliant on a few prominent examples such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.

“Timing isn’t everything, as some startup people would like to believe,” he said. “With that said, if you truly believe that you have a good idea, by all means you should take risks.”

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Axess to undergo comprehensive remodeling https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/18/axess-to-undergo-comprehensive-remodeling/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/18/axess-to-undergo-comprehensive-remodeling/#respond Tue, 19 Feb 2013 07:15:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075026 Axess, Stanford’s primary administrative portal for students, faculty and staff, is in the first phase of a comprehensive redesign that will take several years to complete, according to Associate Vice President for Administrative Systems Ganesh Karkala. Initial improvements will include installing the infrastructure for a new portal technology, updating the web design style and consolidating […]

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According to Stanford Administrative Systems services, Axess is currently in the process of comprehensive remodeling, set to be completed within a few years. (Screenshot taken by The Stanford Daily)
According to Stanford Administrative Systems services, Axess is currently in the process of comprehensive remodeling, set to be completed within a few years. (Screenshot taken by The Stanford Daily)

Axess, Stanford’s primary administrative portal for students, faculty and staff, is in the first phase of a comprehensive redesign that will take several years to complete, according to Associate Vice President for Administrative Systems Ganesh Karkala.

Initial improvements will include installing the infrastructure for a new portal technology, updating the web design style and consolidating content.

According to Sameer Marella, senior director of PeopleSoft Systems, Axess is currently managed almost entirely with PeopleSoft software, though the new infrastructure will permit the future integration of other technologies.

Karkala said that the decision to upgrade Axess was made by the PeopleSoft Steering Committee — composed of 11 representatives from business offices across campus — after members spent several years soliciting Axess users’ feedback. She expressed optimism about the potential for recently developed technologies to upgrade user experience.

“The technology has improved a lot, so we want to utilize those things at Stanford and give that experience to our community,” he said.

According to Marella, Stanford has used the branded version of Axess since 2004, with the portal’s most recent update — which included the consolidation of Student Center options and the adoption of a new style guide — taking place in 2009. A simpler version of a similar system has been in use since the 1990s.

Members of the steering committee have been investigating Axess user experience for several years, and additional feedback for the redesign was recently collected through a survey on the main page of Axess.

According to Marella, the recent survey posted on the Axess main page collected over 2,000 responses in a week, with students constituting the majority of respondents.

“[Users] have overwhelmingly said that they like the fact that Axess consolidates information from a variety of different academic and financial interactions with the Stanford administration,” Marella said. “They like that it is all in one place so they can just go there and find what they need to do in order to get their needs met.”

Marella said that students also offered feedback on how the redesign could improve functionality. Popular requests included a more responsive system, improved accessibility on mobile devices, support for a wider variety of browsers and a more intuitive user interface.

Ruben Pierre-Antoine ’14, a Resident Computer Consultant (RCC) in Larkin, offered several suggestions for potential improvements to Axess.

“It’s kind of confusing to get around, but I think the design is fine,” Pierre-Antoine said. “I just think some of the links on the homepage could be better.”

Pierre-Antoine recommended the addition of a search function, citing student complaints about the difficulty of navigating Axess, and the integration of Axess with related sites such as Courserank and ExploreCourses within the course enrollment process.

Ryan Globus ’14, Florence Moore West’s RCC, expressed general satisfaction with Axess but also suggested changes in the course enrollment process. Globus said that he has found SimpleEnroll to be “flaky and unreliable” and said that he has instead taught some freshmen to use the regular enroll process instead.

As a result, Globus suggested consolidating the two enrollment systems and simplifying the site’s navigation.

“There is just some little design stuff, like all those drop-down menus that aren’t very user friendly,” Globus said. “Everything seems to be cluttered or tucked away.”

While Marella emphasized the value placed on student feedback during the redesign process, she acknowledged that a prominent existing issue — long delays when course enrollment opens for each quarter — will go unresolved even as the University explores “a variety of options” to address the matter.

“It’s not directly the server problem,” Marella said. “There are a lot of components interacting in the enrollment process at the same time.”

