Brian Contreras – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Wed, 20 May 2020 09:03:34 +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 Brian Contreras – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 As Stanford looks to tighten budget, some leaders remain tight-lipped about their salaries https://stanforddaily.com/2020/05/20/as-stanford-looks-to-tighten-budget-some-leaders-remain-tight-lipped-about-their-salaries/ https://stanforddaily.com/2020/05/20/as-stanford-looks-to-tighten-budget-some-leaders-remain-tight-lipped-about-their-salaries/#respond Wed, 20 May 2020 09:03:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1168188 It's unclear which senior leadership members are taking pay cuts, even as Stanford reconsiders other expenditures in preparation for an economic downturn.

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On April 2, Provost Persis Drell announced that she and President Marc Tessier-Lavigne would both be taking a 20% “voluntary base pay reduction” as part of Stanford’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. They also asked members of the University’s senior leadership, including the cabinet, to take their own voluntary base pay reductions of 5 to 10%.

But it’s unclear how the school’s executive leadership responded to that request, even as Stanford reconsiders other expenditures in preparation for an economic downturn. 

Other than Drell and Tessier-Lavigne, eight out of 12 members of the University’s executive cabinet did not disclose to The Daily whether they had chosen to take the voluntary pay reduction. Of the four who did, only one specified the amount.

“The current situation is imposing hardships and requiring sacrifices of everyone. I am happy to do my part,” wrote Hoover Institution Director Thomas Gilligan in an email to The Daily. He wrote that he took a 10% pay reduction.

Cabinet members Stephan Graham, dean of the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences; Lloyd Minor, dean of the School of Medicine; and Debra Satz, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, also told The Daily that they each took a voluntary pay reduction, but they each declined to specify the amount.

“At a time when many people are being asked to make sacrifices and step up, it is entirely appropriate for the University leadership to do the same,” said Satz, who declined to specify the size of the reduction she took in order to avoid “putting the other deans on the spot.”

Beyond the cabinet, Stanford spokesperson E.J. Miranda told The Daily that “many other members of University leadership, such as deans, vice presidents, vice provosts and other university leaders” were asked to take a voluntary cut — but he declined to specify who was asked. Of 11 additional, non-cabinet senior administrators The Daily reached out to, two disclosed that they took pay cuts.

Robert Wallace, CEO of the Stanford Management Company, volunteered for a 20% pay reduction in mid-March, he told The Daily. He added that “many other Stanford leaders did the same.” Megan Pierson, chief of staff to the president and secretary to the Board of Trustees, also said she took a cut but did not say by how much.

Miranda told The Daily that he was unable to provide additional information about who agreed to take pay reductions, and if so, by how much they reduced their pay.

While not all administrators’ salaries are publicly available, four cabinet members are included in the University’s 990 Tax Filing from August 2018, which discloses reportable compensation from the University. Tessier-Lavigne’s pay was $1,112,306, and Drell’s was $774,116, according to the document, while Minor’s was $1,467,861 and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and for the Arts Harry Elam’s was $575,025.

Drell’s request for senior leadership to take pay cuts comes amid a period of particular scrutiny into University finances — and criticism of how the University has made financial decisions around pay for its workers.

The University expects a $100 million deficit by the end of this fiscal year, and Drell has told faculty to “prepare for perhaps the worst” when it comes to budget planning for the next fiscal year. Departments have been asked to come up with plans that include a 15% reduction in endowment payout and 10% reduction in general funds.

In addition to asking senior leadership to take pay cuts, Stanford froze faculty and staff salaries in early April, and the University has stopped hiring new faculty and staff.

Stanford’s financial habits during the pandemic have also been subject to criticism over the University’s relationship with its workers. 

The University has committed to paying all regular employees until the end of spring quarter, and said it would work with campus contractors to maintain contracted employees’ income and benefits over the same period. However, union representatives have since argued that those promises were misleading, claiming that Stanford has only offered to help custodial service contractor UG2 provide health insurance to its employees without offering other benefits and continuation pay.

“These firms will be supported in maintaining income and benefits for their employees through June 15,” Miranda reiterated in response to these claims.

Stanford’s endowment is valued at $27.7 billion as of August 2019, a number that activists commonly cite as an indication of the University’s ability to better support workers in this period of crisis.

“Given that Stanford’s endowment is one of the largest in the country, it is unconscionable that the University is not providing its workers the same basic benefits” as peer institutions, argues one petition.

Healthcare workers at Stanford Health Care have also spoken out against Stanford’s policies amid COVID-19. Stanford Health Care’s Temporary Workforce Adjustment program — enacted as a result of financial pressures from the pandemic, according to hospital spokespeople — forces employees to choose between taking paid vacation time or a 20% pay reduction from April 27 to July 4. If they cannot take paid vacation, they can opt for a furlough. 

Frontline workers protested the adjustments on May 7, just days before Stanford Health Care was awarded $102 million from the CARES Act and resumed most delayed procedures. However, the influx of funding and revenue has not affected the program. Stanford Health Care spokesperson Julie Grecius maintains that the program is necessary “to help us avoid additional expense reduction measures that could impact staff more significantly.”

This article may be updated if further information regarding administrators’ pay reductions becomes available.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Julia Ingram at jmingram ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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‘The house of cards has fallen’: Investors in Robotics Club founder’s startup claim fraud https://stanforddaily.com/2019/12/04/the-house-of-cards-has-fallen-investors-in-robotics-club-founders-startup-claim-fraud/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/12/04/the-house-of-cards-has-fallen-investors-in-robotics-club-founders-startup-claim-fraud/#respond Wed, 04 Dec 2019 09:32:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1161600 Allegations of fraud against Smalls came to a head on Oct. 30 when the Oklahoma Department of Securities mailed a cease-and-desist letter to him and MANNA.

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For the sake of readability, the individuals referred to as Investors 1 and 2 by the Oklahoma Department of Securities have been given the pseudonyms Tyler and Harry in this article, respectively. Their real names are being withheld due to the ongoing nature of their case.

A few months after first investing in MANNA Robotics — a blockchain-backed drone delivery startup run by the founder of Stanford’s robotics club — Harry started to suspect he’d been scammed.

“The fact that he lied about who his partner was; the fact that one of his main ‘investors’ is not an investor; the fact that he’s told me his company is worth $10 million but I don’t believe that that’s true,” Harry said of Stanford drop-out and MANNA CEO Eric Smalls — “as all this was coming together, I started realizing, ‘Wow, this isn’t just a really bad situation, but I’m actually the victim of clear-cut investment fraud.’”

Allegations of fraud against Smalls came to a head on Oct. 30 when the Oklahoma Department of Securities mailed him a cease-and-desist letter, as first reported in campus newsletter The Fountain Hopper. The letter alleged that he violated state law by selling unregistered securities and misleading potential investors, including Harry and a second investor, Tyler.

“All allegations made are false and racist!” Smalls wrote in a statement to The Daily. He deemed the allegations a “racially motivated SLAPP Suit” — or strategic lawsuit against public participation, intended to censor debate or intimidate critics — and any reporting on them “clickbait instead of real journalism.”

MANNA Robotics has now been ordered to halt all actions and business in violation of Oklahoma’s securities act and can face civil penalties of up to $5,000 for a single violation — or $250,000 for multiple violations — in addition to the costs of the Department of Securities investigation, according to the department’s letter.

Smalls was never registered as a legal agent authorized to sell securities in Oklahoma, the letter says, and shares of MANNA Robotics were also unregistered — making the sale of those stocks to investors in Oklahoma illegal.

Oklahoma’s cease-and-desist gave Smalls a 30-day window in which to request a hearing on his case. Smalls filed a request on Tuesday, according to the Oklahoma Department of Securities’ website.

“He’s a good talker, good manipulator, but not a good businessman,” Tyler said of Smalls. “But the house of cards has fallen.”

Smalls wrote in a statement to The Daily that both Tyler and Harry are “racists and friends with each other conspiring and accusing [him] of stealing.”

The two individuals at the center of the claims became involved with Smalls indirectly: Tyler through a mutual friend who’d gone to school with Smalls, and Harry through Tyler, they told The Daily.

“His credibility is all in his network,” Tyler said, “and he’s very sensitive about his network.”

Harry told The Daily that, after being put in contact with Smalls, he talked to Smalls for about eight hours via phone over the course of a few days, and — impressed with Smalls’ having founded Stanford Robotics as well as coverage of his company in outlets like Forbes — felt comfortable enough to wire the CEO an investment of $15,000.

The cease-and-desist letter alleges that Harry bought that much MANNA stock in July, adding that Smalls told Harry he thus had a 0.0015 direct ownership stake in the company, which he said was valued at $10 million.

Wanting to find out more about MANNA, Harry says he eventually flew out to Stanford and met with Smalls. Smalls was “careful” about sharing details about the company’s operations, Harry said, but Harry viewed it as a mix of Smalls being “a sort of robot genius nerd type person” and also being protective about MANNA’s technology.

Harry says Smalls then told him that he’d be a good fit for a leadership position at MANNA — “We agreed on chief operating officer” — but for that to happen, he’d need to invest more money in the company. Excited to change career paths and viewing it as an investment in himself, Harry says he wired Smalls another $45,000 about a month later, on July 24.

The cease-and-desist letter states that Harry bought $45,000 of MANNA stock and that Smalls told him he had 0.0045 additional ownership in the company.

Two days later, Harry says he was meeting with a personal mentor when MANNA came up. The mentor — a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist from the dotcom boom — raised concerns about how unwilling Smalls seemed to be to share details about the company.

“It’s not like the movies, where people are so careful about their secret sauce,” Harry said his mentor told him. “Typically they’re very open about things, because they want you to be comfortable and invest.”

In fact, Harry says that at one point he had pushed back on Smalls, asking why MANNA needed a relatively small investment from Harry if Smalls was supposedly so well-connected in the tech world. Harry says Smalls replied that, having come from a poor family, he didn’t want to make the rich richer when he could instead work with “normal people” and spread the wealth.

“So,” explained Harry, “he kind of had a good story.”

Following the talk with his mentor, Harry started to get nervous — and as he dug further, he says he found more holes in Smalls’ story. For instance, Smalls had said Sean Greensalde was his current business partner, but Harry found out that Greenslade hadn’t worked with Smalls since the year prior. Greenslade wrote in an email to The Daily that he’s had “no involvement in MANNA for quite some time.”

Smalls also misrepresented MANNA’s support from investors, Harry said. When he actually asked one of those investors, Sam Lessin, Harry found that Lessin only gave Smalls a $15,000 grant “to experiment with drones” while Smalls was an undergrad. Lessin, a product manager for Facebook, told Harry he was frustrated that Smalls claimed him as an investor when the money was just given for an “academic fun check,” according to text messages obtained by The Daily.

Lessin did not respond to a request for comment.

Realizing that he knew less than he’d thought about MANNA’s business status, and having found through conversation with Tyler that they’d each been told a different version of the company’s business model, Harry started trying to get some of his money back from Smalls. After about a month, he directly accused Smalls of being a con artist.

The two made an agreement under which Smalls would repay Harry’s second investment of $45,000 over the course of three months, Harry said, adding that Smalls paid him back $20,000 — but the check for the next $15,000 bounced. Harry added that, when he asked Smalls what went wrong, Smalls said he’d intentionally left the account empty because Harry “voided the contract” by discussing his situation on Facebook.

“[Smalls] is saying that not only will he not pay the money back, but he’s also saying I don’t own the equity,” Harry said. “And I said, ‘It’s one or the other … If we wrote up a contract saying you’re going to pay me back $45,000, and then you don’t pay me back, then I still own the equity. And if there’s no equity there, that’s called fraud.”

According to the cease-and-desist letter, Harry has received neither shares of stock in MANNA nor the return of his principal investment. Further, the promissory notes and stock were not registered, the letter reads.

“He’s not a good business person, and he’s not a good criminal either,” Harry said of Smalls. “He wants everything official. He wants signatures, he wants agreements and contracts. But everything we’re talking about is blatant fraud.”

Tyler, the other investor in the Oklahoma letter, told a similar story. Smalls promised him he could double his money in three months, Tyler said, so they signed a contract in January and Tyler put in $2,500. The cease-and-desist letter says that Smalls issued a promissory note and security agreement promising a $5,000 return.

Three months later, in April, Tyler tried to deposit a check from Smalls for $5,000 and it bounced, documents obtained by The Daily confirm. But by then, he and Smalls had entered another agreement.

“I kind of ignored it, because he rolled that deal into another deal, and rolled that deal into another deal,” Tyler said. “And that’s where we are right now.”

According to the cease-and-desist letter, in April Tyler invested another $12,000 with Smalls in exchange for a $24,000 check post-dated for July. Come July, the letter continues, Smalls told Tyler he wasn’t able to pay back the check; however, he did pay Tyler $4,000, and also issued a $20,000 promissory note that promised to pay Tyler $32,500.

Tyler said Smalls still owes him that $32,500 plus late fees. The letter adds that Tyler has not received the return of his principal investment, the promised return on investment or collateral Smalls promised him.

In total, Tyler claims he has identified at least 20 people — himself and Harry included — who gave Smalls money in amounts ranging from $20 to Harry’s $60,000. 

Smalls, meanwhile, said in his statement that MANNA is “in contact with the accusers to settle matters privately with them admitting fault.”

However, Tyler said the last time he talked with Smalls was on Oct. 10 in a text saying, “I’ll see you in court,” and then “gave up on him.” Harry, meanwhile, said “there’s no settling things privately.”

“He has our money, we want it back and he’s refusing to give it to us,” Harry added. “The only way to settle it is for him to pay us money. He’s refusing to do so.”

If Smalls’ request for a hearing is granted, the hearing will be scheduled within 15 days of his Tuesday filing.

Update: On Feb. 20, the Oklahoma Department of Securities vacated a cease-and-desist order it had issued to MannaRobotics, Co. on the grounds that the company had been improperly named in the case. “It does not appear that the company is, or ever has been, affiliated with Eric Christian Smalls,” the order to vacate reads. Jennifer Shaw, an attorney with the securities department, confirmed that Smalls is still subject to the cease-and-desist order directed at him and that his hearing is set for April 30. Smalls did not respond to a request for comment on the matter. This article has been updated accordingly.

Contact Elena Shao at eshao98 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Public feedback period on ‘Conversations’ steering committee delayed https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/29/public-feedback-period-on-conversations-steering-committee-delayed/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/29/public-feedback-period-on-conversations-steering-committee-delayed/#respond Thu, 29 Nov 2018 08:19:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1147383 The University has delayed releasing the draft student leadership structure of the revitalized Cardinal Conversations program to January despite initial plans to hold a public comment period immediately after Thanksgiving break.

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The University has delayed releasing the draft student leadership structure of the revitalized Cardinal Conversations program to January despite initial plans to hold a public comment period immediately after Thanksgiving break.

“The plan was to release a draft proposal for the future of the program during week nine for students’ review and comment,” Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole wrote in an email to The Daily. “The timeline has been revised and the faculty committee now anticipates a release of the proposal in January so as to avoid overlap with the approaching finals period.”

Brubaker-Cole said the decision to delay “arose out of discussions between the faculty [advisors] and student groups involved” and that the student groups are currently reviewing a draft before providing feedback to the advisors.

Following the codification of the student steering committee, it — alongside the faculty committee — will oversee the Conversations program. According to Associate Vice President for University Communications Brad Hayward ’92, “decisions about … topics, speakers and program format are the purview of the student [and] faculty committee.

The Conversations program, a controversial lecture series founded last year, is operating under new leadership following the departure of former faculty leaders Niall Ferguson and Michael McFaul — the former amid scandal, the latter for still-unexplained reasons.

The program now has three faculty advisors: Thomas Gilligan, director of the Hoover Institution; law professor Deborah Rhode; and Claude Steele, professor emeritus of psychology and dean emeritus of the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

Three student organizations — the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU), the Stanford Political Union (SPU) and Stanford in Government (SIG) — are helping design the new student committee, Brubaker-Cole said. She told The Daily via email that the “ASSU [executive leadership] continues to be involved.”

However, ASSU President Shanta Katipamula ’19 said the executives are “not the ones designing the new model” and that SPU and SIG are taking the lead.

In the series’ inaugural year, the student steering committee included the ASSU, SPU and SIG as well as student publications like The Stanford Sphere and The Stanford Review. However, the makeup of the committee was criticized by some as right-leaning and procedurally opaque.

The new makeup will likely include nine or 10 students representing ideological and political diversity as well as “diversity in backgrounds [and] identities,” Brubaker-Cole said.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Recreated ‘Conversations’ program forms student committee, sees reduced role for ASSU execs https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/14/recreated-conversations-program-forms-student-committee-sees-reduced-role-for-assu-execs/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/14/recreated-conversations-program-forms-student-committee-sees-reduced-role-for-assu-execs/#respond Wed, 14 Nov 2018 09:59:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1146860 In the aftermath of scandal and controversy, Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole, three faculty advisors and certain student organizations are set to oversee the renaming and restructuring of the high-profile speaker series.

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As administrative control of the Cardinal Conversations program transitions from the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) to the Office of the Vice Provost for Student Affairs, Susie Brubaker-Cole, three faculty advisors and certain student organizations are set to oversee the renaming and restructuring of the high-profile speaker series in the aftermath of scandal and controversy.

Foremost among the coming changes will be the creation of a new student steering committee with authority over the content and format of programming.

These changes are the continuation of a restructuring process that began in September, when Provost Persis Drell announced in a “Notes from the Quad” post that the program would be rethought in the 2018-2019 academic year, with the leadership structure redesigned and speaker involvement rethought.

The movement of Cardinal Conversations away from the Hoover Institute comes after student concern about the conservative leanings of the Institution, according to Brubaker-Cole.

“I know that [involvement with Hoover] was something that a lot of students objected to because it appeared to be more partisan than [Cardinal Conversations] was intended to be,” she said. “So it’s moving to [the] non-partisan, neutral administrative home of Student Affairs.”

Drell has called for the faculty leaders to convene a new student steering committee with authority over the series’ content and format. The committee will likely include nine to 10 students representing “a broad range of diversity on our campus, from ideological [and] political diversity to diversity in backgrounds [and] identities,” according to Brubaker-Cole.

Brubaker-Cole said her position is intended to be predominantly administrative.

“It’s not my vision,” she told The Daily. “I am a neutral facilitating party in this.”

In an email to The Daily, Brad Hayward, associate vice president for University communications, reiterated that Student Affairs will not be making substantive decisions for the redesigned Conversations program.

“The Provost asked [Brubaker-Cole] to serve as the administrative home for the program to work with the student and faculty committee to provide logistics and facilitation,” Hayward wrote. “Decisions about the membership of the student committee, topics, speakers and program format are the purview of the student/faculty committee.”

 

Student leadership

Last year – the first in which Cardinal Conversations was held – saw FSI’s Michael McFaul and Hoover’s Niall Ferguson working with a steering committee of undergraduate representatives from various student groups and publications, including the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU), the Stanford Political Union (SPU), Stanford in Government (SIG), The Stanford Sphere and The Stanford Review.

Accounts vary regarding the distribution of power between the steering committee and faculty leaders. Ferguson said members “kicked around ideas” and were involved in recruiting speakers, while McFaul described his own capacity as “working with students” and “helping to assemble” talks. Stanford News reported that student members “chose the topics” of discussion.

Last year’s student steering committee was criticized by a coalition of student activists over allegations of political bias and inadequate transparency.

“There is … no public knowledge on how the committee was formed,” the coalition wrote in an op-ed. “The leadership of Cardinal Conversations as a whole leans toward the right of the political spectrum, thus the speakers the initiative invites neither represent both sides of the story nor raise the voices of communities that have been historically silenced.”

Moving forward, Brubaker-Cole said SPU, SIG and ASSU have been involved in designing a proposal for this year’s student committee. That proposal is set to be released for community comment, shortly after Thanksgiving Break.

Although Brubaker-Cole said she “provided a forum for those [three] groups to have input” and implied that all three are still involved, the ASSU affirmed that it has been less involved than SPU and SIG.

“We are not the ones designing the new model – our understanding is that this has been primarily SPU [and] SIG,” said ASSU President Shanta Katipamula ’19. “We have provided feedback on the draft proposal that was shared with us. We also suggested that given the harm perpetuated by this program in the past, the entire campus community should be given an opportunity to comment on the proposed structure for the student committee. The faculty committee indicated that they were amenable to that suggestion.”

Katipamula met with Brubaker-Cole and the program’s faculty advisors on Friday, after Katipamula and her vice president, Ph.D. candidate Rosie Nelson, raised “some critical questions of how students would be selected for the committee and how student feedback was being solicited” with Brubaker-Cole.

According to Katipamula, this was the first and only meeting the ASSU had with Brubaker-Cole to discuss the steering committee’s composition. After an ASSU cabinet member met with a member of SPU this past weekend to provide concrete suggestions for the proposal, the ASSU decided to discontinue its involvement with the program.

“It became clear to us that this student group had a very distinct vision of what the program should look like that didn’t address all of our concerns, so we suggested that the students who have been involved much longer than we have [been] be given the opportunity to implement their vision in accordance with the faculty group’s guidance,” Katipamula wrote. “We hope that the next iteration of the proposal does address those concerns and we hope that the ultimate proposal will meet the campus’s needs.”

However, not every branch of student government has stepped back from involvement in rethinking Cardinal Conversations. Last week, the Undergraduate Senate passed a resolution – introduced by Senator Matthew Wigler ’19 – to reform Conversations as a new dialogue series called Deliberative Dinners, built around the six principles of community, conversation, continuity, inclusion, equality and accountability.

Brubaker-Cole confirmed that she will be meeting with Wigler to discuss his alternative vision, but she added that she knows little about the specifics of the proposal.

For its part, SPU – despite being a relatively new student group – was cited as an influence on Cardinal Conversations by President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Drell when the program was first formally announced.

SPU co-chairs Zoe Himwich ’19 and Jack Lindsey ’19 said they reached out to McFaul because the Conversations program “had a similar stated mission” to theirs in that it sought “to encourage dialogue on campus between people with different ideologies and viewpoints.”

“We wanted to see if there were ways we could work with the program towards common objectives,” they wrote in an email to The Daily.

Himwich and Lindsey added that they, along with representatives from SIG, have been meeting with Brubaker-Cole to “provide input and suggestions for the new program structure, focusing on ways to make it more accessible to students and representative of diverse viewpoints and interests.”

As of Tuesday night, SIG leadership had not responded to The Daily’s request for comment.

 

Faculty involvement

Drell’s September update also announced three faculty advisors for the program: Thomas Gilligan, director of the Hoover Institution; law professor Deborah Rhode; and Claude Steele, professor emeritus of psychology and dean emeritus of the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

Gilligan was first brought onboard at the end of last year, as an interim leader, after Ferguson stepped down following the leak of an email chain revealing that Ferguson had conspired with conservative students to steer the direction of the program and do “opposition research” on a progressive student activist.

“I was asked by the Provost to work with Susie and the Faculty members to support the student leadership of this initiative,” Gillian wrote in an email to The Daily. “I’m happy to do so.”

Steele, meanwhile, was a speaker in last year’s fifth and final Conversation, which was announced significantly later than the other four and just days after Ferguson resigned from the program.

If your psychology department was thinking of inviting Charles Murray I would vote no,” Steele remarked during the talk. “But if some student group invited him, I wouldn’t oppose that.”

His comments were made in reference to an earlier Conversation featuring social scientist Charles Murray, who has been criticized for arguing that disparities in intelligence are tied to race. Murray’s talk was met with student protest outside the venue and with visibly low attendance inside.

However, Steele also said that free speech – which has been a central theme of the Conversations initiative since its inception – is not always entirely positive.

“One can see how free speech, in some [of its] uses, can be incredibly disruptive to people, to their functioning,” Steele remarked during the Conversation. “It can be debilitating enough to make it very difficult for them to take advantage of the opportunities here.”

Facing forward, Steele expressed excitement about the opportunity to “develop a forum for genuinely open discussions of society’s most important challenges.”

“This is an important function of universities, great universities, and I am glad to be part of Stanford’s rising to the challenge,” he wrote in an email to The Daily. “As I join this effort it is clear that the major shift from last year’s effort is to have students play a much more central role in designing and implementing the effort, from speaker selection to format design.”

Steele clarified that faculty are “colleagues,” not directors, of students in the programming discussion.

McFaul is no longer involved. He did not respond to a request for comment on Ferguson’s departure last spring, and as of press time Tuesday night, had not responded to a second request for comment. Rhode also did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Julia Ingram at jmingram ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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House swings blue; Republicans maintain control of Senate https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/07/house-swings-blue-republicans-maintain-control-of-senate/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/07/house-swings-blue-republicans-maintain-control-of-senate/#respond Wed, 07 Nov 2018 09:39:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1146434 Democrats gained a majority in the House of Representatives while Republicans retained the Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

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Democrats gained a majority in the House of Representatives while Republicans retained the Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

As of late Tuesday night, Democrats had gained 26 seats in the House, putting them at 228 total — well above the 218 needed to take control of the legislative body.

As of the same time, Republicans had gained three seats in the Senate, securing 53 out of 100 votes in the body.

In the two years since Republicans took control over both the House and the Senate, a number of issues have come down to the wire, including the “skinny repeal” of the Affordable Care Act (which failed 51-49) and the Supreme Court confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh (which passed 50-48).

However, the advantage Republicans gain from their stronger Senate majority will be tempered by the House’s flip to blue, which splits the bicameral legislature and ends what was — following Kavanaugh’s confirmation — an effective right-wing lock on all three branches of the federal government.

At the time of print publication, various West Coast races — as well as neck-and-neck ones elsewhere — had not been called for the House and Senate.

Notable victories in the Senate included those of Republican Ted Cruz over Democrat challenger Beto O’Rourke in Texas and Republican Josh Hawley over Democrat incumbent Claire McCaskill in Missouri. Democrat Joe Manchin kept his contested seat in West Virginia, while Republican Kevin Cramer unseated Democrat Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, and former Florida governor Rick Scott — a Republican — seemed set to defeat Democrat incumbent Bill Nelson.

Senatorial victories in other toss-up states included those of Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mike Braun (R-IN). Matt Rosendale (R-MT), Martha McSally (R-AZ) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) also seemed the likely victors of their respective states at the time of writing.

In the House, Democrat upset victories included those of Max Rose in New York’s 11th district (near Staten Island) and Joe Cunningham in South Carolina’s first (around Charleston).

In California, two House districts seemed ready to flip late Tuesday night, both going from Republican to Democrat: the 48th in Orange County and the 49th in northern San Diego. Statewide, the night ended with a predicted 41 total Democrat representatives and 12 total Republican ones, maintaining the state’s strong liberal leaning.

With 36 governor’s races on the ballot, Democrats looked to have gained six, even in the face of two high-profile losses in the south.

One of those two was in Florida, where Ron DeSantis — an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump — beat Bernie Sanders-endorsed progressive Andrew Gillum.

“I’m not going to beat around the bush — this is definitely not the result I expected,” said Tatie Balabanis ’19, a registered voter in Miami-Dade County. “But I think it is almost reassuring knowing, one, how many people from Florida went and voted, and two, how close it was because I feel like as it was just within reach. There is so much opportunity for change at the local level, leaving a lot of potential for change in my county and local district.”

Meanwhile, Georgian Democrat Stacey Abrams seemed set to lose to Republican Brian Kemp in a race that garnered national attention amid claims of voter suppression by Kemp. As Georgia’s current Secretary of State, Kemp enforces voter registration policies, including the state’s controversial “exact match” law.

In a speech late Tuesday night, Abrams pledged to not concede the race until all votes had been counted, implying that a runoff for the seat is likely.

“Much like the Beto v. Cruz race in Texas, Kemp’s strategy was mostly to attack Abrams’ standpoint,” wrote Sean Hackett ’21, a registered Georgia voter, in a message to The Daily. “…To me it wasn’t surprising that he won, given that the state is highly conservative.”

In Texas, Republican incumbent Greg Abbott kept his seat as governor. However, after a neck-and-neck race that went on for much of the night, the Wisconsin governorship was taken from Scott Walker (a Republican) by challenger Tony Evers (a Democrat).

Balabanis applauded Stanford’s campus climate leading up to the midterms, citing the emphasis on voter participation and expressing hope that students “keep this momentum going for the 2020 election.”

Dauber’s activism in the midterms

Races beyond the Bay Area, and even beyond California, were in the sights of Stanford Law professor Michele Dauber as she sought to build upon the energy of the #MeToo movement and make sexual assault an issue for voters.

