Claire Wang – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Tue, 05 Nov 2019 17:49:48 +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 Claire Wang – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Sexual assault and aggravated assault reported to SUDPS over weekend https://stanforddaily.com/2019/11/04/sexual-assault-and-aggravated-assault-reported-to-sudps-over-weekend/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/11/04/sexual-assault-and-aggravated-assault-reported-to-sudps-over-weekend/#respond Tue, 05 Nov 2019 07:47:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1159876 A male suspect sexually assaulted a woman against her request that he stop at a Lagunita Court student residence sometime between late evening and early evening on Nov. 1-2, according to an AlertSU report sent to the campus community on Monday.

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One sexual assault and one aggravated assault with possible sexual battery occurred between Oct. 31 and Nov. 2, according to two AlertSU notifications sent to the campus community on Monday. 

A male individual choked a female individual inside a student residence at the 600-630 block of Escondido Road, according to a mandated reporter who brought the incident to campus authorities. The male individual was “endeavoring to engage in sexual activity with the woman and may have committed sexual battery,” according to the report on the incident, which occurred sometime between Oct. 31 and Nov. 1. 

In a separate incident, a male suspect sexually assaulted a female individual despite her request that he stop at a Lagunita Court student residence sometime between late evening and early evening on Nov. 1-2. The incident was reported by a mandated reporter. 

The victim said that she had consumed alcohol earlier in the evening and one additional drink at the suspect’s dormitory, the AlertSU noted. It was reported that she believes the drink consumed at the suspect’s dorm rendered her incapable of consenting to sexual intercourse. 

Stanford public safety department spokesperson Bill Larson told The Daily that the only information the University has on the reported sexual assault is what was reported in the AlertSU. Larson did not respond to inquiries on the reported aggravated assault in time for publication.

In both incidents, the male suspect is known to the victim, but neither victim shared the perpetrator’s name or physical description with authorities. Both incidents were reported by a mandated reporter, and it is unclear whether the suspects are still on campus at present.

The incidents follows two instances of sexual assault from just over a week ago. No AlertSU report was issued for either prior case because the University lacked enough information to conclude whether there was an “ongoing or significant threat to the community,” Larson told The Daily at the time.

“The decision to issue a Timely Warning for sex offenses involving persons who are acquaintances will be made on a case-by-case basis,” Larson said. “Factors which will be considered when making this decision include: the level of force and violence used to commit the crime, the potential use of a drug to commit the crime, and the existence of multiple crimes of a similar nature occurring in close proximity, either in time or location.”

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

This article has been updated with comment from Bill Larson on how decisions to issue a Timely Warning for sex offenses are made.

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Women’s soccer stomps Colorado amid landmark performance https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/25/womens-soccer-stomps-colorado-amid-landmark-performance/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/25/womens-soccer-stomps-colorado-amid-landmark-performance/#respond Fri, 25 Oct 2019 07:02:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1159251 No. 2 women’s soccer (14-1-0, 7-0-0 Pac-12) overwhelmed Colorado (10-5-1, 2-4-1 Pac-12) with three second-half goals in a 4-0 victory in Boulder, CO. Four different Cardinal players found the back of the net, but it was junior forward Catarina Macario’s first-half penalty score that will go down in the history books.

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No. 2 women’s soccer (14-1-0, 7-0-0 Pac-12) overwhelmed Colorado (10-5-1, 2-4-1 Pac-12) with three second-half goals in a 4-0 victory in Boulder, CO. Four different Cardinal players found the back of the net, but it was junior forward Catarina Macario’s first-half penalty score that will go down in the history books.

Just into the eleventh minute, Macario was able to draw a foul from Buffaloes goalkeeper Jalen Tompkins. She was awarded the penalty, which she converted for her nation-leading eighth game-winner and 50th career goal. Macario is just the sixth Stanford woman to reach the half-century mark, joining the ranks of joining Christen Press (71), Sarah Rafanelli (59), Kelley O’Hara (57), Lindsay Taylor (53) and Julie Foudy (52).

Despite 11 more shots from the Cardinal attack, Colorado managed to staunch the bleeding for the rest of the half. Tompkins and the Buffaloes employed bend-don’t-break defense to the max entering the second half, as they repelled eight more shots in the opening twenty minutes.

Finally in the 65th, Macario worked her magic, collecting the ball in her own half and running it all the way up the left side before crossing to junior forward Madison Haley. Haley controlled on her first touch and slipped the ball past Tompkins on her second for her seventh goal on the year.

In the 77th minute, senior midfielder Beattie Goad redirected redshirt freshman defender Sierra Enge’s cross within the near post to score the third goal in the game. An eleventh-hour goal helped Stanford secure its triumph in the match, as junior defender Jojo Harber headed a cross from senior forward Carley Malatskey into the top corner. In concert, these efforts — which both occurred in the final 15 minutes of the match — marked the eighth time the Cardinal scored four or more goals this season. 

Stanford has reigned undefeated in its last 37 Pac-12 games dating back to 2016. The offense has been nigh unstoppable, outscoring competition 103-14 within that range. 

Stanford will play its last three matches of the season at home against Arizona State (Oct. 31), Arizona (Nov. 3) and California (Nov. 8). 

Contact James Hemker at jahemker ‘at’ stanford.edu and Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Report shows students support core curriculum, express doubt toward unit reduction of majors https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/23/report-shows-students-support-unit-reduction-of-majors-express-doubt-toward-core-curriculum/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/23/report-shows-students-support-unit-reduction-of-majors-express-doubt-toward-core-curriculum/#respond Wed, 23 Oct 2019 07:09:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1159083 The report — which will be discussed at the Faculty Senate this Thursday — also expressed the Undergraduate Senate’s official endorsement of the proposals, and includes recommendations for potential amendments to the proposals based on student feedback.

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Students responded positively to the curricular reform proposal to establish a core curriculum but were more hesitant about the proposal that recommends capping all majors at 95 units, according to a recently-released Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) report on student perspectives toward the proposals. 

The report — which will be discussed at the Faculty Senate this Thursday — also expressed the Undergraduate Senate’s official endorsement of the proposals, and includes recommendations for potential amendments to the proposals based on student feedback. The ASSU analysis represents the aggregate feedback of approximately 70 undergraduates to a survey distributed to the entire student community. 

According to ASSU Senator Jonathan Lipman ’21, who authored the report, student respondents expressed near-unanimous support for the proposal to standardize unit counts, although responses to the proposal to reduce unit counts on majors to no more than 95 units were more divided. The latter proposal is aimed at making unit-heavy majors more accessible to those who lack prerequisites and allowing students to explore more classes outside their major. 

While some students said that scaling back unit counts could reduce stress and encourage greater academic freedom, others argued that reducing major size has no effect on the broader limiting factor of mandatory course sequences that only run once a year, which forces students to take mandatory sequences early or else miss out on a year of required classes. 

“We agree that there is a real issue here,” wrote philosophy professor Lanier Anderson in a statement on behalf of the team of four faculty co-chairs that drafted the proposals. “There are some majors currently under the proposed unit cap which do have accessibility challenges because of this kind of issue.” 

Anderson added that the proposal recommends that every major have an accessibility plan that outlines bottlenecks and that a special committee, which is currently being formed, reviews the central STEM prerequisite course structure. 

Regarding the future of the major, students were also in support of having a required senior capstone, standardizing prerequisite classes and a designated major declaration week, according to the report. 

The proposal to establish a core freshman-year curriculum was met with positive reception toward the concept, but doubt toward execution. While the proposal argues that a standardized core sequence will allow first-year students to explore the idea of a liberal arts education in an unfettered environment and foster a stronger intellectual culture on campus, the ASSU report points to significant student doubt over the core curriculum’s successful implementation. 

French professor Dan Edelstein, who helped draft the proposals as co-chair alongside Anderson, acknowledged that recruiting faculty to teach the core courses and setting up a robust course review structure will be among the program’s key implementation challenges. 

“No doubt we’ll try some things that look great on paper, but don’t work well in class,” Edelstein said. “That’s to be expected, so we want to have a structure in place that allows us to make changes fairly easily, and lets the faculty teaching the courses tweak and transform them over time.”

Some student respondents criticized the proposed core as being too humanities-centric and lacking in STEM, while others noted that the large lecture format could disincentivize attendance. 

However, Edelstein believes this view stems from a common misconception among students that a “liberal education” is synonymous with the humanities, and added that “the core is not just humanistic,” but will also address technological issues, as well as ethical and political perspectives. 

“Today, a liberal education is universally thought to entail a broad, well-rounded education, which necessarily incorporates STEM,” he said. “For us, a liberal education is a mindset (one that we contrast with instrumental or vocational education). It is the mindset you adopt when you study a subject, whether art history or chemical engineering, for its own sake, not just for some ulterior purpose.”

Still, many students responded positively toward the idea of a core curriculum broadly speaking, concluding that the success of the program will ultimately be determined by the details of its execution, which have yet to be solidified. According to ASSU President Erica Scott ’20, gaining student and faculty buy-in is among the primary challenges moving forward in the proposals. 

“The success of these proposals hinges pretty heavily on implementation, and students and faculty need to be on board for effective implementation to occur,” she wrote in a statement to The Daily. “We expect that most faculty will agree that curricular changes need to be made since Stanford isn’t adequately living up to its ideal of a liberal arts education. However, we foresee some faculty members expressing skepticism that these proposed changes will actually fix the problems at hand.”

In response to the student feedback aggregated in its report, the Senate recommended several changes to the two faculty proposals on the first-year experience and future of the major. Among these include restructuring course sequences, redesigning the WAYS general education requirements and modifying the first-year experience proposal to include transfer students.

They also recommended that over the long term the University continue to explore solutions to mitigate an “extremely toxic” job recruiting process, centralize course planning into a single website and expand its pre-freshman year academic prep programs, including the Leland Scholars Program and Stanford Summer Engineering Academy. 

The two proposals in question will be presented and discussed at the Faculty Senate on Thursday. 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

This article has been corrected to note that student respondents to the ASSU survey expressed near-support for the proposal to standardize unit counts, not the proposal to cap the major at 95 units. It has also been corrected to reflect that students show broad support for the core curriculum and doubt towards unit reduction of the major, not the other way around. The Daily regrets these errors.


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Board of Trustees Chair highlights global collaboration in research, divestment https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/16/board-of-trustees-chair-highlights-global-collaboration-in-research-divestment/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/16/board-of-trustees-chair-highlights-global-collaboration-in-research-divestment/#respond Wed, 16 Oct 2019 07:17:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1158658 Board of Trustees Chair Jeff Raikes ’80 relayed the University’s commitment to affirming international collaboration in research and provided an update on the Board’s review of Fossil Free Stanford’s petition for divestment from large oil and gas corporations, in a Tuesday briefing on the Board’s first meeting of the year.

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Board of Trustees Chair Jeff Raikes ’80 relayed the University’s commitment to affirming international collaboration in research and provided an update on the Board’s review of Fossil Free Stanford’s petition for divestment from large oil and gas corporations, in a Tuesday briefing on the Board’s first meeting of the year. 

Research

The Board focused on Stanford’s research ecosystem in its most recent board meeting. Raikes said that University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne underscored two main elements of research in his speech to the trustees: the importance of investing in research, as well as the importance of international exchange to the spreading of ideas. 

Raikes emphasized Stanford’s commitment to global collaboration and research opportunities. He added that in an environment where “some people would question or push back on the inclusion of international members of our community,” Stanford highly values and fully supports the international community, especially when it comes to research. Raikes’ comments come on the heels of controversies regarding Stanford’s research ties with Saudi Arabia and Chinese companies including Huawei last year. 

Vice Provost and Dean of Research Kam Moler then provided trustees with an overview of the scope of Stanford’s research ecosystem. She emphasized that despite the recent changes in Washington that have constrained the availability of funding, Stanford faculty members remain competitive for funding from external sources. 

Looking forward, she hopes that the University establishes larger, more diverse and more flexible research teams to address what Raikes referred to as “the key questions of our time.” Raikes added, “an important part of our long-range vision is providing flexible resources and platforms for all of our scholars and lowering barriers across organizations for collaboration.” Moler further emphasized the importance of weaving data science into the university’s research fabric and honing tools and skills for data-driven research. 

Fossil fuel divestment

Raikes then addressed Fossil Free Stanford’s (FFS) petition for full divestment from fossil fuels from last spring. The petition demands that the University immediately freeze investment in big oil and gas companies and commit to complete endowment divestment from direct and indirect holdings in these corporations. 

The Board of Trustees’ Special Committee on Investment Responsibility is reviewing FFS’ formal report this fall and will take action under the guiding principles of Stanford Management Company’s Statement on Investment Responsibility under its recently-launched Ethical Investment Framework. 

To qualify for divestment, the Statement currently mandates that an investment be “abhorrent and ethically unjustifiable,” citing apartheid, genocide, human trafficking, slavery and violations of child labor laws as examples of such qualifying company actions. 

The Committee has set up a task force which “will engage with FFS and with others in the University community to listen and understand the underpinnings of [FFS’] proposal more deeply,” Raikes said. 

An Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility, which no longer exists, recommended against total fossil fuel divestment in 2016. 

Sexual violence survey

Raikes also recapped the recently-released results of the campus climate survey on sexual violence, which indicate that undergraduate women and non-cis-gendered students have experienced significantly more nonconsensual sexual contact since coming to Stanford. 

“The findings clearly indicate that we and other universities have a long way to go in creating the kind of campus culture that we aspire to have at Stanford,” Raikes said. 

To address the issues brought forth in the data, the University is undertaking an external review led by national experts to provide recommendations, according to a campus-wide email sent by Provost Persis Drell. Starting in November, the University will also host a community coordinator from the Young Women’s Christian Association to provide resources for Stanford affiliates impacted by sexual violence and harassment. 

Annual report and sustainability

Raikes also discussed Tessier-Lavigne’s annual report to the Board, emphasizing that the Board will continue to support the University’s Long-Range Planning initiative, especially with regard to an upcoming fundraising campaign to finance the effort. Raikes declined to provide further details on the campaign, noting that it is still in its early stages. 

Another topic brought up at the meeting was Stanford’s work in environmental sustainability. Dean of the School of Earth Stephan Graham highlighted Stanford’s plans to accelerate its efforts in sustainability, which included new zero-emission energy solutions to limit carbon, new data-driven strategies to help communities adapt to climate change and climate simulation research to help evaluate predicted changes to ecosystems. 

Contact Marianne Lu at mlu23 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford to overhaul leave of absence policies in watershed class-action settlement https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/07/stanford-to-overhaul-leave-of-absence-policies-in-watershed-class-action-settlement/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/07/stanford-to-overhaul-leave-of-absence-policies-in-watershed-class-action-settlement/#respond Mon, 07 Oct 2019 17:56:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1158225 Following a yearlong legal battle in which a coalition of students accused Stanford’s leave of absence policies of discriminating against those with mental health disabilities, the University has agreed to treat mandatory leaves as a last resort and provide access to one quarter of on-campus housing for some students on leave.

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Following a yearlong legal battle in which a coalition of students accused Stanford’s leave of absence policies of discriminating against those with mental health disabilities, the University agreed in a settlement released Monday to treat mandatory leaves as a last resort and provide access to one quarter of on-campus housing for some students on leave.

“We’re very happy about being able to reach the terms that we did in the settlement,” said Caroline Zha ’20, co-director of the Mental Health & Wellness Coalition, which is a plaintiff in the suit.

A primary allegation in the suit, filed May 17, 2018, was that Stanford imposed a “blanket policy” of placing students who undergo a mental health crisis on mandatory leaves of absence, without considering all potential ways the University could keep them on campus. Students were forced to immediately withdraw from all classes and were stripped of their housing. 

