It’s hard to imagine Stanford without Hoover Tower, NSO fountain-hopping or the one, the only, the truly incomparable Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band. But what about Stanford without the Directors’ Cup?
Arlene Rusche has dinner reservations, but since this is the last home game of the season for the Stanford women’s basketball team, the cheerful woman in Cardinal attire isn’t leaving Maples Pavilion until the very end of the post-game festivities. Rusche is one of many fans in the arena who has held season tickets for over 20 years, providing an unusually strong fan base for the Stanford women’s basketball team.
It seems like blasphemy to even ask this question, the sort of uneducated heresy more likely to be uttered by a student from that university across the Bay, but: Is Stanford evil?
When The Daily was deciding how to organize its football beat this September, I made it known early and often that I would not, could not and most definitely should not cover games from the press box. A son of two Stanford alums, my 15 seasons of Cardinal football had made me way too attached to the team for that role. Telling me to shut up and take notes quietly in the press box, smack dab in the middle of Stanford football’s spontaneous heyday–I had seen just two bowl-eligible teams in my first 11 years of fanhood–would be akin to making David Shaw give up the power run or asking Stanford to admit athletes with sub-par GPAs: Some things are just too foundational to give up.
As a Stanford student, it’s pretty hard to complain very much. I go to a top-notch school that gives me a scholarship, access to great professors and facilities and doesn’t make me wait by the computer at 12:01 to pray I can get into maybe my third- or fourth-choice classes—unless it’s spring quarter wine tasting.
The Concours d’Elegance is a car show that has raised over $1.78 million for local charities over the last 47 years.
You’re probably feeling a little dazed and confused right now. There is so much to do: get to know your new dormmates, find your way around campus (and remember where that new dorm is), learn the baffling Stanford terminology (CoHo, TresEx, MemAud, FloMo, etc.), work out which clubs and societies you want to join. And maybe even sign up for classes.
Over the 19 days of competition at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, current Stanford athletes and alumni took 16 medals—equivalent to 17th in the world amongst participating country. Stanford finished third in the collegiate Olympic medal count behind USC and Cal, and tied USC for earning the most gold medals. Here are some Cardinal highlights of the last week of Olympic competition.