Dauber — who is also known for her successful campaign to recall former judge Aaron Persky ’84 M.A. ’85 — praised the defeat of candidates targeted by her recently-established political action committee (PAC), the Enough is Enough Voters Project, which aims to end the careers of politicians the organization believes are guilty of sexual misconduct or actions contrary to women’s issues.

“So long misogynist Jason Lewis,” Dauber tweeted Tuesday night, referring to a House of Representatives incumbent from Minnesota’s second district who was bested by Democratic candidate Angie Craig. “Looking like voters said no thanks to your misogyny.”

In 2011, Lewis said of women, “They don’t understand, they’re — they don’t handle finances. They’re guided by emotion, not reason. Why, that’s why they didn’t have the vote for a full century in the country.”

Dauber echoed similar sentiments toward Matt Rinaldi, a Texas state legislator who called the #MeToo movement a “crazy opportunistic political attack” and opposed legislation extending the statute of limitations for rape victims.

“Texas voters said #EnoughIsEnough to Matt Rinaldi,” Dauber tweeted.

Lewis and Rinaldi were among six candidates identified as being in “Featured Races” by the Enough is Enough website. Among the other four was Cruz, who the PAC targeted for voting against the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization and the right for victims of sexual assault to get abortions.

Speaking to The Daily in September, Dauber emphasized her efforts to subject leaders with questionable records to significant scrutiny through the ballot.

“There is a serious problem, particularly at the state and local level, with elected officials who have been credibly accused of these kinds of behaviors but have never been held accountable because the voters lack the information because [the elected officials] operate below the radar of the national media,” she said.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Electrical failure at Bass Biology Building causes one-third of campus to lose power https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/24/following-possible-construction-incident-one-third-of-campus-loses-power/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/24/following-possible-construction-incident-one-third-of-campus-loses-power/#respond Thu, 25 Oct 2018 01:21:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1145577 Approximately one third of Stanford’s campus lost power at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, potentially as the result of an incident at an on-campus construction site. Approximately 55 buildings were initially affected, though some were left without power longer than others.

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Approximately one-third of Stanford’s campus lost power at about 3 p.m. on Wednesday, following an electrical failure at the nearly completed Bass Biology Building. Around 55 buildings were initially affected, though some were left without power longer than others.

Classes and events that had been planned to occur in affected buildings were officially canceled in an AlertSU announcement sent at 5:06 p.m on Wednesday. All affected buildings, aside from Bass, were restored with power by around 10 p.m., after a cable failure was identified at a transformer serving Bass.

In an email sent to CS 107 students on Wednesday afternoon, computer science lecturer Cynthia Lee speculated that an on-campus construction accident was the cause of the outages. Bass was not officially revealed as the construction site in question until a Thursday morning update from the University.

“From what I understand, construction workers next door to the Gates Computer Science building hit a high voltage line and knocked out power to multiple buildings, including Gates and Huang,” Lee wrote. “Thankfully, what I’m hearing is that no one was hurt. I hope that is the case.”

In an email to The Daily on Wednesday, University spokesperson E.J. Miranda wrote that the cause for the power outages had not yet been confirmed. He noted that Stanford’s “focus is on working to restore power.”

“We have no reports of a campus construction project hitting any utility lines,” Miranda added in a second email. “And there was no active digging in [the Gates] area today.”

While some of the affected buildings were powered with backup generators almost immediately after losing power, other buildings experienced longer outages, and those without generators were warned that they might lose services if battery backups ran out. As of 5 p.m. on Wednesday, more than 40 campus buildings were still affected by the outages, according to Stanford Emergency Information.

WiFi connections were also impacted, as the Stanford network rendered temporarily unavailable for an unknown number of students. Staff of the Lathrop Tech Desk described the incident as a “power/wifi outage” in a sign posted on the door of the Lathrop Learning Hub.

“It was scary,” said Royce Wang ’19. “I was doing my grad school apps on Word, thankfully.”

Stanford’s Land, Buildings & Real Estate (LBRE) department began working to restore power within about an hour of the initial outage, according to an AlertSU Emergency Alert sent around campus. It was estimated in the 4:25 p.m. alert that power restoration in affected buildings would take about four hours.

Cecil H. Green Library, one of the affected buildings, closed at 4:20 p.m., and was reopened at 6:20 p.m., as a result of the outage. The Red Hoop Fountain outside of the library was also shut off.

The Lathrop Learning Hub also closed early on Wednesday. Desktop computers both in the Hub and in the nearby 24-hour study space were shut down as a result of the outage, while customers at the basement Lathrop Cafe were temporarily forced to pay with cash for their coffees and baked goods.

Zhi Xin MS ’19 said she tried to go to the Tech Desk after it shut down, only to find the doors locked and a sign on the door saying it wouldn’t reopen until the next morning. Xin, who was attempting to return a camera she borrowed from the Desk for a class, expressed doubt about how the shutdown would impact rental policies.

“My reservation ends this afternoon, so I don’t know how they’ll deal with that,” she said.

Other affected areas included Mudd Chemistry, Gilbert Biology, Bing Concert Hall, the Arrillaga Alumni Center, Hoover Tower, multiple gyms and athletic facilities, the Cantor Arts Center, various research facilities and all of the Graduate School of Business, according to Stanford’s Emergency Information service.

Several students reported outages having occurred in their residences, though Emergency Information noted that all dormitories and dining halls were reportedly powered as of 4:25 p.m.

“I was in Mars,” said JB Horsley ’19. “We lost power for, like, 10 minutes. I just thought someone turned off the lights.”

“Wifi was also down for about 15 minutes,” said CJ Paige ’19, who was in Norcliffe at the time of the outage. “The power came on before the wifi.”

Other students were in class at the time of the outage, and faculty responses to the outage varied. Griffin Koontz ’17 M.S. ’19 noted that ECON 52 professor Monika Piazzesi continued to teach after the class lecture hall — Lathrop’s Bishop Auditorium — lost power.

“I was in Econ 52, and suddenly the lights went out and we could not see the board any longer,” Koontz said. “Then, the back-up lights turned on, and we could vaguely see the board with the help of [Piazzesi]’s phone flashlight. And she continued to lecture … with her phone shining on the board. And then she would write, and we could kind of see what was going on.”

Piazzesi explained that she did this because she is “really determined to teach [her students] this material.”

“Econ 52 is great material to teach, and a small thing like a power outage won’t prevent me from teaching it,” she wrote in an email to The Daily.

Elsewhere, the outage affected research work. Researchers were told to “cease any work with hazardous materials, and secure and leave [their] lab” in an AlertSU Emergency Alert. More detailed lab safety protocols, published online, asked researchers to close biosafety cabinets and fume hood sashes.

Students and researchers were also warned that ventilation may have been impacted by the incident.

As of 8 p.m. Wednesday night, the Anderson Collection, Stauffer I, Stauffer II, the Stanford Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic, Roth Way Garage, Mudd Chemistry, Gilbert Biology, the Paul Allen Building and Chemistry Gazebo were the only buildings still without power, according to a University update regarding the outage.

Bass was the only building still without power on Thursday, according to Emergency Information.

 

This article has been updated to include comment from economics professor Monika Piazzesi.

The article has also been updated to include information from Emergency Information posts released on Wednesday night and on Thursday, after this article’s initial publication.

Gillian Brassil and Alex Tsai contributed to this report.

 

Contact Holden Foreman at hs4man21 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Leaked memo reveals extent of communication between Resident Assistants, Resident Fellows about student drinking https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/18/leaked-memo-reveals-extent-of-communication-between-resident-assistants-resident-fellows-about-student-drinking/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/18/leaked-memo-reveals-extent-of-communication-between-resident-assistants-resident-fellows-about-student-drinking/#respond Thu, 18 Oct 2018 08:50:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1145146 A leaked memo from two Resident Assistants (RAs) in an all-freshman dorm in Stern Hall has revealed the extent to which staff members communicate residents’ social and drinking behavior to Resident Fellows (RFs) on a regular basis.

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A leaked memo from two Resident Assistants (RAs) in an all-freshman dorm in Stern Hall has revealed the extent to which staff members communicate residents’ social and drinking behavior to Resident Fellows (RFs) on a regular basis.

On Sunday, Oct. 14 at 2:06 a.m., an incident report was accidentally sent to all residents of the dorm instead of just staff and RFs. The informally written memo recorded the students’ behavior that night between 8:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. chronologically and in half-hour or hourly intervals. The students were identified by name.

To protect the medical privacy of residents named in the memo and to avoid implicating uninvolved staff members within the residence, The Daily has chosen to withhold the name of the specific dorm.

Immediately following the leak, the University Privacy Office initiated an investigation into the incident, according to Student Affairs spokesperson Pat Harris.

The memo detailed events ranging from “wholesome” alcohol-free interactions to reports of a student who was intoxicated, a student who took five shots within an hour and a half and a student who vomited in a restroom.

“Around 11:45 [p.m.] … [a student] had thrown up in the … bathroom,” the memo said. “[One student] and [another student] helped her clean it up and I provided Clorox wipes. [One student] was coherent and also helping clean.”

Dorm staff members have not responded to The Daily’s request for comment.

The RAs also noted each “gathering” that was going on in the dorm, whether alcohol was present at those gatherings and whether each one was “registered.”

“Reaction to the [leaked memo] was mixed,” said an individual who requested anonymity. “Some thought it was humorous, while others were understandably upset by it. Regardless, it caught everyone off guard that these notes were taken and recorded in the first place.”

A dorm resident said that not having known this information was being collected made some residents uncomfortable, adding that they were “a little upset that [they] were in the dark about this the whole time.”

Since the leak, the resident said, some residents have floated the idea that they either be formally included on future such communications or be alerted when they get named therein. However, those ideas have not been brought before dorm staff as far as the resident knew.

RAs in multiple dormitories confirmed that, despite new protocol from Residential Education (ResEd), staff members across residences have been collecting and sending such information to RFs for years. According to the RAs, this takes place while RAs are “on call” in the dorm, which typically happens on Friday and Saturday nights from around 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. and involves providing alternatives to attending parties that night.

Harris confirmed the regularity with which this information is reported, writing in an email to The Daily that these reports are intended to summarize incidents “in order to facilitate communication among staff members and respond to critical situations.”

She added that “assessing student conduct is an important protective factor for students who may need support and education about healthy and safe behaviors.”

However, on call reports from 2014 — shared with The Daily by a former dorm RF — demonstrate that the Stern dorm’s memo went into more detail than is always the case.

The first report from the former RF only discusses one resident in detail. That resident is referred to by their initials, and the report describes them as having played a drinking game and then received a verbal warning from a staff member.

The second such report refers to residents by neither name nor initials, instead just describing a large party — featuring both alcohol and non-resident attendees — that happened in the dorm and resulted in light disciplinary action.

Both of the 2014 reports were shared as text emails at the time. However, staff in different houses vary in their methods of communicating reports. While emails are the norm for some, others use methods — ranging from GroupMe to Google Docs to Slack — that are less prone to accidental disclosure.

“We anticipate our investigation of this incident will help us improve safeguards,” Harris said. “This may include technical solutions and, as needed, additional training based on best practices.”

Ten minutes after the Stern dorm’s report was released to residents, an RA involved in the leak followed up with an apology email sent to the whole dorm.

“[The email said] that it was an accident and if anyone had any questions about what was said, or what was reported, then to come talk to … staff,” a dorm resident recalled.

“Then Sunday evening,” the resident continued, “an email was sent out to residents by the RFs.”

That email referred to “sharing information” as “ResEd’s standard operating procedures” and said that doing so is a necessary part of staffing but should be done in a way that maintains student privacy.

“One way of responding [to student issues] well is being mindful of the past,” the RFs wrote. “So, it’s important to share nonjudgmental descriptions of what’s been happening as well as assessed needs so that other staff members can be informed and thoughtful during every weekend and every other day throughout the year.”

Residents later received an email from Privacy Officer Danielle Brooks on behalf of the University Privacy Office asking them to permanently delete the email and reply with confirmation that they had done so.

“At Stanford University, we take privacy very seriously, and we apologize for any inconvenience this error may have caused you,” Brooks wrote.

The exact same email was sent again two days later to remind students to delete the leaked memo, a dorm resident said. However, they added, “hardly anybody” has done so.

The Daily has reached out to the dorm RFs and Brooks for comment.

 

This report has been updated to include old on call reports from a former RF, as well as comment from Harris and dorm residents.

This report will be continually updated as more details and perspectives come to light.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Julia Ingram at jmingram ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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SCR President drops charges, asks for apology https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/15/scr-president-drops-charges-asks-for-apology/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/15/scr-president-drops-charges-asks-for-apology/#respond Tue, 16 Oct 2018 03:50:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1144985 Stanford College Republicans (SCR) President John Rice-Cameron ’20 has dropped the charges he previously filed against Melinda Hernandez ’21, SCR announced in a Facebook post made Monday night. Rice-Cameron had alleged that Hernandez pushed him during a White Plaza tabling event last Tuesday, and Hernandez was issued a citation for battery at the scene.

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Stanford College Republicans (SCR) President John Rice-Cameron ’20 has dropped the charges he previously filed against Melinda Hernandez ’21, SCR announced in a Facebook post made Monday night. Rice-Cameron had alleged that Hernandez pushed him during a White Plaza tabling event last Tuesday, and Hernandez was issued a citation for battery at the scene.

“Although it is entirely within the legal rights of our president to press charges, he has decided to drop the charges in an expression of goodwill and in the hope that doing so will help diffuse tension on campus,” SCR wrote.

The incident in question occurred while SCR members, including Rice-Cameron, were holding an event in support of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, despite numerous sexual assault allegations against him. Rice-Cameron told authorities that Hernandez “shoved him in the chest with her hand during a verbal disagreement,” Stanford Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bill Larson told The Daily at the time.

Hernandez and other witnesses denied that the contact was forceful, and Hernandez said it was prompted by Rice-Cameron refusing to stop videotaping her without her consent.

Hernandez was placed under a private person arrest and issued the battery citation by police who arrived at the scene. A message leaked from SCR’s group chat on the day of the arrest confirmed that Rice-Cameron had filed a police report and was planning to press “full charges” against Hernandez.

“She got in my face and proceeded to hit me in the chest area and push me back forcefully,” Rice-Cameron said.

Larson said there was no obvious injury to anyone involved, and Rice-Cameron declined to be evaluated by paramedics on the scene.

“I hope that my willingness to drop the charges will set the tone for more respect and decency in political discourse going forward,” Rice-Cameron told The Daily. “I hope that the student who assaulted me will do her part and acknowledge that her behavior was completely inappropriate.”

Sean Webby, Public Communications Officer for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, said they “have not yet received the case to review.”

The SCR statement calls for Hernandez to apologize for the alleged assault, as well as to “do her part to contribute to a more respectful and civil Stanford” and acknowledge “the right of all students to express their views peacefully.”

Hernandez did not immediately respond to a request for comment, although a public Facebook post she previously wrote described the charges as “an exertion of power and privilege” by SCR.

“Those who know my character, from a distance or up close, know my fight in social justice lies in peace,” she added.

Stanford Democrats President Gabe Rosen ’19 expressed hope that SCR would follow through on its commitment to “civility and respectful dialogue,” but also questioned the mechanisms through which the conservative student group approaches those ends.

“It’s our belief that such engagement can’t be realized in the form of publicly challenging random students on the street to address emotionally charged issues, seeing as those lopsided encounters usually end up undermining the stated goal of facilitating informed discourse,” Rosen said. “Setting up debates moderated by neutral third parties would be more preferable for civility as a demonstration of good faith and for giving people the choice whether to participate or not.”

Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole and Senior Associate Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Access Lauren Schoenthaler addressed the incident in a Thursday post on the University-run blog Notes from the Quad.

“These issues come at a time when many in our community are feeling vulnerable, whether because of the polarized political culture in our country, or the recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings and the issues they raised, or other reasons,” the post read. “In these times, it is especially important to reiterate our shared responsibility for creating a community of care and respect for one another, and for the reasoned discussion of ideas that is at the heart of what universities contribute to our society.”

The post also announced plans to convene student groups to discuss the incident further.

Amid a national debate over the extent of and limits on free speech, particularly on college campuses, the White Plaza incident has received national attention. The Washington Post ran a story Monday that discussed the incident in the context of Rice-Cameron’s relationship with his mother, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama Susan Rice. SCR treasurer Ben Esposito also discussed the incident in a recent Fox News segment.

 

This report has been updated with comment from the Stanford Democrats and the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, and will be updated further pending comment from Hernandez and others.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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After year of criticism, Drell announces changes to Conversations program https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/24/after-year-of-criticism-drell-announces-changes-to-conversations-program/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/24/after-year-of-criticism-drell-announces-changes-to-conversations-program/#respond Mon, 24 Sep 2018 08:25:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1143793 In a “Notes from the Quad” blog post published Friday, Provost Persis Drell outlined a plan for the future of the Cardinal Conversations lecture series, the content and organization of which was repeatedly the subject of scandals and protest.

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In a “Notes from the Quad” blog post published Friday, Provost Persis Drell outlined a plan for the future of the Cardinal Conversations lecture series, the content and organization of which was repeatedly the subject of scandals and protest.

Among the planned changes are a reconstitution of the program’s leadership and a reevaluation of which speakers are invited to participate.

“One of the goals of Cardinal Conversations was to create a forum where thought leaders could engage in civil and intellectually rigorous conversation,” Drell said in the post before adding that there were “several bumps in [that] road.”

Among those, she elaborated, were a lack of diversity in both speakers and topics — “an issue that we tried to address later in the series” — and trouble finding a leadership structure that appropriately balanced student and faculty input.

In its inaugural year, Cardinal Conversations was co-led by Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. McFaul and Ferguson worked with a committee of undergraduates representing various student groups and publications to select the roster of invited speakers.

This year, however, there will be three faculty advisors: Thomas Gilligan, director of the Hoover Institution; Deborah Rhode, Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law; and Claude Steele, professor emeritus of psychology and dean emeritus of the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

They will work with a group of students “representing a wide spectrum of backgrounds and political perspectives” to develop lecture programming, Drell said, adding that the group structure and selection process will be determined during fall quarter.

“This committee will reexamine the program format and structure and aim to present a more diverse group of speakers and topics,” Drell said.

There were five Conversations last year, including ones featuring Palantir founder Peter Thiel ’89, political commentator Andrew Sullivan, former “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel M.A. ’62 and former Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ’82. 

It was the second event in the series, however — featuring social scientist Charles Murray — that sparked the most outcry. Murray, whose statements about the relationship between race and IQ have been criticized as racist pseudoscience, was met with student protest outside the lecture venue and visibly low attendance within.

The program later made national headlines after leaked emails revealed Ferguson had been coordinating with conservative student activists John Rice-Cameron ’20 and Max Minshull ’20 to steer the tone and content of the Conversations program, as well as to conduct “opposition research” on a progressive student activist.

Ferguson resigned from his leadership role after Drell was made aware of these efforts.

The new series of Conversations, under the new leadership structure, is expected to begin in early 2019, Drell said.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford affiliate publicly accuses Kavanaugh of sexual assault https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/16/stanford-affiliate-publicly-accuses-kavanaugh-of-sexual-assault/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/16/stanford-affiliate-publicly-accuses-kavanaugh-of-sexual-assault/#respond Sun, 16 Sep 2018 20:10:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1143656 Stanford affiliate Christine Blasey Ford has come forward as the author of a letter sent to Senator Dianne Feinstein ’55, the Washington Post reports. Ford’s letter, the contents of which became public Friday, accuses Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a high school party in the early 1980s.

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Stanford affiliate Christine Blasey Ford has come forward as the author of a letter sent to Senator Dianne Feinstein ’55, the Washington Post reports. Ford’s letter, the contents of which became public Friday, accuses Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a high school party in the early 1980s.

Ford, who uses the name Christine Blasey professionally, is a professor at Palo Alto University and teaches in a consortium with Stanford. Per her official University profile, Ford works in psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

She has reportedly been in contact with The Post for weeks regarding her letter but was previously only willing to speak on background, meaning The Post could not quote or attribute anything to her.

In early July, prior to Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Ford submitted a tip to The Post and contacted 18th Congressional District Representative Anna Eshoo, who represents both Palo Alto and Stanford. On July 30, the letter — including Ford’s request to keep the matter confidential — was reportedly sent from Eshoo’s office to Feinstein.

Now, with the allegations having reached national prominence and reporters visiting her at home, Ford has decided to publicly identify herself.

In an interview with The Post, she reiterated and elaborated on the claims made in the letter sent to Feinstein and Eshoo, saying that Kavanaugh pinned her down on a bed and groped her over her clothes while attempting to undress her, as a friend of his watched. Kavanaugh also put his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream, she said.

In a statement issued when the allegations initially became public, Kavanaugh said he “categorically and unequivocally” denied such an incident having ever occured.

Kavanaugh’s high school, Georgetown Preparatory School, and his high school friend, Mark Judge — whom Ford identified as the second boy in the room at the time of the assault — have both denied knowledge of the alleged incident.

Feinstein, who is the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, shared the contents of the letter, but not the letter itself, with fellow committee Democrats Wednesday. She also referred the letter to the F.B.I., which added it — with Ford’s name redacted — to Kavanaugh’s background check folder.

The F.B.I. said Thursday that it had not opened an investigation into the allegations.

Ford hired Debra Katz, an attorney known for her past work on sexual harassment cases, to represent her. In early August, Ford reportedly took a polygraph test — commonly used to detect lies — administered by a former F.B.I. agent. Katz, who recommended Ford take the test, later provided the The Post with the results, which maintain that Ford told the truth when she affirmed the accuracy of her allegations against Kavanaugh.

Ford did not discuss specifics of the incident with anyone for decades, The Post reports, although she did tell her husband early on in their relationship that she’d been a victim of physical abuse.

The two married in 2002, and during couples therapy in 2012, Ford recounted having been assaulted by students of “an elitist boys’ school” who later became “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington,” according to her therapist’s notes, reviewed by The Post.

In an interview with The Post, Ford’s husband said the incident she described in 2012 was the same one that would eventually be outlined in her letter.

Ford’s husband also said that Ford specifically named Kavanaugh during therapy, and that she worried he might one day be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Following the reveal of Ford’s letter, a spokesperson for Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley — the Republican senator who set the timeline for Kavanaugh’s confirmation — told The New York Times that Grassley has no plans to delay the committee’s vote on Kavanaugh, which is set to take place this Thursday.

 

This report has been updated to reflect that the vote planned for Thursday is a committee vote rather than a confirmation vote. It will be updated further as new details and perspectives emerge.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Holden Foreman at hs4man21 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford affiliate potentially involved in raising allegations of sexual misconduct by SCOTUS nominee https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/13/stanford-affiliate-potentially-involved-in-raising-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct-by-scotus-nominee/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/13/stanford-affiliate-potentially-involved-in-raising-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct-by-scotus-nominee/#respond Fri, 14 Sep 2018 04:09:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1143627 A Stanford affiliate may have played a role in connecting Dianne Feinstein ’55, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, with a letter some say discusses potential sexual misconduct by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh while he was in high school, multiple media outlets report.

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A Stanford affiliate may have played a role in connecting Dianne Feinstein ’55, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, with a letter alleging past sexual misconduct by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, multiple media outlets report.

Details of the letter surfaced Friday in coverage by The New Yorker, which said the letter accuses Kavanaugh of assaulting a woman during a high school party in the early 1980s. The letter reportedly says Kavanaugh and a classmate — both of whom had been drinking — played loud music in a bedroom to drown out a woman’s protests while Kavanaugh attempted to force himself on top of her, before she eventually escaped.

Kavanaugh denied the allegations entirely, The New Yorker reported, and the letter itself has not been made public.

“I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,” Feinstein said in a statement on Thursday. “That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision.”

Accounts of how Feinstein came to possess the letter remain clouded.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the letter was given to Feinstein in July by 18th Congressional District Representative Anna Eshoo. The 18th District includes Stanford, and — according to a Wednesday report by The Intercept — Eshoo received the letter from a Stanford affiliate, who reportedly wrote it based on information provided to them by a fourth party.

However, The New Yorker instead cites a source close to the woman in the letter as saying that this woman sent the letter directly to the offices of both Eshoo and Feinstein.

The New Yorker article does not mention a Stanford affiliate. However, a subsequent article published Friday by Politico does, and specifies that it was a Stanford Law School professor.

Stanford Law Professor Michele Dauber — an advocate for sexual assault victims who garnered widespread attention for her role in the successful campaign to recall former superior court judge Aaron Persky ’84 M.A. ’85 — said she had no knowledge of an affiliate beyond media coverage.

“I was not involved in any letter to anyone and don’t know anyone who was,” Dauber told The Daily.

Debra Katz, an attorney known for her work with #MeToo survivors, is representing the woman in the letter, The Intercept reported. When asked by Buzzfeed News about her involvement in the matter, Katz said there was “nothing to say.”

A spokesperson for Kavanaugh’s former high school, Georgetown Preparatory School in Maryland, told CNN that the school has “no knowledge regarding any accusation” against Kavanaugh related to his time at the school.

Feinstein referred the matter to the F.B.I. on Thursday, after discussing — but not sharing — the letter with Judiciary Committee Democrats Wednesday. An F.B.I. official told The Times that a criminal investigation has not been opened in response to the letter.

The F.B.I., which conducts background checks on all Supreme Court nominees, added the letter to Kavanaugh’s background file on Thursday, giving the White House access. Other senators may also now have access to the letter, The Times reported.

The timing of Feinstein’s actions — months after she allegedly received the letter — drew criticism from the Trump administration, which dismissed discussion of the letter as a politicized attempt to derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

“Not until the eve of his confirmation has Senator Feinstein or anyone raised the specter of new ‘information’ about [Kavanaugh],” said White House spokesperson Kerri Kupec.

Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley, the Republican senator who set the timeline for Kavanaugh’s confirmation, reportedly received a copy of the letter after its inclusion in Kavanaugh’s background file. However, a spokesperson for Grassley told The Times that the senator had not yet viewed the letter and had no plans to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote.

The Senate is set to vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation next Thursday, Sept. 20.

 

This report has been updated to reflect new details regarding the alleged contents of the letter and the status of the alleged Stanford affiliate, as well as discrepancies between different media outlets’ coverage of the story. The Daily will include additional details as they come to light.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Holden Foreman at hs4man21 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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University to rename Serra House, Serra Mall following two years of controversy https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/13/university-to-rename-serra-house-serra-mall-following-two-years-of-controversy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/13/university-to-rename-serra-house-serra-mall-following-two-years-of-controversy/#respond Thu, 13 Sep 2018 21:00:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1143616 Stanford will rename the Serra freshman dorm and Serra House, two campus buildings honoring California mission system founder Father Junipero Serra, who has drawn sharp criticism for his mistreatment of Native Americans.  

Stanford will also seek to rename Serra Mall, pending the approval of Santa Clara County and the U.S. Postal Service. This would change the University’s official address, which is currently 450 Serra Mall. If approved, Serra Mall will become Jane Stanford Way in honor of the University’s co-founder.

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Stanford will rename the freshman dorm, Serra, and Serra House, two campus buildings honoring California mission system founder Father Junipero Serra, who has drawn sharp criticism for his mistreatment of Native Americans.  

Stanford will also seek to rename Serra Mall, pending the approval of Santa Clara County and the U.S. Postal Service. This would change the University’s official address, which is currently 450 Serra Mall. If approved, Serra Mall will become Jane Stanford Way in honor of the University’s co-founder.

New names for the Serra dorm and the Serra House, an academic building that houses the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, have yet to be determined. According to Brad Hayward, Associate Vice President for University Communications, the University will select the new name for Serra dorm after gathering student input starting this fall.

Not all landmarks that echo Serra’s name will be re-christened. Serra Street, which stretches from the end of Serra Mall to El Camino Real, will retain its name. The dorm Junipero — named for the juniper tree rather than Serra, despite popular misconceptions — will remain unchanged.

The decision was recommended by the Advisory Committee on Renaming Junipero Serra Features, convened by University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne to apply a set of principles surrounding the renaming of campus buildings and landmarks to those honoring Serra. The recommendations have been accepted by Stanford’s Board of Trustees. 

“We hope that renaming the two Serra houses and Serra Mall will remove a significant hurt to Native Americans, other members of the Stanford community and the larger diverse world that Stanford seeks to embrace,” the committee’s report states. “We also acknowledge that respect for historic continuity with Stanford’s founding reflected in our recommendation to maintain the names of other features named for Spanish missionaries and settlers may continue to cause concern for some.”