The new policy, which takes effect Jan. 4, 2020, requires that a mandatory leave only be pursued if a consultation with a representative from Stanford’s Office of Accessible Education (OAE) with expertise in mental health disabilities cannot find reasonable accommodations that would permit the student to remain at Stanford without taking a leave of absence. These accommodations may pertain to academics or housing.

Stanford to overhaul leave of absence policies in watershed class-action settlement
DANIEL WU and JULIA INGRAM/The Stanford Daily

“I won my lawsuit against Stanford,” plaintiff Harrison Fowler ’22 wrote in an Instagram post about the settlement. “I paid no money, I received no money. Leave of absence policies at Stanford have now changed for the better.”

Furthermore, students with mental health disabilities will be eligible to petition for one quarter of on-campus housing while they are on leave. Previously, Stanford extended this housing right to only students with non-mental health related medical disabilities and prohibited students on mental health-related leave from living on campus or participating in University-related activities. 

“The key change from the old policy to the new is that it is now required to go through every possible reasonable accommodation before a leave is implemented, which will eliminate the need for leave in some cases, we anticipate,” said Monica Porter, the attorney representing the plaintiffs in the case.

Also among the suit’s complaints was Stanford’s disregard for the recommendation of students’ outside mental health providers against leaves of absence, which happened in the case of a plaintiff referred to as Rose A. Under the new policy, Stanford will give “substantial weight to the opinion of the students’ treatment providers” in its assessment of whether a student should be placed on leave, Porter said.

When a student is ready to return from leave, Stanford’s assessment of the student will be of whether they are able and ready to return to the University with or without reasonable accommodations — for example, by giving students the option to return part-time. Students returning from leaves of absence are also no longer required to submit personal statements justifying their readiness to return, a measure some plaintiffs felt required them to take the blame for something that was out of their control.  

The settlement further stipulates that Stanford must provide clearer documentation on the OAE website on what accommodations are available to students — especially those with less visible disability such as mental health disability — since many are unaware of the accommodations they are entitled to under federal law. The accommodations now listed on the OAE include, but are not limited to, reduced course load, recording missed classes and changing dorm rooms. 

“Above all, the most important impact we hope the policy changes will have on students is to encourage them to know their rights and ask for the accommodations that they are legally entitled to,” Zha said. “Experiencing a mental health crisis is scary and often traumatizing, and the institutional barriers and administrative hoops that you have to jump over and work through in the aftermath can be even moreso.”

The University will use the rest of fall quarter leading up the new policy’s winter quarter implementation to “develop clear processes, to engage and train all staff members who will interact with the new policy, and to provide an opportunity for information sessions during which interested community members can ask questions about the new policy and the processes it will prescribe,” according to a statement released by Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole.

“Of course, there is always additional work to be done, and we look forward to continuing to work with student activists and administrators to continue to strengthen and improve mental health resources and policies on campus moving forward, in order to ensure that all students feel safe and supported seeking help at Stanford,” Zha wrote in a statement to The Daily.

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

This article has been updated with information from the University’s statement on the settlement. This article has also been updated with comment from plaintiffs in the case.

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Parents implicated in college admissions scandal turn to pricey outside consultants in attempt to receive lighter sentences https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/04/parents-implicated-in-college-admissions-scandal-turn-to-pricey-outside-consultants-in-attempt-to-receive-lighter-sentences/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/10/04/parents-implicated-in-college-admissions-scandal-turn-to-pricey-outside-consultants-in-attempt-to-receive-lighter-sentences/#respond Fri, 04 Oct 2019 08:03:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1158064 A handful of parents who pleaded guilty in the nationwide college admissions scandal are now putting their money toward expensive outside consultants, doctors and criminologists in the hopes of securing lenient sentences, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

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A handful of parents who pleaded guilty in the nationwide college admissions scandal are now putting their money toward expensive outside consultants, doctors and criminologists in the hopes of securing lenient sentences, the New York Times reported on Thursday. 

In attempts to make judge and jury sympathetic to their clients, some parents’ lawyers have submitted elaborate presentations like Hollywood-style videos of their past charitable work and long reports connecting childhood hardships to susceptibility to manipulation in the scandal. 

So far, these efforts have been largely unsuccessful. 

“I maybe should say to you, before I get nine more of these: I don’t feel I need an expert report from a criminologist to tell me how to rule here, particularly where it’s the same criminologist that’s going to be probably presenting for everybody in L.A.,” Massachusetts Judge Indira Talwani — who is sentencing most of the parents who have pleaded guilty — warned in a statement to other defendants who have yet to be sentenced. 

In one instance, Los Angeles businessman Devin Sloane — who paid $250,000 to scandal ringleader William “Rick” Singer for his son to be admitted to the University of Southern California as a fraudulent water polo recruit — proposed in an elaborately edited video that he could atone for his misdeeds by fundraising for a “cutting-edge” collaboration between the Special Olympics and private schools wherein disabled children play sports with elite students. The video — wrought with montages of athletes rejoicing in victory — featured a gold medalist describing Sloane as “my neighbor and best friend.” Sloane was sentenced to four months in prison. 

Talwani described his proposal as “about as tone-deaf as I’ve heard.”

In another instance, Los Angeles businessman Stephen Semprevivo — who paid $400,000 for his son’s admission to Georgetown as a sham tennis recruit — hired a court consultant and criminologist to draft a report on how his difficult childhood led him to being easily susceptible to manipulation in the admissions scheme. Semprevivo will also serve a four-month prison sentence. 

Semprevivo’s criminologist claimed that she focuses on rehabilitation and humanization by trying to get defendants into community-service projects or treatment programs prior to sentencing. “I’m helping somebody rebuild their life, whether or not they are incarcerated,” she said. 

According to the New York Times, other parents have obtained doctors’ letters and submitted them under seal, as well as hired consultants to tell their life stories. Generally, these stories have centered around the reputational damage the defendants have suffered. 

The practice of hiring consultants to help out with criminal sentencings is legal and not uncommon. Lawyers for poor defendants sometimes submit similar reports and videos to help mitigate prison time. Former federal prosecutor Harry Sandick told the New York Times that these types of materials can help provide important context and give judges fuller pictures of defendants. The risk is that they could backfire, with the efforts viewed as attempts to manipulate the judge. 

Agustin Huneeus, a Napa Valley vintner implicated in both the test cheating and athletics bribery schemes, will be sentenced on Friday. In contrast to Sloane and Semprevivo, his lawyers emphasized that he “has not hired experts (psychologists, criminologists or others) to explain or contextualize his conduct.”

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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CAPS aims to reduce wait times for mental health services by removing initial phone assessment https://stanforddaily.com/2019/09/22/caps-aims-to-reduce-wait-times-for-mental-health-services-by-removing-initial-phone-assessment/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/09/22/caps-aims-to-reduce-wait-times-for-mental-health-services-by-removing-initial-phone-assessment/#respond Mon, 23 Sep 2019 05:31:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1157386 Students should expect to wait no more than one week for an in-person consultation with a clinician at CAPS, which has re-vamped its mental health services this year to eliminate the initial phone assessment causing delays in treatment.

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In a push to reduce wait times for students seeking mental health care, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) no longer requires students to request a phone assessment appointment before beginning therapy, in favor of a new walk-in system.

Until July, students were previously required to schedule a 15-minute phone session with a clinician to discuss their situation before beginning therapy. This step of the process was identified as the primary driver of long wait times for intake appointments — in some cases, up to one month — according to an internal review that CAPS conducted over the past year.

Under the new model, students can simply walk into CAPS’s Campus Drive headquarters at Vaden Health Center anytime during working hours to discuss their situation with a clinician, who will identify resources and services that address their concerns. Such resources could include a follow-up consultation with the same clinician, a psychiatric consult, a referral to a specialist outside the CAPS system or a joint clinical workshop at CAPS. Following this initial touchpoint, students will wait no more than one week for a longer consultation with a clinician.

With the old system, “The most significant bottleneck was occurring after the phone assessment appointment, because the number of available intake appointments at CAPS was too small to keep up with an increasing volume of requests,” wrote CAPS Director Bina Patel, Vaden Health Center Director Jim Jacobs and CAPS Operations Director Oliver Lin in a joint statement to The Daily. “It was clear that we needed to prioritize real-time access for students.”

Last fall, the number of requests for care exceeded CAPS’s intake capacity by approximately 30%, according to the statement from Patel, Jacobs and Lin. This year, they aim to provide enough initial consult appointments each week to meet student needs, further streamline CAPS processes so that clinicians maximize their face-to-face time with students and minimize their time spent on administrative tasks.

“We are really excited and happy to see Vaden and CAPS taking to heart a lot of years of legitimate student concerns about … wait times at CAPS,” Associated Students of Stanford University President Erica Scott ’20 said. “I think it’s a step in the right direction.”

“Obviously it’s important to recognize there are still aspects of the system that could still be addressed and improved,” Scott added, citing accessibility issues with off-campus healthcare referrals and the lack of support for students and staff from trained mental health professionals. Scott also acknowledged student concerns about the 5150 process that allows putting a voluntary or involuntary psychiatric hold on individuals identified as a threat to themselves or others.

These changes to mental health care follow a difficult year for Stanford as the campus community mourned the deaths of two undergraduates and two graduate students. They also follow a year defined by widespread campus discourse about the dismal state of student mental health among undergraduates and graduate students alike, as well as an ongoing lawsuit filed against Stanford which alleges that the University’s leave of absence policies discriminate against students with mental health disabilities.

The mental health crisis among college students extends beyond Stanford, however. In one nationwide survey, 71 percent of students reported feeling very sad, with 66 percent reporting that they felt overwhelming anxiety. Between 2009 and 2015, moreover, student counseling center utilization increased by approximately 30 to 40%, although overall college enrollment increased by 5%, according to the Center for Collegiate Mental Health.

“Stanford recognizes the urgent need to respond to these trends, and I have appreciated the campus-wide support and interest in addressing these concerns,” Patel told Stanford News. “But we also want to be proactive in promoting positive mental health and well-being. We know these efforts are works-in-progress, and that we will have to continuously evolve in order to meet the needs of our students.”

Beyond CAPS, the Well-Being at Stanford office — another department within Vaden that provides coaching, academic courses and workshops to broadly support student health on campus — is also expanding its mental health services this year. Notably, the program has launched a pilot coaching program for students who may not need therapy but would like someone to talk to.

“We decided to develop this coaching program out of recognition that all of us need support at times in our lives, but not all of us need clinical services such as psychotherapy,” Inge Hansen, the inaugural director of the office, wrote in an email to The Daily.

Hansen added that the pilot program is intended to help students manage challenges including life transitions, stress, grief and loss, loneliness, interpersonal conflict, unhealthy eating and values conflicts.

Well-Being at Stanford is also hiring three new full-time student support specialists to support the needs of specific campus communities. One specialist will focus on community centers and ethnic-themed dorms, another will interface with Residential Education and Academic Advising and a third will partner with the Graduate Life Office to support graduate students. These student advisors will provide individual coaching for students based on their area of specialty and will help develop mental health and well-being programming on campus, Hansen said.

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Serra Mall to be renamed Jane Stanford Way on Oct. 7, following two years of controversy https://stanforddaily.com/2019/09/18/serra-mall-to-be-renamed-jane-stanford-way-on-oct-7-following-two-years-of-controversy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/09/18/serra-mall-to-be-renamed-jane-stanford-way-on-oct-7-following-two-years-of-controversy/#respond Thu, 19 Sep 2019 03:45:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1157343 Serra Mall will be renamed Jane Stanford Way in October, changing the University's official address. The decision was recommended by an advisory committee following years of controversy over a name that honored Junipero Serra, who has been criticized for his mistreatment of Native Americans.

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Serra Mall will be officially redesignated Jane Stanford Way on Oct. 7, joining the recently renamed Sally Ride House dorm and Carolyn Lewis Attneave House in shedding the controversial epithet of California mission system founder Father Junipero Serra, who has been criticized for his mistreatment of Native Americans. 

The decision to rename the prominent campus streetway after the University’s co-founder would change the University’s official address. Last year, University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne convened a committee that would make recommendations for renaming campus buildings and landmarks honoring Serra. 

Jane Stanford’s name is not currently featured on any main campus landmarks, despite her role in co-founding the University with her husband Leland and helping the University through financial challenges following his 1893 death. New signs will be added to the official street signs to help explain the name change and Jane Stanford’s legacy. 

“With this step, a prominent thoroughfare at the front door of our campus will now honor Jane Stanford, whose vision and strength played a central role in guiding and sustaining the university during its critical early years,” Tessier-Lavigne told Stanford News.

The renaming of Serra Mall comes on the heels of two years of controversy marked by student protests, critical op-eds and campus-wide debate among students and faculty alike. 

Serra Mall — which cradles the Oval and extends from Campus Drive West to Campus Drive East — will be renamed, while the connecting Serra Street running from Campus Drive East to El Camino Real will not. This decision was made to “[avoid] erasing the University’s symbolic connection with Serra,” according to the renaming committee’s report. Additional street signs will be added along Serra Street to provide background on Serra and his connection to the University. 

“In addition to the renamings, we are pursuing new ways of honoring the contributions of Native Americans at Stanford and the fact that the university’s lands are the homeland of the Muwekma Ohlone people,” said Mattiew Tiews, associate vice president for campus engagement. 

The proposal for the street’s renaming was recently cleared by the U.S. Postal Service, Santa Clara County Communications and the Santa Clara County Surveyor’s Office, which set the official date of the name change. Stanford originally began filing paperwork with Santa Clara County this past April to initiate the change. 

Stanford will host a campus event in fall quarter to celebrate the name change. 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Battery and unwanted kissing incident reported at Campus and Galvez https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/14/battery-and-unwanted-kissing-incident-reported-at-campus-and-galvez/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/14/battery-and-unwanted-kissing-incident-reported-at-campus-and-galvez/#respond Fri, 14 Jun 2019 17:10:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1156170 A woman was unwillingly lifted off of the ground and kissed on the forehead by an unknown man who ran up to her at the intersection of Campus and Galvez late Thursday night. The male suspect then asked the victim to get into his car with him; she declined and he left, according to an AlertSU Crime Alert sent to the Stanford community.

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A female student was unwillingly lifted off of the ground and kissed on the forehead by a 17-year-old who ran up to her at the intersection of Campus and Galvez late Thursday night. The male suspect then asked the victim to get into his car with him; she declined and he left, according to an AlertSU Crime Alert sent to the Stanford community.

This is an update to the alert sent on Friday, 6/14/2019, regarding a battery (unwanted kissing). Public Safety has identified the suspect, a 17 year old juvenile. He was cited and released for assault and battery.

The suspect, described as a 6-foot Asian/Indian man with short black/brown hair, was cited and released for assault and battery.

“At this time there is no ongoing threat to the community,” an AlertSU update released on Sunday reads.

This article has been updated to note that the victim is a Stanford student and to reflect information released in an AlertSU update on the situation.

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Mental health service increases, administrative restructuring announced in Student Affairs spring update https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/11/mental-health-service-increases-administrative-restructuring-announced-in-student-affairs-spring-update/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/11/mental-health-service-increases-administrative-restructuring-announced-in-student-affairs-spring-update/#respond Wed, 12 Jun 2019 02:00:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1156128 The merging of administrative oversight toward student groups and Greek life, increased mental health services and the promise of continued campus social programming were among the announcements shared in Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole’s spring quarter update to the campus community on Tuesday.

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The merging of administrative oversight toward student groups and Greek life, increased mental health services and the promise of continued campus social programming were among the announcements shared in Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole’s spring quarter update to the campus community on Tuesday.