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Q&A: Eitan Winer Pinkas, newly appointed CEO of Stanford Student Enterprises, discusses his plans for the job https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/15/qa-eitan-winer-pinkas-newly-appointed-ceo-of-stanford-student-enterprises-discusses-his-plans-for-the-job/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/15/qa-eitan-winer-pinkas-newly-appointed-ceo-of-stanford-student-enterprises-discusses-his-plans-for-the-job/#respond Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:34:26 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074979 Eitan Winer Pinkas '12 M.S. '12 was recently appointed CEO of Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE), the organization responsible for maintaining the long-term financial stability of the ASSU. He will begin work in July, leading a staff of almost 100 employees and managing more than $15 million in investments and $2 million in annual revenues for a two-year term. Winer Pinkas sat down with The Daily to discuss how he is preparing for the job and what his plans are for the SSE.

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Eitan Winer Pinkas ’12 M.S. ’12 was recently appointed CEO of Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE), the organization responsible for maintaining the long-term financial stability of the ASSU. He will begin work in July, leading a staff of almost 100 employees and managing more than $15 million in investments and $2 million in annual revenues for a two-year term. Winer Pinkas sat down with The Daily to discuss how he is preparing for the job and what his plans are for the SSE.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): As part of your application, you were asked for three objectives for SSE. What were they?
Eitan Winer Pinkas (EWP): I think the three things have changed a lot since I started training…In terms of going forward, the most clear objective is maximizing the creation of value that SSE provides the Stanford community. I think in order to maximize the creation of value we have to try to run [SSE] as closely as possible to real businesses.

TSD: What do you believe makes you qualified for the position, and why do you think that you were chosen?
EWP: I think my involvement with the Stanford community in the past several years, as an RA or with student groups or TAing classes, showed my passion and dedication for the school. Along with that, it was probably a personality fit, too. I like to think I’m a happy person, a fun person.
A lot of this business has to do with strategy and also with management, and I think that my background, whether through internships or outside projects or just personality, would contribute to that.

TSD: Since you were selected, what have you been doing to prepare for taking on the role of CEO?
EWP: I actually have started formally training together with Neveen [Mahmoud ’11], who is the current CEO. Today, for example, we were together for three hours. The first couple hours was more of a formal training where we started going through things that we would want to do in coming weeks. One hour was dedicated to specifically looking at the operations of the Stanford Student Store.

TSD: Are you planning on restructuring or refocusing the SSE in any way?
EWP: In the past, many CEOs have focused a lot on expansion. Of course, expansion should always be the end goal, but I think in the position we are in now it is very important to strengthen the foundations we have. We have very good businesses in the Stanford Student Store and advertising and Ground Up. [We should] strengthen those bases a lot, then [look] to expand.

TSD: What do you see as the main challenges facing the SSE, and how do you plan to overcome them?
EWP: I think something that every CEO has to struggle through is the fact that we are a student-run business. That has limitations specifically in terms of the high turnover rate of students and how that affects our ability to accomplish long or even medium-term goals.
I think increasing our ability to deal with high turnover, whether it is through the passing of institutional knowledge or the better training and transmission of previous learned experiences from one manager to the next, is important. I think recruiting will be a great part too, making sure that the people we are recruiting are hardworking and really care about the organization and want to be a part of it.

TSD: Campus Mobile, the cell phone store managed by SSE, was predicted to be financially stable but is now closing. What went wrong with Campus Mobile, and how can the SSE prevent this from happening to its other enterprises, like Ground Up?
EWP: I think it’s very important to understand the reasons behind why Campus Mobile is closing. It definitely is not a management failure or a business strategy or an execution failure, in that sense Campus Mobile was very well run…We live in a bubble, and I think the bubble that we serve was just not the best market we could have had for [Campus Mobile].
To prevent things like this from happening in the future, I think something I will focus on a lot is developing future projects and future enterprises based on needs.

This interview has been condensed and edited

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SLAC scientists confirm source of cosmic rays https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/15/slac-scientists-confirm-source-of-cosmic-rays/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/15/slac-scientists-confirm-source-of-cosmic-rays/#respond Fri, 15 Feb 2013 08:19:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074968 Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), part of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, have confirmed that cosmic rays are created in the aftermath of supernovas, a theory that had never before been proven conclusively.

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Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), part of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, have confirmed that cosmic rays are created in the aftermath of supernovas, a theory that had never before been proven conclusively.

The team of researchers, led by Assistant Professor of Physics Stefan Funk, analyzed four years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The researchers found that the aftermath of two supernovas had accelerated protons through a process called Fermi acceleration, causing these protons to transform into cosmic rays.