Stanford’s Thursday decision marks a milestone in a multi-year debate that has been fraught with institutional delays and ensuing frustration from those who sought a resolution to the matter.  

The Advisory Committee on Renaming Junipero Serra Features is the third committee convened in response to the call to rename Serra. An original committee, tasked in 2016 to resolve the renaming question by then-President John Hennessy, failed to deliver a verdict on the matter after a long stalemate.

In late 2017, institutional efforts to address the renaming controversy accelerated. Tessier-Lavigne announced that he would dissolve that group and convene two new committees; the first would devise principles on renaming to ensure continuity between cases going forward, and the second would apply those principles to Serra’s case.

Committee chair and former Stanford Law Dean Paul Brest said that the group’s deliberations, including efforts to perceive the nuances of Serra’s relationship to Stanford history, were thoughtful and constructive.

“It was a very positive and productive process,” he said.

 

Rationale behind renaming

Tessier-Lavigne maintains that the committee’s decision recognizes the “many challenging dimensions of this issue and the broad variety of viewpoints on it, along with the multidimensional nature of Junipero Serra’s legacy.”

Before arriving at its decision, the committee met with students, staff and alumni belonging to Native American, Latinx and Roman Catholic communities, as well as current and former residents of the Serra dorm. The committee also solicited online feedback from Stanford community members and met with Muwekma Ohlone tribal leaders.

Brest highlighted the meeting between Stanford’s Native American community and committee members as especially powerful. He praised Carson Smith ’19, the Social Justice Programming Coordinator at the Native American Cultural Center, for leading the discussion in a “peacemaking style” that allowed stakeholders to voice concerns one by one and encouraged respectful listening.

“What came through to all of us — and I speak for all the committee members who were there — was a sense of sincere passion about their felt harms that Native Americans felt from Serra,” Brest said. “There was a tremendous empathy and association of Native American experiences wherever they came from, with each other.”

In the meeting, individuals of Native American descent recounted “visceral feelings of harm, trauma, emotional damage, and damage to their mental health,” as a result of buildings honoring Serra, according to the report.

“For many of the participants, Serra’s name evokes the entire history of oppression of Native Americans,” the committee wrote.

Shelley Correll, Director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, wrote to the committee stating that she and her colleagues would prefer Serra’s name be removed from the academic building.

But other interest groups on campus sought to curb efforts at renaming. The issue is of special relevance to the Roman Catholic community, since Serra was canonized as a saint in 2015.

According to the report, Catholic community members expressed their hope that the committee would not “attack evangelism” as an enterprise.

Catholic stakeholders also said the committee should not attribute all problematic components of the mission system to Serra, as some factors were beyond his individual knowledge and power.

“The mission system changed after his death, and the mission system as a whole is more than just Serra,” Catholic Students Association former president Katie Hufker ’18 told The Daily last year.

The committee summarized the Catholic community’s viewpoint with the statement of one individual, who said they would be “disappointed but not angry,” if features honoring Serra were renamed.

As a result, the committee determined that “the harms avoided by renaming outweigh the harms of renaming,” and thus, renaming is “not disrespectful,” according to the report.

In its recommendation against renaming Serra Street, the committee argued that street names do not have the same “symbolic salience” as buildings or Serra Mall. Moreover, they said that retaining Serra Street’s name carries historical importance.

“Retaining a street with the Serra name avoids erasing the University’s symbolic connection with Serra and, in conjunction with a plaque or other marker, can assist in reminding the campus community and larger world of this aspect of the University’s past,” the committee wrote.

According to Stanford News, retaining the name of Serra Street honors “the Stanfords’ desire to recognize a significant period of California’s history.” The news release refers to Serra as “a California pioneer” in “a period of California history that influenced the founding and design of [Stanford’s] campus.”

Because some landmarks will be re-christened and others will retain their names, the committee’s ultimate recommendations, adopted by the Board and the President, sit at the intersection of multiple interest groups.

“Whenever you are trying to accommodate or balance competing interests, the chances are that you are going to reach an accommodation that is not completely on one side or another of what people would like,” Brest said. “That’s the nature of accommodating different interests. The hope is that this is a balance that both significantly reduces the negative experience of members of the community and preserves the history at the same time.”

 

History of the debate

The renaming effort began when the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Senate passed a resolution asking the University to consider renaming buildings honoring Serra in February 2016. Specifically, the resolution called for the renaming of four locations: the Serra and Junipero dorms, the Serra House and the University’s address.

The original ASSU Senate bill said that “recognition [of Serra] illustrates the dismissal, indifference and subsequent erasure of indigenous voices in the institution and tacitly celebrates the atrocities visited upon Native communities of old.”

“Father Serra’s actions led to the massacre of thousands of people and the disappearance of languages and cultures, which is a net negative,” said former ASSU Vice President Brandon Hill ’16 while discussing the bill. “We should shift the burden from us … justifying why he needs to go to, why is it imperative that he needs to be celebrated?”

Yet those against renaming argue that removing Serra’s name from buildings and landmarks cannot erase history, and that the renaming movement unfairly targets Serra while ignoring other buildings, such as those named after eugenicists like former Stanford presidents Donald Tresidder and David Starr Jordan.

“If we embrace a system where offense is grounds to remove a name, then most of Stanford’s buildings would have to change names,” Brandon Camhi ’16 wrote in a 2016 Stanford Review article.

The renaming controversy — and administrative efforts to address it — have fielded criticism in procedure as well as in substance. The Advisory Committee on Renaming Junipero Serra Features has previously been criticized for inadequately representing Native American voices in its makeup. Defenders of the committee composition argued that its role was to objectively apply the standards developed by the second committee.

“This is a committee designed to represent the various constituencies at Stanford — students, faculty, staff and alumni — but not to represent the stakeholders who are involved, because it’s supposed to make a judicial decision to apply [the devised] principles,” Brest said.

 

Facing forward

In its report, the committee suggested inclusive approaches to enduring renaming issues.

“We recommend that the University seek opportunities to name streets and other features after people of all genders and ethnicities, including Native Americans and people of color, and that it consider other ideas for mitigation, including academic and community-wide education programs,” the committee wrote. “Based on our conversations with the groups we consulted, we believe that it is important to their members and other stakeholders to participate in these mitigation decisions where appropriate.

Stanford has yet to address how its principles surrounding campus naming may be applied to buildings honoring eugenicists, such as Jordan Hall and Cubberley Auditorium — the latter of which is named after former Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean Elwood P. Cubberley, who once claimed “east European immigrants were ‘of a very different sort’ and were ‘wholly without Anglo-Saxon conceptions of righteousness, liberty, law, order, public decency, and government.’”

In March 2017, the Palo Alto school board voted unanimously to rename Jordan Middle School and Terman Middle School, named after eugenicist Lewis Terman.

Hayward said that the Serra case was the only one under active review, but that the same guiding principles “would be used to evaluate questions regarding other names.”

The Advisory Committee acknowledged the breadth of the issue in its report and said that its decision is not the final step in resolving this issue.

“Renaming is not sufficient in itself, but must be accompanied by education and dialog to foster inclusion and empathy among different groups,” the committee wrote.

 

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly deemed the Clayman Institute for Gender Research the “Clayman Institute for Gender Studies.” The Daily regrets this error. 

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu, Holden Foreman at hs4man ‘at’ stanford.edu and Julia Ingram at jmingram ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Crothers staffer files employment discrimination claim against Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/16/crothers-staffer-files-employment-discrimination-claim-against-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/16/crothers-staffer-files-employment-discrimination-claim-against-stanford/#respond Sat, 16 Jun 2018 18:35:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1142384 An Academic Theme Associate (ATA) in Crothers during the 2017-2018 school year has filed a discrimination claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging that she was unfairly prevented from staffing there for a second year due to mental illness.

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Update (June 22, 6:45 pm): The University has said that they have received the EEOC claim. “We received it yesterday (Thursday),” June 21, University spokesperson EJ Miranda said in an email to The Daily, “and it is under review.”

An Academic Theme Associate (ATA) in Crothers during the 2017-2018 school year has filed a discrimination claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging that she was unfairly prevented from staffing there for a second year due to mental illness.

The student, who asked for anonymity to keep her story and personal details private from future employers online, says that the Crothers Resident Fellows (RFs) — Professor Stephen Stedman and Stanford Center on Global Poverty and Development program manager Corinne Thomas — compelled her to go through a formal re-application process that no other returning staffer was asked to partake in, culminating in the student not receiving an offer to return as a staffer.

A Crothers staffer with knowledge of the situation — who also requested anonymity to avoid damaging their relationship with the RFs — corroborated elements of her story.

Stedman and Thomas declined to discuss the matter, with Stedman saying that “as university employees [they] cannot comment on an individual student’s employment performance or mental health issues.”

In a submission to The Daily after this article’s publication, however, Stedman wrote that he and Thomas do not discriminate based on mental health when hiring staff. Noting that he has suffered from depression and once openly took a leave from teaching because of it, he emphasized his and Thomas’ commitment to accommodating and helping students who have a mental illness.

“Confidentiality precludes naming names, but we have selected students managing their mental health to be on our staff in the past,” he wrote. “In those cases, we felt that the candidates met our general selection criteria: empathy, trust, maturity, communication, teamwork, leadership and follow through. And we have supported staff who experienced mental health issues while on staff.”

According to the University, Stanford has not yet received the EEOC claim, even though it was supposedly sent several weeks ago.

This story comes on the heels of a lawsuit claiming that Stanford discriminated against multiple students struggling with mental health.

Attempted return

Because the staffing application opens up at the start of winter quarter, RFs typically begin discussing the potential for staff members to return next year as early as fall quarter.

Although the official policy of Residential Education (ResEd) is that would-be returning staffers “move through the Selection process like all other new applicants,” the student who filed the claim said that the actual process for returning staffers is generally much more lenient.

“Usually if you want to return and [the RFs] want you to return, and you don’t want to even consider [staffing] any other houses, they’ll automatically rehire you,” she explained. “So that means you fill out a blank application on the [application] portal, but pretty much you only rank, in this case, Crothers, and Crothers ranks you high, and you’re pretty much automatically re-assigned to live there again.”

She added that returning staffers also typically don’t have to interview with their RFs, either individually or in a group, like first-time applicants do.

The other anonymous Crothers staffer confirmed this, noting that staffers often only need to talk once with the RFs about staffing Crothers a second time.

Stedman contested that dorm staffers are by default allowed back.

“We do not automatically reappoint staff; we interview all staff interested in returning,” he said.

Criteria for staff, Stedman said, include the trust they inspire, their ability to communicate and work in a team, their inclusivity, their ability to “hold up under the stress of dealing with crises” and their community-building skills.

The student who filed with the EEOC was interested in returning to staff Crothers for 2018-2019 and met with Stedman and Thomas right after Thanksgiving break to discuss the process. However, in the same meeting, she said, she brought up that she was interested in getting a support animal the next year to help her deal with mental illness.

“I didn’t tell them what my specific diagnosis was,” the student said. “Just that I’m medicated, I’m seeing a therapist, and I hadn’t reached out to my therapist yet to see about getting a support animal. I just was curious about how that would work [and] what the process would look like to try to get more information.”

But after the RFs knew she was dealing with mental illness, she says they began openly questioning her ability to meet the demands of staffing, including being tough on residents. Most of their suspicion, she added, was rooted in a brief event several weeks earlier during which she had shown up to a dorm event with red eyes after an argument with a friend and co-staffer.

However, she said, at the time the RFs did not indicate that the “red eyes” incident — which, according to the other Crothers staffer who spoke to The Daily, was relatively insignificant and went unnoticed by residents — was a problem.

“After the event with red eyes, they just texted me, ‘Is everything okay,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, things are fine,’” the student alleging discrimination said. “There was no ‘Try to keep it on the low’… I wasn’t aware it was an issue until they brought it up in that meeting where I asked about the support animal.”

Following said meeting, she sent Stedman and Thomas an email reiterating that the “red eyes” incident did not reflect on her ability to staff. The three set up a subsequent meeting to discuss her re-applying to staff Crothers, but at that meeting, her mental health was again raised as a potential issue. According to her, the RFs suggested that “trauma” — which she had never discussed with them previously — might impede her ability to counsel residents going through tough times. They also asked that a mental health professional confirm in writing her ability to staff, she said.

“They wanted me to talk to my therapist and make sure I was capable of doing my job, which I was kind of taken aback by,” she said. “Like, no one else [was] being asked to provide proof that they’re capable of doing the job.”

She added, “I had never done anything to make them question my mental stability, which was what hurt.”

In the same meeting, she says that Stedman and Thomas brought up her parent’s divorce, and suggested that — in her paraphrase — “having divorced parents might leave [one] with trauma [and] make it difficult to be an RA.”

Rejection

After the follow-up meeting, the student went to the room of friend and Resident Assistant (RA) Chiamaka Ogwuegbu ’18, she said. However, soon after, Ogwuegbu was asked by Thomas to come talk with her and Stedman; he did so, leaving her in his room.

In the aftermath of this conversation, Ogwuegbu recounted his meeting with the RFs to the student who filed the claim. Discussing what she heard from Ogwuegbu, the student told The Daily that the RFs said that “based on [their] psychoanalysis, [she] had abandonment issues” and that they were “trying to see if [Ogwuegbu] knew of any instances of [her] being unstable or incapable of doing the [ATA] job.”

After the meeting, when Ogwuegbu returned to his room and told her what had happened, she felt distressed by Stedman and Thomas’ discussion of her personal life, including her mental health status and her parents’ divorce.

Soon after, the student left for winter break, during which time she got a note from her therapist confirming her ability to staff for a second year. But upon returning to Crothers, she said, she was again told by the RFs that they needed more time to consider whether she was capable of doing so.

“They said they didn’t want to take any other staffing positions away from me, so they recommended I go through the formal process, which is something no other staff members had to do,” she said.

However, she said, she assumed her work as ATA would speak for itself, and proceeded to re-apply to staff through the standard procedure — including doing so for dorms other than Crothers.

As the process continued, she did a one-on-one interview with Stedman and Thomas, as is standard for first-time applicants but generally not required of returning staffers. A group interview, also standard, was not required of her.

At the end of the solo interview, she asked the RFs if they’d decided whether to invite her back to staff. They responded, she says, by asking what she meant.

“And I was like, ‘Well, I was under the impression you guys were going to decide whether I was a good fit for Crothers and let me know whether I was going to return,’” she said. “[And] they’re like, ‘We can’t tell you that. Because you went through the formal process, we can’t tell you if we’re going to rank you or not.’”

The other anonymous Crothers staffer, who was not present at the interview, interpreted this as an intentional move on the part of the RFs.

“They basically made it seem as though their hands were tied in terms of how selection was supposed to happen because [she] applied to other places, even though they were the ones who encouraged her to apply to other places,” the staffer said.

A week later, staffing assignments came out. Despite ranking Crothers as her first choice, the student claiming discrimination did not get a position there. Given how the assignment system works, this suggests that the RFs intentionally didn’t rehire her.

“In order for [her] to not have received a Crothers spot, they would’ve needed to have placed her low on that list, because Crothers does not get all its first places,” the other staffer said. “We lose so many people to freshman dorms, et cetera, so it was a very intentional move on their part.”

Ultimately, the student who filed the claim found the entire process disheartening, and felt like she’d been intentionally discriminated against based on her mental health status.

“It felt like, constantly, double standards everywhere; that no matter where I turned, I just couldn’t do anything right,” she said.

Claims of discrimination

The student says she repeatedly tried to schedule meetings between herself, Stedman, Thomas and a ResEd mediator to address what had happened, but that the RFs were unresponsive. Feeling like she had no other options, she filed a formal complaint with ResEd, which she says is currently under investigation.

“But the way that ends up in the end is [that] I don’t know what the determination was,” she said. “They’ll just tell me, ‘We addressed it.’”

Looking for clearer answers to what had gone wrong, she turned to the EEOC. She had filed an inquiry in January, but then had to wait three and a half months to do her “intake interview.” By the time the Commission had written her claim and she’d edited and approved it, it was mid-May; Stanford was supposed to receive the formal complaint within the next 10 days, according to both her and the EEOC’s website.

Now, a month later, Stanford says it still hasn’t gotten the complaint.

“We have not received it,” said University spokesperson EJ Miranda in an email to The Daily Wednesday.

He added, “The student staff selection process has been designed to ensure equal access to opportunities for all qualified students.”

After being notified by The Daily of this, the student says she checked the EEOC’s online filing portal for an update, which showed that the Commission had uploaded the charge but that Stanford hasn’t yet responded.

If it does move forward, the finality that EEOC mediation would afford is not the only benefit she seeks. In addition to her own case, she says, other Crothers staffers have had similar problems, and an EEOC claim might offer a solution.

“I know I’m not the only staff member who’s had issues with this in the past,” she said. “A couple others have told me about their experiences with [Stedman] and [Thomas] specifically, and they told me in confidence so I can’t share anything about it, but I know I’m not the only staff member. It happened to a kid before me, and I feel like if I don’t do something to at least get ResEd’s attention now, to get some kind of change now, it’s going to keep happening.”

Emphasizing that he could not defend himself publicly on specific points, RF Stedman highlighted his personal experience with mental health issues and his past candor about it. In his statement, he wrote that he once gave a class lecture explaining to students that his temporary leave from teaching was due to depression, despite “powerful incentives to keep mental illness quiet.” 

Stedman said he and Thomas have shared Stedman’s experience with students going through similar struggles, “so that they know that despite how bad things feel in the short time, they will get better, that they are not alone, and that they can get help.”

The discrimination allegations “would come as a shock to any student we have supported over the years, and anyone who knows me and my personal history,” Stedman wrote.

Two former Crothers staffers who served as an ATA and RA respectively in 2016-17 wrote an op ed response Sunday after this piece’s publication, defending Stedman and Thomas and saying that the claim of discrimination is “wholly inconsistent” with their experience of the two RFs.

Ben Chao ’17, an ATA last year, said Stedman and Thomas visited him while he was hospitalized for mental illness as a staffer and “quickly reassured [Chao] that they had full faith in [his] ability to continue as an ATA,” talking with him throughout the remainder of the school year when he needed help. 

“In fact, they offered the idea that I would be more effective as a staffer because of my experiences, as I could help residents facing similar challenges navigate the resources and support offered by Stanford,” Chao wrote.

Chao’s co-staffer at the time, Whitney McIntosh ’17, echoed his statement as someone familiar with what Chao dealt with.

“In all my experiences of Steve and Corinne, they have continuously demonstrated empathy for the challenges students face, not only in their academic work at Stanford, but in their personal lives,” McIntosh wrote.

The student who filed with the EEOC said that, following her own negative experience discussing mental health with her RFs — vis a vis the initial question about getting a service animal — she has warned others to not disclose any such personal information to Stedman and Thomas.

“Do not tell them anything about what you’re going through, because they will use it against you,” she says she tells students.

Staffer-RF relationships are particularly difficult to navigate, she added, because power dynamics in the relationship skew in one direction.

“I was sitting there like, ‘I don’t know who to reach out to,’ because I was scared during the hiring process and interviewing at other houses [that] if I complain about my RFs, they’d blacklist me from other houses,” the student who filed said. “It’s a huge power indifference, where you feel lost and [have] no one to turn to.”

Stedman, on the other hand, criticized what he sees as the promotion of a “narrative of victimhood that argues that those who suffer from mental illness should in fact keep it to themselves and not avail themselves of all the resources that Stanford’s safety net has to offer.” He called the allegations against him “one-sided.”

The University, for its part, maintains that it “cares deeply about the health and well-being of all… students and works to ensure students have full and equal access to the benefits of Stanford’s programs, facilities, and services,” according to Miranda.

“The University is mindful of our obligations in this area under the law and believes we have complied with them,” Miranda wrote in another email to The Daily following questions about both the Crothers situation and the recent discrimination lawsuit filed against the University. He added that “the University is unable to comment on a particular student’s employment situation or health status.”

For the student who alleges discrimination, the issue goes beyond just the two Crothers RFs; it’s more systemic, she says.

“My bigger issue with ResEd is [that] there’s a lack of oversight in how RFs are handling their houses, especially the hiring process for those who are returning,” she said. “There’s no oversight whatsoever.”

ResEd declined to provide additional comment.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

This piece has been updated to include comments sent after the article’s initial publication, from Stephen Stedman and former Crothers staffers Ben Chao and Whitney McIntosh. 

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Amid drone program controversy, students boycott Google internships https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/05/amid-drone-program-controversy-students-boycott-google-internships/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/05/amid-drone-program-controversy-students-boycott-google-internships/#respond Wed, 06 Jun 2018 02:53:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1142072 Student activist group the Stanford Solidarity Network (SSN) has released a petition calling on Google to pledge not to pursue any future contracts with the military, adding that until such a commitment is made, signatories will not pursue internships with the tech giant.

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Student activist group the Stanford Solidarity Network (SSN) has released a petition calling on Google to pledge not to pursue any future contracts with the military, adding that until such a commitment is made, signatories will not pursue internships or postgraduate jobs with the tech giant.

“We, students, pledge that we will … refuse to participate in developing technologies of war,” the MoveOn.org petition says, later adding that students will “refrain from interviewing with Google” until their demands are met.

The petition comes amid criticism of Google, both internal and external, over a Department of Defense program it is contracting with called “Project Maven.” Maven uses artificial intelligence to interpret drone video footage and improve targeting for strikes.

On June 1, it was announced that Google would not be working with the project beyond next year, when its current contract expires. The decision followed a petition by 4,000 Google employees demanding “that neither Google nor its contractors … ever build warfare technology.”

The SSN petition uses similar language, calling on Google to “fully [commit] not to develop military technologies in the future.” However, it also goes a step further, calling for Google to “fully [withdraw] from its contract with the Department of Defense,” suggesting a premature end to the military contract rather than a non-renewal of it further on down the road.

The student petition additionally calls for Google to not use any personal data it has collected for military applications.

As of Tuesday evening, SSN’s petition had 52 signatures, with a final goal of 100. However, not all signatories were students at Stanford.

In their Tweet announcing the petition, SSN tagged student unions from several other universities — including at UC Berkeley, Harvard, Cornell and the University of Chicago — for help disseminating the petition. Also tagged was YDSA, the student wing of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Additionally, 20 Stanford affiliates — including professors, lecturers, graduate students and undergraduates — appear to have signed an open letter penned in mid-May by the International Community for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC). The Stanford affiliates whose signatures appear on the letter study teach in multiple University departments, including computer science, economics and bioengineering.

“We wholeheartedly support [Google employee’s] demand that Google terminate its contract with the DoD, and that Google and its parent company Alphabet commit not to develop military technologies and not to use the personal data that they collect for military purposes,” the letter states. “The extent to which military funding has been a driver of research and development in computing historically should not determine the field’s path going forward.”

The ICRAC open letter also requests that Google and Alphabet executives join an existing campaign for an international treaty prohibiting “autonomous weapon systems.” Other technology executives, as well as AI and robotics researchers, are already part of this effort.

Listed signatories of the ICRAC open letter include computer science lecturer Chris Piech, computer science professors James Landay and Doug James, communications professor Fred Turner, co-director of the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group Terry Winograd, professor emeritus in computer science Eric Roberts, Students for Alternatives to Militarism member Dan Walls Ph.D. ’18, associate professor of bioengineering and of microbiology and immunology Kerwyn Huang and assistant professor of film and media studies Shane Denson.

The question of what role artificial intelligence research should play in drone programs is not a new one for Stanford.

Earlier this year, The Daily reported on a student project done for the class “Hacking For Defense” — wherein student engineers partner with defense industry sponsors — that involved the use of computer vision to identify potential targets for drone strikes.

Since the war on terror began, American drone policy has been criticized on a number of grounds, including a lack of transparency about civilian deaths as well as questions surrounding the program’s legality under international law.

 

This report will be updated.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Holden Foreman at hs4man21 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Leaked emails show Hoover academic conspiring with College Republicans to conduct ‘opposition research’ on student https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/31/emails-between-ferguson-scr-reveal-opposition-research-against-ocon-prompt-fergusons-resignation-from-cardinal-conversations-leadership-role/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/31/emails-between-ferguson-scr-reveal-opposition-research-against-ocon-prompt-fergusons-resignation-from-cardinal-conversations-leadership-role/#respond Fri, 01 Jun 2018 02:23:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1141872 Emails between the Hoover Institution's Niall Ferguson and well-known Republican student activists John Rice-Cameron ’20 and Max Minshull ’20 reveal coordination on “opposition research” against progressive activist Michael Ocon ’20 — referenced as “Mr. O” — and efforts to shore up support among members of the Cardinal Conversations steering committee.

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Emails between the Hoover Institution’s Niall Ferguson and well-known Republican student activists John Rice-Cameron ’20 and Max Minshull ’20 reveal coordination on “opposition research” against progressive activist Michael Ocon ’20 — referenced as “Mr. O” — and efforts to shore up support among members of the Cardinal Conversations steering committee.

Ferguson resigned from his leadership role in the Cardinal Conversations program on April 16, after Provost Persis Drell became aware of the email chain.

“I very much regret the publication of these emails. I also regret having written them,” Ferguson wrote in a statement to The Daily.

Drell said that Ferguson “offered to resign,” and that she accepted the resignation.

“The emails … were contrary to the spirit and intent of Cardinal Conversations,” Drell said.

Ferguson himself is well-known for his conservative views. He made headlines in March for organizing a conference of 30 white male historians.

The Ocon emails are not the first time that Ferguson has made a statement he later withdrew.

In 2013, for instance, he stated that acclaimed economist John Maynard Keynes did not care to consider future generations when discussing current affairs because he was gay. Ferguson later apologized for the statement.

He has also been criticized for his outspoken support of colonialism and the British empire.

Ocon — the subject of the emails —  may be remembered for his recent ASSU executive campaign alongside Khaled Aounallah ’19, which became particularly dramatic thanks to a facetious last-minute “endorsement” from The Stanford Review that claimed Ocon had links to the conservative Turning Point USA Foundation (TPUSA).

Rice-Cameron is known on campus for his role in organizing for that same group, TPUSA, as well as his role as president of Stanford College Republicans (SCR). Minshull, meanwhile, was recently in the news for his involvement with a recent “coup-attempt” of the Stanford Conservative Society, as written about by the Fountain Hopper.

The emails use harsh and at times war-like language to describe liberals and “social justice warriors” (SJWs).

“Slowly, we will continue to crush the Left’s will to resist, as they will crack under pressure,” Rice-Cameron wrote.

Leaked emails show Hoover academic conspiring with College Republicans to conduct 'opposition research' on student

“[The original Cardinal Conversations steering committee] should all be allies against O. Whatever your past differences, bury them. Unite against the SJWs. [Christos] Makridis [a fellow at Vox Clara, a Christian student publication] is especially good and will intimidate them,” Ferguson wrote.

Leaked emails show Hoover academic conspiring with College Republicans to conduct 'opposition research' on student

“Now we turn to the more subtle game of grinding them down on the committee. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” Ferguson wrote.

The previous messages were interspersed with greater discussion of the Cardinal Conversations committee and planning process, as well as a discussion appearing to be about student government.

In the email chain, Ferguson wrote, “Some opposition research on Mr. O might also be worthwhile,” referring to Ocon.

Minshull wrote in response that he would “get on the opposition research for Mr. O.”

Leaked emails show Hoover academic conspiring with College Republicans to conduct 'opposition research' on student

Minshull is presently Ferguson’s research assistant at Hoover, according to Minshull’s LinkedIn profile.

“When these emails were written, I was worried that Cardinal Conversations would cease to be an organization commited [sic] to inviting speakers of diverse viewpoints; we believed that activists were trying to restrict conservative voices from being heard,” Minshull told The Daily. “That said, I harbor no personal animus against Michael Ocon and apologize that my emails crossed a line.”

The Hoover Institution has in the past provided monetary support to SCR, which Rice-Cameron is president of. When contacted about whether that money had been in the service of the recent SCR event featuring leadership from TPUSA, Ferguson did not respond.

The Cardinal Conversations program itself, meanwhile, has sparked its fair share of controversy. Its invitation of social scientist Charles Murray — who has advanced spurious claims about the relationship between race and IQ — prompted “Take Back The Mic” counter-programming by student activists.

Ferguson said that he was “deeply concerned” by the campus anticipation of, and response to, Charles Murray’s visit on Feb. 22, just days before the email chain occurred.