In the wake of Student Activities and Leadership (SAL) Director Nanci Howe’s retirement after 38 years at Stanford, Brubaker-Cole announced the merging of SAL — which currently oversees the over 600 student organizations on campus — with the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL), under the new Office of Student Engagement (OSE).

“We envision OSE to be a one-stop shop encompassing a great many of our leadership and engagement opportunities,” Brubaker-Cole wrote.

Assistant Vice Provost for the Centers for Equity, Community and Leadership and Ujamaa Resident Fellow Jan Barker-Alexander will serve as the interim leader of OSE and chair the search for a permanent director.

Brubaker-Cole also announced that OSE will report to the brand new Associate Associate Vice Provost for Inclusion, Community and Integrative Learning, Dr. Emelyn de la Peña.

Starting July 1, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) “is significantly increasing” its availability of weekly in-person initial consultation appointments, as part of ongoing University efforts to decrease wait times for mental health services. The University also previously announced the addition of four CAPS clinicians come fall 2019, as well as online training to provide faculty with strategies to support student well-being in academic settings.

These updates come on the heels of two graduate student suicides within one month of each other, as well as campus-wide concerns about a lack of adequate mental health care for students.

In her update, Brubaker-Cole also acknowledged this past quarter’s successful campus social programming, including the opening of new student bar The Arbor and a block party event held on the lower Row. She added that the bar has been “so successful” that its operations will continue in the fall, and that Stanford intends to host the block party next year in addition to other social events. These recent increases in social programming come as a result of efforts led by The Social Project student association, a student organization that has been working with the University to bring new events to the campus social scene.

The spring quarter update also announced the Alcohol Solutions Group will issue its recommendations for methods of reducing high-risk drinking on campus in the fall, and that a new online portal to formalize the process by which student communities request new resources — including potential future community centers — will be made available next year as well.

This article has been corrected to reflect that Stanford’s alcohol policy will not be changing in the fall with the Alcohol Solutions Group’s recommendations. The Daily regrets this error.

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Additional campus cooling reductions instituted amid 100-degree heat https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/11/additional-campus-cooling-reductions-instituted-amid-100-degree-heat/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/11/additional-campus-cooling-reductions-instituted-amid-100-degree-heat/#respond Tue, 11 Jun 2019 20:33:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1156111 Further reductions in cooling across campus labs, offices and classrooms will be enforced today as a result of the lasting heat wave, according to an AlertSU Community Alert issued on Tuesday morning. Classrooms holding final exams will not be affected.

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Further reductions in cooling across campus labs, offices and classrooms will be enforced today as a result of the lasting heat wave, according to an AlertSU Community Alert issued on Tuesday morning. Classrooms holding final exams will not be affected.

“Temperatures in labs, offices and classrooms are allowed to exceed campus guidelines for a limited time,” the AlertSU reads.

Campus buildings are cooled using a chilled water system; due to the persistent daytime and nighttime heat, chilled water within the University’s Central Energy Facility “must be further curtailed to meet critical loads throughout the day.”

Amid the 100-degree temperatures, a heat advisory for the Bay Area has been issued by the National Weather Service.

Today’s cooling measure is expected to last through the evening.

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Amid excessive heat warning, comfort cooling reduced on campus https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/10/amid-excessive-heat-warning-comfort-cooling-reduced-on-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/10/amid-excessive-heat-warning-comfort-cooling-reduced-on-campus/#respond Tue, 11 Jun 2019 01:39:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1156104 Comfort cooling is being reduced across several offices and other campus buildings in order to preserve the cooling capacity necessary for medical, research, data processing and other facilities “due to the unusually high current temperatures,” according to an AlertSU Community Alert sent early Monday evening.

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Comfort cooling is being reduced across several offices and other campus buildings in order to preserve the cooling capacity necessary for medical, research, data processing and other facilities “due to the unusually high current temperatures,” according to an AlertSU Community Alert sent early Monday evening.

An excessive heat warning lasting until 9 p.m. tonight and a heat advisory lasting from 10 a.m. until 9 p.m. tomorrow have been issued to the area surrounding Stanford.  

Reduced comfort cooling is expected to last until at least Tuesday evening. Stanford uses a chilled water system to cool its buildings; due to the lasting heat wave, the chilled water within the Central Energy Facility must be “curtailed.”

The curtailment “is required to reduce load and restore chilled water storage to normal levels,” the AlertSU reads.

The duration of the measure remains unknown at present.

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Medicine professor fired for sexual misconduct apologizes, cites cultural differences for conduct https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/06/medicine-professor-fired-for-sexual-misconduct-apologizes-cites-cultural-differences-for-conduct/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/06/medicine-professor-fired-for-sexual-misconduct-apologizes-cites-cultural-differences-for-conduct/#respond Thu, 06 Jun 2019 23:31:44 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1156050 Stanford Medical Center professor Jose Montoya, who was fired after a University investigation found that he had violated University code of conduct related to sexual harassment, misconduct and assault, said he “sincerely apologize[s]” to anyone who he “offended."

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Stanford Medical Center professor Jose Montoya, who was fired after a University investigation found that he had violated University code of conduct policies related to sexual harassment, misconduct and assault, said he “sincerely apologize[s]” to anyone who he “offended,” in a statement to The Daily sent by his lawyer David Nied.

Montoya, who formerly directed the Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) Initiative, added that the events that occurred since March — when a group of affected women first raised their concerns to Stanford — have been a “huge surprise.”

“It was even more shattering to learn, through the June 4 Stanford Daily article, that it was members of my Stanford ME/CFS team who experienced some of my behaviors as attempts at unsolicited sexual acts, harassment and misconduct,” he wrote.

He further denied having been involved in “any sexual or romantic relationships” with other employees at Stanford. Montoya pointed to a difference in “social norms” between the United States and his homeland of Colombia, writing that he has served patients with “with respect, professionalism and the affection proper of my Hispanic heritage.”

“I did not sufficiently appreciate that difference [in social norms],” Montoya wrote. “It is my responsibility to change and be both mindful and respectful of the boundaries of personal space – and I pledge to do just that.”

[Read Jose’s Montoya’s full statement here.]

In a joint statement, a group of individuals affected by his conduct wrote, “This past March, a large group of women who have worked under Dr. Montoya came forward with extensive allegations of sexual misconduct, assault and harassment,” they wrote. “The allegations included multiple instances of Dr. Montoya attempting unsolicited sexual acts with his female employees, among many other instances of harassment and misconduct, and were confirmed in an investigation.”

Montoya has the right to appeal the investigation’s decision. His legal representation declined to comment on whether he intends to pursue this route.

In the wake of Montoya’s firing, ME/CFS patients and advocates have expressed concern in online forums about the future of treatment and of the field at-large.

The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome support organization #MEAction is hosting a dial-in support call on Friday in response to Montoya’s dismissal for his former patients to discuss alternative options for care.  

Stanford Medicine spokesperson Stephanie Brusseze did not respond to questions about whether or when Stanford intends to hire a replacement for the now-vacant director role for Stanford’s ME/CFS Initiative.

“Along with SHC’s organizational and physician leadership, we are working diligently to address the needs of our ME/CFS patients following Dr. Jose Montoya’s departure,” Brusseze wrote in a statement to The Daily. “We extend our sincere apologies for any disappointment or inconvenience [that patients] may have experienced due to these unforeseen circumstances.”

Contact Julia Ingram at jmingram ‘at’ stanford.edu and Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Editor’s note: See below for a statement on behalf of Stanford Health Care (SHC) from spokesperson Stephanie Brusseze regarding treatment options.

If you are a current patient, please contact us at (650) 736-5200, and we will work with you to accommodate your individual needs and answer any questions or concerns you may have.

If you prefer to seek care outside SHC, you may request that your SHC medical records be transferred to your new physician. The information required for this process is available on Stanford Health Care’s website (stanfordhealthcare.org) by clicking “Patients & Visitors” and then selecting “Medical Records.” You may also call Medical Records at (650) 723-5721.

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Sexual harassment, misconduct behind medicine professor’s dismissal https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/04/sexual-harassment-misconduct-behind-medicine-professors-dismissal/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/04/sexual-harassment-misconduct-behind-medicine-professors-dismissal/#respond Wed, 05 Jun 2019 03:07:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1155992 Violations of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct were among the reasons for the recent firing of former Stanford Medical Center professor Jose Montoya.

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Violations of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct were among the reasons for the recent firing of former Stanford Medical Center professor Jose Montoya, according to a former member of the Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) Initiative which Montoya previously led.

Montoya’s termination comes on the heels of an investigation led by an outside attorney and unknown Stanford faculty member that found him in violation of numerous University conduct policies, including those related to sexual harassment, misconduct and assault.

A group of those affected by Montoya’s actions — including the former ME/CFS Initiative member — wrote a joint anonymous statement in response to his termination.

“This past March, a large group of women who have worked under Dr. Montoya came forward with extensive allegations of sexual misconduct, assault and harassment,” they wrote. “The allegations included multiple instances of Dr. Montoya attempting unsolicited sexual acts with his female employees, among many other instances of harassment and misconduct, and were confirmed in an investigation.”

Montoya first began teaching at Stanford in 1990, though the timeline of his University conduct violations remains unclear. He did not immediately respond to request for comment, and his email auto-response indicated that he is “currently on research leave.”

Montoya has the right to appeal the investigation’s decision, according to Stanford Medicine spokesperson Stephanie Bruzzese.

The former ME/CFS Initiative member was notified of the investigation’s outcome in an email sent on May 30, the same day Montoya’s termination was shared in a May 30 email from Stanford Medicine’s Infectious Diseases Division chief Upinder Singh to all division employees. Singh’s email did not specify the nature of Montoya’s conduct violations.

Bruzzese and Singh did not immediately respond to The Daily’s request for comment regarding the sexual misconduct violations.  

Contact Julia Ingram at jmingram ‘at’ stanford.edu and Claire Wang clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

This article has been updated to indicate that the joint anonymous statement was provided by the former ME/CFS employee.

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Comparative grading system for Greek conduct drove the original decision to unhouse TDX https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/27/comparative-grading-system-for-greek-conduct-drove-the-original-decision-to-unhouse-tdx/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/27/comparative-grading-system-for-greek-conduct-drove-the-original-decision-to-unhouse-tdx/#respond Sun, 27 Jan 2019 19:58:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1148758 The Office of Student Affairs plans to review SOE procedures — in particular, the evaluation based on comparisons to other fraternities — “to ensure that they are fair, equitable and clear.”

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A system that comparatively grades Greek organizations’ conduct, previously undisclosed by the Office of Student Affairs, was the basis of the original decision to revoke Theta Delta Chi’s (TDX) housing last week. Reversing the initial unhousing, Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole formally apologized for this “procedural flaw” in a Saturday evening email to the presidents of all-campus Greek organizations.

“On behalf of the University and Student Affairs, I have apologized to the members of TDX for this lack of process clarity and what it produced in this case,” Brubaker-Cole wrote. “I regret the tremendous stress this has caused the TDX community.”

Brubaker-Cole explained the “procedural flaw” in Stanford’s “Standards of Excellence” (SOE) process, which governs reviews of Greek organizations, in an email sent shortly after she announced the University’s decision to restore TDX’s housing. Comparative grading has not affected the housing status of any Greek organizations beyond TDX, according to Brubaker-Cole’s email.

For the 2018-19 school year, TDX “received a raw score within the ‘meets expectations’ range, which would not subject the organization to a loss of housing,” Brubaker-Cole wrote. When compared to other Greek organizations on campus, however, TDX fell into the “needs improvement” category.

This would have been the fourth consecutive year that the fraternity received a ranking of “needs improvement,” a record that TDX leadership believed would put them at risk for unhousing.

TDX Vice President Michael Quezada said that fraternity members were “excited, but not surprised” by the University’s decision.

“From the beginning, we have felt that we have complied with the SOE’s recommendations from last year and that we were deserving of a ‘meets expectations’ outcome, which is why we were all taken aback when the initial decision to remove us from the house came out,” he wrote in an email to The Daily.

Greek organizations that undergo the Standards of Excellence (SOE) conduct review are given both a raw score and a score in “comparison with the performance of other Greek organizations,” Brubaker-Cole wrote. She said it is “unfair” that official written documentation provided to Greek organizations about the SOE program does not make clear that the comparative score factors into an organization’s final rating.

Quezada agreed, also saying it is “unfair” for the University to not notify the fraternity of the grading mechanisms they are using.

“If the University is dedicated to having an impactful Greek system, they would benefit from having a more transparent SOE program,” he wrote.

Student Affairs plans to review SOE procedures — in particular, the evaluation based on comparisons to other fraternities — “to ensure that they are fair, equitable and clear.”

“If this measure is kept, we will ensure that the criterion is clearly communicated and applied fairly,” Brubaker-Cole wrote.

In her email, she expressed support for Greek life at Stanford while also noting the Office of Student Affairs’ “high expectations of student organizations that have the privilege of being housed on our campus.”

In response to student concerns about the declining social scene at Stanford, Brubaker-Cole wrote, “Vibrant social life on campus is critical to a thriving and healthy campus community and to the personal health, well-being and success of students.”

“I will be in touch with Greek community leaders to initiate some conversations about these matters,” she wrote. “We have begun to engage students in designing solutions, and more opportunities for engagement and planning are in the works,” she added.

Quezada expressed his enthusiasm to work with Student Affairs in the future.

“We are committed to working with the University, including Student Affairs, to improve,” he wrote. “TDX isn’t perfect, and there’s work to do if we want this house to stay on campus… We are pleased with their decision to admit their error.”

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Erin Woo at erinkwoo ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Board of Trustees announces new ethical investment policies, dissolves former advisory panel https://stanforddaily.com/2018/12/04/board-of-trustees-announces-new-ethical-investment-policies-dissolves-former-advisory-panel/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/12/04/board-of-trustees-announces-new-ethical-investment-policies-dissolves-former-advisory-panel/#respond Wed, 05 Dec 2018 01:05:06 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1147653 The Board of Trustees amended its Statement on Investment Responsibility and approved the Stanford Management Company’s (SMC) first-ever Ethical Investment Framework in its Tuesday morning meeting.

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The Board of Trustees amended its Statement on Investment Responsibility and approved the Stanford Management Company’s (SMC) first-ever Ethical Investment Framework in its Tuesday morning meeting. In addition, the Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility (APIRL) — which previously recommended that the University not divest from private prisons and fossil fuels — was dissolved and replaced by committees that will be appointed and convened on an ad-hoc basis. 

The new Ethical Investment Framework outlines SMC’s commitment to “social and ethical considerations” but does not identify discrete criteria that will be factored into that calculus.

These changes come after APIRL — a panel of students, faculty, staff and alumni that formerly assessed University investment and divestment decisions — reviewed the Board’s Statement on Investment Responsibility (SIR) and recommended multiple changes, including its own dissolution. APIRL will now be replaced by ad-hoc committees that will advise the Special Committee on Investment Responsibility (SCIR), a subsidiary of the Board of Trustees.

“While the disbanding of APIRL removes one step in an already bureaucratic process, the ASSU (through NomCom) had the ability to recommend students to be on APIRL and we hope that any ad hoc committees that are formed will have clearly delineated processes for student involvement and input,” ASSU President Shanta Katipamula ’19 wrote in a statement to The Daily.

Going forward, SCIR will be in charge of reviewing divestment proposals from community stakeholders — a task for which it will use the updated SIR and new Ethical Investment Framework as guiding documents.

The updated SIR affirms the University’s high threshold for divestment as requiring that investments rise to the level of “abhorrent and ethically unjustifiable,” listing apartheid, genocide, human trafficking, slavery and violations of child labor laws as examples of company actions that could trigger divestment.