Scientists had previously believed that cosmic rays were created either by supernovas or through energy from black holes but were unable to find definite evidence because they could not trace the rays back to their source.

The SLAC team approached the issue by looking at gamma rays, which have distinctive signatures and are created when cosmic rays combine with static protons. Unlike cosmic rays, which are deflected by magnetic fields, gamma rays travel in straight lines, and their source can be identified.

“It’s fitting that such a clear demonstration showing supernova remnants accelerate cosmic rays came as we celebrated the 100th anniversary of their discovery,” Kavli Institute Director Roger Blandford said in a press release. “It brings home how quickly our capabilities for discovery are advancing.”

The team’s findings were published in the Feb. 15 issue of Science.

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ASSU Senate harbors lax funding policies https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/13/assu-senate-harbors-lax-funding-policies/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/13/assu-senate-harbors-lax-funding-policies/#respond Thu, 14 Feb 2013 07:16:18 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074927 Despite being responsible for disbursing several hundred thousand dollars to student groups each year, few members of the ASSU Undergraduate Senate have detailed knowledge of the funding requests they habitually approve after little discussion, an issue attributable at least in part to lax funding policies. Both the Graduate Student Council (GSC) and the Senate have […]

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Despite being responsible for disbursing several hundred thousand dollars to student groups each year, few members of the ASSU Undergraduate Senate have detailed knowledge of the funding requests they habitually approve after little discussion, an issue attributable at least in part to lax funding policies.

Both the Graduate Student Council (GSC) and the Senate have a funding committee that reviews all applications for funding based on a set of guidelines for each type of expense, from food and marketing to honoraria and travel fees. Graduate and undergraduate financial officers are required to meet with their respective funding committee about their funding request, after which the committee makes a recommendation to the legislative body.

Groups requesting funding from the GSC are also required to appear before the entire GSC to answer questions, allowing all of the members of the GSC to more closely examine each funding request and question student representatives. The Senate does not ask groups requesting funding to appear at a general Senate meeting.

While Assistant Financial Manager Stephen Trusheim ’13 M.S. ’14 said that he has never seen either group deny a funding request, funding bills at the GSC are voted on independently and often involve more debate than funding bills at the Senate, which are almost always passed simultaneously and without discussion.

“I think it just speaks to the differences in the two bodies,” Trusheim said. “The Undergraduate Senate pretty much entirely relies on the Appropriations Committee to make decisions. They might as well not vote on [funding bills] at the meetings — they don’t talk about them.”

According to Trusheim, a GSC member once brought up the issue of whether or not groups who profit from ticket sales for a GSC-funded event should split the profits with the GSC. Trusheim called this an “excellent point,” and said that he has never heard an idea like that come from undergraduate senators.

“Graduate students stay very well connected to funds by making people come to explain them and having some sort of debate before approving requests,” he said. “There is a lot to be said for keeping the legislative bodies really thinking about funding at every junction.”

Another recent funding idea produced by the GSC was a quiz for financial officers about funding bylaws, which GSC Funding Committee Chair Anne-Laure Cuvilliez Ph.D. ’18 created this summer. The GSC strongly recommends that financial officers take the quiz, which asks them to apply information from the bylaws to practical funding situations, before meeting with the funding committee.

“It’s a good way for them to check that they know enough to be able to make a good request and be comfortable with level of conversation in meeting,” Cuvilliez said.

The Senate has no such funding quiz, though Appropriations Committee Chair Nancy Pham ’14 said it was a “smart” idea, as some financial officers come to Appropriations Committee meetings unaware of funding policies.

Financial officers for graduate student groups also benefit from the GSC’s policy of requiring group representatives to appear at general GSC meetings, according to Cuvilliez. These meetings give the groups an opportunity to appeal to the GSC as a whole and receive more money than the funding committee recommended.

Cuvilliez noted that, although the funding committee uses their guidelines to evaluate each request, groups can bypass the guidelines with the approval of the GSC. According to Cuvilliez, this occurs most often with the rental and programming expenses on funding requests.

“The guidelines are just guidelines, and the final call is by the GSC,” Cuvilliez said.

By contrast, Pham said that her committee “just goes with the funding policies.”