“It seemed to me that the Cardinal Conversations student steering committee was in danger of being taken over by elements that were fundamentally hostile to free speech,” he wrote to The Daily. “It was, however, rash of me to seek to involve the Stanford Republicans, and reckless to use such inflammatory language.”

Cardinal Conversations’ student steering committee, also referenced in the emails, has drawn criticism. A February op-ed published in The Daily and co-authored by eight student groups said that the details of how the committee was formed is not publicly known. The piece also criticized the makeup of the committee.  

“Cardinal Conversations’ Steering Committee, which claims to represent student voices, does not reflect the broad range of political beliefs and identities on campus,” the letter read. “The leadership of Cardinal Conversations as a whole leans toward the right of the political spectrum, thus the speakers the initiative invites neither represent both sides of the story nor raise the voices of communities that have been historically silenced.”

Ferguson actually appears to have made reference to the emails in his April 22 column in The Times, writing of a panic attack triggered by “a few intemperate emails, inadvertently forwarded to unintended recipients.”

 

Editors’ Note: Ada Statler was listed in the email as a steering committee member based on her former role as Editor-in-Chief of The Daily. However, she declined membership after being invited to participate via email and never attended a Cardinal Conversations meeting.  

Correction: An earlier version of the article mistakenly stated that Ferguson was writing about “opposition research” in response to Minshull’s Feb. 23 email, when Minshull was in fact responding to Ferguson. 

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu, Ada Statler at adastat ‘at’ stanford.edu and Courtney Douglas at ccdouglas ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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On this day in Stanford history: May 31 https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/31/on-this-day-may-31st/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/31/on-this-day-may-31st/#respond Thu, 31 May 2018 07:55:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1141788 The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford. According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on May 31 in….

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The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford.

According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on May 31 in….

1918: Stanford’s student government came under new rule with the passage of a new constitution by the student body. Only 49 votes were cast, with 39 done so in favor of the change. Among other changes, the constitution created a permanent election board, changed the executive committee to a more powerful student council and the introduced the possibility of recall for student leaders.

1928: A young man was taken into police custody after an unprompted visit to a sorority house, due to “annoying behavior” and an insistence on “demonstrating his athletic prowess.” Authorities suspected he was on drugs.

1933: A recount of the recent ASSU election was called for because, among other reasons, candidates and their campaign managers had been involved in counting the votes.

1939: In an article headlined “Daily Stops; Life Begins,” it was announced that that day’s issue was to be the last of the quarter. “We gotta take finals too,” the article explained.

1955: The Daily reported on continued clashes in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Egypt. “Each side accused the other of provoking the attack,” the article said.

1961: A front-page article on the Fair Play for Cuba Committee explored the “Communist-infiltrated organization,” a pro-Fidel Castro group with a presence on 37 college campuses. The article, from the United Press International, made no mention of Stanford.

1972: A group composed of members from the Palo Alto Human Relations Commission and the Palo Alto Youth Advisory Council issued a report criticizing the Palo Alto police for an earlier “mass arrest” of 205 protestors. The report found no misconduct by Palo Alto officers, but determined that it was “unlikely that mass arrests [were] needed.”

1978: The ASSU voted in support of divesting student funds from general university ones, primarily because the latter were partially invested in business that supported apartheid South Africa.

1990: After having taught drama at Stanford for a decade, Prof. Sandra Richards left to teach at Northwestern University; The Daily explored he reasons for departure in an article titled “Faculty of color face problems at elite universities.”

1995: The Daily announced that universal student ID cards would make their debut the following school year, combining ID, dining hall and debit card functionality.

2012: Drew Houston, CEO and co-founder of Dropbox, spoke to an audience of students in NVIDIA auditorium as part of the DFJ Entrepreneurial Thoughts Leader Seminar. “So many companies that you would think about in the hall of fame were started by people who, basically, didn’t know what the hell they were doing,” Houston said.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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On this day in Stanford history: From David Starr Jordan to the Stanford impostor https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/24/on-this-day-in-stanford-history-from-david-starr-jordan-to-the-stanford-impostor/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/24/on-this-day-in-stanford-history-from-david-starr-jordan-to-the-stanford-impostor/#respond Thu, 24 May 2018 08:10:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1141498 The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford. According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on May 24 in… 1899: University President David Starr Jordan delivered an address to the graduating class in which he said that “government by the people needs its […]

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The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford.

According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on May 24 in…

1899: University President David Starr Jordan delivered an address to the graduating class in which he said that “government by the people needs its trained and educated men more than any other kind of government, for while monarchy seeks far and wide for wise men and strong men to be used as its tools, strength and wisdom is the daily life of successful democracy.” In more recent times, Jordan has received criticism for his support of eugenics.

1918: A front-page story on the forthcoming commencement address by San Francisco District Attorney John McNab noted that “War Conditions Will Affect Stanford Tradition to a Limited Extent” but did not specify the manner of that effect.

1928: Japan filed a claim with the League of Nations stating that if the Chinese civil war extended to northern region of Manchuria, Japan would be “compelled to protect her interests there.”

1932: A $25,000 award was announced for the capture of the killers and kidnappers of the child of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh.

1938: “DAILY SHUFFLES DECK TODAY,” a front-page story announced following the election of the next editor-in-chief (we did that today, too).

1955: The Political Union and Ram’s Head theater group prepared to put on the play “Waiting for Lefty,” which the director described as “frankly Communist propaganda.” The play revolves around a taxi driver strike.

1963: In a unanimous vote, the “Student Congress [Voted] to Support Southern Racial Integration Attempts,” The Daily reported.

1967: “Tension Increases As Sides Are Chosen In Arab-Israeli Conflict,” a Daily headline reported. The Six-Day War, fought primarily between Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan, would begin less than two weeks later.

1976: The Daily reported on a recent meeting by the Stanford University Librarians Association (SULA) to form a collective bargaining unit, or union.

1989: “French House dryer fire serves up towels flambé,” The Daily reported in a self-explanatory headline.

1996: It was announced that noted economist Paul Krugman would be leaving Stanford for MIT, where he had previously taught. Krugman is currently a columnist for The New York Times and a professor at the City University of New York.

2007: Eighteen-year-old Azia Kim, the infamous “Stanford impostor,” was caught after having spent eight months as a would-be student and resident at Stanford despite not having been accepted. “Personally, I don’t feel safe now that Stanford allowed this to happen and that they’re not doing anything to ensure the safety of their students,” said Kim’s roommate, Amy Zhou ’08.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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SCR event tickets manually deleted after students order multiple https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/15/scr-event-tickets-manually-deleted-after-students-order-multiple/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/15/scr-event-tickets-manually-deleted-after-students-order-multiple/#respond Wed, 16 May 2018 00:29:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1141101 Members of Stanford College Republicans (SCR) are actively deleting the tickets of some students who signed up to attend a forthcoming talk titled “Make Stanford Great Again” with controversial conservative activists Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens on May 29, both students and SCR leadership confirmed.

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Members of Stanford College Republicans (SCR) are actively deleting the tickets of some students who signed up to attend a forthcoming talk titled “Make Stanford Great Again” with controversial conservative activists Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens on May 29, both students and SCR leadership confirmed.

SCR President John Rice-Cameron ’20 said that tickets have been deleted, but added that the student group only removed those ordered with a fake name, by someone who ordered more than one ticket, or by Stanford students who placed orders in the “general public” category.

SCR event tickets manually deleted after students order multipleSCR event tickets manually deleted after students order multiple

At least five students have had their tickets deleted, The Daily confirmed, with Eventbrite — the service through which tickets for the free event are being distributed — displaying a “No tickets were found for this order” message even after the students received a confirmation email of their order.

According to Associate Dean and Director of Student Activities and Leadership (SAL) Nanci Howe, SAL has heard from several students regarding this issue and is currently “in the process of determining what happened and how the University should best respond.”

She added that the event has been approved as a public event open to both Stanford and non-Stanford affiliates.

A student, who requested anonymity, claims they observed Rice-Cameron using EventBrite to delete ordered tickets during a class they were both attending.

The student added that they thought Rice-Cameron was selectively deleting tickets based on the Facebook accounts of prospective attendees. They saw him “toggling between Facebook and EventBrite,” leading them to believe Rice-Cameron “was looking at names or profiles [on Facebook] and checking ticket orders, and deciding what to do about ticket orders.”

But Rice-Cameron said the deletions were only in response to “people [who] have been spamming the Eventbrite with ticket orders under false names and spam accounts.”

“Yes, we have been removing those requests from the list to make room for people who genuinely wish to hear the speakers,” he said, but added that multiple people made requests for 10 tickets at once under their names, or requested tickets in the “general public” category though they were Stanford students. According to Rice-Cameron, all such ticket orders were deleted.

When asked about whether Facebook accounts were being used to vet attendees, Rice-Cameron said that “SCR is using any and all methods to determine whether or not people signing up have a serious intention to actually attend the event.”

“I didn’t take any actions to delete my tickets,” said Caroline Cao Zha ’20, one of the students whose ticket has been deleted. She added that only about 30 to 40 minutes elapsed between the confirmation email (at 2:31 p.m.) and the “no tickets found” message (at 3:06 p.m.); the student who said they observed the ticket deletions stated it took place at about 2:40 p.m. and after.

Others have had this problem repeatedly.

Gabi Guerra ’19 told The Daily that she did attempt to order 10 tickets, which were for a student group she is in that was “planning to go protest.”

“I don’t think they have a right to delete large ticket orders simply for being large,” she said.

She added that she did “not receive any notification about [her] tickets being deleted” and that a friend of hers “has bought tickets more than once and keeps having them get deleted.”

Other students whose tickets were deleted also ordered multiple, ranging from two to 10.

This news follows yesterday’s announcement that the College Republicans will host Owens and Kirk — who are the executive director and communications director, respectively, of right-wing nonprofit Turning Point USA (TPUSA) —  at an end-of-the-year “Make Stanford Great Again” event.

The Eventbrite and Facebook pages announcing the event described it as SCR’s “year-end grand finale.” After quoting several right-wing sound bites, ranging  from “deport criminal immigrants” to “there are only two genders” to “taxation is theft,” the description said that Kirk and Owens will encourage listeners to “break free from the farcical assumptions and victimhood mentalities propagated by the political Left.”

Kirk, who founded TPUSA at age 18, visited Stanford last month. He attended a second amendment-themed tabling event in White Plaza with Rice-Cameron, SCR Vice President Philip Eykamp ’20 and other SCR affiliates.

TPUSA aims to “educate students about the importance of fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government,” according to its website.

ASSU senate appropriations chair Gabe Rosen ’19 told The Daily that “as far as [he is] aware, SCR is not using any ASSU-appropriated funds to pay for” the Kirk and Owens event.

In their coverage of the ticket deletions, student publication The Stanford Sphere said that “a policy of targeted deletion as such is in violation of Stanford Student and Activity Leadership (SAL) policy,” citing regulations that call for “open and easy access” to activities held by student organizations.

This report will be updated pending response from University administrators.

 

This report has been updated to reflect allegations that SCR acted in violation of SAL policy, as well as official comment from the SAL Office. 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Sigma Chi fraternity loses charter, subject to University ‘conduct process’ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/11/sigma-chi-fraternity-reportedly-loses-charter/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/11/sigma-chi-fraternity-reportedly-loses-charter/#respond Fri, 11 May 2018 10:03:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140945 Stanford’s Sigma Chi fraternity lost its charter Thursday, University officials confirmed to The Daily Friday evening.

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Stanford’s Sigma Chi fraternity lost its charter Thursday, University officials confirmed to The Daily Friday evening.

Representatives from Sigma Chi International informed fraternity members of the decision on Thursday. According to University spokesperson E.J. Miranda, Stanford is currently overseeing an ongoing “conduct process” for its Alpha Omega chapter.

He added that Residential Education, as well as Fraternity and Sorority Life staff, “will continue to work with [house residents] to ensure that they have access to University resources.”

A statement released Friday by Sigma Chi International Fraternity said that after the international organization conducted a “membership assessment,” they “determined there were few members who would carry the chapter forward in a positive manner.”

Current members of the fraternity posted Snapchat and Instagram story photos and videos on Thursday night of the chapter’s 550 Mayfield Avenue building with letters removed from the front of the house — changes that Daily reporters also observed.

One such photo, which was posted to a Sigma Chi member’s Snapchat story, was accompanied by the caption, “When you lose your charter and they immediately tear down your letters.”

The fraternity members will be on “suspended active status” and barred from participating “in anything that could be conceived as a Sigma Chi activity,” until 2021 according to the press release. Sigma Chi Internationals said that eventually, they hope to re-instate the Stanford chapter in partnership with Stanford administrators.

Multiple members of Sigma Chi declined to comment on the issue when Daily reporters were let into the house on Thursday. The Daily was then asked to leave the residence.

The Daily previously reported that Sigma Chi International began investigating the Stanford chapter after an alleged January drugging by a non-Stanford affiliate at the Sigma Chi house and that the investigation precluded the chapter from recruiting a spring 2018 pledge class.

Bob Ottilie ’77 — chairman and spokesman of the Alpha Omega Housing Corporation (AOHC), the alumni group that acts as landlord for the residence — declined to comment on the matter Thursday night.

Ottilie told The Daily last week that as of May 1 the chapter would retain its charter, following closure of the investigation.

“The international fraternity had to make a decision whether they were going to pull their charter or not, and that decision was finalized today and was announced to the chapter this evening,” Ottilie said at the time. “And the international fraternity, or whatever committee they have that deals with those issues, has unanimously decided — in a report that was issued today and provided to the chapter tonight — has unanimously agreed that the Sigma Chi Alpha Omega chapter should keep their charter.”

On May 3, The Daily reported that the Sigma Chi house would become a tier-three residence open to non-fraternity members for the 2018-2019 school year as a result of its inability to take a pledge class this year. However, details regarding Sigma Chi’s status as a residence for next year remain unclear.

Then, on May 4, the house hosted a private “open house” event for non-affiliated students interested in living in the residence next year. Over 400 students were invited via Facebook; the event page stated that students accepted as boarders would be able to enter the regular University draw and later drop their housing without a fee.

In previous summer quarters, Sigma Chi sponsored a residential opportunity known as “Summer Chi” for fraternity brothers and non-affiliates to live in the house. The status of the program remains unclear following Thursday’s developments.

The Daily has reached out to Residential Education and Sigma Chi International for comment, as well as Trey Turner ’19, the Stanford chapter’s president.

 

This story has been updated to include information on the University’s official confirmation of the charter’s closing. 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu, Julia Ingram at jmingram ‘at’ stanford.edu and Holden Foreman at hs4man21 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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On this day in Stanford history: May 3 https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/03/on-this-day-in-stanford-history-may-3/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/03/on-this-day-in-stanford-history-may-3/#respond Thu, 03 May 2018 07:56:44 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140448 The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford. According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on May 3 in…

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The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford.

According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on May 3 in….

1898: The Daily noted that polling for student government elections would be held tomorrow. Multiple races — including those for president, vice president, secretary, newspaper editor and several sports team managers — were uncontested.

1915: The Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity was granted a charter to open a branch on Stanford’s campus, joining the 19 other fraternities already present. Phi Kappa Sigma had 26 other active chapters already, including one at the University of California.

1920: A large photograph of Herbert Hoover ran on the front page of The Daily, captioned “Make Him President!”

1927: The Daily announced that a University of California faculty member, Dr. S.J. Holmes, would be visiting campus that day to deliver a lecture entitled “Eugenics and Civilization.”

1932: “Al Capone today received the news that the United States Supreme Court had refused to intervene in his income tax conviction,” The Daily reported.

1943: A series of front-page wartime stories included headlines such as “Americans, French Take 6,000 German Prisoners,” “U.S. Bombers Attack German Sub Base” and “Russian Troops Break Six-Day Nazi Attack.”

1945: A pair of front-page Daily articles referenced the suicides of Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, and Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda.

1955: The Daily reported on the University’s announcement that Encina Hall would be used for temporary undergraduate housing until the completion of a new section of Stern Hall. The same article included details on the then-new Crothers Memorial Hall, intended to house fifth-year engineers and graduate students in engineering and “the sciences.”

1965: The Stanford in France program’s building was defaced by critics of America’s policy in Vietnam with phrases like “Vive Le Viet-Cong Socialiste” and “U.S. Assassins,” as well as swastikas.

1972: The Daily reported on a statement from Law School faculty that reaffirmed the previous year’s admissions standards for minority students. The faculty agreed that admissions standards “should be applied with ‘flexibility’ in individual cases,” but they refused to decide on quotas for minority admissions, despite demands by the Stanford black, Chicano and American Indian law associations for a quota of at least 50 minority students admitted to the law school starting in fall.

1985: The Daily covered the campus debate on whether or not to divest from South African companies due to the nation’s practice of apartheid. According to the article, the University’s Board of Trustees would have the final word. In the same issue, The Daily noted 252 protesters of South African apartheid were arrested on the campuses of Harvard and UC Berkeley.

2007: A lecture by Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina ’76 was recapped by The Daily. In the lecture, Fiorina focused on gender inequalities, noting “Out of the top company executives, 16 percent are women and 14 percent are minorities, and those statistics haven’t changed for the past two years. It’s no longer about unprepared women. People fear people who are different from them.”

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Holden Foreman at hs4man21 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Senate hosts secret morning meeting potentially in conflict with ASSU constitution https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/01/senate-hosts-secret-morning-meeting-potentially-in-conflict-with-assu-constitution/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/01/senate-hosts-secret-morning-meeting-potentially-in-conflict-with-assu-constitution/#respond Tue, 01 May 2018 18:04:54 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140361 On Tuesday, the Undergraduate Senate held a secret 8 a.m. meeting that appears to be in violation of multiple ASSU Constitutional clauses guaranteeing transparency in student governance.

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On Tuesday, the Undergraduate Senate held a secret 8 a.m. meeting that appears to be in violation of multiple ASSU constitutional clauses guaranteeing transparency in student governance.

Former treasurer Katie Hufker ’18 emphasized that the meeting was “informal” and therefore was not subject to the rules prescribed by the Constitution. All 15 senators were present at the meeting, and the body discussed transitional matters and logistics when it convened.

According to Hufker, the gathering was intended to help prepare incoming senators for their new positions and to inform them on general University structure — such as funding processes — in preparation for tonight’s first official public meeting of the new Senate. She added that the informal meeting has taken place in previous years as well.

“No official business is being done at the meeting, it’s just to help make sure the senators are prepared to take on their new roles,” Hufker said.

The meeting was held in a conference room of the ASSU office in Old Union, rather than the Senate’s usual Nitery 209 space, which can be reserved and used by a variety of student groups. The office door was locked through the meeting’s duration, and could only be opened by individuals with ASSU office swipe access.

According to an ASSU bylaw, all meetings must be held in spaces “accessible by all participants, including members of the general public.”

There was no Senate secretary present to take notes, and an official recording of the meeting was not made.

At the meeting’s outset, Hufker and Luka Fatuesi ’17 — former senator and current ASSU assistant financial manager — attempted to prevent The Daily from attending and reporting on the meeting.

But one clause of the ASSU Constitution states that all Stanford students “have the right to attend all open meetings of the Association and to view all open records of the Association.”

The meeting was also not posted on the ASSU Undergraduate Senate Calendar. On the group’s website, only its regular Tuesday evening meetings were listed.

Another section of the Constitution says that information about the location, timing and agenda for all Senate meetings “must be made available in a public place” electronically, and at least 24 hours before meetings should be held. The Daily was unable to find any online information about today’s meeting prior to its occurrence.

The meeting primarily consisted of planning which Senators intended to run for which positions. Most of the Senators who put their names forth for positions were uncontested: Leya Elias ’21 for chair, Jianna So ’21 for deputy chair, Michal Skreta ’21 for treasurer and Faa Diallo ’21 for parliamentarian.

Both Gabe Rosen ’19 and Jamie Seney ’21 said they intended to run for appropriations chair. Each gave a brief speech to the Senate on why they were the right pick for the position, with Rosen emphasizing his prior experience and Seney emphasizing her first-generation, low-income background. Neither faced questions during the allotted questioning period.

Following the statements, Fatuesi gave the rest of the Senators 15 minutes to deliberate, after which an “informal vote” would be taken if no consensus had been reached.

At this point the Senators tried again to remove The Daily so they might speak in confidence. Fatuesi suggested changing the meeting’s status to “off the record” so the group might deliberate on Rosen’s and Seney’s candidacies, and The Daily was asked to stop recording.

The Daily refused, again on constitutional grounds.

“Recordings of all such meetings may be made so long as the act of recording the meeting does not interfere in a substantial way with conducting the meeting,” the constitution reads.

In a vote 5-6-2 (with two Senators not yet arrived), the Senate ultimately decided to table deliberation until tonight’s regularly-scheduled meeting. No measures in the Constitution or its bylaws mention regulating procedures for informal votes.

“The discussion will happen again,” Hufker told The Daily, in reference to the morning meeting. “Just, in the past, we’ve found that it’s nice to be able to talk about things amongst ourselves a little bit.”

Senators also discussed which of the six committees they were interested in joining.

All decisions made at the secret meeting are nonbinding, and the official nominations and voting for positions will be done at the Senate’s regularly-scheduled weekly meeting tonight at 7.

 

This article will be updated.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford to replace campus climate survey with AAU alternative https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/26/stanford-to-replace-campus-climate-survey-with-aau-alternative/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/26/stanford-to-replace-campus-climate-survey-with-aau-alternative/#respond Thu, 26 Apr 2018 08:28:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140099 After years of heated debate over how the University should collect information about students’ experiences with sexual misconduct and other issues, Stanford will conduct the Association of American Universities (AAU) survey in the spring of 2019, Provost Persis Drell announced in a “Notes from the Quad” post on Wednesday.

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After years of heated debate over how the University should collect information about students’ experiences with sexual misconduct and other issues, Stanford will conduct the Association of American Universities (AAU) survey in the spring of 2019, Provost Persis Drell announced in a “Notes from the Quad” post on Wednesday.

The AAU survey will replace the Campus Climate Survey (CCS), which Stanford first used in 2015 and had planned to use again this year. Critics of the CCS have cited issues including the fact that it does not collect data regarding the location of on-campus sexual assaults, non-physical partner abuse and incapacitation by alcohol or drugs.

The definition of sexual assault that the CCS uses has also been criticized as too narrow; the 2015 survey’s finding that only 1.9 percent of survey participants had been sexually assaulted drew scrutiny.

In mid-February of this year, the Undergraduate Senate passed a resolution in support of the AAU survey. In 2016, over 90 percent of students who voted in a referendum on the matter also supported the switch.

The AAU survey is already in use at peer institutions like Harvard, Brown and Yale. Stanford has been a member of the AAU itself since 1900, alongside 61 other schools.

In their campaign, incoming ASSU executives Shanta Katipamula ’19 and Ph.D. candidate Rosie Nelson promised to “continue pushing for Stanford to administer the [AAU] survey in 2019.”

Katipamula told The Daily in an email that she was “thrilled” by the Provost’s decision, as well as by the process through which it was made.

“As someone who was very involved in pushing for both the AAU survey in 2019 and the creation of a standing committee,” she said, “I’m glad that the Provost has taken a decision that is in line with the demands and needs of the diverse range of students who advocated for this decision.”

Katipamula also expressed her appreciation of the Provost’s advisory committee on the Campus Climate Survey, the 12-person organization that was announced in January. The committee included faculty, staff and students and was tasked with making recommendations to Drell on the type and timing of campus surveys.

Drell emphasized the committee’s outreach to various Stanford stakeholders — including the Undergraduate Senate, Graduate Student Council, Coalition on Sexual Violence and student focus groups — as it sought input for their recommendations.

“The committee also sent an email to all students in February about the status of its work, and it reviewed input collected through an email mechanism it promoted to the community,” Drell wrote.

“The advisory committee was exemplary in communicating proactively with students,” said Katipamula, adding that she hopes “this model will be adopted by other university committees.”

Third-term undergraduate senator Gabe Rosen ’19 also expressed his ardent support for the change. Rosen called for the adoption of the AAU survey in his campaign platform.

“I’m not alone in being thrilled to see that the Provost has agreed to administer the AAU survey in spring 2019, as administering the AAU survey is a vital step toward ensuring we have comprehensive and comparable information on the true prevalence of sexual violence on this campus,” Rosen said. “I look forward to hearing about the work of the Provost’s newly proposed committee to help administer the survey.”

Drell acknowledged a “tradeoff” inherent to the AAU system: Because the survey is used nationally by many institutions, University officials are not as able to modify the questions to render them Stanford-specific.

“The advisory committee was fully aware of this limitation, along with the corresponding benefit that participation in the AAU survey would allow Stanford’s results to be better compared with those of other universities,” Drell wrote.

That qualification echoes statements made in the past regarding the merits of using a survey unique to Stanford. For example, Brian Cook ’01 — director of assessment and program evaluation at the Office of Institutional Research and a member of the committee that manages the CCS — said in February that the AAU “doesn’t give [Stanford] a lot of flexibility in terms of asking questions that are campus-specific.”

Drell’s committee recommended that the University not rely on the AAU as its sole form of surveying students about issues but instead contemplate distributing “additional or alternate” surveys that might include questions directly related to Stanford campus life.  

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Courtney Douglas at ccd4 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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FOREVER ’21 allegedly drops from sophomore class president race https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/24/forever-21-allegedly-drops-from-sophomore-class-president-race/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/24/forever-21-allegedly-drops-from-sophomore-class-president-race/#respond Tue, 24 Apr 2018 07:03:01 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139886 Ten days after the results of the 2018 Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections were announced, the membership of next year’s sophomore class presidency is still undecided. Now, after the ASSU Elections Commission announced that it is investigating potential campaign violations — including ones regarding a party hosted by the FOREVER ’21 slate — reports have emerged that FOREVER ’21 has dropped out of contestation for the presidency.

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Ten days after the results of the 2018 ASSU elections were announced, the membership of next year’s sophomore class presidency is still undecided. Now, after the ASSU Elections Commission announced that it is investigating potential campaign violations — including a possible violation regarding a party hosted by the FOREVER ’21 slate — reports have emerged that FOREVER ’21 has dropped out of contestation for the presidency.

“They were just tired of all the election drama,” said a freshman who knows a member of the slate and asked to remain anonymous.  

The freshman added that the slate “wanted this whole fiasco over [with].”

Multiple other sources confirmed that the slate has dropped out. Neither the members of FOREVER ’21 nor ASSU Elections Commissioner Paul Serrato ’19 responded to multiple requests for comment on the matter.

FOREVER ’21 has been the subject of scrutiny following the revelation that on April 6 in Otero the slate hosted a party at which alcoholic beverages were served to minors.

If confirmed, this event — a violation of California law, University policy and ASSU campaign regulations — would likely have made them ineligible for the presidency.

Last week, members of the slate acknowledged that they had been “cooperating” with the ASSU Elections Commission, but did not confirm or deny whether they were personally under investigation.

“We really are unsure as to what exactly the ASSU is looking into, as there have been various reports surrounding other slates in this election,” Kiki Velez ’21 said in a written statement submitted to The Daily and cosigned by fellow slate members Rozy Eastaugh ’21, Miles Menafee ’21 and Troy Shen ’21.

Shen, however, told The Daily last week that the slate had “submitted a written account of the incident” to the ASSU.

Claims that two other slates — Twenty-One, Twenty-Fun and The Culture — violated or attempted to violate campaign regulations have also been made in the wake of the election.

Neither those two slates, nor a fourth one — StanFor-U — responded to requests for comment.

FOREVER ’21 is, at present, the only one of the four alleged to have dropped out of the election.

 

Courtney Douglas contributed to this report.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Nurses at Stanford’s ValleyCare Medical Center vote to unionize https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/19/nurses-at-stanfords-valleycare-medical-center-vote-to-unionize/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/19/nurses-at-stanfords-valleycare-medical-center-vote-to-unionize/#respond Thu, 19 Apr 2018 09:47:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139661 After a barrage of accusations that Stanford’s recently-acquired ValleyCare Medical Center is a poor work environment — including allegations of worker intimidation, bribery and patient endangerment — the hospital’s nurses have taken matters into their own hands and unionized.

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After a barrage of accusations that Stanford’s recently-acquired ValleyCare Medical Center is a poor work environment — including allegations of worker intimidation, bribery and patient endangerment — the hospital’s nurses have taken matters into their own hands and unionized.

Wednesday night, in a secret ballot that came out to 188 in favor and 114 against, the Registered Nurses (RNs) joined the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) union.