Like the Ethical Investment Framework, the SIR does not reference specific criteria pertaining to ethics. To this point, Board of Trustees Chair Jeffrey Raikes emphasized that the framework is not intended to be “formulaic.”

For issues that require more specialized review, the SCIR will be able to appoint “ad-hoc fact-finding committees” with subject-matter experts who will research the issue at hand and perform campus outreach to inform the Board’s final decision in a more timely manner than before. These committees were recommended in APIRL’s 2018 report, which also indicated that committees should include students, staff and faculty along with at least two field experts — effectively serving as subject-specific equivalents of the now-dissolved APIRL.

When choosing external partners to make investment decisions about specific securities on Stanford’s behalf, SMC said in the Ethical Investment Framework that it considers the partners’ “moral framework” — but adds that it “would not be appropriate” to tell partners to invest with the goal of advancing particular political or social agendas.

“SMC is obliged to place proper weight on ethical issues that can have a bearing on economic results, but not to use the endowment to pursue other agendas,” the Ethical Investment Framework reads.

This sentiment echoes SMC CEO Robert Wallace’s statement last spring that the endowment is not meant to be used as a “tool for social activism.”

Some students on campus, however, feel like the changes fall short. Students for the Liberation of All People, an organization which previously protested the University not deciding to divest in private prisons, said in a statement that Stanford’s actions “are more than enough for us to be morally horrified with them.”

“The good Stanford creates from educating its students cannot outweigh the harm done by continuously investing in companies that egregiously violate human rights,” the organization said.

The Board also announced that it will be allocating $10 million over the next 10 years to a new education and research initiative focused on responsible and sustainable investment. The initiative will include classes, workshops, lectures and other educational events aimed at both students and alumni.

“I’m excited by the possibilities presented by the new $10M fund around responsible social impact investing and governance, which mirrors the ASSU’s own initiative over the past year as we remodel our Cardinal Fund class to be more focused on social impact [and] environmental impact investing,” Katipamula wrote.

New and amended documents

APIRL recommended that the Board of Trustees implement the United Nations-supported Principles of Responsible Investment, which state that investors should take questions of environmental, social and corporate governance into account when considering investment options. Over 20 universities, including many of Stanford’s peer institutions — such as Harvard and Northwestern — have adopted the Principles.

But APIRL also said that Stanford “need not specifically adopt the [United Nations’] principles;” instead, the University could draft its own, custom ethical framework. SMC opted for the latter option and drafted the Ethical Investment Framework.

The goal in drafting a document separate from the UN-backed Principles of Responsible Investment was to be “more explicit and direct about [Stanford’s] own standard”, according to Raikes.

In the framework, SMC makes clear that ethical and social considerations play a part in their consideration of investment options, saying that businesses that show little regard for ethics or “consistently and willfully mistreat stakeholders” are usually “poor long-term investments.”

“We want the Stanford community to have the confidence that ethical considerations are explicitly factored into the investment decision-making process,” Raikes said.

Similarly, the Board of Trustees amended its Statement of Responsibility to explicitly include mention of “environmental, social and governance factors into investment decisions.”

“A key part of what the Statement [on Investment Responsibility] does is to outline the endowment’s role as a central source of financial support for the University’s mission,” Raikes said. “Then, it articulates the abhorrent and ethically unjustifiable behavior that would warrant the University’s dissociation from an investment.”

Katipamula added that she believes the Ethical Investment Framework is a step in the right direction. 

“I’m also glad that the [Board] approved an ethical investing framework for SMC for the first time,” she wrote. “While a lot of attention has rightly focused on issues of divestment, it’s really important that investments are properly made to begin with.”

APIRL review

The Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility’s (APIRL) review of Stanford’s Statement on Investment Responsibility (SIR) was announced last fall in response to concerns about ambiguities in divestment criteria and inefficiencies in the divestment process. These complaints were made by both APIRL members and student groups that submitted divestment requests.

Principally, the report suggested that the University should be more proactive and less reactionary in its investment policies.

“The University’s current policy arguably leads to the worst of all worlds: rather than taking the lead in deciding how best to factor social and environmental issues into its investment decisions, the University waits for formal divestiture requests,” the report read.

The report also stated that, under the former process, APIRL wasted months investigating investment petitions only to eventually discover that the University had no relevant stocks in the companies under review.

The final concern voiced by the panel was that prior investment and divestment policies lacked transparency, as petitioners received few to no status updates regarding investigation proceedings.

“The non-confidential information collected as part of the investigation of the petitioners’ claims deserves wider dissemination and discussion,” the report said.

In 2018, APIRL — with support from the University’s Office of Investment Responsibility and Stakeholder Relations — conducted focus groups, surveys, web forms and interviews with divestment groups to solicit community feedback on Stanford’s investment and divestment practices.

Based on that outreach the group devised recommendations aimed to rectify the identified areas of concern. The first recommendation was for the University to adopt a more explicit standard for divestment since, according to APIRL, the initial SIR included ambiguous phrasing.

“Inevitably, any standard will rely on subjective language,” the group wrote. However, they added that phrases such as “social injury,” “significant number of individuals,” “foreseeable future” and “unusual circumstances” led to confusion due to their hatheir having multiple possible interpretations.

APIRL further advised that SMC make the standards for investment and divestment more accessible by creating public-facing materials explaining them. Specifically, the group recommended that the SIR explain that the bar for divestment is so high due to the Trustees’ strict mission of managing the endowment “to maximize the risk-adjusted financial return on endowment assets and the President’s stance that the University will not take partisan or political stances on issues that divide the campus.”

APIRL added that the SIR should also clarify that the majority of Stanford’s endowment is not directly invested and that only a small portion of direct investment is subject to divestment proposals.

Finally, the panel recommended that Stanford reform its divestment request process to be more time efficient, given that formal proposals were frequently taking over a year to process before a final Board decision was made. APIRL added that more mechanisms for student engagement with the SCIR, Board of Trustees and SMC be put in place.

A number of these recommendations were ultimately implemented in the Board’s revision of its investment policies.

“I’m looking forward to hearing more information from the President’s office regarding implementation details, such as when community members will be able to begin submitting proposals [and] how members will be selected for the ad hoc committees that may be formed,” Katipamula wrote.

This report has been updated with additional information about the new and amended documents and the 2017-2018 APIRL investment review. It has also been updated with comment from ASSU President Shanta Katipamula ’19 and Students for the Liberation of All People. 

 

Contact Adesuwa Agbonile at adesuwaa ‘at’ stanford.edu and Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

A previous version of this article stated that the APIRL will  be replaced by the new SCIR. In fact, the APIRL will be replaced by the ad-hoc committees, and the SCIR is not a novel group. The Daily regrets these errors. 

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Democrats Newsom, Eshoo sweep California gubernatorial and House elections https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/07/democrats-newsom-eshoo-sweep-california-gubernatorial-and-house-elections/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/11/07/democrats-newsom-eshoo-sweep-california-gubernatorial-and-house-elections/#respond Wed, 07 Nov 2018 09:37:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1146414 Gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom and incumbent House representative Anna G. Eshoo, both Democrats, swept their respective California state races on Tuesday.

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Gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom and incumbent House representative Anna G. Eshoo, both Democrats, swept their respective California state races on Tuesday.

Governor-elect Newsom, who currently serves as Democratic Lieutenant Governor to Gov. Jerry Brown, glided to victory in the California gubernatorial race over Republican opponent John Cox. Newsom — who has served as California’s lieutenant governor since 2011 and is a former San Francisco mayor — landed his victory on a platform devoted to homelessness, housing affordability and healthcare.

Newsom is well-known for his 2004 mayoral decision to issue marriage licenses to gay couples and for championing ballot initiatives in favor of legalized recreational marijuana and gun control. As governor, Newsom’s ambitions include developing 3.5 million new housing units by 2025, a push for universal healthcare, a statewide preschool program for all and increased investment in state infrastructure and job training.

His landslide win marks the first time in well over a century that a Democrat succeeded another Democrat for office. On the eve of Election Day, Gov. Brown issued a public endorsement of Newsom’s campaign, describing Newsom as a “visionary” against the “negativity and fear” Brown said has pervaded the nation under President Donald Trump.

Newsom has been widely regarded as a shoo-in for the spot since he announced his candidacy in February 2015. Cox, a San Diego businessman whose campaign centered around efforts to repeal last year’s state gas tax increase, struggled to win over constituencies in the deep-blue state. Cox employed Trumpian tactics in his attempt to garner the working class vote — emphasizing affordability issues and by portraying himself as “the forgotten Californian,” an advocate for struggling workers — but ultimately failed to tip the blue state red.

Following his January inauguration, Newsom will lead the world’s fifth largest economy on a largely anti-Trump platform, pioneering the resistance against national immigration and environmental regulations, amongst others.

Eshoo’s expected re-election

Democratic Member of Congress Anna G. Eshoo was re-elected to California’s 18th House District with a majority of votes over her Republican opponent Christine Russell.

Eshoo made headlines earlier this fall for her involvement in then-Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. Eshoo was the first member of Congress to hear Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s story of being attacked by Brett Kavanaugh when they were high school students. On Eshoo’s recommendation, Ford, a research psychologist at Palo Alto University, wrote a letter to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee who was also re-elected Tuesday evening.

The letter was delivered to Sen. Feinstein’s Washington, D.C. office on Jul. 30 and was delivered to the FBI on Sept. 13.

A Sept. 17 statement on Eshoo’s website offered encouragement to Ford regarding her decision to come forward with her allegations.  

“I’m proud of my constituent,” it read. “I am grateful to her for weighing these equities and choosing to speak out on one of the most consequential decisions in our country, an appointment to the highest court in the land,” she said in the statement.

According to The Center for Responsive Politics, Stanford is the third largest contributor to Eshoo’s campaign. California’s 18th House district includes the Department of Energy’s Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), which is operated by the University. Eshoo represents a district containing multiple government agencies including the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System and the NASA Ames Research Center.

Eshoo has also been a proponent of Net Neutrality. She co-authored the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as well as an amicus brief supporting states’ efforts to overturn the FCC repeal of Net Neutrality.

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Karen Kurosawa at karen16 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Following disputed allegations of physical assault, battery charges filed at College Republicans event https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/09/following-disputed-allegations-of-physical-assault-battery-charges-filed-at-college-republicans-event/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/09/following-disputed-allegations-of-physical-assault-battery-charges-filed-at-college-republicans-event/#respond Wed, 10 Oct 2018 00:16:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1144587 Police arrived at White Plaza early Tuesday afternoon in response to a call from Stanford College Republicans (SCR) President John Rice-Cameron ’20, who alleged that a sophomore woman physically assaulted him at an SCR tabling event the group was holding in support of Brett Kavanaugh’s recent Supreme Court confirmation.

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Police arrived at White Plaza early Tuesday afternoon in response to a call from Stanford College Republicans (SCR) President John Rice-Cameron ’20, who alleged that Melinda Hernandez ’21 physically assaulted him at an SCR tabling event the group was holding in support of Brett Kavanaugh’s recent Supreme Court confirmation.

Hernandez and multiple other witnesses denied these allegations, claiming that she touched him without force. 

According to Stanford Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bill Larson, Hernandez was placed under a private person arrest at Rice-Cameron’s request and issued a citation for battery in response to Rice-Cameron’s allegations that she “shoved him in the chest with her hand during a verbal disagreement.” Larson added that there was no obvious physical injury to either party involved, and that Rice-Cameron declined to be evaluated by paramedics. Moving forward, the District Attorney’s Office will review the case and decide upon any further action.

A leaked message from Rice-Cameron to 76 SCR members confirmed that he filed a police report and is pressing “full charges” against the woman. 

When approached by The Daily at the scene, Rice-Cameron refused to comment on the issue. In a subsequent statement to The Daily, Rice-Cameron said, “She got in my face and proceeded to hit me in the chest area and push me back forcefully.”

“Nobody should be assaulted on campus, under any circumstances,” he added. 

A post on SCR’s Facebook page held that the altercation was an assault, and that the organization “experienced the violent and totalitarian behavior of the unhinged Stanford left” today.

Hernandez claims she merely touched Rice-Cameron on the chest after he refused to stop video recording her without her consent. Rice-Cameron did not call police in her presence, she added.

“This is clearly an exertion of power and privilege by [SCR],” Hernandez wrote in a public Facebook post. “Those who know my character, from a distance or up close, know my fight in social justice lies in peace.”

An anonymous eyewitness to the event recalled her as being “angry [and] upset,” and described her demeanor toward Rice-Cameron as combative. 

“She kept getting in his face, louder and louder — she walked straight towards him and invaded his personal space and definitely put her hands on him,” he said.

Another witness, a member of SCR who also declined to be named, described the contact as a push, but not a “hard push,” given that Rice-Cameron wasn’t shoved to the ground. 

According to Bryce Tuttle ’20, SCR members continued to videotape individuals who approached the table despite their requests to the contrary, claiming that it is legal to film people without their consent in public spaces such as White Plaza. Video footage leaked to The Daily by an SCR member confirms Tuttle’s eyewitness account.

In other leaked videos, Annie Zheng ’20 is shown approaching the table, tearing off two event signs and running away toward Tresidder Memorial Union. In response to this event, SCR member Annika Nordquist ’21 is captured on film describing Zheng as a “cold-ass bitch.”

The Daily has reached out to Nordquist for comment.

Another video depicts Nordquist, Rice-Cameron and another SCR member following Zheng as she walks back across White Plaza, laughing and peppering her with questions about her identity and why she removed the signs despite Zheng’s repeated requests to be left alone. In the video, Rice-Cameron is also shown filming the encounter on his personal cell phone.

Roughly an hour later, Zheng returned to the scene and again removed posters from the table.

Jim Wheaton, Senior Counsel at the First Amendment Project and a Stanford expert in media law, told The Daily that “video and photographic recording are permitted in public spaces, and generally one has the right to record with video or photo anything that can be seen with the unaided eye if you have a right to be in that space.”

White Plaza, where the SCR event was held, is considered a “free speech area” by the University. Tabling by student groups for informational purposes requires no prior approval as per Student Activities and Leadership (SAL) policy.

Under California law, audio recordings are subject to different standards of consent than video recordings. Namely, Wheaton cited a state law that requires consent from all persons recorded in a “confidential conversation,” which does not necessarily need to occur in a private setting to be classified as such.

Wheaton noted that exceptions exist — including public speech, public meetings or arguments loud enough that participants “cannot claim they thought it was confined to” those involved — but said that, based on his understanding of the circumstances, SCR would have the right to “record the video, but not the audio, without permission.”

“Recording a conversation — even [one] in a public space — is a violation of law in California,” he concluded.

Larson told The Daily that the Department of Public Safety “did not receive any reports from persons who said they were recorded and had asked that it stop,” although video footage reveals that such an interaction did take place.

Thursday’s incident comes nearly one year after SCR members alleged they were involved in another physical altercation, after being followed by individuals in masks and hoodies at a November 2017 event featuring controversial speaker Robert Spencer. Multiple other witnesses present at last year’s incident said that the altercation was not physical.

In a statement to The Daily, University spokesperson E.J. Miranda said, “Student Affairs has reached out and is offering support, information and resources to all parties involved in this incident.”

ASSU President Shanta Katipamula ’19, ASSU Vice President Rosie Nelson and ASSU Director of Academic Freedom wrote in a statement to The Daily that they are working with senior University administrators to “better promote the productive exchange of ideas within our community while supporting all members of our community, especially those who have been adversely affected by recent events locally and nationally.”

