Weekend Roundup email newsletter: May 10 edition

May 10, 2020, 12:50 p.m.

Our Weekend Roundup is released on Sunday mornings during the school year and features an engaging rundown of the news from the previous week in the form of a briefing. It also includes editors’ picks from other sections. Subscribe here to receive emails like this.

 
 
 
 
Weekend Roundup email newsletter: May 10 edition
 

 
 

 
 
Screenshot of grid view from Thursday's Faculty Senate meeting over Zoom
 
On Thursday, the Faculty Senate passed the “Future of the Major” proposal, which will require all majors to consist of between 60 and 100 units and include a capstone component, and the proposal for a “First-Year Experience,” which will instate a two-course core requirement in civic, liberal and global education. Both proposals will take effect starting with the class of 2025.

The changes to majors are intended to “address goals of accessibility,” according to Graduate School of Education professor Adam Banks. Though they raised concerns among engineering faculty worried that unit limits would affect students’ workplace readiness, other faculty welcomed the changes, saying the proposal will make studying abroad easier.

Under the First-Year Experience program, aimed at creating a shared freshman curriculum and allowing students to explore the liberal arts, students will be required to choose one course from a set list over two separate quarters. The proposal drew mixed reactions from faculty; some expressed disappointment that the program was two quarters, instead of three as previously proposed.

The proposal passed as students, including the Student Alliance for Justice in Education (SAJE), were calling for more student input into the planned changes. In a survey of 200 students, the group found that over three-quarters of respondents felt like they did not have an opportunity to have input on the proposals.
 
Kingscote Gardens, where Stanford's Title IX Office
 
Provost Persis Drell said Stanford will continue efforts to “ensure that our campus is a safe and respectful environment to live, work and study” after the U.S. Department of Education issued new rules regarding the adjudication of allegations of sexual misconduct at colleges and universities.

The new regulations, which are set to take effect on Aug. 14 and have faced criticism at Stanford and beyond, will strengthen the rights of the accused, narrow the range of claims that universities are required to investigate and raise the standards by which universities can be held legally liable for failing to address allegations of sexual misconduct.

Some students, faculty and staff are already criticizing Stanford’s existing sexual misconduct services and policies. In a series of town halls, students said a lack of clarity and general distrust of Stanford’s sexual assault and harassment services prevent them from speaking out, and faculty and staff said that the University’s services and policies have forced faculty members to face personal costs or leave Stanford for speaking out.

Meanwhile, the University’s Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse Education and Response (SARA) Office is hailing Stanford’s first-ever virtual Sexual Assault Awareness Month as a success. The month-long awareness campaign in April served hundreds of attendees, including the more than 370 who attended the biggest events of the month: Denim Day and Take Back the Night (TBTN), according to SARA staff.
 

 
Healthcare workers protest while maintaining social distancing on the corner of Sand Hill Road and El Camino Real.
 
For the latest coronavirus updates, follow along with The Daily’s live blog, which includes a map of confirmed cases and a timeline of Stanford’s response to the outbreak.

  • Frontline healthcare workers are protesting Stanford Health Care’s “temporary workforce adjustment program,” which requires that employees choose between being furloughed, taking paid time off (PTO) or accepting a 20% pay cut.

  • Graduate students, facing financial strain and a tight academic job market amid the pandemic, say that some departments are providing inadequate financial support.

  • The Undergraduate Senate approved a resolution condemning an assistant art history professor for writing the N-word twice in a Canvas discussion board on Monday after saying the word in a class guest lecture on April 28.

  • Stanford announced the April death of Langston Wesley ’20, an art practice major and member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

  • The Daily’s Data Team took a closer look at students’ COVID-19 petitions and analyzed how Stanford’s trends in undergraduate major popularity stack up at other institutions.


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    Former Stanford swimmer and Olympian Katie Ledecky
     
    In Sports, Inyoung Choi profiles Olympian swimmer Katie Ledecky, and Cybele Zhang looks back at Stanford sports history. In Opinions, graduate students Jason Beckman and Anna Toledano call for more affordable housing support from Stanford. The Grind’s Ecy King reflects on how she and other Stanford students are growing and learning despite living through a very different spring than the one they had planned. In Arts & Life, Carly Taylor recounts pulling off a concert right before COVID-19 shut down gatherings, and Noah Howard ruminates on imperfect morality in “Fallout 4,” a “very different version of the apocalypse than the one we’re living through.”

    By the way, happy Mother’s Day! Kirsten Mettler celebrates with satire of a frosh gifting their mom a round of beer pong to make up for the lack of rush.

    And if you’re not in the mood for an article, The Daily’s got multimedia content, too: Watch what it’s like spending spring quarter on campus, listen to our first “Lines of Love” podcast episode and catch (well, not quite) candy thrown by legendary computer science professor Mehran Sahami ’92 M.S. ’93 Ph.D. ’99 himself.
     

     
  • Contemporary folk musician Lizzie No ’13 is holding a living room concert and Q&A on Monday.

  • Stanford lecturer Will Gow is moderating a roundtable discussion on the Asian American experience during the pandemic on Tuesday.

  • Beyond Meat founder and CEO Ethan Brown is speaking as part of the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series on Wednesday.

  • Stanford Medicine faculty, residents, staff, students and friends are performing a virtual concert every Thursday evening. (For more on this series, check out Arts & Life’s feature.)

  • Stanford King Center is hosting a faculty discussion on Friday regarding the economic impact of COVID-19 in China as China lifts its lockdown and U.S. cases continue to climb.

  • The Stanford Spoken Word Collective is presenting open mic night every Friday to give community members a chance to share in poetry and community, as well as to hear from a different featured poet each week.

    Have an event you’d like featured in next week’s roundup? Let us know at [email protected].


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    We need to make more space! The Sun has a corona!
     


    That’s all for this roundup. Though The Daily is suspending its print edition, we’ll continue to bring you updates on coronavirus, online spring and more through our email newsletters, social media platforms and our website, stanforddaily.com.
     
     
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