All full-time and regular part-time ValleyCare RNs were eligible to participate, and the process was set up, monitored and tallied by the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

According to the NLRB Notice of Election, unionizing only required “a majority of the valid ballots cast.”

The Pleasanton-based ValleyCare merged into the Stanford Health Care system in 2015. Although nurses at Stanford Hospital and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital are already part of the Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement (CRONA), an independent union, their ValleyCare equivalents are not.

The ValleyCare unionization campaign was an ongoing effort and took place amid mounting concerns that the hospital was a poor environment to work in. Last week, for instance, two ValleyCare RNs and three organizers from CNA met with Stanford students at the El Centro Chicano y Latino community center to discuss the issues motivating their push to unionize.

Cenobio Hernandez ’18 advertised the event with an email stating that “RNs are often called and told not to come to work claiming they are not needed,” leaving units understaffed. He also noted that RNs are “required to work in units they are not trained for… causing patient safety concerns.”

Stanford Health Care corporate communications and media relations lead Patrick Bartosch disputed those claims in a statement to The Daily.

“As almost every other hospital in the nation, ValleyCare Hospital does have staff that are ‘on call’ to come into work in case of an unexpected increase in workload,” Bartosch wrote. “However, we make every effort to limit these circumstances. All of our staff only work in areas they are trained for and which are part of their regular scope of work.”

A Facebook post advertising the event, made by the Stanford Coalition for Planning an Equitable 2035 (SCoPE), added that violations of a 1999 California law regulating the ratio of nurses to patients also spurred the pro-union movement.

The law in question, Assembly Bill 394, mandates minimum staffing ratios for different hospital contexts, such as 1:1 in an operating room or 1:4 in an emergency room. Studies have shown that such laws improve both patient care and nurse safety.

While Wednesday’s vote marked the ValleyCare RN’s only successful unionization, it was not the first attempt of its kind.

“A couple times, [nurses have] tried to organize,” said one nurse at the Monday event, whose name has been omitted because she feared for her job security. “Once it was 15 years ago and several people got fired, so staff was really frightened to organize even though [it’s] a federally-protected law that we can.”

That law is the National Labor Relations Act, under which “employees have the right to attempt to form a union where none currently exists,” as per NLRB guidelines.

The nurse added that non-nurse staff have also tried to organize more recently, which “didn’t go over well, either.”

Some of the nurses contacted CNA in November to see if they could organize and improve working conditions around issues like “not having pay comparable to other area hospitals,” understaffing and having to hand off patients to other nurses at critical stages.

“They don’t pay us [differently] if we work Christmas Day,” added another nurse, whose name has also been omitted due to employment concerns.

Hospital administration denied their claims, however.

“ValleyCare Hospital is fully committed to offering the best working conditions for all of our employees,” Bartosch wrote. “At ValleyCare, there have been no cuts in hourly wages or to the retirement plan in recent history. Instead, select hourly wages have increased significantly and our retirement employee match program was launched this year, which in turn increases our employees’ retirement savings.”

He added, “the number of holidays, the amount of holiday pay and vacation time, as well as seniority structures have not changed in years and claims to the contrary are factually inaccurate.”

But according to the RNs, Stanford Hospital ran an “aggressive, nasty campaign” to scare nurses into not supporting unionization and even fired nurses for organizing pro-union efforts.

The nurses also said that unionizing is not just a question of improving labor conditions for the nurses themselves; it leads to better treatment for patients, too. This message aligns with a recent string of radio advertisements by the Stanford Hospital-affiliated Service Employees International Union associating the facility’s high infection rates with poor working conditions.

“Most of it’s patient advocacy,” the first nurse said, referencing studies showing that unionized hospitals outperform their non-unionized counterparts on most measures of patient outcomes.

Yet other issues also pervade the hospital environment, the two added. Workers have allegedly been told that they’ll be fired for talking about how much they earn, and the second nurse said that hospital management is aggressive and intimidating toward RNs — to the detriment of patient care.

“There’s a significant positive relationship, a significant effect, towards safe patient care when you have nurses who are able to enforce regulations,” said Omar Batanyan, a union organizer with NNU who was at the El Centro event.

Unionizing was even more important, the speakers added, because ValleyCare nurses were (until Wednesday night) unique in the Bay Area for their lack of a union.

“We’re the only hospital around, in our area, that’s not unionized,” the first nurse said. And although they’d brought their complaints to administrators as high up as the president of the hospital, there’d been “no changes; it just [got] worse.”

Efforts to unionize were complicated, however, by Stanford’s hiring of a “union-busting firm” which “harassed and intimidated and threatened” nurses into not supporting a union, said CNA’s Michele Nyberg.

The firm in question is IRI Consultants, which identifies itself as “finding opportunities amid organizational challenges to improve employee satisfaction and performance” and offers a “Union Vulnerability Assessment” to employers that suspect their workers of planning to unionize. 

It is around this issue, Nyberg added, that the event attendees and other Stanford students came in.

“This firm is paid for through Stanford tuition dollars,” she said. “So you all do have a stake in what we’re talking about.”

Bartosch declined to answer questions about whether Stanford is working with IRI Consultants, whether the firm had attempted to intimidate nurses or whether tuition dollars were being used to pay them.

Monday’s two nurses described additional issues they said they and their peers have faced, such as being paid thousands of dollars in “hush money” and being fed misleading information by administrators about the dangers of unionization.

“They try to spread incorrect information,” the second nurse said, referencing slideshow presentations that nurses are repeatedly shown, which Batanyan said “nitpick” the National Labor Relations Act.

Bartosch declined to answer questions about these specific claims.

At the close of Monday’s event, the speakers circulated a letter for attendees to sign. Addressed to University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and cc’d to Stanford Health Care — ValleyCare President Scott Gregerson and Stanford Health Care CEO and President David Entwistle, the letter criticized the University’s alleged hiring of the union-busting firm, firing of pro-union advocates, intimidation tactics and bribing of nurses. 

“We firmly believe that tuition fees and public money should NOT be used to prevent anyone from exercising their legal and human right to organize,” read the letter, a Google Forms version of which was later released for public circulation. 

It was in that context that the vote over whether to unionize took place. And although hopes were high going in — “I think we have a good chance of winning,” said NNU’s Dana Trentalange at the time — so were the stakes.

“If we lose,” one of the nurses remarked, “I’m being fired.”

If the results of Wednesday’s ballot are any indication, she no longer needs to worry.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Sophomore presidency remains vacant; multiple campaigning violations alleged https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/18/sophomore-presidency-remains-vacant-multiple-campaigning-violations-alleged/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/18/sophomore-presidency-remains-vacant-multiple-campaigning-violations-alleged/#respond Wed, 18 Apr 2018 10:40:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139588 Amid the continued vacancy of next year’s sophomore class presidency, a recent edition of the anonymously-authored campus e-newsletter The Fountain Hopper (FoHo) has raised questions about how many candidates for the position are currently under investigation for potential campaign violations.

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Amid the continued vacancy of next year’s sophomore class presidency, a recent edition of the anonymously-authored campus e-newsletter The Fountain Hopper (FoHo) has raised questions about how many candidates for the position are currently under investigation for potential campaign violations.

Of the four slates — StanFor-U, The Culture, FOREVER ’21 and Twenty-One, Twenty-Fun — that ran for the position, three have been accused of some form of misconduct.

The precise status of the investigation is, at present, unknown. ASSU Elections Commissioner Paul Serrato ’19 wrote in an email to The Daily that he is unable to comment on the investigation. 

On Monday, The Daily reported on an Apr. 6 party that FOREVER ’21 hosted in the freshman dorm Otero, at which alcoholic beverages were allegedly served to minors. As a violation of California law, and thus both University policy and ASSU Elections Commission regulations, this would likely have prompted an investigation. Indeed, members of the slate confirmed that they had submitted a report on the event to the Commission.

But according to slate member Kiki Velez ’21, the slate is “confident that [they] haven’t broken any campaign or dorm regulations.”

Later that day, the FoHo sent out an email that reiterated the claims against FOREVER ’21, and also discussed additional ones against two other slates: Twenty-One, Twenty-Fun and The Culture.

The email said that Twenty-One, Twenty-Fun — which includes Celine Foster ’21, Brian Chan ’21, Johnathan Bridges ’21 and N’Nasseri Carew-Johnson ’21 — is “reportedly being investigated for possibly going over the $400 campaign spending cap.”

The FoHo email also said that the slate offered a number of free giveaways — including two tickets to a Beyonce concert — and had allegedly attempted to organize a party during winter quarter, which would have violated ASSU rules restricting campaigning before April 2.

In a written statement to The Daily, Chan denied accusations of campaign violations and added that the FoHo never reached out to members of the slate for comment on the claims.

“We are not nor have ever been over budget nor under investigation,” Chan said.

He added, “Our slate did not begin campaigning until the time the Elections Commission said campaigning would be allowed.”

Serrato said that campaign finance information would not be available until after all election results are certified.

The FoHo also claimed that a third slate, The Culture — comprised of Sara Kolb ’21, Joe McGrath ’21, Cade Crow ’21 and Ebbie Banks ’21— tried to throw a party in freshman dorm Twain. The party would have included alcohol, but Twain Resident Assistants cancelled the event after someone sent them screenshots of the Frosh Council GroupMe in which the event had initially been advertised.

Members of The Culture did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

StanFor-U — the fourth slate and the only one not named in the FoHo report — also did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Class of 2021 presidency vacant pending ASSU elections investigation https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/16/class-of-2021-presidency-vacant-pending-assu-elections-investigation/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/16/class-of-2021-presidency-vacant-pending-assu-elections-investigation/#respond Mon, 16 Apr 2018 08:50:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139483 On Saturday, the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Elections Commission announced the results of the 2018 race. Included were winning slates for ASSU Executive and junior and senior class presidents, as well as candidates elected to the Undergraduate Senate and the Graduate Student Council.

Not on the list? Next year’s sophomore class presidents.

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On Saturday, the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Elections Commission announced the results of the 2018 race. Included were winning slates for ASSU Executive and junior and senior class presidents, as well as candidates elected to the Undergraduate Senate and the Graduate Student Council.

Not on the list? Next year’s sophomore class presidents.

Instead, the official preliminary results sheet of the ASSU Elections Commission stated that results would be forthcoming, pending “investigation of potential campaigning violations.”

The Commission has not publicly announced what such violations might include or who is believed to have committed them. However, the list of potential suspects is limited, with only four slates — StanFor-U, The Culture, FOREVER ’21 and Twenty-One, Twenty-Fun — having run for the position.

One potential infraction that could have prompted the investigation is a party that was held in Otero on Friday, April 6.

“I was invited by [a member of] the Forever ’21 slate to the party,” an anonymous freshman attendee said. “There were alcoholic drinks at the party, and [the drinks] were labelled with the names of the Forever ’21 slate.”

However, aside from the labels, the freshman attendee said that campaigning did not take place. They added that the candidates served hard alcohol in the dorm room, but that the party was focused in the dorm’s lounge, where drinking did not occur.

“Nobody was really talking about the election,” they said. 

Two more party attendees, also freshmen, confirmed the initial attendee’s report.

The slate members  — Rozy Eastaugh ’21, Miles Menafee ’21, Troy Shen ’21 and Kiki Velez ’21 — did not deny or corroborate the allegations but did note that they have been in contact with the Elections Commission.

“At this moment, FOREVER ’21 has submitted a written account of the incident to the ASSU, and we are confident they will reach a decision that preserves the integrity of the election, regardless of what the results may be,” said Shen, speaking for the slate. “We choose not to expand upon this because a brief description alone would not capture the nuances of the situation.”

“FOREVER ’21 is fully cooperating with the ASSU Elections Commissioner,” added Eastaugh.

However, the slate maintained that they did not know what the ASSU investigation is about “as there have been various reports surrounding other slates in this election,” according to Velez.

One other slate said that they are not under investigation.

“Our slate is not under investigation, but we’re fully cooperating with the ASSU Elections Commissioner about the pending election,” said Celine Foster ’21 of the Twenty-One, Twenty-Fun campaign.

Velez, also on behalf of the Forever ’21 slate, later said that the slate is “confident that [they] haven’t broken any campaign or dorm regulations.”

It is a violation of campaign regulations to break University policy, and it is a violation of University policy to break California state law, under which “it is illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to purchase alcohol or to possess alcohol in a public space… [and it is] illegal for anyone to furnish alcohol to an individual under the age of 21.”

If the FOREVER ’21 or another slate was found to have broken this law, they would be in violation of ASSU campaign regulation.

Elections Commissioner Paul Serrato ’19 did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The campaign regulations to which candidates are subject are intended to “ensure a fair and equal playing ground” under Election Commission regulations.

For instance, in addition to forbidding candidates from breaking University policy, campaign regulations bar candidates from making “rude or offensive remarks and advertisements,” using their authority — like a residential staff position — for personal gain, appropriating logos for personal use or violating guidelines regarding flyering, chalking and other modes of advertisement.

There are also campaign finance regulations that must be adhered to. For class president candidates, spending is capped at $400, and any funding from non-ASSU sources must be reported.

“If the Elections Commission is made aware of any infractions,” the Commission website says, “the person in question will be notified and shall have 24 hours to resolve the issue or risk losing ballot access.”

No policy is listed for persons who are found to have committed an infraction after already being listed on the ballot, nor for after the election has already ended.

Per the Commission’s 2018 Voter Guide, class presidents do not technically operate under the ASSU governance structure. They do appear on the ASSU ballot for voters in their respective class, but “mostly deal with class programming and events instead of funding and policy.”

This news follows claims by The Stanford Review that Michael Ocon ’20, who ran with Khaled Aounallah ’19 for ASSU Executive, had potentially accepted campaign funds and support from conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA. Ocon disputed the claims, labeling them “a clear example of voter manipulation.”

 

This report will be updated as further details come to light.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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2018 ASSU election results announced: Shanta-Rosie slate elected as executives https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/14/2018-assu-election-results-announced-shanta-rosie-slate-elected-as-executives/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/14/2018-assu-election-results-announced-shanta-rosie-slate-elected-as-executives/#respond Sun, 15 Apr 2018 01:11:07 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139412 On Saturday, the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections commission announced the results of the 2018 elections. The Shanta-Rosie slate, including Shanta Katipamula ’19 and Ph.D. candidate Rosie Nelson, won against the Khaled-Ocon slate to become the 2018-2019 ASSU executives.

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On Saturday, the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections commission announced the results of the 2018 elections. The Shanta-Rosie slate, including Shanta Katipamula ’19 and Ph.D. candidate Rosie Nelson, won against the Khaled-Ocon slate to become the 2018-2019 ASSU executives.

The 15 members of the forthcoming 20th Undergraduate Senate were also selected from a total of 22 candidates.

The elections commission also announced new class presidents and next year’s Graduate Student Council members. 76 out of 80 annual grant and special fee groups were approved. A referendum advocating fossil fuel divestment passed in both the undergraduate and graduate bodies. 

“We are grateful for the trust and confidence the student body has placed in us by electing us to be the next ASSU Exec,” Katipamula and Nelson wrote in a joint statement to The Daily “Thank you to everyone who believed in our campaign and our message of uplifting student voices to the decision-making table. We can’t wait to get to work and deliver on our campaign promises.”

The total undergraduate voter turnout was 57.39 percent, and the total graduate voter turnout was 34.07 percent. Katipamula and Nelson noted that they were “incredibly excited” by an increase in turnout of around 400 voters. 

2018 ASSU election results announced: Shanta-Rosie slate elected as executives

Executive

The Shanta-Rosie slate — which was endorsed by the First Generation and/or Low Income Partnership, Stanford Daily, Stanford Bioscience Student Association and the Biomedical Association for the Interest of Minority Students — won with 61.92 percent of the vote, beating the Khaled-Ocon slate by 34.6 percent. They also beat the Associated Students of Stanford “joke slate,” which featured John McNelly ’19 and Cale Lester ’19.

Katipamula and Nelson ran a campaign based around bringing together undergraduate and graduate students, with the slate itself featuring one of each. They also emphasized their ability to work within the larger institution of Stanford, with a campaign statement that described “working relationships with the highest levels of Stanford’s administration” and a website that highlighted their past work in student government (Katipamula being a former senate chair and Nelson currently a GSC co-chair).

Their campaign included promises to advocate for greater community center funding, more long-term housing and transportation options for graduate students, increased Peer Health Educator pay, more diverse Counseling and Psychological Services counselors, for Stanford to use the American Association of Universities sexual assault survey, a block meal swipe option for undergraduates and increased minimum salaries for teaching assistants and resident assistants.

One particular policy area which they disagreed with the Aounallah and Ocon on was about the presence of undergraduate students on Title IX panels. During the executive debate a week earlier, it had emerged that Shanta-Rosie opposed adding an undergraduate panel member (due to worries about adequate training for them), while Khaled-Ocon were in favor of adding one (in the name of representation for all affected by the panel’s verdicts).

Undergraduate Senate

In the 2018 Senate race, 22 candidates competed for 15 seats. Their campaigns focused on issues ranging from University transparency to free speech, mental health to housing. Candidate statements, published on the ASSU website, proposed policies including introducing need-blind admissions for international students, expanding mental health resources and increasing community center budgets.   

Some candidates campaigned individually, while others joined forces and ran in coalitions. These included A2, Morfin/Diallo, FAM and S.I.D.E. (Students for Inclusion, Diversity and Equality).

The ASSU Elections Commission announced that the following candidates were elected to the 20th Undergraduate Senate. In descending order of votes, the winners are:

Gabe Rosen ’19, who promised to increase transparency about Senate meetings as well as support the rights of service workers and course fee reductions. Elected to his third term, Rosen was the only incumbent who sought another term. He received 1,192 votes.

Melissa Loupeda ’21, who campaigned for supporting a disability studies program, standardizing student groups funding guidelines and increasing dialogue around sexual assault. Loupeda received 1,190 votes.

Jianna So ’21, who championed diversity and service workers in her campaign, as well as proposed changes to the way Stanford addresses sexual assault. So received 1,092 votes.

Leya Elias ’21, who promised to create a new community center for first-generation/low-income students, distribute ASSU student group funding more equitably and promote after-dark transportation services. Elias received 1,002 votes.

Melody Yang ’21, who advocated for more housing and dining options over winter and spring break, a week-long reading period in lieu of Dead Week and increase community center budgets. Yang received 915 votes.

Tyra Nicolay ’21, who called for changes to community centers, fairer allocation of student group funding and more representation for minorities on campus. Nicolay received 896 votes.

Martin Altenburg ’21, who promised reforms to the admissions system and community centers, as well as championed programs for first-generation and low-income students. Altenburg received 883 votes.

Josh Nkoy ’21, who campaigned on a platform of common sense, promised to establish new outreach programs, make Stanford a sanctuary campus and pave the way for divestment from
fossil fuels. Nkoy received 846 votes.

Jamie Seney ’21, who advocated for supporting undocumented students, improving ASSU transparency and increasing community center budgets. Seney received 782 votes.

Zakaria Sharif ’21, who promised more community on campus, advocated for the creation of disability studies and championed workers’ rights on campus. Sharif received 737 votes.

Jon Johnson ’21, who emphasized empowering minorities on campus. Johnson received 717 votes.

Michal Skreta ’21, who supported expanding meal plan options and increasing transparency about University finances, as well as abolishing printing fees and subsidizing airport rides. Skreta received 715 votes.

Faa Diallo ’21, who proposed to subsidize student health care, introduce more meal plan options and encourage greater dialogue on campus. Diallo received 662 votes.

Matt Wigler ’19, who proposed to initiate a student-centered cardinal conversations program, advocate for a Disability Studies minor and alleviate financial hardships on students through subsidies. His platform also expressed support for Israel and opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Wigler received 457 votes.

Wigler received fewer votes than five rising sophomores who sought office, but was elected over them because of an ASSU bylaw that mandates that at least three undergraduate senators be upperclassmen.

Last year, this bylaw resulted in a tumultuous Constitutional Council case when Lizzie Ford ’20 was chosen over upperclassman candidate Jacob Randolph ’19 — who received fewer votes than Ford — to replace upperclassman Matthew Cohen ’18 when Cohen was appointed ASSU Chief of Staff by recently-elected executives Justice Tention ’18 and Vicki Niu ’18.

The Council determined that the bylaw only applied in elections, not in single-seat vacancies. Ford retained her seat.

The joke candidate Emperor Palpatine (also known as former Tree Sam Weyen ’18) received a sizeable 656 votes, which would be enough to win him a seat on the Undergraduate Senate. However, the Elections Commission noted that “verification of future undergraduate enrollment [is] required before [his] confirmation by GSC and Senate.”

Rodolfo Salazar ’21 is reported to have the next most amount of votes after Palpatine.

All of the senatorial candidates endorsed by the Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) were elected to the Undergraduate Senate. However, the Khaled-Ocon slate, which SOCC also endorsed, was not elected. This fact is unusual given that SOCC endorsements have historically poised candidates for successful outcomes.

The elected Senators serve at-large on behalf of the student body in one of the ASSU’s six committees: Advocacy, Academic Affairs, Administration and Rules, Appropriations, Communications and Student Life.

Class presidents

The MARC TESSENIOR LEV19NE slate — which includes Tashrima Hossain ’19, Aron Tesfai ’19, Nick Pena ’19 and Tony Moller ’19 — was elected senior class president. The slate ran unopposed and promised to help connect rising seniors through events such as senior formal and dorm reunions, as well as host diversity and service-oriented events.

The only slate running for junior class president — consisting of Izzy Angus ’20, Will Kenney ’20, Leila Mengesha ’20, Sofia Dudas ’20, Cameron Woods ’20 and Marco Lee ’20 — was also officially elected on Saturday. The slate emphasized accessibility as one of its primary aims, and also promised to offer a wide variety of event programming, volunteer activities and opportunities student-faculty interaction.

Election results for sophomore class president were not released, “pending investigation of potential campaigning violations.”

Student group funding

All 71 undergraduate student groups who applied for Annual Grants were granted funding. Three groups — L’Chayim Club, SUAVE and Stanford Video Game Association — were originally listed as having not been approved, but the results were updated afterwards to reflect that they had, in fact, received funding.  

In addition, 5 of the 9 graduate student groups were approved for Special Fees. The four groups which did not meet the threshold were Stanford Speakers Bureau, KZSU, Viennese Ball Committee and Stanford Martial Arts Program.

Graduate Student Council 

The graduate community also elected representatives to their legislative body, the Graduate Student Council (GSC). According to the ASSU, the GSC includes 15 voting members — 10 of whom represent Stanford’s seven schools and five of whom are at-large representatives.

Gabby Badica, a graduate student in Iberian and Latin American Cultures who is currently an incumbent on the Council, won the at-large GSC positions.

Rui Liu, a Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical Engineering, and Yiqing Ding, a masters student in Engineering, were also elected as at-large representatives.

Melanie Malinas, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in biophysics, will represent the Natural Sciences graduate district. Having run unopposed for her second term on the Council, Malinas was endorsed by the Stanford Bioscience Student Association and the Stanford Biomedical Association for the Interests of Minority students. In her first term, Malinas has worked on issues ranging from financial literacy to mental healthcare.

Nicolas Garcia, a first-year law student, will be the the law school’s district representative. Amy Tarangelo, a biology Ph.D. candidate, will represent the medical school district. Shanna Chu, a Stanford Earth graduate student, will represent the Earth Science district. David Song, an education Ph.D. candidate, will represent the Graduate School of Education. Garcia, Tarangelo, Chu and Song ran unopposed. Ana Maria Tarano and Ricardo Peterson were elected to represent the School of Engineering, and Justin Di will represent the Graduate School of Business.

Caleb Smith ’17, currently a coterm in Public Policy, was elected as Social Sciences district representative with two write-in votes — despite the fact that he is graduating this year. Smith, a Daily staffer, said he was “honored and, most of all, surprised.” Smith did not run for the position.

“I look forward to spending my one and a half remaining months at Stanford on the GSC working to fix our student group funding system and pressure the administration to develop campus in a prudent and equitable manner,” he wrote to The Daily.

 

This article has been updated to reflect additions to the Graduate Student Council election results and the passage of the Fossil Free Stanford referendum. 

Graphic courtesy of Josh Wagner.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu, Yasmin Samrai at ysamrai ‘at’ stanford.edu, Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Courtney Douglas at ccd4 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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On this day: April 13 https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/13/on-this-day-april-13/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/13/on-this-day-april-13/#respond Fri, 13 Apr 2018 07:54:01 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139370 The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford. According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on April 13 in….

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The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford.

According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on April 13 in …

1897: Thomas Welton Stanford, brother of University founder Leland Stanford, donated a collection of fifty paintings to the Stanford museum. They depicted Australia, where the Melbourne-based Thomas Stanford lived.

1920: The Student Council threatened to abolish “roughing” at the Women’s Clubhouse following multiple complaints about “the increased breaking of windows and damage caused … [at] recent dances.”

1936: The Daily announced the commencement of a ping pong tournament, noting that admission was 25 cents.

1942: The American military base Corregidor Island in Manila Bay held out against twelve rounds of bombing and artillery strikes by Japanese forces, the Daily reported.

1954: The New York Times broke the story that Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer — the so-called “father of the atomic bomb” — had been suspended pending a review of his security record.

1955: The discovery of a polio vaccine “set into motion long-made plans for vaccinating 57,000,000 children before summer’s end,” The Daily reported.

1961: Yuri Gagarin returned to Earth after becoming the first man in space. “Russia Goes Wild,” The Daily headline noted.

1966: The Daily reported that the Sexual Rights Forum (SSRF) had gained enough petition signatures to call a campus-wide referendum on whether the University health program should start distributing contraceptives to students. The policy at the time was that contraceptives were only provided for married or engaged students, which SSRF co-leader James Sayre called “a moral judgement on non-marital intercourse.”

1971: Six policemen used a search warrant to enter and search The Daily building, seeking photographic evidence to use in prosecutions related to a recent sit-in that had turned violent. The officers left empty-handed, and editor Felicity Barringer ’72 responded to the incident by saying that “it is extremely difficult for any news organization to perform its function in a democratic society if it is working under the constant threat of governmental subpoena or a government-sanctioned search of its confidential files.” The incident evolved into a Supreme Court case, Zurcher v. Stanford Daily.

1978: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted “extensive monitoring” of “radical political groups” at Stanford and at least 57 other colleges from 1967 until 1973, The Daily reported in the wake of the declassification of documents concerning “Project Resistance.”

1993: After investigations failed to show any concrete proof of cheating, The Daily reported that the finals for Philosophy 58 and Geophysics 4 would count, despite numerous allegations of academic dishonesty.

2012: The Daily reported on a series of criticisms made about ASSU Vice President and Executive candidate Stewart MacGregor-Dennis ’13 after it emerged that he had spent over $2,000 on various online services as part of his election campaign.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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ASSU Executive candidate Michael Ocon denies Review allegations of link to conservative nonprofit https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/12/assu-executive-candidate-michael-ocon-denies-allegations-of-affiliation-with-conservative-nonprofit-turning-point-usa/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/12/assu-executive-candidate-michael-ocon-denies-allegations-of-affiliation-with-conservative-nonprofit-turning-point-usa/#respond Thu, 12 Apr 2018 08:53:01 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139285 Following an article published by The Stanford Review on the first day of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections, Students of Color Coalition (SOCC)-endorsed ASSU Executive candidate Michael Ocon ’20 denied allegations that he is affiliated with, and has received funding from, the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA (TPUSA).

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Following an article published by The Stanford Review on the first day of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections, Students of Color Coalition (SOCC)-endorsed ASSU Executive candidate Michael Ocon ’20 denied allegations that he is affiliated with and has received funding from the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA (TPUSA).

Ocon is running on an ASSU Executive slate with fellow student activist Khaled Aounallah ’19.

TPUSA, a national nonprofit organization with chapters in college campuses and high schools, aims to “identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets and limited government,” according to its website.

The website maintains that the group “works consistently to re-brand free market values” using “innovative grassroots messaging” with slogans such as “Commies Aren’t Cool,” “Big Government Sucks” and “Taxation is Theft.”

The Stanford Review article, published about 15 hours into the 48-hour voting window, said The Review had heard that Ocon accepted campaign funding and “logistical support” from TPUSA. According to the article, The Review received an attendance list for a TPUSA-hosted conference that listed Ocon as having attended.

Both Ocon and Aounallah denied the allegations. Aounallah said he was unaware of TPUSA prior to the release of The Review article. Ocon said he did not know about any conference related to TPUSA and held that he had never attended any conference related to any conservative political organization.