“While provocation for its own sake may be considered legally protected speech, we hope that ASSU-funded groups will aspire to a higher standard in their interactions with other members of the community,” they wrote. “We recognize and validate the harm that the rhetoric used at this event has caused members of our community. We encourage students to practice self-care and seek help from campus resources such as the Confidential Support Team if necessary.”

Stanford Democrats president Gabe Rosen ’19 told The Daily that Stanford Democrats is “deeply concerned” that the police were called.

“This just adds to our suspicion that [‘Change My Mind’ events, such as the one in White Plaza] are not conducive to civil debate,” Rosen wrote.

 

This report has been updated to include comments from University officials, Public Safety and SCR President John Rice-Cameron. It has also been updated to include Ms. Hernandez’s name. 

This report has been updated to include SCR’s statement on Facebook as well as a statement from the ASSU executives. It has also been updated to identify the woman who removed SCR’s event signs as Annie Zheng ’20 and to clarify a quote from an unnamed SCR member.

This report has been updated to include Ms. Hernandez’s statement on Facebook.

Karen Kurosawa, Elena Shao and Erin Woo contributed reporting.

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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Abysmal midterm voting rates among students spark community mobilization https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/25/abysmal-midterm-voting-rates-among-students-spark-community-mobilization/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/25/abysmal-midterm-voting-rates-among-students-spark-community-mobilization/#respond Tue, 25 Sep 2018 07:34:03 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1143859 Fewer than one in five eligible Stanford students voted in the 2014 midterm elections. Less than 50 percent of eligible students cast their ballots in the 2016 presidential election. Overall, Stanford trails its peer research institutions by about two percent in terms of voting rate. Why is the level of civic engagement among Stanford students so low? Amid the release of these abysmal statistics, a coalition of students, faculty and staff are responding with the StanfordVotes initiative, a collective effort to improve student voter registration and engagement on campus.

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Fewer than one in five eligible Stanford students voted in the 2014 midterm elections. Less than 50 percent of eligible students cast their ballots in the 2016 presidential election. Overall, Stanford trails its peer research institutions by about two percent in terms of voting rate. Why is the level of civic engagement among Stanford students so low? Amid the release of these abysmal statistics, a coalition of students, faculty and staff are responding with the StanfordVotes initiative, a collective effort to improve student voter registration and engagement on campus.

Behind the numbers

The data comes from the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE), an initiative run by Tufts University researchers who analyzed voting data from more than nine million students in 1,100 higher education institutions across all 50 states. Their published results consider enrollment data from all undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs, and match the data against publicly available state voting records.

According to the study, non-STEM majors tend to vote at significantly higher rates than STEM majors. Women also tend to vote more often than men. Turnout from Hispanic and Asian students has increased significantly since 2012, while the turnout for black students experienced a decline.

Urban Studies Lecturer Larry Litvak, who collaborated with Stanford in Government (SIG) and the Haas Center for Public Service to publicize these statistics in a call-to-action published in The Daily last spring, cited a variety of reasons for the low voter turnout among college students. For one, voter participation is highly correlated with age. Younger individuals tend to have less at stake — and are therefore less engaged — in their communities compared to older generations.

“[Younger people] move around more, they generally don’t have houses, they don’t have children in school and so on,” Litvak said. “So, some of the things that would motivate political participation are not present.”

He added that there’s a strong correlation between how far away students are from home and whether or not they vote. Students who attend out-of-state institutions often have to vote absentee or re-register to vote in a new state, which can add additional obstacles to the voting process. It’s also more likely that students away from home are less informed about the candidates and ballot measures in their voting state due to their geographic separation.

“It’s not particularly easy to vote,” said Antonia Hellman ’21, co-director of SIG’s Community Service and Voter Engagement Team.

Hellman cited Michigan’s particularly stringent policies for first-time voters, which requires individuals to either vote in-person for their first elections or hand-deliver their initial registration paperwork to the city clerk in their hometowns.

It is easy for students to feel daunted by the process because they often have multiple addresses and may be voting for the first time in college, added Sara Clark. Clark is a senior partnerships associate at TurboVote, an online voter registration and reminder service that partners with universities including Stanford.

 

Abysmal midterm voting rates among students spark community mobilization

 

Campus voting initiatives

Under the Higher Education Act, universities are already mandated to inform students about registering to vote. But this year marked the beginning of a more concerted effort to increase voter registration and engagement at Stanford in response to the issues underlying Stanford students’ low level of civic engagement. This spring, a coalition of students, faculty and staff came together under the nonpartisan StanfordVotes initiative, a project that includes both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms to increase voter engagement in the upcoming Nov. 6 midterms.

According to Megan Fogarty, deputy executive director at the Haas Center, StanfordVotes is taking a three-pronged approach in its effort to galvanize college students to vote. The first effort area focuses on easing the voter registration process for eligible students and staff, especially with regards to requesting absentee ballots. TurboVote’s partnership with Stanford in Government and the Haas Center helps streamline the process of registering students to vote.

The second prong involves building a campus message around the importance of voting through online reminders on Axess, flyering campaigns, speaker events and more.

“There’s a lot of [campus] emphasis on social impact and volunteerism, but that’s not the same as civic participation [in] voting,” Litvak said, pointing out that University culture plays a significant role in encouraging student political engagement.

To that extent, history professor Allyson Hobbs emphasized the role of faculty in contributing to a campus message that emphasizes the importance of voting. A variety of courses on voting issues are currently being offered in departments ranging from political science to psychology.

“This is a really critical aspect of our interactions with students and in what we’re teaching students and what we’re discussing in our classrooms,” Hobbs said. “It’s really important for faculty to convey to students the importance of voting and the importance of being part of the political process.

StanfordVotes’ community messaging initiative also involves SIG’s 65 Civic Engagement Volunteers (CEVs), who will spend two to four hours a week for the first half of fall quarter raising awareness about voting through student organizations and other campus communities. SIG Chair Olivia Martin ’19 added that several CEVs are in fact STEM majors, a reflection of SIG’s efforts to address the disparity in voter participation between STEM and non-STEM students.

The final piece of the puzzle, according to Fogarty, involves working to remove obstacles to voting, particularly those unique to out-of-state college students. SIG and the Haas Center are currently working on hosting a mailing party in White Plaza before Election Day to help students mail their absentee ballots on time.

Challenges at stake

Despite the mobilization efforts underpinning StanfordVotes, there remain a number of challenges facing forward in the push to increase student voter engagement at Stanford. According to Hellman’s co-director Christina Li ’21, Stanford’s later quarter system start date poses a challenge given its proximity to the Nov. 6 election.

“It’s just a matter of weeks and days before you have to get registered to vote and before you have to go out and vote yourself,” Li said. “We can’t just roll this initiative out slowly, we have to hit the ground running.”

Hellman added that despite efforts to encourage voter registration, it’s ultimately up to students to take it upon themselves to get to the polls on Election Day.

“It’s one thing to get people registered, help them through the process — we can do that,” she said. “There’s only so much we can do, however. In the end, it’s really up to them.”

Nationally, there’s a lot at stake in this year’s midterms. According to the New York Times, over 30 competitive House races this year were won in 2016 by margins smaller than the number of college students living in the district. Democrats have a real shot at taking back the House of Representatives and, according to historian and professor Estelle Freedman, there’s been a recent revival of civic engagement in response to the current state of American politics.

“Quite honestly … we are in a moment of democratic crisis in terms of the undermining of voting rights, the possibility of foreign interference in elections [and] the loss of truthfulness,” Freedman said. “I’m hard-pressed to think of a midterm that might be as significant as this one.”

 

Contact Elena Shao at eshao98 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Threatening legal action, attorney involved in Paula Jones case demands that University fire Daoud https://stanforddaily.com/2018/08/01/threatening-legal-action-attorney-involved-in-paula-jones-case-demands-that-university-fire-daoud/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/08/01/threatening-legal-action-attorney-involved-in-paula-jones-case-demands-that-university-fire-daoud/#respond Wed, 01 Aug 2018 21:11:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1143223 Stanford now faces increased external pressure in the push to fire incoming Norcliffe House Resident Assistant Hamzeh Daoud ’20, as Pennsylvania lawyer Jerome Marcus — in a Tuesday letter sent to President Marc Tessier-Lavigne — alleged that the University risks legal action should Daoud retain his position.

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Stanford now faces increased external pressure in the push to fire incoming Norcliffe House Resident Assistant Hamzeh Daoud ’20, as Pennsylvania lawyer Jerome Marcus — in a Tuesday letter sent to President Marc Tessier-Lavigne — alleged that the University risks legal action should Daoud retain his position.

Writing on behalf of an unnamed Jewish and Zionist undergraduate, Marcus demanded that Stanford fire Daoud, citing Daoud’s now-deleted social media posts from earlier this year as attacks on Zionists and thus religious discrimination in violation of the Constitution, Civil Rights Act of 1964 and University Fundamental Standard, which provides guidelines for student conduct.

“If Stanford were to retain a person of Daoud’s temperament in that position after being made aware of his statements,” Marcus wrote, “Stanford will have clearly discriminated against Zionist students on campus, in violation of federal law and its own formal policies.”

At present, it remains unclear what legal action, if any, Marcus intends to pursue against either Daoud or the University. Marcus — who discreetly led the Paula Jones sexual misconduct lawsuit against former U.S. president Bill Clinton —  declined to respond to The Daily’s multiple requests for comment on this and other issues raised by his letter.

But should the University indeed dismiss Daoud, it will not evade public scrutiny from student and community stakeholders, several of whom publicly defended Daoud in op-eds published last week.

“Regardless of the action the University decides to take, we are behind Hamzeh,” wrote Stanford Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) co-president Emily Wilder ’20 in an email to The Daily, on behalf of JVP and Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine. Wilder has also said that she is a close friend of Daoud’s.

University spokesperson E.J. Miranda indicated that the review of Daoud’s case, spearheaded by Student Affairs, is still ongoing as of Wednesday evening.

“We are aware of the various communications that have been circulated on this issue,” Miranda wrote in a statement to The Daily. “We are not in a position to comment on them individually, but we understand the many expressions of concern regarding the issue.”

Daoud did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Daily.

Although Daoud has since closed his personal Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, Marcus’ letter includes images of deleted posts Daoud allegedly wrote earlier this year. Marcus claims that the posts are still “retrievable” and that they are “obscene and threatening statements against Zionists and Zionism,” thus rendering Daoud “incapable of according Zionist students at Stanford the respect to which they are entitled.” Marcus declined to inform The Daily of how he accessed the alleged posts.

The statement to Tessier-Lavigne demands that Daoud reactivate his social media accounts for University investigation and public review. As precedent for University action against Daoud, Marcus further cited the Graduate Student Council’s 2014 retraction of funding for the Stanford Anscombe Society, as well as the 2015 termination of on-campus housing for fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon on the basis of sexual orientation and sex discrimination, respectively.

He also cited this year’s controversial posting of satirical posters about U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement activity in student residences. Due to First Amendment concerns, the student involved was not officially sanctioned by the University in the aftermath of the incident.

“There is no legitimate basis upon which Zionist students can be distinguished from any other student holding views opposed to those of a Stanford speaker,” Marcus wrote, arguing that Stanford would have handed down a decisive punishment had Daoud’s comments targeted “black students, or gay students, or women students, or Muslim students.”

Recently, members of Stanford College Republicans (SCR) have circulated via email an imperative to contact University administrators in support of Daoud’s dismissal, specifically seeking out incoming freshman to “bolster [the] cause,” wrote SCR member Annika Nordquist ’21.

Paid Facebook advertisements calling for Daoud to be fired were also spread last week by the page See4Yourself, part of a pro-Israel campaign sponsored by the Israeli-American Council. The ads have since been removed, but See4Yourself wrote on Wednesday that it still believes Daoud crossed a “red line” in his posts and should be removed from his RA position.

Cody Stocker ’17 posted a widely-shared Facebook status criticizing the ads as “an attempt to rile up people in the community to attack a student.” Jonathan Engel ’17 commented on Stocker’s post, noting that Facebook users can report pages for harassment.

 

This article has been updated with comment from University spokesperson E.J. Miranda. 

Holden Foreman contributed reporting.

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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President and Provost commit to international need-blind admissions, announce postdoc salary raise to $60k https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/18/president-and-provost-commit-to-international-need-blind-admissions-announce-60k-postdoc-salary-raise/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/18/president-and-provost-commit-to-international-need-blind-admissions-announce-60k-postdoc-salary-raise/#respond Fri, 18 May 2018 07:20:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1142465 A commitment to need-blind admissions for international students, increased faculty diversity and an 80 percent carbon-free, zero-waste campus by 2030 were among the prominent issues presented by President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Persis Drell at Thursday’s annual meeting of the Academic Council.

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A commitment to need-blind admissions for international students, increased faculty diversity and an 80 percent carbon-free, zero-waste campus by 2030 were among the prominent issues presented by President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Persis Drell at Thursday’s annual meeting of the Academic Council.

These goals were raised as part of the pair’s high-level “Vision” for Stanford’s future, the culmination of the University’s year-long long-range planning process. The process synthesized over 2,800 ideas from the Stanford community in 37 white papers that address issues including education, research, sustainability and community outreach.

After Tessier-Lavigne delivered a presentation on the vision, he and Drell fielded audience questions on topics ranging from the vision’s sustainability initiatives to budgetary concerns related to the long-range planning process.

“I think if you start with the attitude of a constrained budget, you get constrained ideas,” Drell said in response to a question about cost of long-range planning. “When you start with the vision of where this institution needs to be in 10 or 15 or 20 years, you get big ideas, and big ideas will generate big resources.”

The Stanford Vision is captured in four “Cardinal Points”: Mission & Values, Education, Research and Community.

Under Mission & Values, the pair highlighted initiatives to promote technology and research ethics, as well as greater community engagement. Specific goals include increased community center support, a new postdoctoral program to increase faculty diversity, financial aid expansion and increased enrollment.

Under Education, Tessier-Lavigne and Drell stressed an improved academic advising system and the development of a revised residential life plan. The Research point drew attention to the “Stanford as a Lab” initiative, as well as ways to leverage artificial intelligence across all fields.

Finally, the Community point underscored affordability issues, such as increased financial assistance for graduate students with children, an increased minimum salary for postdocs and expanded remote work options for staff members.

Need-blind aid for international students

Tessier-Lavigne announced that Stanford’s Admission office will “go down the path” to become need-blind for international applicants.

Though Tessier-Lavigne conceded that the initiative “cannot happen overnight” because of financial constraints, he said that the University has a responsibility to move toward this policy change.

“It’s something we want to do, and it’s something that we need to do,” he said. “If we don’t prioritize it, it won’t happen, which is why we are prioritizing today.”

Dean of Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid Richard Shaw expressed support for the long-term initiative.

“Accomplishing this objective to become need-blind for international students will bring us to a point of total access and support without any consideration of [one’s] ability to pay,” he wrote in a statement to The Daily following the announcement. “It will take some time to build the endowment but this upfront commitment incorporated in the plan is a strong positive for Stanford.”

Following the revelation of the vision, many student activists also reported that they are happy with the announcement. Hamzeh Daoud ’20, who in March co-authored a petition that demanded need-blind admission for international applicants, said that Tessier-Lavigne’s push for the need-blind admission policy is “beyond exciting.”

“Setting the goal of implementing a need-blind admission policy as one of the highest priorities Stanford will focus on moving forward in the long-range planning process is one step closer to actualizing a Stanford that is inclusive to everyone, especially FLI students around the world,” he wrote in a statement to The Daily. “The international Stanford student experience should not be exclusive to those who are comfortable enough to not ask for aid. This is a step in the right direction, and I couldn’t be prouder.”