According to Trusheim, the GSC’s direct use of proprietary funds to put on events means GSC members are more engaged with the funding process compared to their undergraduate peers.

The GSC spends about half of the $300,000 they collect each year from student activity fees on in-house programming, giving GSC members the ability to propose and organize their own events or sponsor event ideas generated by other students. The Senate is prohibited from spending student activity fees on their own events.

While Trusheim acknowledged that senators have fewer incentives to be involved with their funding process, as they cannot host their own events, he argued that that detachment shouldn’t preclude a more critical and knowledge approach to funding requests and policies.

“I think that both bodies should be really deeply considering all of their funding requests and all of the money that exits from their accounts,” Trusheim said. “They’re basically taxing students to provide funding.”

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Undergraduate senators pass bill to lower special fees budget increase https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/12/undergraduate-senators-pass-bill-to-lower-special-fees-budget-increase/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/12/undergraduate-senators-pass-bill-to-lower-special-fees-budget-increase/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:32:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074866 At its Feb. 12 meeting, the ASSU Undergraduate Senate approved a bill to lower the percent increase in funding that special fees groups can request without having to petition the student body.

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At its Feb. 12 meeting, the ASSU Undergraduate Senate approved a bill to lower the percent increase in funding that special fees groups can request without having to petition the student body.

Before the bill was passed, special fees groups that received funding the previous year could request a 10 percent budget increase—in addition to inflation—without having to petition. This year, special fees groups will only be allowed to request a 7.1 percent increase in the absence of any petition.

Appropriations Committee member Daniela Olivos ’15 said that the committee created the bill after reexamining funding data from previous years. Historically, special fees groups have almost never pulled more than ten percent of their budget from reserves in any given year. This led the committee to decide on a lower allowed budget increase of five percent plus 2.1 percent inflation, according to Olivos.

“When we were reevaluating the 10 percent increase, we thought that it was a substantial amount,” Olivos said. “We were also thinking that since 10 percent is such a big number, groups should petition if they want to have another event or have something larger.”

Appropriations Committee Chair Nancy Pham ’14 said that financial officers were informed of the change at a mandatory workshop for special fees groups, but that some groups may have been confused by the fact that the online documents had not been updated and still reflect last year’s allowed budget increase.

However, Pham downplayed the probability of any special fees groups having difficulty with the new policy, saying that the committee will work with groups who would like to cut down their budget to the 7.1 percent increase but were not able to do so.

“We haven’t received any emails about it,” said Olivos, adding that financial officers were first told about the change at a meeting on Feb. 4. “There has been time for financial officers to submit their budget and ask questions.”

The Senate voted unanimously to pass the bill.

ASSU Assistant Financial Manager Stephen Trusheim ’13 M.S. ’14 announced that Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) will be launching a low-risk loans program for ticketed events within the next few weeks.

Trusheim said that the program would give senators the option to loan money to groups who need funding for ticketed events upfront, with the expectation that these groups will pay back the Senate after collecting money for tickets. Historically, the Senate has subsidized these events from general fees funds and allowed groups to keep the ticket money.

Trusheim worked with Senator Lauren Miller ’15 and Olivos to upload the ASSU’s governing documents onto a Wiki form. In the past, senators have discussed the difficulty of finding and updating the governing documents.

“It’s going to be an easily accessible version of the documents and also provide a way for the Senate to go in and amend them when a bill gets passed,” Miller said about the Wiki. “It’s locked so that only certain people can edit the documents, but it’s an easy way for anyone to go on and see things.”

Senators also passed two Publications Board bills, allocating $6,000 to the Stanford Undergraduate Research Journal and $3,333 to the Stanford Journal of International Relations, though Publications Board chair Kathleen Chaykowski ’13 did not attend the meeting to present the bills. Chaykowski is a Daily staffer.

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Stanford Board of Trustees approves tuition raise https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/12/stanford-board-of-trustees-approve-tuition-raise-to-56411/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/12/stanford-board-of-trustees-approve-tuition-raise-to-56411/#respond Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:22:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074862 For the 2013-2014 academic year, tuition will increase 3.5 percent for all undergraduate and most graduate students.

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Stanford’s Board of Trustees approved a tuition increase and discussed developments in online education at its Feb. 12 meeting.