“This is a personal attack,” Ocon told The Daily on Wednesday evening. “This is a clear example of voter manipulation.”

“There is no proof of these allegations,” Aounallah said.

The Review contacted neither Ocon nor Aounallah for comment prior to the article’s publication.

Sam Wolfe ’20, The Review’s editor-in-chief and the article’s author, told The Daily that the piece was intended to be “satirical and lighthearted” and that The Review “never intended to attack Michael.”

“None of the facts presented are false, though,” he added.  

Ocon, too, initially perceived the article to be satire.

“Initially … we thought it was a joke,” he said. “Then, reading the content of the article, we were concerned about the allegations made against us.”

Though Wolfe was “very” confident that Ocon attended the conference, he was not clear on what Ocon’s motives were in allegedly engaging in TPUSA activities.

“Why he did so is anyone’s guess,” Wolfe said.

The Daily also received a document containing a list of attendees from a TPUSA affiliate, believed to be the same file referenced by The Review. Among the attendees, Nathaniel Stuart ’20 and Faa Diallo ’21 — a current Senate candidate — were listed as staying in the same hotel as Ocon.

“It is true, as far as we know, that [Ocon] went to the conference,” Wolfe said. “The document is extensive and detailed and does not appear to be a work of forgery or anything of the sort.”

The Daily was unable to verify the document’s provenance or connect the file to TPUSA or any specific event. However, the list also contained the names of staff contacts who were verified to be affiliated with TPUSA.

Stuart declined to respond to The Daily’s request for comment. Diallo responded saying he would neither confirm nor deny his attendance at the alleged conference.

Following publication of The Review’s story, Stanford College Republicans (SCR) expressed its public endorsement of the Khaled-Ocon slate in a Facebook post.

“We, like The Stanford Review, regard the presence of a credibly conservative candidacy for ASSU Executive ebulliently and with great surprise,” SCR wrote. “If they’re conservative enough for Turning Point USA, they’re conservative enough for us!”

Ocon said that he and Aounallah have publicly clashed with The Review on several other fronts, including Stanford College Republicans’ November 2017 speaker event featuring self-proclaimed Islamophobe Robert Spencer, as well as Stanford Sanctuary Now’s campaign to make Memorial Church a sanctuary church.

Ocon also noted that he has a poor relationship with The Review, saying that he felt “attacked profusely” by Review articles about the Coalition of Concerned Students’ protests against political scientist Charles Murray’s invitation to the Cardinal Conversations speaker series in January.

“We’ve been attacked for being affiliated with movements that they deem to have some sort of Antifa connotation,” Ocon said. “We’ve been portrayed by the Review as being the leaders of a socialist movement on campus.”

Ocon said that he viewed the Review piece as an attack on SOCC, whose endorsed candidates consistently see success on ASSU election days.

“They pointedly reference the Students of Color Coalition in the article,” Ocon said. “We’re really disappointed with the fact that The Review went forward with an article that had no substance to it.”

The Review has described SOCC as “heavily influenced by radical liberal activists and operating behind the guise of ‘color’ and ‘campus unity.’”

In 2015, The Review filed a Constitutional Council suit against SOCC, claiming that they violated an ASSU constitutional clause after refusing to hand over candidate endorsement records to the publication. After hearing arguments, the Council ruled in favor of SOCC.

Ocon and Aounallah are currently in the running for ASSU Executive on a slate under the slogan “Together We Thrive.” The Khaled-Ocon slate is known for the pair’s visible involvement in a wide array of progressive movements on campus. Their campaign platform addresses issues ranging from advocating for Stanford to become a “sanctuary campus” that would not cooperate with the federal government in the deportation of undocumented students to efforts to rename University buildings and landmarks named after Junipero Serra, a missionary who has drawn controversy for harming Native populations.

TPUSA has a history of getting involved in University elections. Speaking to a conservative audience in 2015, founder and director Charlie Kirk explained that doing so gives the organization a platform for political advocacy and control over student-government budgets.

“We’re not going to change the professor’s mind,” Kirk said. “You’re not going to get teachers fired. But the only vulnerability … is student-government-association races and elections, and we’re investing a lot of time and energy and money in it.”

Generally, this support is only for right-wing candidates whose platforms differ significantly from Aounallah and Ocon’s. But doubts about the politics of one TPUSA-backed slate arose during an Ohio State University student government election in 2016.

At TPUSA’s December 2016 “Winter In West Palm Beach Activist Summit,” Kadin Llewellyn — the former president of Ohio State’s TPUSA chapter — was introduced by a TPUSA leadership director to two other Ohio State students who were running to be the school’s president and vice president. But after TPUSA backed the pair, skepticism emerged about the candidates’ conservative bonafides.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Llewellyn and other TPUSA chapter members “harbored deep doubts about whether the … ticket was truly conservative” and “complained that Turning Point chose to back a candidate it thought could win, even if it meant abandoning its values.”

“I felt I was manipulated and lied to during the process,” Llewelyn told The Chronicle.

However, nothing in the Chronicle article suggests that the candidates were actually left-wing; the Khaled-Ocon slate aligns with liberal causes. Amid allegations that they had broken a campaign spending cap and then covered it up, the Ohio State candidates eventually withdrew from the race.

The Khaled-Ocon slate is running for ASSU executive office against Shanta Katipamula ’19 and Ph.D. candidate Rosie Nelson, as well as the “Associated Students of Stanford” joke slate.

ASSU voting will remain open until Thursday at 11:59 p.m., and each eligible voter has received a ballot through their Stanford Email account. Election results will be publicly announced on Saturday, April 14.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu, Courtney Douglas at ccd4 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The 2018 Undergraduate Senate Elections: A Primer https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/11/2018-assu-elections/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/11/2018-assu-elections/#respond Wed, 11 Apr 2018 08:21:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139050 Are you voting in this year's Undergraduate Senate elections? The Daily gives you everything you need to know with candidate profiles, endorsement lists and issue breakdowns.

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Every year, Stanford undergraduate and graduate students are invited to vote on who will make up the legislative and executive branches of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) government in the next academic year.

All registered students who were enrolled in Stanford during winter quarter of that year are eligible to vote for senators (for undergraduates) and council members (for graduate students) as well as a president/vice president slate. The elected representatives speak on behalf of students in dialogue with University administrators, vote on ASSU bills and push forward ASSU initiatives.

In this year’s Undergraduate Senate race, there are 22 candidates running for 15 seats. Voters will receive their ballots via email through an individualized link, and will have two days to place their votes. This year, the ballot opens on April 11 at 12:00 a.m. and closes on April 12 at 11:59 p.m.

Preliminary election results will be announced on April 14 on the ASSU Elections Commission’s website.

[ubergrid id=1138950]

This report will be updated as the election proceeds.

An earlier version of this article said that the voting period will last one day rather than two. The Daily regrets this error.

Felicia Hou, Jacob Nierenberg, Jordan Payne, Melissa Santos, Andrea Villa and Michael Whittaker contributed to this report. Graphics by Josh Wagner.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Yasmin Samrai at ysamrai ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Community centers: Who gets them? https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/10/community-centers-who-gets-them/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/10/community-centers-who-gets-them/#respond Tue, 10 Apr 2018 07:13:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138948 Once a week, early enough that the sun has barely risen, a small group gathers outside Green Library for an hour or so and chats. Seated around a table at Coupa Cafe, they discuss typical Stanford things: what classes to avoid, what grad schools to apply for, what articles they’ve been reading.

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This article is the second in a mini-series examining the role, goals and challenges of community centers and other community-centered organizations on campus.

Once a week, early enough that the sun has barely risen, a small group gathers outside Green Library for an hour or so and chats. Seated around a table at Coupa Cafe, they discuss typical Stanford things: what classes to avoid, what grad schools to apply for, what articles they’ve been reading.

But the conversation also extends to topics that would be foreign to most other students. The difference between a piddle pack and a wag bag, for instance. Or the importance of good ventilation when designing tents for the desert. Or the relative merits of the Navy versus the Marine Corps.

These are members of Stanford’s military-affiliated community: students, staff and fellows, most of them veterans, who have a personal connection to the armed forces. Unlike other campus communities, Stanford’s veterans do not have a designated community center in which to meet and organize. So instead they sit outside, at Coupa Cafe, and build their community there.

“This is a place where we can meet and talk about those things with other people that can relate to [them],” said Stephen McReynolds ’20, a member of the Stanford Undergraduate Veterans Association who frequents the morning meetings. “It’s really nice, and we’re able to do it, but there’s no privacy there; there’s no space there. If it’s raining, we’re like, ‘Alright, well where do we meet?’ It’s tough.”

Nor are Stanford’s military-affiliated students the only ones who do their communing outside the walls of a community center. And that’s something that they — along with Stanford’s disability, Catholic, low-income and other communities — want to see changed.

“Eventually,” McReynolds said, “we’d like a permanent space.”

Communities without community centers

There are currently seven officially-designated campus community centers, each of which aims to support students based on a different racial, ethnic, religious, gender or sexual identity. Although they are open to all students, the centers are particularly important to members of the given community on which they are focused.

“I’m just really amazed that different communities can have a space that [is] physically present on campus and can make so many different things happen,” said Celia Chen ’20, one of three ASSU Community Centers Leads.

However, there are of course more than seven factors around which Stanford students can identify — the result being that not every community that wants a community center has one.

“Our Community Centers are so successful at their jobs that numerous other groups have made requests for their own centers,” notes the White Paper on “Inclusion, Equity, and Stanford Culture” that emerged from the University’s ongoing long-range planning process. “These include FLI (first generation and low income) students, members of our faith communities, and members of our community with physical or mental disabilities, among others.”

Cohorts from each of the three named groups — FLI, faith and disability — spoke with The Daily about ongoing efforts to establish their own official community center. Along with Stanford’s veterans, each of these communities is at a different point in the process and envisions their center fulfilling different purposes.

Yet they all share the same end goal: a physical space to call their own.

“I would love to have a space like Hillel does, where we could be a resource for a lot of different organizations,” said campus minister Lourdes Alonso, a member of the Catholic Community at Stanford (CC@S), in reference to the Jewish community space Hillel@Stanford.

Although Hillel is not itself a University-run community center, it serves many similar roles to the seven centers that are. The Markaz, meanwhile, is an official center focused on Muslim identity.

Other groups seeking an official center are farther along. The disability community recently received University support to have a designated space: the Abilities Hub. However, those involved say the space is still several steps removed from the community center they ultimately want.

“We’ve been granted a temporary space, [for] which we have reservation privileges,” said Bryce Tuttle ’20, president of the disability advocacy organization Power2Act and a leader of the new Abilities Hub. “We have two rooms in the BEAM and Office of Accessible Education (OAE) building, which we’re allowed to reserve provided that BEAM doesn’t have other events there.”

But, Tuttle added, they still “do not have an official designation” as a community center, and are currently sponsored by the student-run group Power2Act rather than the University itself.

The FLI community is in an altogether different situation. Currently, the Diversity and First Gen Office (DGen) is the main school organ that supports them culturally. DGen is administratively grouped in with the seven community centers, but according to Associate Dean and Director of DGen Dereca Blackmon ’91, that’s not the same as having a designated FLI space.

“[DGen is] not a community center,” she explained. “It is an office.”

Currently, Blackmon said, DGen serves two roles: supporting the FLI community and fostering diversity at Stanford writ large. Her vision for the future, though, is to split the FLI half off and turn it into an actual community center, while leaving the diversity half an office.

“That’s something I’d like to see short-term,” she added.

Stanford’s military community is in a somewhat analogous position. The Office for Military-Affiliated Communities (OMAC) is a primarily administrative body; although it hosts a few social events, McReynolds said, “they’re really not able to do too much more.”

A petition on the OMAC website pushes for the same solution to this issue that the other three student communities have landed on: full community center recognition and a designated physical location.

The issue of space

The University, for its part, recognizes the demand for multiple new community centers. Administrators argue, however, that similar results can be achieved without resorting to such a spatially demanding solution.

“There’s only so much physical space on the campus, and we want everyone to have a sense of place and home [here] — and that can look all kinds of ways,” said Deborah Golder, associate vice provost for Student Affairs and dean of Residential Education. “Some people’s home is the Haas Center, some people’s home is being a Bridge counselor, some people’s home is the Black House … You could imagine there [being] 100 centers.”

However, speaking about the Abilities Hub in particular, Senator Kimiko Hirota ’20 emphasized the importance of a physical space in legitimizing campus communities.

“[A group] having their own … permanent space is one of the main pieces of feeling like, ‘Yes, we are a community center,’ outside of the actual complicated … status of being a community center,” Hirota said.

Golder agreed that “sometimes you need that physical environment” to allow people to fully connect to an identity. However, she emphasized that doing so for every student community wouldn’t be feasible.

“We have over 700 student organizations, and everyone can’t have their own [space],” she explained. “That’s the real tension. How do we find enough places for people to gather who want to gather within their community?”

Blackmon, however, pushed back on that way of looking at the issue.

“No one asked the question for arts, ‘If we have a music hall then we can’t have a visual arts space,’” the DGen director said. “I think that’s limited thinking, and I really want to push people against that kind of ‘we can only have so many centers, everyone can’t have one’ [mindset]. We don’t think that way about engineering or arts or anything else.”

An ongoing process

The creation of new community centers has historically been “very student-initiated” and driven by activism, Chen said. The contemporary push for even more has, thus far, been pursued through similar mechanisms.

“[The Abilities Hub] is the product of between three and seven years of advocacy work,” Tuttle said. “So right now we pretty much have our foot in the door and we need to demonstrate that we’re using it, that people want to have it and that the University should provide us with funding and a full-time director and a permanent space.”

Although student advocates have been calling for a designated space on campus for the disability community for several decades — and temporarily got one in Meyer Library, before it was torn down in 2015 — Tuttle attributes the recent success with creating the Hub to renewed activist fervor around the issue.

“There’s sort of this movement building around disability advocacy on campus,” he said.

But even that victory is a partial one. Aside from access to BEAM’s internal calendar and associated room reservation privileges, Tuttle said the Hub still has no formal designation under the University. It remains fully student-run and now takes up almost all of Power2Act’s time.

Meanwhile, other groups have followed different paths towards more official status. For instance, Blackmon said that the DGen office’s initial creation was the result of “a specific opportunity from a specific donor.” And although it has since been retrofitted to serve as a semi-social area, “the designated space… is very small.”

As such, she and the FLI community have turned to more formal mechanisms in pursuit of better accommodations.

“Several submissions called for the creation of a Community Center (with yearly base funding and dedicated professional staff) for FLI students,” the aforementioned long-range planning White Paper notes.

Space is also the underlying issue for CC@S, which — like DGen — has offices in the Old Union complex. These offices can serve as an ad hoc social space for Catholic students but are still a far cry from the affordances of a true community center, advocates say.

“It’s one thing to have different religious organizations on campus,” said Father Xavier Lavagetto, pastor and director of CC@S. “The question is, can there be more of a conversation?… And part of that is also simply a function of space, time and place. So this place is just too small.”

Lavagetto is still very early on in his push for a Catholic community center. He has a meeting with University administrators — including Provost Persis Drell — set up for spring quarter, and hopes to eventually meet with President Marc Tessier-Lavigne as well.

“I think we’re still trying to figure out, what is the need,” Alonso said. “And we know that there is one, but we don’t know exactly what it is.”

Need-finding has also been a big part of the process for leaders in the military-affiliated community. McReynolds said that OMAC is currently interested in renting out a room to host the morning meetings in, which could serve as a proof-of-concept for a permanent community center.

McReynolds sees this as a potential path forward, alongside dialogue with administrators and the online petition.

“My understanding is that the University has heard this and they are listening to it, [but] no broad commitment has been made,” McReynolds said. “They’re receptive to the idea, they understand that there is a desire and a want, they probably accept that they could call it a need, but I don’t know where it is on their priority list.”

The benefits of a center

The four communities that the Daily talked to identified a quartet of benefits implicit in becoming a community center: space, staff, money and broader recognition.

Space is the most tangible of the four. Blackmon, for instance, believes that “being a center is definitely place-based,” and leaders of the Ability Hub identified having a designated, exclusive location as important for building communities.

“We want… an independent space that we alone have access to, that can be used both during events and outside of events like other community centers,” Tuttle said.

He added, “Since we’re sharing the space, BEAM has fully justified worries that they won’t be able to use the space [as] they want or they need, which really puts us in an uncomfortable position, because we’ve been given this space by people and through meetings that were with neither BEAM nor the OAE.”

However, Associate Vice Provost and Dean of Career and Experiential Education Farouk Dey — who oversees BEAM — spoke favorably of the shared-space situation.

“At BEAM, it is important that our space is inclusive of all students and conducive to community engagement for all student groups,” Dey wrote in an email to The Daily. “We are glad to have the opportunity to partner with the Abilities Hub, OAE, and the Schwab Learning Center to share our space and resources for the benefit of all students.”

Tied in with spatial concerns are, for certain communities, monetary ones.

“We’re poor,” said Lavagetto of CC@S. “I mean, we happen to be on a very rich campus, but we’re poor. And so we make do, but one of the things I dream of is, [could] we get some kind of space on campus? Would the university allow it?”

The Abilities Hub, meanwhile, has no outside funding, according to Tuttle. Their budget is, in effect, the same as that of its sponsor group, Power2Act.

What’s more, they lack any official staff: Abilities Hub leaders hope community center status would come with a full-time director.

“We’re beginning to construct an informal infrastructure,” Tuttle said, “but all of that has to be under the student group.”

In a more abstract sense, many communities view community center status as holding symbolic value in addition fulfilling a practical purpose. It is, to them, a sort of validation.

“I do think the center designation would indicate the University’s recognition of FLI students as an existing community who need a specific set of supports,” Blackmon said.

Others saw it as important for ensuring the long-term presence of a given community on campus. Without being a community center, Lavagetto said, “you’re always depending upon the goodwill of others… [so the] ability to rest [can] sometimes be hard.”

To highlight what good a community center can do for a given community, McReynolds pointed to the enormous benefit he got out of the veteran center at College of San Mateo, which he attended before transferring to Stanford.

Fresh off his service in the Marine Corps, McReynolds found himself craving contact with people at San Mateo who had experienced similar things that he had. The veterans center — which combined administrative functions like issuing VA cards with social functions like networking events —  met that need.

“It gave me a sense of community,” he said. “I could walk in after a stressful day and be a veteran again, if that makes sense. I could talk like that, and I could act like that, and then I could walk back out, put that game face on, and go be in charge of my student body or be in class or just be a regular student.”

It is a model, he suggested, that Stanford should try to emulate.

“[Veterans’] success and happiness here, and certainly our potential here as individual students and as a community, would be very positively impacted by a center,” McReynolds said.

Unique problems

However, although issues relating to space, funding, staffing and representation exist across multiple communities, each identity group also faces certain problems particular to its membership and place in the Stanford ecosystem.

Were they to get a community center, these particularities would have to be taken into account.

The disability community, for instance, has trouble assessing the number of people who might benefit from a community center because many students might not be open about their membership in the community to begin with.

“There are a lot of really vocal advocates… but everyone else who really needs the space and really needs to feel comfortable and feel safe doesn’t really want to say it, because they don’t necessarily want to talk about their own disability,” Tuttle explained. “And that makes it really difficult for us.”

Similarly, Tuttle noted that the current location of the Abilities Hub is less than ideal because it is far from much of the campus’ disability-accessible housing and, in sharing space with the OAE, suggests that the disability community is primarily defined by its academic accommodations. He also said that part of the facility was not wheelchair accessible — an obvious problem for a space partially meant for students with physical disabilities.

CC@S faces issues of its own. For instance, like other religious groups on campus, they are funded by their parent organization; in this case, Lavagetto and Alonso are employed by the Diocese of San Jose and work primarily off of an endowment and community donations. Although individual Catholic-affiliated student groups are eligible for ASSU funding, the parish itself doesn’t get money from the University.

“You can’t ask students, can’t ask parents, can’t ask alumni,” Lavagetto said. “So we have to go outside that bubble. And that’s the difficulty.”

They do receive University support in the form of free office space in Old Union and use of Memorial Church for Mass, although additional event space has to be rented and their staff is entirely funded by the Diocese.

They face cultural issues, too. Lavagetto said that the diversity of traditions and cultures within Catholicism complicates the notion of a single Catholic community, as does the balance between cultural and religious identity.

“We’re on campus as a religious organization,” he said. “Okay, that’s fine. But while the University doesn’t see us as a culture, everyone else does.”

Veterans, too, face problems unique to their community. For instance, certain features of the veterans center at College of San Mateo that McReynolds recalled — like information about suicide crisis hotlines and help securing VA benefits — are of particular relevance to the military-affiliated community.

One aspect of Stanford’s veteran community that a community center would have to engage with would be the age gap that often exists between undergraduates who enroll out of high school and those who enroll after time serving in the armed forces.

“A lot of us do have different adult things,” McReynolds said. “A couple veterans have kids.”

Yet the challenges that set these communities apart are also, in some cases, the things that make recognition by way of community center all the more important to members.

“A lot of students of color and other marginalized students wouldn’t come here if we didn’t have the kind of resources that we do,” Blackmon said. “And I think people want that diversity, but they sometimes have resistance to the support system for it.”

A path forward

Regardless of the specific issues faced by any one community, however, certain more systemic issues remain.

For instance, it is unclear what the standard is for determining who does — and does not — get to have a community center.

“I think one of the things [Vice Provost for Student Affairs] Susie [Brubaker-Cole] will be challenging us to do is have a more comprehensive process for it, not having [it] be so random or arbitrary,” Golder said. Golder said that given that physical space is limited, Stanford should come up with a better-defined system to determine who qualifies for a community center.

Meanwhile, others emphasized the tricky role of using quantifiable data to apportion new centers.

“Trying to figure out the criteria for who should have a space is really hard, because it hasn’t been historically by things like the number of people in the community, or the amount of services they access, or the amount of services they provide, or the type of services they provide — all of which would be great metrics,” Blackmon said. “But folks have advocated for their communities to have centers, and there’s been some parity … in how those centers have been supported. So to come in now and say, ‘Okay, now we’re going to hold these metrics that haven’t been held before,’ it’s confusing.”

The alternative, she continued, would be that people continue to rely on activism and advocacy to secure University support for a center, as has historically been the case.

Another factor to consider, in addition to whether new space is viable, is whether current space is being used as efficiently as possible.

“It’s important to be able to maximize the resources, because if we’re going to go to the University, the president and the provost, and say we don’t have enough space, it’s important that we be using our spaces in the best possible way,” said Director of Operations and Student Unions Jeanette Smith-Laws.

Laws also noted other factors — the Bay Area housing affordability crisis; stipulations in Stanford’s General Use Permit; the needs of other parts of the University, like academics or housing — that further constrain the degree to which new community centers are viable.

“It’s a whole University system that needs space,” she said.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Dake allegations raise questions about Title IX jurisdiction in alumni cases https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/09/dake-allegations-raise-questions-about-title-ix-jurisdiction-in-alumni-cases/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/09/dake-allegations-raise-questions-about-title-ix-jurisdiction-in-alumni-cases/#respond Mon, 09 Apr 2018 07:29:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138891 While Ellery Dake ’14 was a Stanford undergraduate, another student — then a member of the football team — allegedly raped her. Nearly eight years later, this January, Dake began pursuing punitive action against him through Stanford’s Title IX Office.

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While Ellery Dake ’14 was a Stanford undergraduate, another student — then a member of the football team — allegedly raped her. Nearly eight years later, this January, Dake began pursuing punitive action against him through Stanford’s Title IX Office.

However, after a process that she found to be misleading and ineffectual, Dake was eventually told by the Title IX Office that her case did not fall under the University’s jurisdiction because both she and her alleged rapist are alumni and no longer sufficiently affiliated with Stanford.

In response to Dake’s case, The Daily examined how Stanford and other schools handle complaints of sexual assault brought against non-students, particularly alumni. Stanford says the Title IX Office’s ability to address complaints brought against alumni is limited and varies on a case-by-case basis. Dake — now a Harvard independent researcher who splits time between Cambridge and California while writing a biography — argues that University policies do not do enough to protect the Stanford community from sexual predators.

Coming forward

On Jan. 22, inspired by the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct, Dake began writing letters to men who she felt had sexually violated her while she was an undergraduate. Dake sent letters to seven former Stanford football players, six of whom she said verbally degraded her and one of whom allegedly raped her. Dake also wrote a letter to a second alleged rapist, who is a non-Stanford affiliate.

Dake says that the Stanford football player who raped her did so in the spring of 2010, on a night when she was too drunk to consent to sex.

“I woke up naked in my roommate’s bed in a puddle of my own urine, vaginally sore and confused after a night of drinking,” Dake told The Daily. “The soreness in my vagina persisted for almost a week. I was devastated.”

After realizing that she had had sex and could not remember any of it, Dake said, she told several of her friends, as well as a friend of her alleged rapist, that she’d been raped. She also told the man himself.

“He had clear recollections of the evening’s events and kept asking if I ‘remembered’ that night,” Dake said. “I told him, unequivocally, that I did not, each time he asked.”

The alleged assault, combined with sexual humiliation she says she had been subjected to by other football players, motivated her to send the letters.

“I was really struggling with a lot of issues related to how the football team treated me,” Dake said.  

Then, on Jan. 25 of this year, Dake attempted to use the Callisto platform to report four sexual assaults she says she experienced while attending Stanford, including both of those described in her #MeToo letters as well as two more assaults allegedly committed by a third man who is not affiliated with the University. However, because she no longer had a Stanford email account, Dake was told by the system that she could not submit the reports, so she instead tried to contact the Title IX Office directly.

“I was eventually told … that they did in fact receive my reports, although I received no electronic verification of this” at the time, Dake told The Daily.

After two days of attempting unsuccessfully to get in touch with the Title IX Office through their publicly-listed email address and phone number, Dake decided to make a visit in person. She said that Title IX’s delayed response to her reports had left her feeling concerned and frustrated.

“Imagine, for example, if there was evidence that needed to be collected or people that needed to be spoken to promptly in an investigation like this,” Dake said. “Time is an issue, and I feel like they were just very much dragging their feet.”

On Jan. 29, four days after using Callisto, Dake met with Miranda Tuttle, the Title IX Outreach and Student Resources Manager. According to Dake, Tuttle told her during this meeting that while Title IX lacked jurisdiction over her two alleged non-Stanford-affiliated rapists, they did have the capacity to pursue action against the former Stanford football player to whom she’d sent a letter.

“[Tuttle told me], ‘Oh, you know, we can’t do anything about these three [other] sexual assault reports, but we can do something about [him],’” Dake said.

Dake added that Tuttle conveyed three possible consequences for alumni perpetrators of sexual harassment and assault: a ban from campus, a ban from alumni events and a ban from all Stanford-affiliated events.

According to Vice President for University Communications Lisa Lapin, the University “never encourage[s] complainants to reach out to witnesses” during Title IX proceedings. In fact, the Title IX Administrative Policy explicitly says not to do so because interacting with witnesses could create the appearance of “coaching” witnesses on what to say. But Dake told The Daily that she understood from the interview that she should “find” witnesses for the investigation herself, and “started calling women who [she] hadn’t spoken to in years” afterwards.

One of these women had been Dake’s roommate at the time, and it was in that woman’s bed that the rape allegedly took place. Two others were high school friends visiting campus who had been at a fraternity party with Dake that night, and a fourth was an outcry witness — a person who first hears allegations. Dake also said that a fifth woman had actually seen the assault take place, but didn’t want to be involved in the investigation and so had instead conveyed her story to one of the other witnesses.

“It was a huge deal for me, frankly, to be calling these girls and [asking], ‘Oh, remember that night that I was raped, and would you consider talking to the Title IX investigators who say they’re going to do an investigation?’” Dake said.

Following the meeting with Tuttle, Dake wrote a statement to Stanford Title IX investigators Kristen Kreple and Sophia Khan providing details about her alleged sexual assault, including the witnesses’ contact information.

Dake met with Khan and Kreple on Feb. 6 to conduct an investigatory interview, part of the Title IX Office’s initial inquiry process. However, Dake says that during the interview she became frustrated upon finding out that Khan and Kreple had neither contacted any of the witnesses nor, she claims, read the statement she’d sent them beforehand.

Dake also stated that the subsequent summary of the investigation interview produced by the Title IX Office, which she received on Feb. 21, contained misspellings of witness names.  