Celia Chen ’20, another co-author of the petition, lauded the changes but added that Stanford can make additional reform to financial aid programs in the more immediate future.

“It’s truly heartening that the university listened to students’ voices and responded to the demand of student activism,” she wrote in a statement to The Daily. “Besides the long-term change, we will also work on immediate policy change, such as increasing the flexibility of financial aid status in [response] to students’ changing financial situation.”

Affordability and diversity

Tessier-Lavigne described affordability as a “clear and present danger to the future of the University,” and emphasized that Stanford must take “decisive steps” to mitigate the issue.

He proposed a series of immediate actions, as well as near-, mid-, and long-term projects the University intends to enact under the Vision.

“We are not underestimating the threat to Stanford of the affordability crisis,” he said.

Tessier-Lavigne also emphasized the importance of increasing faculty diversity and formally endorsed the creation of a new program to promote postdoc diversity to help realize this goal. He described this program as a “pipeline” for recruiting faculty to both the University and other academic institutions.

“We cannot rest until we excel at recruiting more diverse talent,” he said. “This includes being systematic about applying best practices to diversify our community.”

To support postdocs specifically, the University will raise the minimum salary for postdoctoral scholars from $53,400 to $60,000 in 2019.

Tessier-Lavigne emphasized campus inclusivity as an additional goal to be pursued in tandem with diversified faculty recruitment.

“Just as we must excel at recruiting diverse talent, we must excel at being an inclusive community where everyone feels they belong,” Tessier-Lavigne remarked.

Additional goals

Tessier-Lavigne also announced increased support for community centers, which have previously faced funding challenges and issues with space needs.

Per the vision articulated Thursday, increasing undergraduate enrollment is also a priority of Stanford’s. Tessier-Lavigne said that the University is looking to increase undergraduate class sizes by between 10 and 20 percent over a period of around 10 years, but with around a three-year “lead-in period” to build additional residences.

“We want to make sure that our systems for bringing in and supporting diverse students are really effective before we start increasing the class size from what it is right now,” he said.

Referring to the Vision’s “Stanford as a Lab” initiative, Tessier-Lavigne described the sustainability goals to go 80 percent carbon-free by 2025 and zero-waste by 2030 as “feasible but aggressive.”

According to Drell, the 80 percent mark was determined as the most “reasonable” number given the costs associated with such sustainability measures.

“A question we might have gotten was, ‘Why only 80 percent by 2025?’ So just in case somebody out there was going to ask that question: We looked at the goals. They’re both achievable, but they’re achievable at a reasonable price,” she said. “We could have chosen other goals, but they then required more investment.”

In their “Notes from the Quad” blog post, Tessier-Lavigne and Drell emphasized scope as a main challenge in the execution of their Vision.

“The biggest challenge, I think, has been to really make an open, engaged and inclusive process work effectively,” Tessier-Lavigne said. “What was so gratifying was that people came into the process and wanted to participate. But we ended up with 2,800 ideas: that’s a lot to work through and to digest.”

He described the four Area Steering Groups that helped devise the original long-range planning white papers as being instrumental in the process of organizing the 2,800 community submissions.

Tessier-Lavigne also stressed international messaging as a challenge, and said that Stanford hasn’t yet “messaged [its] engagement with the world.” On this matter, he pointed to the importance of working with external communities “as peers and partners, not as people bringing solutions to others.”

“We need to be bold, as I said, but we need to be humble as well,” he said.

Looking ahead

Moving forward, Tessier-Lavigne and Drell aim to implement a series of more immediate policies, including increased financial aid for graduate students and students with children. Last week, they announced an increase in the minimum postdoctoral salary from $53,400 to $60,000, which Tessier-Lavigne described as “a first attempt to address the affordability challenge.”

To execute more long-term plans, Tessier-Lavigne and Drell will appoint official Design Teams over the summer, and will work with these teams to develop action plans during the 2018-19 school year. Additional teams will also help push forth major projects such as the Housing Task Force and a Master Space Plan for redesigning communal campus spaces.

They emphasized accountability measures throughout the planning process, adding that the design teams’ progress will be tracked on the Vision’s main website.

After design teams’ plans are approved by the Executive Cabinet, University leadership will assist them in securing the necessary resources for implementation.

“All of this is happening against a backdrop of diminished trust of institutions, including universities,” Tessier-Lavigne said. “But we believe that Stanford’s can-do spirit, our optimism [and] our track record of innovation position us strongly to help society navigate this dynamic future in order to accelerate benefits and address challenges.”

Following Tessier-Lavigne’s presentation and the President-Provost Q&A session, Nannerl O. Keohane, Jonathan Jansen and Hans N. Weiler — who were former presidents of universities around the world, but all of whom have a connection to Stanford — addressed faculty governance and the current state of universities more generally. Keohane, Jansen and Weiler had planned to field audience questions at the end of their speeches, but ran out of time.

Tessier-Lavigne and Drell will also host two community discussions in the coming weeks, on May 30 at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and on June 5 at the University’s Porter Drive offices.

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Courtney Douglas at ccdouglas ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Kairos house staff fired for ‘unreported’ incident https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/09/entire-kairos-house-staff-fired-for-unreported-incident/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/09/entire-kairos-house-staff-fired-for-unreported-incident/#respond Thu, 10 May 2018 06:36:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140856 Kairos has fired its entire house staff in connection with “an incident that went unreported” in October, multiple sources have confirmed. All staff members have since been ordered to move out of the house.

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No house staff members remain in Row house Kairos following the revelation of “an incident that went unreported” in October, multiple sources have confirmed to The Daily. As of Wednesday night, all staff members have been fired, excluding one member who quit. All staff members have since been ordered to move out of the house.

A resident reported the October incident to Residential Education (ResEd) this month, multiple sources said.

Student Affairs Director of Communications and Web Strategy Elaine Ray wrote in a statement to The Daily that the University would not offer details on the specific events that led to the staff members’ dismissal. However, she did emphasize that residential staff members are required to report “certain behaviors” to Residence Deans, namely incidents that endanger students.

“Failing to report such incidents in a timely fashion may not only prolong potential harm to the victim or victims, but can also negatively impact the residential community while compromising the trust between student and professional staff,” Ray wrote.

Ray said that the staff members who were dismissed are being reassigned to other residences on campus for the remainder of the quarter, and that they will not lose their housing.

Some have expressed concern that with staff making up nearly a fifth of the house, multiple chores and tasks associated with the house will not be completed, given that as a co-op house, all managerial duties are conducted by residents.

Ray said that ResEd is working with residents of the co-op to “mitigate interruptions,” specifically related to food service. Ray also said that ResEd has reached out to students affected by the change.

“Residential Education is committed to preserving the co-op tradition in Kairos and ensuring the overall co-op community continues to thrive,” Ray wrote.

Staff members are currently appealing the decision to ResEd.

The Daily has reached out to Kairos house staff for comment on this matter.

 

This story will be updated as more details come to light.

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Courtney Douglas at ccd4 ‘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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Police investigating ‘suspicious items’ at Cordura Hall, evacuated surrounding area https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/02/police-investigating-suspicious-items-at-cordura-hall-evacuated-area/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/02/police-investigating-suspicious-items-at-cordura-hall-evacuated-area/#respond Mon, 02 Apr 2018 15:26:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138593 According to an Alert SU notice, police are currently investigating "suspicious items" at Cordura Hall, and have evacuated the area while they conduct their inspection.

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Update: April 2, 2018, 10:05 a.m.: The “suspicious items” originally under investigation were found to be not dangerous. They were part of a research project associated with Stanford Online High School. Cardura Hall has been re-opened. 

According to an Alert SU notice, police are currently investigating “suspicious items” at Cordura Hall, and have evacuated the area while they conduct their inspection.

 

This article will be updated.

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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University admission rate drops to 4.3 percent for Class of 2022 https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/30/university-admission-rate-drops-to-4-3-percent-for-class-of-2022/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/30/university-admission-rate-drops-to-4-3-percent-for-class-of-2022/#respond Sat, 31 Mar 2018 00:25:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138511 Stanford announced on Friday the admission of 1,290 students to the Class of 2022. These students, joined by the 750 who were accepted under the restrictive early action program in December, make up a total of 2,040 total students admitted to the incoming class. At 4.3 percent, this year’s admission rate is the lowest in Stanford’s history, down from 4.65 percent last year.

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Stanford announced on Friday the admission of 1,290 students to the Class of 2022. These students, joined by the 750 who were accepted under the restrictive early action program in December, make up a total of 2,040 total students admitted to the incoming class. At 4.3 percent, this year’s admission rate is the lowest in Stanford’s history, down from 4.65 percent last year.

The University received a total of 47,450 applications, topping last year’s number by over 3,000 applications as the largest in the school’s history.

“The incredible strength of the students applying to Stanford is simply awesome, and all candidates who applied will have wonderful choices in higher education,” said Richard Shaw, dean of admission and financial aid, in an interview with Stanford News.

This year’s proportion of accepted students who are the first in their families to attend a four-year college is up from last year as well, at 18.3 percent. Admits to the incoming class come from all 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. International students from 63 countries represent 11.4 percent of the admitted class.

65 percent of admits expressed a primary interest in Humanities and Sciences Programs, while 30 percent leaned toward Engineering. 3.5 percent were interested in Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences, with the rest remaining undecided.

All admits will have until May 1 to accept the University’s offer.

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Police: Following sexual assault of high school runner in broad daylight, armed suspect remains at large https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/28/following-sexual-assault-of-high-school-runner-in-broad-daylight-armed-suspect-remains-at-large/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/28/following-sexual-assault-of-high-school-runner-in-broad-daylight-armed-suspect-remains-at-large/#respond Thu, 29 Mar 2018 01:29:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138502 Around 1:45 p.m. Wednesday, a man armed with a handgun sexually assaulted a high-school aged female jogger near the intersection of Arastradero Road and Deer Creek Road in the Los Altos area, according to a press statement released by the Palo Alto police. The man also held the victim at gunpoint. As of Wednesday evening, the suspect remains at large.

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Around 1:45 p.m. Wednesday, a man armed with a handgun sexually assaulted a high school-aged female jogger near the intersection of Arastradero Road and Deer Creek Road in the Los Altos area, according to a press statement released by the Palo Alto police. The man also held the victim at gunpoint. As of Wednesday evening, the suspect remains at large.

Someone passing by the intersection made an immediate 911 call reporting the assault, according to the report.

After the authorities arrived to the scene, the victim was transported to the hospital, and is in stable condition.

According to the preliminary investigation by the Palo Alto police, the victim was jogging westward along the path running parallel to Arastradero Road. According to a press release by the Palo Alto police, “the suspect emerged from the greenbelt and pulled the victim off of the path,” and proceeded to assault her.

Afterwards, the suspect ran from the scene of the assault, and the victim sought help from a passersby.

With the assistance of deputies from the Stanford Department of Public Safety, officers and a canine from the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, and officers and a helicopter from the California Highway Patrol, members of the Palo Alto police searched the area, but were unable to locate the suspect.

It is unknown whether he had access to a vehicle parked in the nearby vicinity.

The young woman described the suspect as “a male in his thirties, possibly of Filipino descent, about 5’10” tall, wearing a black sweatshirt with a bear logo on it with a white and red border,” according to the press release. He was wearing gray baggy pants and black sneakers, and was armed with a handgun.

Later Wednesday evening, Palo Alto police announced on Twitter that their immediate search for the suspect had ended, and that they believe he is no longer in the area. The investigation into this incident is ongoing.

This article has been updated to reflect that the police search for the suspect concluded Wednesday evening. 

 

Contact Courtney Douglas at ccd4 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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History conference draws fire for featuring 30 white men as speakers https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/17/all-male-history-conference-stirs-controversy-over-lack-of-diversity/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/17/all-male-history-conference-stirs-controversy-over-lack-of-diversity/#respond Sat, 17 Mar 2018 20:07:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138447 30 white male historians made up the body of speakers at the Applied History conference at Stanford earlier this month, stirring controversy regarding the event’s lack of diversity.

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30 white male historians made up the body of speakers at the Applied History conference at Stanford earlier this month, stirring controversy regarding the event’s lack of diversity.

The event, organized by Hoover Institution senior fellow Niall Ferguson, featured 12 sessions spanning a wide variety of topics, with titles such as “Is Trumpism Merely Populism revisited?” and “Same As It Ever Was: The History of Inequality and Mobility.”

On Wednesday, Howard University in Washington history professor Ana Lucia Araujo posted a tweet criticizing the conference, prompting public outcry against the event on social media.

“This goes for the GUINNESS BOOK of the century!” she wrote, adding a screenshot of the event’s roster as evidence. “What a shame.”

History conference draws fire for featuring 30 white men as speakers
(FANGZHOU LIU/The Stanford Daily)

In an email statement to The Daily, Ferguson said that he regretted not inviting more women to speak at the event.

“I have no doubt that there are many talented female historians whom I should have invited,” he wrote. “I reproach myself for not knowing them and not having done more to get to know them.”

Ferguson reported that just four out of 19 individuals invited to present papers at the conference were women, and that they were unable to attend due to other commitments. Of those four, two were women of color. The presenters were invited in addition to the event speakers, not all of whom spoke on their own papers.

According to the event’s website, the only female speaker at the conference was Mary Sarotte, who chaired a session called “The History of the Future.” 20 out of the 87 people in attendance at the event were women, said University spokesperson Lisa Lapin.

“Everybody was keenly aware that it was too white and too male,” Ferguson said in an interview with The New York Times, citing that the problem was “explicitly discussed” prior to the event.

At the same time, he defended the conference in an email statement to The Daily, arguing that “much of the controversy on social media is based on a series of false assumptions about the intention of the event.”

Referring to the titles of the conference’s 12 sessions, several of which are phrased as questions, Ferguson said, “They are mainly questions about economics, politics, diplomacy, [and] war. As anyone who works in a modern history department will confirm, the majority of scholars who work in these sub-fields (which have been much depleted in recent decades) tend to be male.”

Stanford history professor and head of the department’s diversity committee Priya Satia contested this claim in an interview with The New York Times, arguing that while fields like science and technology tend to be male-dominated, history is not.

“Given how prevalent women are in the history department, you’d have to try really hard to come up with a roster of speakers that looks like that,” she said.

Ferguson said that since his move to Stanford just under two years ago, “only a small number” of history department members communicated with him personally, “much less to welcome [him].”

As of Thursday, the main website for the event has been taken down.

Ferguson has recently drawn attention for his leadership role in organizing the Cardinal Conversations speaker series, which is aimed at broadening the spectrum of political discourse at Stanford. The series has drawn widespread controversy on campus for its roster of speakers including social scientist Charles Murray, who faced campus protest for his appearance.  

In his email, Ferguson reflected on the criticism of the conference.

“If any good has come of all this negative publicity, perhaps I shall now get to know [more female historians],” Ferguson wrote. “Or perhaps the result will instead be a boycott of future events I organize. We shall see.”

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Harvard professor retires following 18 sexual misconduct allegations, including one by Stanford professor Terry Karl https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/06/harvard-professor-retires-following-18-sexual-misconduct-allegations-including-one-by-stanford-professor-terry-karl/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/06/harvard-professor-retires-following-18-sexual-misconduct-allegations-including-one-by-stanford-professor-terry-karl/#respond Wed, 07 Mar 2018 00:03:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137862 On Tuesday, high-profile Harvard professor of government Jorge Dominguez announced his resignation and retirement following a stream of 18 sexual misconduct allegations against him, including one involving Stanford professor of political science and Latin American studies Terry Karl. Harvard placed Dominguez on administrative leave on Sunday evening, according to The Crimson.