For the 2013-2014 academic year, tuition will increase 3.5 percent for all undergraduate and most graduate students, including law and medical students. First-year students at the Graduate School of Business will see a 3.9 percent increase.

The overall cost of attending Stanford as an undergraduate will total $56,411 next year, which does not include personal expenses or the cost of books and supplies. First-year MBA students will pay $59,534 in cumulative costs, while graduate engineering students will pay $45,480, and general graduate students will pay $42,690.

According to Steven Denning MBA ’78, chair of the Board of Trustees, financial aid increased at the same rate as tuition, with $130 million allocated in need-based aid this year. Denning said that the current net tuition after financial aid is equivalent to the tuition in 1994 in inflation-adjusted dollars.

“I think that’s a pretty clear indication of Stanford’s commitment to hold down what appears to be an ever-increasing number,” Denning said.

Trustees also approved several building projects, most of which Denning said were “small projects that are less critical.”

According to Denning, the two most notable projects were a partial construction approval and budget increase for the McMurtry Building and the approval of $100 million in capital for Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI) projects.

Trustees discussed online education for the majority of the meeting, with presentations from the School of Education, the School of Medicine, the School of Engineering and the Graduate School of Business.

“When one says online education, it represents a wide array of activity from things going on here on campus to the so-called MOOCs [massive open online courses],” Denning said. “The attempt was to give the board a broader and richer understanding of what one means when [one says] online education.”

Denning said that the trustees will discuss longer-term issues at their next meeting.

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Five Coursera classes recommended for official college credit https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/06/five-coursera-classes-recommended-for-official-college-credit/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/06/five-coursera-classes-recommended-for-official-college-credit/#respond Thu, 07 Feb 2013 07:56:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074722 The American Council of Education (ACE) has recommended that five courses on Coursera, an online learning platform founded by Stanford professors, become eligible for official college credit.

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The American Council of Education (ACE) has recommended that five courses on Coursera, an online learning platform founded by Stanford professors, become eligible for official college credit.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Andrew Ng and Professor of Computer Science Daphne Koller Ph.D. ’93 launched Coursera in April 2012. The platform currently offers more than 200 online classes from 33 universities around the country.

Of the five courses recommended for credit by the ACE, four are intended for undergraduates: Pre-Calculus, offered by the University of California, Irvine; Introduction to Genetics and Evolution and Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach, both offered by Duke University; and Calculus: Single Variable, offered by the University of Pennsylvania. The ACE also recommended Algebra, offered by the University of California, Irvine, for vocational credit.

The ACE certification will allow colleges to grant credit for Coursera courses, though each university will ultimately make its own decision about awarding credit for the classes. Students taking classes for official credit will complete a proctored exam at the end of the course and enroll in the course’s Signature Track, which connects each student’s coursework to his or her identity and creates a shareable course record.

Though enrollment in a Coursera class is usually free, students receiving credit will pay a fee of $30 to $99 for the Signature Track, and another $60 to $90 for the proctored exam at the end of the course. Exams will be proctored through the online service ProctorU, which allows students to connect to a proctor via webcam.

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Residential networks connected to upgraded backbone network https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/05/residential-networks-connected-to-upgraded-backbone-network/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/05/residential-networks-connected-to-upgraded-backbone-network/#respond Wed, 06 Feb 2013 07:21:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074644 IT Services has started to connect all Stanford residential networks to a newly upgraded backbone network in an effort to reduce the possibility of network failures and Internet outages such as the one that affected residences across campus last month.

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IT Services has started to connect all Stanford residential networks to a newly upgraded backbone network in an effort to reduce the possibility of network failures and Internet outages such as the one that affected residences across campus last month.

All academic buildings were connected to the new network by December 2012, and all residential networks will have been migrated to the new system by mid-March 2013, according to Nancy Ware ’83, director of strategic planning and communications for IT Services.

“The purpose of this refresh is to ensure that we continue to provide Stanford with a high-performance, highly available network built with the latest network standards,” Ware wrote in a statement to The Daily. “The newly upgraded network is more resilient and features increased capacity.”

The new network is organized into multiple Operational Areas, and each area’s network equipment room is “physically diverse,” according to Ware, to improve the chances that the network as a whole will remain healthy should any piece fail. The Operational Areas, each of which is independently redundant, are linked to each other via multiple 10 Giga-bit per second connections.