“I did so much work as part of the investigation,” Dake said. “I called up witnesses and endured painful conversations, making sure that I could far exceed the standard of proof. I worked on statements that Kristen Kreple and Sophia N. Khan didn’t even [read] before the initial investigatory interview I did with them, contributing to the atmosphere of inadequacy [and] confusion I have come to associate with Stanford’s Title IX Office.”

During the interview, Dake said, she was once again led to believe that punitive action against her alleged rapist was on the table.

“Miranda Tuttle, Sophia N. Khan and Kristin Kreple assured me that three potential disciplinary outcomes were available to me in moving forward with the administrative protocol for Title IX investigations,” Dake wrote in an email originally sent to the Title IX Office and later shared with The Daily. “Never, not once, was I told [he] could not be punished if [their] office decided he was not appropriately ‘affiliated’ with Stanford University. I was told: ‘disciplinary outcomes for alumni are limited but concrete,’ almost word for word.”

Kreple, Khan and Tuttle did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story. Because Dake declined to waive her privacy rights under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a federal law that protects access to student education records, both University administrators and Title IX investigators were limited in their ability to discuss her case.

University response

Six days later, on Feb. 27, Dake received an email from Title IX Coordinator Catherine Glaze ’80 JD ’85   — whom Dake says she had not spoken with up to that point — informing her that the Title IX Office would not be proceeding with the investigation because of “a combination of factors at play.”

“We do not have jurisdiction because neither you nor [he] are current Stanford students, and [he] has no ongoing connection to Stanford other than being an alumnus,” Glaze wrote.

Glaze went on to say that Dake should contact the Title IX Office in the future if she or her alleged rapist ever returned to campus as employees or graduate students.

“Please know that I respect your courage in coming forward, and I hope you understand that just because the Title IX Office does not have jurisdiction over your case does not in any way minimize your experience,” Glaze concluded.

After receiving the decision, Dake met with Tuttle to express her disappointment and to say that she felt misled by what the three Title IX investigators had told her regarding their ability to take action against her accused rapist.

According to Dake, Tuttle apologized but said that the Title IX Office’s jurisdiction had changed.

“She said that their understanding of their office’s responsibilities was ‘evolving,’” Dake said. “I honestly don’t know what she meant by that … She said she would take personal responsibility for what happened … [and] she didn’t really elaborate on what she meant by their understanding ‘evolving.’”

Lapin did not respond to The Daily’s request for comment about whether the Title IX Office’s jurisdiction has recently changed or been re-evaluated.

In response to follow-up emails from Dake regarding her verdict, Glaze wrote that investigators do not always know right away if they have jurisdiction over a specific case. She explained that when determining jurisdiction over cases, the Title IX Office considers both whether the alleged conduct would, if proven, violate Stanford policy, and also whether the University’s Title IX Office has jurisdiction over the alleged perpetrator.

“Because it is a two-pronged inquiry and because we do not want to unnecessarily delay an investigation, we pursue both inquiries at once,” Glaze wrote.

Glaze later added that while the alleged conduct was indeed against policy, Title IX did not have jurisdiction over the alleged perpetrator because he had no ongoing affiliation with Stanford, such as being a student, staff member, faculty member, participant in alumni travel, alumni volunteer or mentor.

“You came to us in 2018, eight years after the incident occurred and at a time when neither you nor the responding party is participating in any education program or education activity at Stanford,” Glaze wrote to Dake.

Stanford’s first Annual Title IX/Sexual Harassment Report states that “when Stanford community members experience unwanted conduct by individuals outside of the Stanford community, although Stanford does not have direct disciplinary authority over these individuals, Stanford will take action to assist the Stanford complainant.”

Discussing the Student Title IX Process, Lapin said that a complainant can be “any person who experienced sexual violence at Stanford by a current Stanford student.”

Although Dake fits the “any person” standard, her alleged alumni rapist would not meet the “current Stanford student” definition — meaning her case falls outside the bounds of the student process. Matters outside the student process follow the separate Title IX Administrative Policy.

Under FERPA, Lapin said she could not specifically discuss Dake’s case or how Title IX handled it.

However, speaking about University policy more broadly, she reaffirmed what Glaze told Dake.

“If a complaint comes forward from an alum relating to a Title IX concern that occurred while the alum was a student here, we conduct an initial inquiry to determine whether an investigation is appropriate and feasible under the totality of the circumstances,” Lapin wrote in an email to The Daily. “We consider the seriousness of the allegations, whether evidence and witnesses will be available [and] the amount of time that has passed since the alleged conduct occurred.”

Lapin added that the respondent’s level of connection to Stanford — for example, whether they continue to engage with alumni events or visit campus frequently — is a pertinent factor in the University’s decision.

“Every case requires an individualized analysis to determine if there is a potential current threat to the Stanford community,” she said. The University considers “whether — based on conduct that occurred at or in connection with Stanford and while the accused was a student here — the complainant will not feel welcome at events such as reunions.”

If the case meets those conditions and a policy violation is found to have been committed, the University can then pursue punishments like a campus or event ban.

But because Dake’s accused rapist was an alumnus and had “no ongoing connection to Stanford other than being an alumnus” — as Glaze phrased it in her initial email — Title IX determined that he did not fall within its jurisdiction.

Yet Dake told The Daily that no one at Title IX ever told her that that was a possible outcome.

In a response to Glaze, Dake wrote that Tuttle, Khan and Kreple had all assured her that the three potential disciplinary outcomes were achievable. According to Dake, she’d never been warned that her alleged rapist might not be punished.

“[The Title IX Office] told me [they] could ban [him] from alumni events, campus and other Stanford events,” she said. “I was reassured of that repeatedly by [Kreple, Khan and Tuttle]. They assured me my case had concrete potential disciplinary outcomes. What in the world suddenly took place that negated this jurisdiction they spoke of? And why weren’t all the people who collaborated with me at the Title IX Office well versed in the jurisdictional particularities of their office?”

Glaze disagreed with those criticisms.

“I have spoken with the members of the office who met with you, and their recollections of the conversations differ [significantly] from yours,” Glaze wrote in an email to Dake that Dake shared with The Daily.

“I am deeply sorry for your experiences, but no one in this office ‘encouraged’ you to go forward with a Title IX complaint,” Glaze wrote in addition. “That was your choice.”

Overall, Dake described the Title IX Office as “disorganized” and “impotent.”

“I felt like it was a mess, quite frankly,” she added.

Similar cases

Dake is not alone when it comes to dealing as an alum with an assault she says she experienced as a student.

Kathy Unruh ’93 M.S. ’94 also alleges she was raped by a member of the Stanford football team while they were both undergraduate students. As with Dake, Unruh did not pursue charges at the time of the assault; she did not expect anything would happen if she did, and thought “there was no point [to it] other than shaming and embarrassing” herself.

“I was ashamed and traumatized,” Unruh wrote in an email to the Daily. “I didn’t know who to contact.”

Although Unruh has not encountered her alleged rapist since graduation, she expects that she will at some point.

“I was living and working in Palo Alto for the past year and a half … [and] I really expected to run into him at a football game,” she said.

However, she said she is unconcerned by that prospect.

“I am not afraid of him,” Unruh said. “I would probably insult and shame him, or want to.”

But for Dake, the possibility that she — or someone else — could encounter her alleged rapist is a significant issue. He’s a threat, she told The Daily, and any Title IX system that does not treat him as such is one that fails to meet its commitment to ensuring equal access to education for all.

“Whatever the paradigm is that they’re operating from,” Dake said, “it’s endangering people at Stanford … I just don’t understand how that does not impede equal access to education, if you’re not properly putting barriers in place to protect our community from predators.”

However, it is not unprecedented for alumni to face punitive measures under Title IX. In one case detailed by the 2016-2017 Title IX/Sexual Harassment Report, a male alumnus found to have violated school policy regarding sexual harassment in a “workplace or academic environment” was “barred from further engagement with students.” The report did not specify whether the complainant in the case was a current Stanford student or employee.

Other University policies also suggest a potentially wider Title IX jurisdiction over alumni than that applied to Dake’s alleged rapist.

For instance, following a request for comment on Dake’s case, law professor and activist Michele Dauber pointed to Policy 1.7.3 “Prohibited Sexual Conduct” of the Stanford Administrative Guide, which outlines the University’s policies and jurisdiction surrounding sexual assault claims (among other types of sexual misconduct).

The policy applies to “all students, faculty, staff, affiliates and others participating in University programs and activities,” which Dauber said would presumably cover the case brought forth by Dake.

“An [alumnus] seems to me to clearly fall under the category of ‘others participating in University programs and activities;’ for example, when he comes to Alumni Weekend or comes on campus for any other event or purpose,” Dauber wrote in an email to The Daily. “I am surprised that the University took [the position that it did] since it appears to be contrary to its own policy.”

She added that, because Stanford is situated on private property, punishments like a campus ban or restricted access to alumni events and reunions would be well within the University’s power to enact.

However, Dauber cautioned that she was unfamiliar with the specifics of Dake’s case and the reasons why the Title IX Office declined to pursue punitive action. 

Dauber is publicly known for spearheading the movement to recall Judge Aaron Persky ’84 M.A. ’85 from his position as a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge. Persky has received criticism for his handling of the sexual assault case against former Stanford student Brock Turner, who Persky sentenced to six months in county jail in June 2016. Critics say the sentence was too light.

Several other legal experts declined to respond to The Daily’s request for comment on Stanford’s jurisdiction over alumni Title IX cases.

Other approaches

Similar to Stanford’s protocol, UC Berkeley’s written policies distinguish between how the school responds to sexual assault claims involving current students and how it responds to those involving alumni.

In an email to The Daily, Berkeley’s Senior Director of Strategic Communications Janet Gilmore noted that there is “a formal investigation and adjudication structure in place” for responding to accusations made against “current students, faculty and staff.”

Meanwhile, in cases where an alumnus brings forward a claim about an assault that happened during their time as a student, Berkeley’s Title IX Office “will accept and look into such reports … [with] no time limit.” The alumnus would also have full access to campus support and counseling resources, according to Gilmore.

Stanford policy, meanwhile, calls for the investigation of claims as long as “there could be a current threat to campus safety (for example, because the alleged perpetrator continues to have an ongoing role at Stanford),” Lapin told The Daily via email.

Lapin also said that support resources like the Confidential Support Team (CST), Counseling and Psychological Services and Help Center are only for current students, faculty and staff. However, CST counselors will connect alumni with external resources as necessary.

Yet Stanford and Berkeley share their limited jurisdiction over alumni accused of assault.

In some cases, when the accused rapist has a connection to Berkeley programs or activities and the university has enough control over them, disciplinary action might be possible.

But for the most part, Gilmore wrote, “in cases where an accusation is made against a student, staff or faculty member no longer enrolled here or working here, the campus would likely have no jurisdiction to take disciplinary action against an individual.”

Even within Stanford, there is variation in how University apparati deal with claims of sexual misconduct brought forth against former students.

For instance, in addition to bringing her sexual assault allegations to Title IX, Dake reached out to leadership from Stanford’s football program and the Office of Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse Education and Response (SARA) to discuss sexism in Stanford’s athletic community.

Dake said she contacted Callie Seidman Dale, associate director of Stanford’s Football Operations, to discuss sexual humiliation she experienced as an undergraduate at the hands of football team members and a broader culture of objectification and misogyny on the team.

Seidman responded that the team was actively working on addressing such issues with its players.

“The Stanford football program has emphasized this topic over the past several years in order to educate student-athletes and prepare them to make the right decisions,” added Tommy Gray, Associate Athletics Director for External Relations, in an email to The Daily. “The year-round efforts, led by head coach David Shaw, include a number of mandatory educational programs, as well as frequent formal and informal conversations during team meetings.”

Dake also contacted Carley Flanery, director of SARA, to discuss similar issues. She said she found SARA significantly easier to work with than Title IX had been.

“The SARA Office has been receptive, open and communicative with me about my concerns,” Dake wrote to the Daily. “I feel valued and cared for by the members of their office.”

 

Contact Ellie Bowen at ebowen ‘at’ stanford.edu and Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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In ASSU executive debate, slates disagree on undergraduate representation on Title IX panels, methods of enacting change https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/09/in-assu-executive-debate-slates-disagree-on-undergraduate-representation-on-title-ix-panels-methods-of-enacting-change/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/09/in-assu-executive-debate-slates-disagree-on-undergraduate-representation-on-title-ix-panels-methods-of-enacting-change/#respond Mon, 09 Apr 2018 07:25:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138934 On Sunday, Apr. 8, two of the three executive slates running for the 2018-2019 ASSU presidency and vice presidency participated in a debate co-hosted by The Stanford Daily and KZSU. Shanta Katipamula ’19 and Ph.D. candidate Rosie Nelson (the Shanta-Rosie slate) debated Khaled Aounallah ’19 and Michael Ocon ’20 (the Khaled-Ocon slate) for approximately an hour while KZSU’s Caleb Smith ’17 M.A. ’18 and The Daily’s Yasmin Samrai ’21 moderated.

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On Sunday, Apr. 8, two of the three executive slates running for the 2018-2019 ASSU presidency and vice presidency participated in a debate co-hosted by The Stanford Daily and KZSU.

Shanta Katipamula ’19 and Ph.D. candidate Rosie Nelson (the Shanta-Rosie slate) debated Khaled Aounallah ’19 and Michael Ocon ’20 (the Khaled-Ocon slate) for approximately an hour while KZSU’s Caleb Smith ’17 M.A. ’18 and The Daily’s Yasmin Samrai ’21 moderated. 

In ASSU executive debate, slates disagree on undergraduate representation on Title IX panels, methods of enacting change
Shanta Katipamula ’19 and graduate student Rosie Nelson are running together on a slate for ASSU Executive (APARNA VERMA/The Stanford Daily).

A third “joke slate” — dubbed Associated Students of Stanford and made up of John McNelly ’19 and Cale Lester ’19 — was invited but did not attend.

Samrai and Smith opened the debate with a call for civility and a plan for the flow of debate, as well as a note on what role the event was meant to play in the larger ASSU electoral process.

“We want to know why Stanford students should vote for them, what initiatives they want… and whether they can feasibly effect change on campus,” Samrai said.

The members of the two slates then introduced themselves. Aounallah and Ocon both noted their involvement with the 18th Undergraduate Senate (as a senator and an intern, respectively), while Katipamula said she chaired the Senate that year and Nelson said she is the current Graduate Student Council (GSC) co-chair.

The debate began with a question about what each slates’ top priority is, given that they would likely need to make compromises if elected.

Katipamula identified her slate’s experience as a key factor, allowing them to understand what projects are feasible and what the University would be willing to work on with them.

In ASSU executive debate, slates disagree on undergraduate representation on Title IX panels, methods of enacting change
Khaled Aounallah and Michael Ocon are also in the running for ASSU Executive (APARNA VERMA/The Stanford Daily).

“What we hope to do is, over time build some lower-level administrative and staff support [from] people that are more progressive but perhaps feel a little bit uncomfortable challenging their superiors,” Nelson added. “And if they can help be our voices in meetings where we’re not included, we think that could be a huge potential benefit.”

Aounallah, meanwhile, emphasized more external methods of promoting change.

“We’ve been working mostly with… activist movements,” he said. “We’ve been working a lot outside of the institution.”

Nelson, however, rebutted that campus activism can take many forms, including not just protest but also “trying to intersect yourself into administrative situations” and working for change from within.

In response, Aounallah clarified that the activist community includes institutional work and leadership, and that he and Ocon are not “against the establishment” but rather want to leverage outsider voices when pushing for institutional change.

The next question expanded that dialogue to ask how each slate would address the process of working with University administrators.

Ocon pointed to his work on the issue of workers’ rights under Residential and Dining Enterprises (R&DE) as evidence of the importance of coalition-building and communication, while Aounallah noted the pair’s work on other issues with University leaders like Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole.

Nelson similarly pointed to her prior work with Vice Provost for Graduate Education Patricia Gumport and the Stanford Solidarity Network in advocating against a graduate student tuition waiver tax suggested in an early version of the 2017 Republican tax bill.

“As chair last year… I worked very closely with [Vice Provost] Greg Boardman to get an open office hours initiative between the ASSU and administration [passed],” Katipamula added. She also discussed her work implementing the pilot program of the Callisto sexual assault reporting platform.

Another question from the moderators raised the question of sexual violence on campus, an issue addressed by each slate’s platform. Although both pairs of candidates emphasized the importance of victim-centered reform and have experience working on these issues, they differed on one specific policy area: whether undergraduate representatives should sit on Title IX panels. Following a policy change several years ago, the panels currently only include graduate students, faculty and staff.

The Khaled-Ocon slate supports adding an undergraduate panel member; the Shanta-Rosie one does not.

“One thing we’ve been hearing a lot is about the lack of accountability to undergraduate students in terms of how the [Title IX] process is working,” Ocon said in response to a listener question later in the debate.

Katipamula responded that the current lack of undergraduate representation was a change made under former president Elizabeth Woodson ’15 (2014-2015 ASSU Executive).

“The reason Elizabeth Woodson advocated for [the panel] to no longer have an undergraduate student… is because they wanted to be able to invest a lot of money in really, really intensive training that would require a panelist to then serve two to three years,” Katipamula said, adding that it would be harder to do with undergraduates.

When asked about their biggest accomplishments and biggest struggles in campus politics over the past year, Ocon said that many of his efforts with Stanford Sanctuary Now to make Stanford a sanctuary campus were not supported by University administrators. However, he noted that other immigration-facing efforts done with Provost Persis Drell, such as sensitivity training in dorms, were more successful.

Nelson, in turn, identified her work as GSC co-chair in completing and analyzing the results of the graduate student survey as a major success, and Katipamula pointed to the University’s treatment of Brock Turner sexual assault victim Emily Doe as a recent struggle.

On the topic of mental health, Katipamula said an important goal of her platform includes ensuring Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) counselors are more attune to the challenges faced by first generation and low-income (FLI) students.

“We really need to have people who understand the needs of our communities on campus,” she said, expressing her admiration for Georgetown University’s mental health support for FLI students.

Nelson added that graduate students face their own unique issues, including often getting referred to off-campus mental health resources and not always receiving support from faculty.

Ocon — who is on the student advisory committee for CAPS — emphasized accessibility issues, especially with regards to the affordability of counseling sessions beyond the six to eight sessions that are provided for free.

The slates also discussed their approaches to topics like student group funding in terms of student fee waivers and divestment at both the ASSU and University levels.

The moderators then moved into the second phase of the debate, which involved slate-specific questions. First, the Shanta-Rosie slate was asked about the value of collaboration between undergraduate and graduate students, which has been a focus of their campaign.

“This issue is very important to me because I see the opportunity for us to be able to leverage combined resources to be able to address issues,” Nelson said. “Right now, often when Graduate Student Council members are working on projects, we’re typically working with the vice provost for graduate education, and not leveraging potential undergraduate resources because we don’t have that connection yet.”

Aounallah and Ocon responded by noting their own connections to graduate students by way of various student groups, and Aounallah added that he will be coterming next year.

The moderators then asked the Khaled-Ocon slate about why students who didn’t vote for them in last year’s election — when the pair ran together for the first time, coming in second — should change their vote and do so now.

“We ran last year largely in an effort to raise awareness about issues that we felt were not being talked about,” Ocon said; in particular, he noted, the Stanford Sanctuary Now movement.

Aounallah added that last year’s campaign gave them momentum, leverage and know-how going into this year’s.

Moving into the third segment of the debate, each slate had the opportunity to ask their competition a question.

Shanta-Rosie asked Khaled-Ocon what they thought the most important issues facing graduate students are. Accessibility and affordability, Aounallah responded.

“In my experience… it’s very hard to be a student at Stanford, especially if you live off-campus, and I think one of the biggest challenges across graduate communities is the lack of housing, for example,” he elaborated.

Then, for their question, Khaled-Ocon asked Shanta-Rosie how they would address questions about free speech and visiting lecturers on campus.

“We’re in support of [the] initiative to hold speakers, hold student groups, to the Fundamental Standard if the speaker violates that Fundamental Standard,” Katipamula said. “And so there’s mechanisms where we can use funding as a way to make sure that the folks that we’re bringing to campus are folks whose ideas are not harmful to our community [and] are folks whose ideas have academic integrity and merit.”

After a brief public question-and-answer session that revisited some earlier topics – namely, the Title IX process and slate priorities – both slates gave brief closing statements that emphasized the importance of both effective ASSU leadership and wider political engagement.

The final words were left to Smith.

“In a matter of days, one of [these] two slates will be elected — or the slate that couldn’t join us today — will be the president and vice president,” Smith said. “So remember, folks, to check your emails for your ballots, which you should be receiving on Wednesday.”

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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On this day in Stanford history: April 5 https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/04/on-this-day-in-stanford-history-april-5th/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/04/on-this-day-in-stanford-history-april-5th/#respond Thu, 05 Apr 2018 06:56:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138747 The feature “On this day in Stanford History” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford. According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on April 5 in….

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The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford.

According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on April 5 in….

1904: The Daily reported that rents on both student dormitories — Encina and Roble Hall — would be raised next quarter. The most expensive rate was for a men’s single, which went from $7 to $8 per month.

1918: Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur spoke to students about the Great War during an ROTC rally in Encina Hall. “We must look this war square in the face,” he urged.

1923: “ORDER FORBIDS DOGS TO ATTEND CLASSES,” an all-caps Daily headline announces.

1939: The Daily reported that Spanish general and military dictator Francisco Franco had ordered the demobilization of civil war forces within 90 days.

1956: As representatives from 60 colleges and universities descended on the Oregon State campus for a Model United Nations conference, a 15-person delegation of Stanford students prepared to represent Israel in mock negotiations on topics like Cyprus and tensions in the Middle East.

1957: After the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) requested that Stanford include a non-discrimination clause in its property contracts, University administrators stated that they did not condone discrimination but felt the specific inclusion of such clauses unnecessary.

1968: The front page of The Daily announced the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., “father of nonviolence in the American Civil Rights movement.” King was 39.

1979: The Daily reported that Tresidder Union would begin selling beer and wine to students, including at Coffeehouse (CoHo).

1989: The University published a report examining “underlying, subtle racial tensions [that had been] plaguing Stanford for decades.” Recommended solutions included doubling the number of minority Ph.D. graduates, hiring 30 new minority faculty members and funding more scholarships and grants for minority students.

2005: After Stanford discovered that 41 Graduate School of Business applicants hacked into the admissions results ahead of the decision release to see whether they’d been admitted, the GSB dean announced that none of them had been.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Ad campaign targets 700 incidences of potentially fatal infections at Stanford Hospital https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/03/ad-campaign-targets-700-incidences-of-potentially-fatal-infections-at-stanford-hospital/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/03/ad-campaign-targets-700-incidences-of-potentially-fatal-infections-at-stanford-hospital/#respond Tue, 03 Apr 2018 07:18:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138619 As part of a campaign by a branch of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), an advertisement criticizing the Stanford Health Care (SHC) system is currently being broadcast on radio stations across the Bay Area. The ad primarily discusses above-average rates of patient infection at Stanford Hospital, although the larger campaign also addresses working conditions at the Hospital.

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As part of a campaign by a branch of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), an advertisement criticizing the Stanford Health Care (SHC) system is currently being broadcast on radio stations across the Bay Area. The ad primarily discusses above-average rates of patient infection at Stanford Hospital, although the larger campaign also addresses working conditions at the Hospital.

“Stanford Health Care has been a trusted institution in the Bay Area,” the minute-long ad says. “But as they’ve expanded, they’ve lost track of the basics.”

Advertisement campaign

SEIU is a two million-member organization focused on workers’ rights. Within the larger organization is United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), which describes itself as “one of the largest unions of hospital workers in the western United States” and reports having more than 93,000 members.

In addition to its work around healthcare worker rights, SEIU-UHW says it also seeks better conditions for patients.

It is that latter aim that the union’s radio campaign focuses on, with Stanford Hospital’s patient infection rates and high prices the main criticisms.

“For the third year in a row, Stanford Hospital has had one of the highest rates of patient infections in the country, all while Stanford is charging some of the highest prices in the state,” the campaign says.

According to Sean Wherley, senior communications specialist for media relations at SEIU-UHW, the spot is currently playing on 11 Bay Area stations.

“We’re trying to raise awareness in the community about the patient infections that are happening at Stanford and the fact that [those run] counter to the hospital’s reputation,” Wherley said. “They depict themselves as a world-class institution yet they’re having serious problems getting patient infections under control.”

Management has been “not as responsive as workers would like,” he added.

SHC, for its part, disputes the claims that it has disproportionately high patient infection rates and that it does not offer safe working conditions to employees.

“As one of the nation’s top-ranked hospitals for quality measures such as high patient survival and low infection rates, our quality and the safety of our patients and employees are our top priorities,” wrote Patrick Bartosch, SHC corporate communications and media relations lead, in an email to The Daily. “Our rankings are a testament to our dedicated employees and their commitment to quality care and ongoing improvement efforts. We feel it is unfortunate and disrespectful to our employees and the community that SEIU-UHW continues to distort the facts.”

Patient infections at Stanford Hospital

The SEIU-UHW ad directs listeners to a website, run by the union’s Political Issues Committee, that goes into more detail about the statistics behind the group’s claims. At the basis of their claim about patient infection rates, the site explains, is a federal policy that went into place in 2014 wherein the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reduces Medicare payments to the worst-performing quartile of hospitals based on their rate of hospital-acquired conditions (HACs).

Based on the prevalence of different types of injuries and infections that hospital patients can get while at a hospital — such as bloodstream and urinary tract infections, or bacteria like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile (C. diff) — “hospitals with a Total HAC Score greater than the 75th percentile of the Total HAC Score distribution will be subject to a payment reduction,” Medicare.gov explains.

SHC has been in that bottom quartile for the last three years, and has thus been subject to a one percent reduction in Medicare funds each time.

It has performed particularly poorly with regards to the frequency of clostridium difficile infections.

“The CMS [rated] SHC as performing ‘worse than the national benchmark’ on the [C. diff] measure for over four years in a row,” SEIU-UHW writes. “Stanford also was rated as performing ‘worse than the national benchmark’ on two other [healthcare-associated infections] measures during the most recent reporting period.”

The majority of C. diff cases occur during or after time spent in a healthcare facility, including a hospital. Symptoms can range from diarrhea and abdominal cramping to kidney failure and even death.

“It’s very serious, [and] there have been 700 incidences of it over a four-year period at the hospital, making it one of the worst in the country,” Wherley said. “And the hospital may claim that it’s got everything under control, but this has been a problem year after year, and it’s not what you expect of a hospital with that kind of status.”

The SEIU-UHW campaign also looked at California state data from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) to see how many infections hospital patients left with were not present upon their admittance to the hospital. According to them, Stanford ranked near the top of the list, with 31 percent of recorded infections “Not Present on Admission.”

For SEIU-UHW, this is a problem for both workers and patients.

“The workers want to be safe on the job, they want to have proper staffing and training, but they also don’t want to be infected,” Wherley said. “They don’t want to bring something home, they don’t want any patients to take something home like that.”

SHC, however, argued that Stanford Hospital actually “exceeds the industry benchmark at preventing infections.”

“We are extremely proud of our overall quality rating, which summarizes up to 57 quality measures and provides a hospital performance rating between 1-5 stars,” Bartosch wrote. “Stanford Health Care’s current quality score on the Hospital Compare website is 4 stars, and only 22.4 percent of the more than 4,500 hospitals rated achieved 4 or 5 stars.”

Medicare.gov also gave SHC a rating of four out of five stars. But for SEIU-UHW, that’s a distraction from the main issue.

“When they talk about things other than C. diff… they are ignoring the real issue here, which is, why does this infection continue to be a problem?” Wherley said.

He added, “No matter what other scores they want to trot out, the one that matters is this infectious disease that people get far too often, and it should not be persisting like it is.”

A long-standing issue

The question of health and labor conditions in Stanford Hospital is not a new one. In 2012 and 2013, data from the California Department of Public Health showed that the facility has “significantly higher” rates of hospital-onset C. diff than comparable peers, and in December 2015 Medicare announced that SHC would be penalized for its high rate of conditions including blood clots, falls and sepsis.

Last year, SHC workers brought their concerns forward to management. However, Wherley said, “It’s not clear that those problems have been addressed,” and so they pursued other methods like the radio campaign.

“[The union members] want to put it out forward for the larger community to learn and ask the same questions,” he added. “Why is this happening? What’s being done to get it under control?”