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On Tuesday, high-profile Harvard professor of government Jorge Dominguez announced his resignation and retirement following a stream of 18 sexual misconduct allegations against him, including one involving Stanford professor of political science and Latin American studies Terry Karl. Harvard placed Dominguez on administrative leave on Sunday evening, according to The Crimson.

In his statement, Dominguez wrote that he will retire at the semester’s end, and that he is currently neither teaching nor involved in any administrative duties at Harvard.

Dominguez’s alleged misconduct spans nearly 40 years. He faces complaints from graduate students, undergraduates, faculty and staff at Harvard who said he engaged in inappropriate kissing, touching and conversation, as reported last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“There are so many derailed women in this story, there were so many women who could not pursue the passion that they had [as a result of Dominguez’s conduct] – there were undergraduates who were very badly damaged,” Karl said in an interview with The Daily.

According to the Chronicle, Harvard suspended Dominguez from administrative duties for three years in 1983, when he was found guilty of “serious misconduct” against Karl, who was then an assistant professor of government.

At the time, Dominguez was Karl’s senior colleague who worked in the same field. He was tenured, while she was not. Karl said he sexually harassed her repeatedly for two years by forcing her to engage in unwanted kisses and groping her with his hand up her skirt, among other unwanted sexual advances. She added that he disregarded repeated verbal and written pleas to stop.

Karl eventually left Harvard to teach at Stanford, where she became a tenured professor.

In an email to The Washington Post, Karl wrote, “A quiet retirement is unacceptable. After more than three decades of harassment, [Harvard] must carry out a full, fair and transparent investigation of this professor’s conduct, and there must be clear and visible consequences.”

She also suggested that Harvard is in part responsible for Dominguez’s continued misconduct.

“Harvard … owes a transparent explanation for his continued promotion to positions of greater power when the university knew or should have known that his conduct was an abuse of power,” she wrote. “This conduct created a hostile environment for decades, affecting women subject to his authority.”

According to The Crimson, Harvard Faculty of the Arts and Sciences Dean Michael Smith sent an email to students on Tuesday stating that Dominguez’s retirement “does not change the full and fair process of review” regarding the accusations made against him.

“What I hope is that this will be a [sufficient] tipping point at Harvard, [and] that Harvard might be able to take the lead in developing best practices that might create a more welcoming environment for all kinds of students,” Karl said.

Karl added that while she has not been contacted by Harvard administrators about the recent developments regarding Dominguez, she has received an outpouring of written support from students at the university.

“I’m heartened by the way this younger generation of students really understands that it is their right to have a hostile-free environment, that it is their right not to worry about walking into a professor’s office and being grabbed or groped, and that it is their right to hold universities accountable until this environment is fully created,” she said.

In the years after the 1983 incident, Dominguez held a variety of positions at Harvard, including vice provost for international affairs, director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, faculty associate of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and faculty dean of Leverett House, a student residence.

Dominguez, who is 72 years old, received both his M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard. He began teaching at Harvard in 1972 and went on to become a tenured professor in 1979.

Dominguez joins a list of college professors accused of sexual misconduct since Oct. 2017, including former Stanford English professors Jay Fliegelman, who is now deceased, and Franco Moretti.

“Until universities send the correct signal – which is that there’s no room for predators, there’s no room for abuse of power, and that we will open our doors so that all students, all faculty, all staff feel comfortable, and do not feel as though they’re working in a hostile environment – until that time, all universities have work to do,” Karl said.  

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Holden Foreman at hs4man21 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Provost releases Stanford’s first Annual Title IX/Sexual Harassment Report https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/28/provost-releases-stanfords-first-annual-title-ixsexual-harassment-report/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/28/provost-releases-stanfords-first-annual-title-ixsexual-harassment-report/#respond Wed, 28 Feb 2018 08:45:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137501 On Tuesday morning, Provost Persis Drell released Stanford’s first Annual Title IX/Sexual Harassment Report. The 16-page document catalogues 190 reported incidents of sexual harassment, sexual violence and other unwanted sexual conduct involving students, staff and faculty over the previous academic year, including case outcomes but not revealing details.

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On Tuesday morning, Provost Persis Drell released Stanford’s first Annual Title IX/Sexual Harassment Report. The 16-page document catalogues 190 reported incidents of sexual harassment, sexual violence and other unwanted sexual conduct involving students, staff and faculty over the previous academic year, including case outcomes but not revealing details.

The four-part report, which was prepared by the Office of Institutional Equity and Access, documents all complaints filed to Stanford between Sept. 1, 2016 and Aug. 31, 2017. Of the 190 reports filed, 58 allegations pertained to workplace sexual harassment and 33 were filed as “student setting” sexual harassment. There were 20 stalking reports filed and 29 “nonconsensual intercourse” reports filed.

“The report we are issuing today shows that prohibited sexual conduct happens throughout our community at Stanford,” Drell wrote in a statement announcing the release. “We all must join together as a community to put an end to this.”

Despite the prevalence of sexual misconduct that the data indicate, incidents of such misconduct on campus are likely underreported, Drell acknowledged.

“I believe the actual numbers of incidents of wrongful sexual conduct are probably larger than are being reported to us,” she wrote.

Drell said that the report will expand to include other data about sexual misconduct in its future iterations and invited community input on its contents.

Report overview

The report categorizes cases by type of alleged conduct and by the University affiliation of complainants and respondents. It also includes summaries of case outcomes, including details on individuals who have been sanctioned for their conduct.

Additionally, the report includes updates on cases resolved via the pilot Student Title IX Process, which has been effective since 2016, operates on the “preponderance of the evidence” standard and requires unanimous three-person vote to find an alleged assailant responsible. 

Drell added that the report does not divulge details about particular cases out of respect for affected individuals’ privacy.

Complainants overwhelmingly identified as female, while a majority of respondents identified as male. Furthermore, complainants were most often categorized as undergraduate students, graduate students or academic staff, while there was greater variation among University affiliation of respondents.

Last May, Drell released a progress report containing data on Title IX cases investigated by the University under the first 15 months of the pilot Student Title IX Process. The current report contains summaries of case outcomes, including those cases that were brought forward before Sept. 1, 2016 but were resolved within the timeframe of the past academic year.

These case outcomes address data for different types of misconduct, including “sexual harassment in the workplace or academic environment,” sexual harassment related to a student’s living environment, nonconsensual intercourse, nonconsensual touching, stalking, relationship violence, retaliation and violation of University directive.

Cases that were raised during the 2016-2017 timeframe that remained under investigation as of Aug. 31, 2017, will be addressed in next year’s report.

Outcome data

The report organized cases by type of misconduct. Within each type of misconduct, outcomes were classified into seven categories: formal investigation, University intervention, determination, inquiry, matters involving external party respondents, “no charge” and “not enough information to proceed.”

“Formal investigation” describes an official University review of allegations, while “University intervention” is described as “an action to address a concern without a formal investigation.” Reported consequences for alleged respondents found responsible included separation from the University, warnings and being “barred from further engagement with students,” among others.

The report cited a total of 58 formal investigations, with 32 of those resulting in findings of a policy violation. Some cases that involved non-hearing resolutions resulted in sanctions against the respondents but not an official finding of a policy violation.

The “no charge” outcome occurs when “a reasonable decision-maker or panel could not conclude by a preponderance of the evidence that a policy violation occurred” following a full investigation.

“Determination” is a decision by the University not to proceed with an investigation because an allegation, even if true, would not be a policy violation, and inquiry consists of a review of available information to decide whether a formal investigation is warranted. Three instances of determination were cited in the report.

While the University does not have direct disciplinary authority over matters involving “external party respondents,” or non-Stanford affiliates, it may issue a variety of consequences including campus bans and restricted access to campus programs. Stanford may also provide “safety planning,” such as housing changes or assistance obtaining a restraining order, to complainants. A total of 27 incidents in the report were classified as “matters involving external-party respondents.”

In seven instances of misconduct that involved respondents not affiliated with Stanford, Stanford “took action against the external party” through campus bans and other measures.

Case outcomes were labeled “not enough information to proceed” for reports that “lack detail and remain unverified despite attempts to contact the reported complainant.” Fifty-three cases were categorized under this label.   

An ongoing project

In her letter to the campus community, Drell pointed to a number of new sexual harassment and violence prevention initiatives at Stanford, including a committee to address the controversial campus climate surveya sophomore-oriented educational program on healthy relationships and the Office of Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse (SARA) Education & Response’s student ambassador program, among others.

She added that she expects the report “to become more robust in the coming years as [the University continues] evolving the ways in which [it collects] information.”

Specifically, she cited the Stanford community’s expressed interest in knowing more about the location of incidents of sexual misconduct experienced by individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender non-conforming, non-binary and queer.

In its Feb. 13 meeting, the 19th Undergraduate Senate passed a resolution to improve University efforts to collect location data related to campus sexual assault.

According to Drell, the University is working to gather location data so it may be included in future reports.

Drell also emphasized transparency as a core element of the document’s substance and purpose.

“The goal is to provide the Stanford community with information to assess where we stand today and how the university responds to reported concerns of sexual harassment, sexual violence and other unwanted sexual conduct,” she said.  

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Courtney Douglas at ccd4 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford releases white papers synthesizing long-range planning submissions https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/02/stanford-releases-white-papers-synthesizing-long-range-planning-submissions/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/02/stanford-releases-white-papers-synthesizing-long-range-planning-submissions/#respond Fri, 02 Feb 2018 08:12:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1136040 The 37 papers represent the efforts of four steering groups to compile high-level summaries of the over 2,800 ideas and proposals submitted by faculty, staff, students and other members of the University community at large.

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On Thursday morning, Stanford’s long-range planning Area Steering Group (ASG) white papers were officially released and made viewable to Stanford affiliates.

The 37 papers represent the efforts of four ASGs to compile high-level summaries of the over 2,800 ideas and proposals submitted by faculty, staff, students and other members of the University community at large. The long-range planning process, launched early last year, seeks to crowdsource thoughts for Stanford’s future.

Stanford releases white papers synthesizing long-range planning submissions
Long-range planning papers released (Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News Service)

“The white papers demonstrate the depth of the University community’s engagement with the long-range planning process, the care with which the area steering groups have reviewed the proposals and our community’s commitment to making meaningful contributions to help solve large global problems,” University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne said in an interview with Stanford News.

The campus community now has a 30 day comment period to submit written feedback. The president and provost also plan to host University-wide discussions.

Content highlights

The four ASGs —  Education, Research, Community and Engagement Beyond Our University —  wrote documents covering a wide range of topics including diversity, educational equity and outreach, housing affordability, sustainability and more.

With over 100 members across the four groups, including both undergraduate and graduate students, staff, faculty and postdoctoral scholars, the ASGs helped organize, frame and editorialize the submitted ideas into a collective framework for Stanford’s future. These papers will ultimately inform the operational decisions made by the University’s Executive Cabinet as it processes the proposals in consultation with the Board of Trustees. The Executive Cabinet is comprised of the president, provost, deans, vice provosts and the directors of SLAC and the Hoover Institution.

The white papers are the product of hours of hard work by the area steering groups and represent a synthesis of the thousands of ideas collected,” Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) President Justice Tention ’18 said.

Notably, the documents address the expansion of financial aid to provide need-blind admission for international students and increased educational accessibility for low-income applicants, as well as a re-imagining of the broad curriculum to increase undergraduate exposure to the humanities. Also emphasized were the need to instill a culture of inclusion and equal treatment, public service to both the local and global community and new research initiatives.

In a blog post, Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Persis Drell pointed to a number of overarching themes across each of the white papers, including “affordability, diversity and inclusion, health and well-being, and institutional accountability.” They added that sustainability was such a significant issue among the papers’ stakeholders that all four steering groups contributed to a paper on the subject.

“We wanted to ask everyone to dream big,” said Megan Pierson ’82, chief of staff to President Marc Tessier-Lavigne. “There [are] a lot of innovative ideas about how … Stanford [should] do things differently, and we want to be good stewards of [our] resources [and] how we can [use them] effectively.”

In their blog post, Tessier-Lavigne and Drell addressed the fact that several proposals express criticism of current practices at Stanford. They said they welcome such feedback and hope to use it to “create a collective vision for the future of Stanford.”

John Zhao ’18, a student representative on the Engagement Beyond Our University ASG, said the University should incorporate feedback from the white papers into its operational processes and investments.

“There is a sense that Stanford should not simply rely on its research as a way to address challenges, but to act responsibly through its investment decisions and operations on campus,” Zhao wrote in a statement to The Daily. “For example, rather than just doing research on the impacts of private prisons on incarcerated individuals, there was a call for Stanford to divest from companies that are implicated in the prison industrial complex.”

In an effort to address top concerns in areas such as housing affordability, employee compensation and institutional change, the Provost’s Office has already overseen a number of initiatives over the past few months. The University is currently working to implement flexible work arrangements to mitigate long commutes and lack of affordable local housing, as well as a project to improve student-faculty advising relationships for graduate students.

“We believe this process will make Stanford better and stronger as an academic institution,” wrote Tessier-Lavigne and Drell.

Strategy

Each submission to the long-range planning process was read by at least two ASG members per group, with no proposals excluded from the review process. Following ASG review, all proposals were forwarded to the Executive Cabinet, which works in collaboration with the Board of Trustees.

Pierson emphasized that each steering group worked independently from Executive Cabinet members and — with the exception of the jointly-crafted sustainability paper — from each other. Though the committees produced white papers with topical commonalities, she said, each group addressed recurring themes, such as equity and diversity, from their own specific angles.

“The net gain from that is we have four groups approach this in their own distinctive way for their own areas, which I think is really wonderful,” she said.

The Executive Cabinet will continue to review the white papers to construct a unified framework while the 30-day comment period is ongoing.

Both ASSU executives, Tention and Vicki Niu ’18, participated as ex-officio members of the Our Community steering group. Last spring, the pair presented to stakeholders on issues Tention described as “critical to students and the priorities of the ASSU.”

In a statement to The Daily, Tention said the white papers will ensure the policies, institutional changes and projects that the long-range planning process ultimately yields will reflect community members’ ideas.

We appreciate the transparency of the President’s office in releasing the white papers in their entirety,” he wrote. “These white papers will hold the executive committee accountable in ensuring that Stanford’s long range plan addresses the desires and concerns brought about [by] the broader community.”

Our Community steering group member Isabelle Foster ’18 advocated the continued involvement of Stanford students in the long-range planning process.

I think that it is encouraging that students have been brought on to the initial steering groups and were solicited for feedback,” she wrote in a statement to The Daily. “I hope that students will continue to be involved in the later stages as well.”

Zhao, however, criticized the long range planning process for its exclusivity on the committee level, citing the University’s process of selecting students to serve as part of the steering groups.

“I was able to apply to join the committee because I had access to limited information during a short time window,” he wrote in a statement to The Daily, saying that fewer than 10 students were selected to serve in total. “It seems unlikely that so few undergraduates could accurately represent the whole student body. While serving on a committee, I felt like my voice as a student was being tokenized and not being genuinely considered to the same level.”

Zhao also questioned the originality of proposed changes that the steering groups hoped to garner.

“Ultimately, many of the ideas submitted through this process are not new,” Zhao said. “Students have been asking and waiting for a while now. Hopefully, the Stanford administration will stick to their word and really listen to the community’s ideas.”

 

Contact Courtney Douglas at ccd4 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Resigning amid Title IX investigation, psychologist joins Stanford Medicine https://stanforddaily.com/2017/12/08/resigning-amid-title-ix-investigation-psychologist-joins-stanford-medicine/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/12/08/resigning-amid-title-ix-investigation-psychologist-joins-stanford-medicine/#respond Fri, 08 Dec 2017 21:01:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1134552 Emanuele Castano, who was previously co-chair of the psychology department at The New School for Social Research (NSSR), resigned from the NSSR in October one day before the planned release of the decision in his Title IX case. The student who reported sexual misconduct and harassment was previously in a relationship with him as an undergraduate.