Benjamin McKenzie ’15, residential computer consultant in Burbank, expressed his hope that the new backbone network will increase network speed for residences that currently suffer from slow connections.

“We have a relatively strong connection in Burbank, but I’ve heard a lot of people in FloMo [Florence Moore Hall] really complaining about their wireless connectability,” McKenzie said. “So hopefully that will help.”

IT Services migrated three residential networks Lyman wired, Roble wired and FloMo wireless to the new backbone network in December 2012. Ware said that these networks represent three different network types an undergraduate wired network, a graduate wired network and a wireless network and were upgraded early to “test operational stability and compatibility.”

According to Ware, the network outage on Jan. 29 motivated IT Services to accelerate the process of migrating the remaining residential networks to the new backbone network. Since Jan. 29, the networks for Governor’s Corner, Lagunita Court, Wilbur Hall and the Row have been connected to the backbone network. The remaining networks for the Lyman Graduate Residences, Roble Hall and FloMo have also been switched over.

A redundant connection for these networks is expected to be in place by Feb. 8.

Though McKenzie predicted that the network migration will not be seamless, he expressed general optimism about the new network.

“I’ve heard that sometimes things can fall through, so I think there will be a lot of patches in the exchange that initially will show up as issues with people,” he said. “In the long run, hopefully the new infrastructure is more solid and faster.”

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Researchers find that independence is a better motivator than interdependence https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/05/researchers-find-that-independence-is-a-better-motivator-than-interdependence/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/05/researchers-find-that-independence-is-a-better-motivator-than-interdependence/#respond Wed, 06 Feb 2013 07:02:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074650 Promoting independent thought can stimulate greater output in individuals, while promoting interdependent though has little positive impact on individuals’ motivation and can in fact decrease it, according to a new study by Stanford psychologists.

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Promoting independent thought can stimulate greater output in individuals, while promoting interdependent though has little positive impact on individuals’ motivation and can in fact decrease it, according to a new study by Stanford psychologists.

The study, which was published in the January issue of Psychological Science, found that for white American students, messages of interdependence had a negative effect on both a student’s level of motivation to complete a task and on the student’s predicted level of motivation in a hypothetical course about environmental sustainability.

Students were more likely to support making the course a University requirement and predicted that they would put more effort into the course when the course description included information about independent behavior such as developing personal skills and learning to work independently.

The effect of the messaging, however, was not consistent across ethnicities. The Asian American students who participated in the study did not show differing motivational results depending on whether they were presented with messages of interdependence or independence.

These findings confirmed the hypothesis that white Americans, who have a more historically independent mindset, would respond more positively to independent messages rather than interdependent messages, according to the study.

The study was conducted by Professor of Psychology Hazel Markus, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity Associate Director MarYam Hamedami Ph.D. ’08 and fourth-year graduate psychology student Alyssa Fu.

“Currently, if we want to inspire Americans to think and act interdependently, it may work best to actually emphasize their independence to motivate them to do so,” Hamedani told the Stanford News Service.

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University endowment grows 3.2 percent in 2011-2012 fiscal year https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/05/university-endowment-grows-3-2-percent-in-2011-2012-fiscal-year/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/05/university-endowment-grows-3-2-percent-in-2011-2012-fiscal-year/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2013 06:24:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074663 The market value of Stanford’s endowment grew from $16.5 billion to $17.03 billion during the 2011-2012 fiscal year, an increase of 3.2 percent.

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The market value of Stanford’s endowment grew from $16.5 billion to $17.03 billion during the 2011-2012 fiscal year, an increase of 3.2 percent. This ranks Stanford fourth in the nation for endowment size behind Harvard, Yale and the University of Texas system.

The average college endowment decreased by 0.3 percent this past year, though colleges with large endowments recorded higher rates of return in general.

The Stanford endowment fell to $12.6 billion in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, a decrease of 27 percent from the previous year, which prompted the University to implement budget cuts. The endowment rose to $13.8 billion by the end of the 2010 fiscal year and $16.5 billion by the end of the 2011 fiscal year.

During the 2012 fiscal year, 23 percent of Stanford’s operating expenses were covered by endowment payout. The Stanford Merged Pool, the primary investment vehicle of Stanford’s endowment, announced a ten-year annualized return of 9.7 percent in June 2012.

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