In the past, SHC has described the problem as one of academic versus community medical centers. In late 2017, they told Kaiser Health News that “academic medical centers serve patients with more-complex conditions who are at greater risk of hospital-acquired infections… [and so] hospitals with a high rate of immunocompromised patients will always seem to have higher” rates of infection.

However, SEIU-UHW contests that explanation, instead asserting that the OSHPD data reveals that Stanford has a disproportionate rate of in-hospital infections compared to that of other academic hospitals.

“When compared with other teaching hospitals in Northern California’s San Francisco Bay Area, Stanford’s [C. diff] rates were the highest of any of the seven Bay Area teaching hospitals,” they wrote. “In fact, in 2013 and 2014, Stanford’s [C. diff] rates were so high that they nearly doubled those of UCSF Medical Center — the teaching hospital with the second highest rate of [C. diff] for those years.”

SEIU-UHW complaints have also addressed more worker-focused issues at SHC, including inadequate time to clean rooms and a high turnover rate among temporary workers. Members of the union even worry that these labor-facing issues exacerbate the patient-facing ones.

“They don’t give them adequate time to do the cleaning or training and I think that really contributes to the high infection rates,” said Linda Cornell, a Patient Unit secretary and employee of SHC for 37 years.

The bigger picture

SEIU-UHW’s reform efforts have extended beyond just the radio campaign and website.

In February, the 19th Undergraduate Senate voted to support the Accountable and Affordable Health Care Initiatives, which “would ensure that a significant portion of revenue from medical care payers is used to improve the quality of care at hospitals through measures such as better equipment and higher staffing ratios,” as per the text of the passed bill.

The bill also cited the prevalence of HACs at Stanford Hospital while contrasting that with an average operating income growth of 32 percent a year between 2010 and 2014.

“They’re understaffed, and there’s also no shown correlation between the really expensive costs of care and the quality of care, at least at Stanford Hospital,” said Senator Ana Queiroz ’20. “So it just really seems out of place that it’s that expensive.”

SEIU-UHW has also been sponsoring a proposed law that would cap Stanford Hospital bills to 15 percent above the cost of treatment (plus quality improvement cost). They would need to get 2,400 petition signatories to be eligible for the Nov. 6 ballot.

“When an institution has made it very, very clear that they have policies in place that don’t reflect what’s right for the community and the workers within the institution, that’s when we stand up,” said San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa during a February rally in support of the initiative. “The responsibility is clearly to stand with our working men… and women.”

The campaign pointed to the high rates of C. diff and other HCIs as proof of the need for more focus on patient outcomes.

Bartosch called the initiative “unconstitutional and invalid if enacted,” and added that “all hospital charges reflect the various levels and complexities of care provided by these health care organizations.”

“At Stanford Health Care,” he said, “we are committed to providing the best value for our patients and community.”

But the members of SEIU-UHW would beg to differ — and in their new campaign against SHC, they do just that.

“The hospital promotes itself as exceptional,” Wherley said. “In this case, patient infection, it’s not exceptional. In fact, it’s the opposite.”

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Board of Judicial Affairs rejects proposal to add “veteran status” to Fundamental Standard https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/16/board-of-judicial-affairs-rejects-proposal-to-add-veteran-status-to-fundamental-standard/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/16/board-of-judicial-affairs-rejects-proposal-to-add-veteran-status-to-fundamental-standard/#comments Fri, 16 Mar 2018 08:00:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138294 On Feb. 18, Stanford’s Board of Judicial Affairs declined to add military affiliation to the list of identities — including race, gender, socioeconomic status and more — explicitly protected under the Fundamental Standard. The University decision followed a request for the change nearly six months prior by Adam Behrendt ’19, president of the Stanford Undergraduate Veteran Association.

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On Feb. 18, Stanford’s Board of Judicial Affairs declined to add military affiliation to the list of identities — including race, gender, socioeconomic status and more — explicitly protected under the Fundamental Standard. The University decision followed a request for the change nearly six months prior by Adam Behrendt ’19, president of the Stanford Undergraduate Veteran Association.

Veterans under the Fundamental Standard

A former Navy corpsman, Behrendt sent an email on Aug. 23 to the Dean of Students Office proposing that military affiliation be added as an explicitly protected class under the Fundamental Standard, the guiding statement on student conduct at the University since 1896.

“Students at Stanford are expected to show both within and without the University such respect for order, morality, personal honor and the rights of others as is demanded of good citizens,” the Standard states. “Failure to do this will be sufficient cause for removal from the University.”

Although the Standard does not name any specific protected identities, an interpretive addendum called “Understanding the Fundamental Standard” meant to “elaborate [on the Standard’s] basic values today” includes several.

“Students are expected to respect and uphold the rights and dignity of others regardless of race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or socio-economic status,” the addendum states.

In his email to the Dean of Students Office, Behrendt proposed adding either “military affiliation” or “veteran status” to that list.

“Both proposals [would] accomplish my primary objective [of] ensuring student, staff, and faculty veterans are afforded an equal opportunity to live, learn and grow in an environment free from disrespect, discrimination and indignity founded in their military affiliation,” he wrote.

Behrendt added that doing so would also represent an “attempt to ensure [that] veteran guests are afforded similar dignity and respect.”

On Feb. 18, Catherine Sanchez ’19 and Ross Shachter, associate professor of management science and engineering — co-­chairs of the Board on Judicial Affairs — responded to Behrendt with an email declining his proposal.

“We agree that people should be respected regardless of their veteran status or military affiliation,” Sanchez and Shachter wrote to Behrendt. “However, we believe that the rights of those with military affiliation are already covered in the Fundamental Standard itself.”

In response to an inquiry from The Daily about why other student communities are explicitly mentioned in “Understanding the Fundamental Standard” while veteran status is held to be implicitly protected in the Standard’s original text, University spokesperson E.J. Miranda deferred to the original decision made by the Board of Judicial Affairs.

“Revisions to the Fundamental Standard are rare, but the Board discussed possible changes to its interpretations,” Miranda wrote in an email to The Daily. “The Board determined that the original text of the Fundamental Standard clearly supports the respect and rights of military-affiliated members of the University community.”

According to Behrendt, following The Daily’s request for University comment on the decision, the Organization for Military-Affiliated Communities (OMAC) was contacted by the Office of Community Standards (OCS) “offering to re-engage.”

On March 6, 16 days after Behrendt received the initial email declining his proposed change, Assistant Director of OMAC David Rice met with OCS to further discuss the decision.

Since the meeting’s occurrence, however, Behrendt told The Daily there has been “no immediate change in consideration” of the proposal.

Following this article’s original publication, OCS confirmed in an email to The Daily that the decision had not been reversed.

Veterans under other University policies

The Fundamental Standard is not Stanford’s only written guideline that critics have called on to include military-affiliated persons.

The University recently added veteran status to its non-discrimination policy. The policy now reads, “Stanford University admits qualified students of any race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, or marital status to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the University.”

Behrendt, who was involved in changing the non-discrimination policy, said he found it a significantly easier University document to revise compared to the Fundamental Standard.

“Last year, I questioned the absence of ‘veteran status’ (and ‘marital status’) in Stanford’s non-discrimination policy,” he wrote in an email to The Daily. “We learned this was an oversight, and the Provost’s Office amended the policy in 10 days.”

In contrast, there was a nearly six-month wait in between Behrendt’s original proposal to the Dean of Students Office and his eventual rejection by the Board on Judicial Affairs.

The minutes of the most recent Board meeting on Jan. 31 noted that “discussion addressed the question of how [Behrendt’s proposed] language fit with ‘protected’ status” and how it would compare to that used in “other University documents.”

When that meeting took place — 18 days before the rejection email — the non-discrimination policy had already included veterans as an explicitly protected class for over a year.

According to the Diversity and Access Office, in addition to its non-discrimination policy, the University is required by the government to perform an annual analysis of the role veterans play in the institution’s workforce, including tracking “hires, promotions and terminations.”

In February, Behrendt — in response to the creation of women-focused weight training sessions at the Arrillaga Outdoor Education Recreation Center — filed a Title IX complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, a gender discrimination complaint with California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing and an Act of Intolerance report with Stanford’s Student Affairs office. As a result, the University implemented men’s-focused lifting hours in the same studio.

“I’m not concerned with the impact of two hours or four hours a week at a gym,” Behrendt wrote in an email to Jennifer Sexton, director of fitness and wellness programs and one of the creators of the women’s hours. “I’m concerned with understanding how the University applies anti-discrimination laws to itself and whether they’ll be honest about that.”

“It is unfortunate that in an effort to ensure the well-being of all community members in response to raised concerns, an initial solution to ensure that women and members of the transgender community felt comfortable working out generated a concern of exclusion,” Miranda wrote to The Daily at the time.

Behrendt has also been involved in several other military-facing advocacy campaigns, including a call for higher University enrollment of veterans and a petition to change the way G.I. Bill benefits are applied towards tuition assistance and other financial aid.

 

This article has been updated to reflect comment from OCS.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Mar. 8: On this day in Stanford history… https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/08/mar-8-on-this-day-in-stanford-history/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/08/mar-8-on-this-day-in-stanford-history/#respond Thu, 08 Mar 2018 08:40:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137953 The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford. According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on March 8 in….

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The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford.

According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on March 8 in….

1905: Junior Prom was called off in response to the death of Jane Stanford, one of the founders of the University, a week earlier. The motion to do so was passed unanimously by the junior class’ Prom committee.

1920: The Daily reported that Herbert Hoover, class of 1895, refused to allow his name to be entered in the Democratic presidential primaries.

1939: A series of stolen cars found hidden in bushes behind the bandhouse discredited the theory that a crime wave was taking place on campus. Instead, it was “nothing more serious than a gag,” campus police reported.

1950: In a vote of 261 to 110, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to make Hawaii part of the Union, The Daily reported. This came less than a week after Alaska’s admission to the U.S. passed in a vote of 186 to 146.

1967: The Winds of Freedom Foundation, a collective of conservative alumni, issued a bulletin calling for less left-wing influence on the University. The foundation wrote, “Stanford undergraduates are being given a heavily overbalanced presentation of philosophies leaning toward collectivism, the welfare state, and other socialist concepts.”

1978: The bronze statue of the Stanford family in the Art Gallery was vandalized over the weekend, the Daily reported, when someone cut off the thumb of Leland Jr. with a hacksaw. The perpetrator was unknown and the thumb had not yet been found.

1979: About 70 women and men marched through campus in a “Take Back the Night” protest to raise awareness of rape.

1991: The Daily reported on the government’s  plans to release 60,000 Iraqi prisoners of war as U.S. troops continued to return home from the Gulf War.

2000: The Daily announced that — for the first time ever — its profiles of ASSU candidates would be available online rather than in print.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Mar. 1: On this day in Stanford history… https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/01/mar-1-on-this-day-in-stanford-history/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/01/mar-1-on-this-day-in-stanford-history/#respond Thu, 01 Mar 2018 08:05:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137560 The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford. According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on Mar. 1 in….

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The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford.

According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on Mar. 1 in….

1901: The members of the Bubonic Plague Commission visited Stanford at the invitation of the University’s first president, David Starr Jordan. The three-man group was initially convened by U.S. President William McKinley to investigate plague outbreaks in Chinatown in San Francisco.

1905: “MRS. STANFORD DIES SUDDENLY IN HAWAII,” the front page of the paper announced in all capital letters. Jane Stanford, one of the founders of the University, had passed away the night prior in Honolulu. The article noted that, according to the best available information at the time, the presumed cause was pneumonia; however, strychnine poison was later determined to have been the actual cause, with murder suspected to this day.

1928: The Daily reported that Armando Diaz, who was commander-in-chief of Italian forces during “the World War,” had passed away in Rome.

1943: Stanford’s debate team broke a losing streak against the San Quentin State Prison “inmate team” with a tie. Because the judges were other, non-competing inmates — who the Daily said had “natural prejudice ” — the victory was hailed as particularly impressive.

1944: Back-to-back Daily headlines announce that “Yanks Stop Nazi Push” and “[Japanese soldiers] in Burma Suffer.”

1957: The Daily reported on plans to build a “multi-billion electronvolt linear accelerator about two miles long in the foothills.” Construction of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, or SLAC, would begin in 1962.

1961: An editorial entitled “Trimester Plan May Revolutionize Academic System” discussed the potential implications of splitting the academic year into thirds, with the author suggesting that it could enable students to earn a bachelor’s degree in less than three years.

1977: “Will Title IX bring sororities?” a front-page article asks.

1989: The Daily reported on an announcement by the Student Conduct Legislative Council that “some forms of expression can . . . constitute violations of the Fundamental Standard.”

2012: The Occupy Stanford group, which had been “[keeping] vigil” in Meyer Library for several months, prepared to present an open letter at the next day’s Occupy Education California rally — an offshoot of the larger Occupy Wall Street movement.

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Controversial Cardinal Conversations speaker Murray sparks peaceful anti-racist rally https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/23/controversial-cardinal-conversation-speaker-murray-sparks-peaceful-anti-racist-rally/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/23/controversial-cardinal-conversation-speaker-murray-sparks-peaceful-anti-racist-rally/#respond Fri, 23 Feb 2018 10:17:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137296 Controversial social scientist Charles Murray and Freeman Spogli Institute senior fellow Francis Fukuyama discussed inequality and populism at the Hoover Institute on Thursday night in the second of four Cardinal Conversations, a program that aims to promote open political discourse on campus.

The event had visibly low attendance, with most of the back segment — around 100 seats — of the 400-person auditorium unfilled. Towards the front of the room, multiple reserved seats were left empty, as were several in the first row.

Meanwhile, across the street at the History Corner, “Take Back The Mic” counter-programming protested Murray and statements he has made regarding the relationship between class, race and intelligence.

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Controversial social scientist Charles Murray and Freeman Spogli Institute senior fellow Francis Fukuyama discussed inequality and populism at the Hoover Institution on Thursday night in the second of four Cardinal Conversations, a program that aims to promote open political discourse on campus.

The event had visibly low attendance, with most of the back segment — around 100 seats — of the 400-person auditorium unfilled. Towards the front of the room, multiple reserved seats were left empty, as were several in the first row.

Meanwhile, across the street at the History Corner, “Take Back The Mic” counter-programming protested Murray and statements he has made regarding the relationship between class, race and intelligence.

 

Murray and Fukuyama in dialogue

Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and a co-leader of Cardinal Conversations, opened the event with a call for dialogue that is “challenging, intellectually and normatively.” He also called for more student engagement in the Conversations program, both in terms of leadership and audiences.

“I’m thrilled to see students here tonight, but there are not enough,” McFaul said.

Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, agreed. “As happened last time, many people seem to get tickets but then don’t show up,” he wrote in a statement to The Daily following the event, referencing the Jan. 31 Cardinal Conversation featuring Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. “Perhaps this was intended as some kind of protest, or perhaps it was just apathy — I don’t know.”

Ferguson continued, “What I do know is this: At Harvard or Oxford there would have been a full house.”

Additionally, he noted the counter-programming taking place directly outside the Hoover Institution and encouraged free speech for speakers and protesters alike.

“I think we all want to create the permissive conditions for inquiry, debate and even strong disagreement,” McFaul said. “We also want to respect other forms of speech, including peaceful protest of speakers… and boycotts of events like this one.”

However, he added, “We don’t respect actions that don’t allow people to speak.”

Ferguson then took the stage alongside Murray and Fukuyama. After introducing both speakers, Ferguson dove into one of the evening’s prescribed topics — inequality in America — by asking Fukuyama about his stance on American “plutocracy” and why the right, not the left, seems to have become the vehicle for white, working-class anger in the age of Donald Trump’s presidency.

“Now, unfortunately, I think the kind of identity politics that had been more on the left has now drifted over to the right,” Fukuyama said.

Trump — “a classic populist in the mode of Juan Perón or Mussolini” — won by capitalizing on that discontent, he added.

Ferguson then brought up the protesters outside who had gathered in opposition to Murray’s presence.

“I’m going to ask you absolutely upfront,” Ferguson said, addressing Murray. “Are you a racist and a sexist?”

Murray responded that he would not meet Ferguson’s conception of racist, wherein racism is the belief that certain groups are superior to others. However, he noted that under the “equality premise” — wherein “differences in group outcomes must be evidence of some sort of discrimination” — his argument in his 1994 text “The Bell Curve” that “there are differences in personality and abilities” both between and within racial groups would indeed label him a racist and a sexist.

In an interview with The Daily, Murray said that although he believes in racial disparities regarding intelligence, “to talk about the superiority of an ethnic group on the basis of some points of difference on IQ tests is idiotic.”

“To equate IQ with human virtue or wisdom or character or a whole variety of other of the most important measures of a value of a person is ridiculous,” he said. “IQ is equivalent to chip speed, and superior chip speed will enable certain things that inferior chip speed will not enable. The same is true about just about any human attribute you can think of that has no relationship to IQ whatsoever.”

Murray went on to defend the academic validity of the controversial book, although Fukuyama added that it would be “very imprudent” for an author to not consider “the impact that [a work] has on the broader society,” with “The Bell Curve” perpetuating white supremacy.

Ferguson then pivoted to the idea of class hierarchies and inequalities, citing Murray’s idea of a “cognitive elite” that has restructured society so as to perpetuate its own power.

“Along with not understanding the lives of ordinary Americans, the cognitive elite increasingly despises [them],” Murray said. “And I think that is at the heart of Donald Trump’s election.”

But populism, Fukuyama said, is not inherently bad; the anger fueling it can be directed towards positive change, like President Franklin Roosevelt’s welfare programs. Rather, Fukuyama identified the threat of populists as coming from their tendency to oppose institutions and checks on their power.

Other problems have fueled shifts in allegiance among working class whites, too. The speakers discussed changing pride in class identity, decreased intermingling between the elite and labor classes, and — as was made evident in Trump’s winning campaign — changes in immigration and demographics.

Writ large, the speakers disagreed on the root problem of these social ills.

“[Murray’s] explanation is completely cultural… and [he leaves] out all of the structural issues,” Fukuyama said.

But, Murray asked, “If economics is the main driver… shouldn’t a booming job market result in some rejuvenation?”

The night ended with a question and answer session, after which Ferguson promoted the next Conversation — which will feature Anne Applebaum and Ted Koppel — and thanked the students and staff who’d helped support the program.

 

Counter-Programming

Only a few hundred feet away from the Conversation, on the steps of The Quad’s History Corner and spilling out onto the surrounding pavement, students gathered to protest the event — and particularly Murray’s invitation to speak at Stanford — at the “Take Back The Mic” rally.

Michael Ocon ’20 organized the rally with the Coalition of Concerned Students to give students of color a platform to speak out against Charles Murray.

In an interview with The Daily, Ocon called Murray a eugenicist and accused him of making ethnic minorities feel vulnerable on campus.

Controversial Cardinal Conversations speaker Murray sparks peaceful anti-racist rally
During the talk, protesters hosted counter-programming that denounced white supremacy and voiced concerns of communities marginalized by Murray’s rhetoric. (LUCY BREWER/The Stanford Daily)

“‘The Bell Curve’ isn’t the basis of our protest,” Ocon said. “Charles Murray is the basis of protest… This person is perpetuating white supremacy in the national discourse and in the local discourse.”

In the opening speech of the rally, Ocon said that protesters were here to stand against white supremacists, whom he believes have found a platform on campus.

“Our communities have been targeted on this campus by agents of racism, white supremacy and hatred,” Ocon said. “They targeted us in our dorms, in our classes, in our community centers. They disrespected and attacked our people at home and attempted to undermine our position at this University.”

Dereca Blackmon, associate dean and director of the Diversity and First-Gen Office, placed the Thursday rally in historical context, comparing it to a 1968 event in which members of the Stanford Black Student Union (BSU) took the microphone from then-Provost Richard Lyman during a speech and read aloud a list of demands.

“I’m here because as an administration we need to do better,” Blackmon said.

David Palumbo-Liu, professor of Comparative Literature, argued that Murray’s presence on campus was a symptom of the University undermining minorities.

“Universities welcome diversity, but they shut it down when it’s too real, too abrasive, when it could actually change the way that we understand things,” Palumbo-Liu said.

Earlier this year, The Stanford Review called on Palumbo-Liu to either resign or dissociate himself from his group, the Campus Antifascist Network.

During Tuesday night’s Undergraduate Senate meeting, ASSU Senate Chair Kojoh Atta ’20 encouraged his fellow senators to attend the “Take Back the Mic” rally. At the rally, fellow Senator Doris Rodriguez ’20 performed an original spoken word piece.

Student speakers represented organizations such as the BSU, American Indian Organization, Asian American Students’ Association (AASA), Muslim Student Union, Students for Justice in Palestine, International Socialist Organization, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Solidarity Network.

Zach Kirk ’20, an event organizer and BSU representative, said that Provost Persis Drell and President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s support for the Murray event is a continuation of the University’s historical support for eugenics. Kirk pointed to David Starr Jordan and Lewis Terman as examples of former Stanford faculty who supported eugenics, yet still have their names featured on campus buildings today.

“I went to a middle school named after David Starr Jordan,” Kirk said. “If he had his way, if he was living today, he wouldn’t want me in this society. He wouldn’t have let me into this school.”

A March 2017 article in the New York Times clarified that Murray did not advocate eugenics in “The Bell Curve.”

Protesters addressed the administration directly, chanting the slogans, “Hey racists, go home!” and “Hey Persis, No Hoover, No KKK – Charles Murray, go away.”

They also chanted the second phrase with reference to Tessier-Lavigne instead of Drell.

Multiple speakers at the protest criticized Murray on academic grounds and for promoting “pseudoscience,” in the words of both Ocon and Blackmon.

“Stanford Medical School would not invite someone who believes that rubbing motor oil on your head will cure cancer,” Palumbo-Liu told The Daily. “[Murray is] not quite that bad, but there’s a certain quality of education we are proud of at Stanford, and this person doesn’t meet the bar.”

Protesters also stressed the need to make reforms to the Cardinal Conversation program. Kirk said that while he believes Cardinal Conversations is important, the committee that decided to bring Murray to campus was representative of neither the student body nor political spectrum on campus, adding that he and other protesters wanted to change this aspect of the program.

“We’re not only here to protest, we’re here to make internal change too,” Kirk said.

In an interview with The Daily, Palumbo-Liu criticized the prominence of the Hoover Institution in organizing Cardinal Conversations, arguing that it lent a partisan bias in the programming.

“I think it’s an interesting phenomenon that the University has decided to locate our discussion of free speech in a decidedly partisan institute,” Palumbo-Liu said. “That shows a certain imbalance.”

Murray’s appearance at Middlebury College on Mar. 2, 2017 turned violent when students and non-College affiliates disrupted his attempts to speak, resulting in a faculty member being injured. Following the incident, Middlebury took disciplinary action against 67 of its students.

Palumbo-Liu told The Daily that he was “not concerned” about any violence erupting at Stanford, emphasizing that Middlebury students and community members were specifically reacting to the college president introducing Murray.

If David Duke were invited and Marc Tessier-Lavigne introduced him, you’d get upset, too,” Palumbo-Liu said.

Outside of Cardinal Conversations, other controversial speakers have been brought to campus and received financial compensation funded by ASSU student fees. In November 2017, Stanford College Republicans invited self-proclaimed Islamophobe Robert Spencer to speak about radical Islam, stirring similar controversy about free speech and inclusion. Nearly 300 Stanford community members organized a counter-protest and walk-out from Spencer’s speech, resulting in verbal and physical altercations.

In contrast, the Murray protest organizers did not plan a walk-out, and according to Ocon and Kirk, the counter-programming was primarily designed to uplift communities being targeted by Murray’s writings.

 

Michael Whittaker contributed to this report. 

 

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu, Yasmin Samrai at ysamrai ‘at’ stanford.edu, Melissa Santos at melissasantos ‘at’ stanford.edu and Sarah Wishingrad at swishing ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Senate discusses Murray talk, passes resolution in support of Health Care Initiatives https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/21/senate-discusses-murray-talk-passes-resolution-in-support-of-health-care-initiatives/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/21/senate-discusses-murray-talk-passes-resolution-in-support-of-health-care-initiatives/#respond Wed, 21 Feb 2018 10:17:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137117 In the 22nd Meeting of the 19th Undergraduate Senate, a resolution supporting the Accountable and Affordable Health Care Initiatives successfully passed. Senators also discussed the upcoming Cardinal Conversation with controversial social scientist Charles Murray.

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In the 22nd Meeting of the 19th Undergraduate Senate, senators discussed the upcoming Cardinal Conversation with controversial social scientist Charles Murray. The Senate also discussed the upcoming ASSU election and passed a resolution supporting the Accountable and Affordable Health Care Initiatives.

The petition deadline for the 2018-19 ASSU elections have now closed, ASSU Financial Manager Jelani Munroe ’17 reported. According to Munroe, 35 undergraduates and 16 graduate students seek seats on the Undergraduate Senate and Graduate Student Council, respectively. Three president-vice president slates seek the ASSU Executive positions.

The final ballot of candidates is expected to be produced “within the next few weeks,” Munroe said, and the deadline for graduate students to declare their candidacy is being extended to allow more involvement and engagement.

ASSU Chair Kojoh Atta ’20 said he was excited to see 35 candidates on the ballot.

Atta also noted that Murray will be speaking on campus tomorrow at a Cardinal Conversations event. Atta encouraged his fellow senators to attend the “Take Back The Mike: Racists Are Not Welcome Here” counter-programming, which will happen at History corner during the event.

“It would be very powerful if we as senators are at this event, really standing by and standing against these hateful and demeaning speakers,” he said.

Atta said that an institution as influential as Stanford should not support hate speech.

Last November, when self-proclaimed Islamophobe Robert Spencer spoke at a Stanford College Republicans-sponsored event that was also partially funded by the Senate, senators condemned the appearance following their decision to allocate money to it. In a bill passed at the time, Senators condemned Spencer’s visit but did not revoke funding in order to “support all student groups equally.”

On February 15th, President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Persis Drell published an op-ed in the Daily about Murray, wherein they said that they “do not intend to rescind anyone’s invitation” but added that “students have expressed concern… that some of Murray’s work has been used to justify and give credence to white supremacist viewpoints… [and] that no action of the university should be taken as an endorsement of abhorrent white supremacist viewpoints.”

Senate Committees also provided updates on their progress. The Student Life Committee reported that they are  working on reforming AlertSU, the Academic Affairs Committee said they met with Michelle Elam from Faculty Senate and the Communications Committee said they are developing an event to teach students how to run for Senate.

The Appropriations Committee presented the week’s Quick Grant funding bills, with chair Gabe Rosen ’19 noting that there was a “very small amount of overall money” with “nothing really unexpected” on the table. The motion to fully recommend the Committee recommendations on this week’s grant funding bills passed successfully.

The Senate tabled for one week a joint resolution in support of an introduction to disability studies course, due to what Atta referred to as “logistical problems.”

A resolution for the Senate to support the Accountable and Affordable Health Care Initiatives, meanwhile, successfully passed. The Initiatives would ensure that a significant portion of revenue from medical care payers is used to improve the quality of care at hospitals through measures such as better equipment and higher staffing ratios.

According to the text of the passed bill, Stanford Health Care is in the “worst-performing quartile of hospitals in the country with respect to HACs,” or Hospital-Acquired Conditions, despite the fact that between 2010 and 2014 the program’s operating income grew by 32 percent each year, on average.

The Initiatives are important in order “to help improve the conditions for the [Stanford] locations and our workers, because they’re understaffed and there’s also no shown correlation between the really expensive costs of care and the quality of care, at least at Stanford Hospital,” said Senator Ana Queiroz ’20. “So it just really seems out of place that it’s that expensive.”

The ASSU also heard from a representative from the Stanford Coalition for Planning an Equitable 2035 (SCoPE 2035) about a resolution the group had written regarding the the Stanford General Use Permit. Several senators spoke about the importance of addressing housing affordability around Stanford.

ASSU Executives Justice Tention ’18 and Vicki Niu ’18 said they had recently presented to Student Affairs on issues impacting students, and that they are involved in Campus Climate Survey town halls.

Senator Kimiko Hirota ’20 suggested that a Senate member speak on the Senate’s behalf at a “Speak Out in Support of Emily Doe” event, which is being sponsored by the Stanford Association of Students for Sexual Assault Prevention (ASAP) and will take place near Kappa Alpha this Friday.

Event attendees will advocate for Brock Turner’s victim, who recently dissociated from a memorial plaque at the site of her rape following a dispute with the University over the plaque’s language.

The Senate will next convene Feb. 27, 2018.

 

Felicia Hou contributed reporting.

Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Annie Chang at annette.chang ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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