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Psychology researcher Emanuele Castano joined Stanford Medicine as a visiting professor this November after resigning from a tenured professorship at another institution amid a Title IX sexual misconduct investigation.

Castano, who was previously co-chair of the psychology department at The New School for Social Research (NSSR), resigned from the NSSR in October one day before the planned release of the decision in his Title IX case. The student who reported sexual misconduct and harassment was previously in a relationship with him as an undergraduate.

Resigning amid Title IX investigation, psychologist joins Stanford Medicine
Castano’s office in The New School, which still bore his nameplate at the time of publication. NSSR said it does not comment on current or former employees. (Courtesy of source).

According to University spokesperson E.J. Miranda, Castano’s role at Stanford is unpaid and does not include teaching responsibilities. Instead, Castano is a research collaborator with the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE); his biography on the research center’s website describes him as a tenured professor at The New School. University Communications contacted Stanford’s Title IX office about the allegations against Castano after The Daily notified the University Tuesday night.

On Friday night, shortly after this story was posted, University spokesperson Lisa Lapin told The Daily that Castano’s visiting professorship has been suspended while Stanford investigates.

After learning of Castano’s recent move to Stanford, several students from the psychology department at the NSSR have spoken out about the investigation and what they describe as Castano’s long-standing reputation for pursuing and harassing students.

According to five graduate students in the department, all of whom asked to remain anonymous, fellow students who have taken classes with Castano said he made lewd comments, rubbed students’ shoulders inappropriately and flirted frequently with female undergraduate and graduate students during class. A former graduate student of Castano’s also recalled feeling uncomfortable during class and described it as an “unprofessional” environment.

Other rumors that Castano had sexual and romantic relationships with both undergraduate and graduate students circulated prior to the investigation against him. A NSSR psychology Ph.D. student who spoke to The Daily said she was not surprised to hear about the investigation – something others from the school echoed.

“Emanuele has always been known to be someone who has sex with students,” said the student, who requested anonymity for career reasons.

The student who filed the Title IX complaint against Castano in July released to The Daily an official letter about the case from Jennifer Francone, assistant vice president of student equity and access at The New School.

The letter, dated Oct. 17, informed the student of Castano’s official resignation from the NSSR, stating that a no-contact directive would remain in place as she finished her studies and adding that “in light of Professor Castano’s resignation, we consider this matter closed.” Other than this letter, the student says she did not receive any official notification of the outcome of the investigation.

The student added that her formal complaint included charges of threats and manipulation against Castano. Immediately following her initial report, she stated that Castano repeatedly called her from several different Italian phone numbers. She said that he called her from Italian numbers knowing she might respond because she has family members residing in the country and that he blocked the digits of the phone numbers to get her to answer. When she did respond, she stated, he would harass her about Human Resources contacting him.

Castano did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Daily.

The reporting student’s story

According to the student who made the complaint, she first met Castano at the age of 18 as an undergraduate at The New School and had her first class with him during her sophomore year. She said she was sexually harassed by Castano during her final semester as an undergraduate this past spring, when she was 22.

She recounted that she became seriously ill with T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma after taking his class and joining his lab as an undergraduate researcher last year, going into remission for a period before becoming ill once again in her final semester. She emailed him to say she couldn’t make it to class one day during that semester, to which he responded saying he was sorry and asking if she wanted to have dinner with him and his child.

According to the student, after Castano’s child fell asleep, the professor asked her to stay up with him to finish watching the movie Pulp Fiction. She said that, at that point, she was intoxicated from the wine they had drunk during dinner as well as from marijuana that they had shared.

She recalled that Castano made a sexual advance toward her and that she didn’t hesitate because she felt pressured by the fact that he was not only her professor, advisor and boss, but also the co-chair of the psychology department. She added that she was unsure whether the encounter was consensual because she was under the influence.

“I was intoxicated, but from a legal standpoint I was conscious enough to not be considered sexually assaulted,” she said.

After that night, she returned to his home 15 to 20 times between March 6 and May 3 and occasionally slept over. She says that these instances included a mix of both consensual and nonconsensual sexual encounters with Castano.

During an early encounter, she reports that Castano didn’t ask for consent before penetrating her anally, and that he attempted to penetrate her anally on multiple later occasions despite her requests to the contrary. The student also said that Castano’s preference for restraining her during sex made her uncomfortable.

She added that she felt pressured to maintain a sexual relationship with him for academic reasons and because her income was dependent on babysitting his child.

“Everything I would do academically depended on his approval as chair of the department and as my advisor,” the student said.

According to the student, she found out in April that he was dating Namrata Goyal, a former Ph.D. student and current postdoctoral fellow at the NSSR, and confronted him about his habit of sleeping with students. She says that Castano responded by telling her that “these things happen in institutions all the time.” He reportedly told her that if she ever told the school about their relationship, she would be making his child fatherless as Castano would lose his job and have to move elsewhere. The student noted that she had formed a strong connection with Castano’s child, whom she had been babysitting for three years at that point.

“It was manipulation,” she said. “At the time it didn’t seem that way because he cooked me dinner, checked in on me daily regarding my health, offered to come to the hospital and took ‘care’ of me during a time I was scared.”

The last time she saw Castano was the night of May 2, she said, right before he left to teach in Italy.

That same summer, while the student was preparing to resume treatment for her illness, she received blood work results stating that she could not begin treatment because she had gotten pregnant. She recounted that she had not had sex with anyone else during that period of time, and reported the situation to Title IX after Castano denied responsibility when she tried to speak to him about it.

Growing concerns

In an email sent to psychology students in early September, Dean and Professor of Economics at the NSSR William Milberg announced that Castano was on leave and that William Hirst would be replacing him as the new co-chair of the psychology department.

The Ph.D. student quoted previously said that when she approached Castano’s office to get an administrative form signed, the psychology department’s secretary stated that he had been banned from campus and from having contact with his students while the investigation was ongoing. The student said she corroborated this information in August with several Ph.D. students working in Castano’s lab at the NSSR at the time, and that the students confirmed the investigation was under way.

Senior Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the NSSR Amy Malsin declined to address specific allegations against Castano, stating that “the university does not comment on current or former employees.”

“The New School has no tolerance for sexual harassment by any member of the university community,” Malsin wrote in an email to The Daily. “We take our responsibility in these matters very seriously and have clear policies and procedures which we follow thoroughly.”

In mid-September, several students in the New School’s psychology department approached the Title IX committee about the investigation, but were told that Castano would not be removed from his faculty position at the NSSR unless he demonstrated a pattern of sexual misconduct. Frustrated by what they saw as the administration’s lack of transparency on the investigation, a group of psychology Ph.D. students drafted a formal letter and addendum to the Title IX committee regarding the allegations against Castano.

The letter pressed the university to take stronger action against Castano and to establish clearer codes of conduct for faculty members given the “attempts … made at a diversion of this investigation and outright intimidation of students to prevent them from coming forward.” In particular, the letter alleged that a postdoctoral fellow – later identified to The Daily as Goyal by one of its writers – tried “to coerce students to sign affidavits that blame the victim.”

According to the student who reported Castano, a friend of hers as well as a fellow lab member were asked to write affidavits claiming her to be of “bad nature”; the Ph.D. student who co-authored the letter added that the affidavit claimed the reporting student was lying and mentally unstable. A student reported the incident to the Title IX office, the Ph.D. student said. But according to Joan Miller, a psychology professor and postdoctoral advisor to Goyal,  Goyal was never subject to an investigation.

In the fall of 2015, Goyal was hired as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychology. She currently holds this position and teaches several required graduate courses. According to Miller, Castano disclosed his relationship to Goyal to the school’s dean before her hire and recused himself from departmental decisions about Goyal, who was approved in a unanimous faculty vote.

By the Ph.D. student’s account, Castano and Goyal have denied being in a relationship while Goyal was a student. However, several students in the psychology department stated that it is an open secret among members of the department that their relationship began while she was a Ph.D. student in the department during his stint as co-chair.

Goyal is not returning to teach next semester; according to Miller, this is at Goyal’s own request. Both Goyal and the administration from The New School did not respond to The Daily’s request for comment on her involvement in the Title IX case and her role at NSSR next semester.

The New School’s official policy on sexual harassment states that “faculty members (and administrative staff) should be aware that any romantic involvement with students (or staff members who report to them) is considered inappropriate, and it might make them liable to formal action.”

In their email to the Title IX committee, the NSSR students said that they felt Goyal too was a “victim in the situation Dr. Castano created” and that their main aim to make clear “the harm students have experienced due to his poor judgment, abuse of power and manipulation.” The letter ultimately garnered 60 signatures of support from students within the psychology department.

The Ph.D. student quoted earlier added that students who used to work in Castano’s former lab declined to sign the letter, some out of loyalty to Goyal and others out of fear.

Administrative response

Psychology students concerned about Castano’s behavior and previous incidents of sexual harassment and assault at NSSR said that some administrators at NSSR have impeded reports and investigations.

Within days, Milberg responded to the letter in an email to all students, faculty and staff in the psychology department. In his message, he promised to “convene a meeting to facilitate an open and safe dialogue on issues that have been raised about the culture and climate of the Department” and assured that “the ongoing investigation into the allegations raised is being conducted in a full and fair manner.”

Shortly thereafter, department co-chairs William Hirst and Howard Steele jointly responded in an email arguing that “it would be wrong for us, as a representative of the school, to discuss or even convene a meeting to address the specifics of the complaint that has been filed against a faculty member.”

They also cited the “principle of … confidentiality for both complainant and respondent” under Title IX and the need to allow the investigation to occur “without evoking external pressures” that such a meeting might cause, adding that they feared public discussion prior to the investigation’s completion could harm its integrity. They advised that for the time being, faculty, students and staff should focus on developing avenues for open dialogue after the investigation’s closure rather than discussing the case directly.

A week after Hirst and Steele’s statement, Milberg announced a psychology department town hall meeting to be held on Oct. 19. But on Oct. 18, Milberg sent another email announcing Castano’s resignation from the university without specifying a reason. The town hall was still held but framed as a more general discussion about student concerns with the university administration, including Title IX issues.

A student who attended the town hall meeting said that that several students from the psychology department, including herself, came forward during the meeting to say they had experienced sexual harassment and assault from within the department.

She added that it isn’t just students who are affected.

“Professors fear speaking out against their superiors, just as students do,” the town hall attendee said. “The administration thrives on silencing students … [and] is concerned about [its] reputation.”

Another graduate student expressed a similar sentiment, saying that the department has had “complicated power dynamics, historically.” According to the Ph.D. student mentioned earlier in the article, there exists an unhealthy power structure among university faculty.

She specifically claimed that co-chair “Hirst is [and] was Emanuele [Castano]’s main ally and supporter.” She also said that after Hirst was appointed co-chair, “no one could talk to him about it due to his personal ties to Emanuele. The other faculty who have tenure and could speak out, even those that disapprove of Emanuele, didn’t.”

“A few longtime faculty members within [the department] protect and support Castano, and even implicitly or explicitly discourage people from speaking out,” remarked another graduate student in the psychology department. “[Bill Hirst] has been vocal in support of Castano, protecting him for many years.”

Hirst did not respond to The Daily’s request for comment regarding the aforementioned allegations.

Miller, however, defended Hirst in a statement to The Daily following this article’s publication, emphasizing in particular that Hirst avoided discussing Castano’s case with students not out of any “personal bias” but because he sought to uphold the confidentiality of an ongoing case.

All faculty members were told by the school administration “not to provide any information related to Professor Castano” or his investigation, Miller said.

The Ph.D. student added that two professors, Wendy D’Andrea and Doris Chang, were supportive of students during the investigation. According to Chang, there has been no official discussion among faculty about Castano’s behavior up to this point.

In an email to New School community members sent three days after this article’s posting, the president and provost of The New School said the university will be reviewing its Title IX policies, appointing a new Title IX leader and expanding its training on sexual misconduct.

Shortly after, the school’s Graduate Faculty Student Senate issued a statement calling the Castano’s investigation “completely mismanaged” and urging the university to issue a decision in his now-closed case. The senate also called on the school to review its administration’s handling of the matter and work to end “any type of abuse of power by any administrator, faculty, or other persons that hold a significant degree of institutional authority over any member of the New School community.”

“The email sent today signed by [the president and provost] does too little too late,” the statement reads. “Perhaps disclosing New School grievances to the media is the only way to make any changes and to make the administrative authorities hear us.”

Other allegations of misconduct

The Title IX investigation into Castano’s behavior comes just two years after the retirement of Marcel Kinsbourne, a formerly tenured professor in the same division of the psychology department as Castano who was a prominent neuroscientist. According to several students in the department, Kinsbourne was forced to retire after being investigated by the Title IX office for sexual harassment of several undergraduate and graduate students and faced no repercussions related to the investigation.

The students added that Kinsbourne’s history of sexual harassment was widely known among students at the time of the investigation, when Castano was co-chair of the department.

Kinsbourne did not respond to The Daily’s request for comment.

According to the aforementioned Ph.D. student, a victim of Kinsbourne’s harassment who was a graduate student of Kinsbourne’s at the time approached Castano (then department co-chair) to report concern over Kinsbourne’s behavior. Castano allegedly dismissed the complaint and expressed concern about how such allegations would look if they were to come out while he was co-chair. The victim then went directly to the dean of the undergraduate college, Stephanie Browner, and Kinsbourne retired shortly after.

Castano’s appointment at Stanford, along with news of the Title IX investigation against him, comes as two former Stanford professors — Jay Fliegelman Ph.D. 77, who is now deceased, and Franco Moretti, who is now retired — face public accusations of sexual assault and harassment. Like Fliegelman and Moretti, Castano is well-established in his field.

According to his biography on Stanford Medicine’s CCARE website, Castano has over 60 publications in “top tier scientific journals” and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the European Union and the International Committee of the Red Cross, among others. Like Moretti, he has also been featured in The New York Times, which detailed his studies on empathy in a front-page article. Just last week, Castano, Kinsbourne and Goyal published a paper together about a study they conducted on empathy and willingness to help others.

“I think it’s really important that students are starting to speak openly and honestly about their experiences in the program,” said Chang, the NSSR professor. “I’m concerned that they’ve experienced this oppressive culture in which they have felt so silenced. That goes against my values as a faculty member and the kinds of values that I’m trying to promote in the department.”

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Goyal was investigated by the Title IX committee at The New School. In fact, while a student reportedly took concerns about Goyal’s affidavit to Title IX, Goyal was not investigated.  The article now includes New School Psychology Professor Joan Miller’s statement that Goyal is leaving her post next semester at her own request. Castano also did not oversee Goyal’s hiring, as suggested in the initial version of the article; Castano recused himself from the hiring decision, which was voted on by faculty. The Daily regrets these errors.

Finally, this post has been updated to reflect that Stanford has suspended Castano while it investigates the allegations against him. The University told The Daily of the suspension shortly after this article’s posting. The article is also updated with communications that the president, provost and Graduate Faculty Student Senate of The New School made to the university’s community following publication, as well as with further comments  from Miller on the administration’s directive to all faculty not to discuss Castano’s case. 

 

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City officials request more time to review Stanford’s growth plan https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/30/city-officials-request-more-time-to-review-stanfords-growth-plan/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/30/city-officials-request-more-time-to-review-stanfords-growth-plan/#respond Thu, 30 Nov 2017 09:05:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1134158 City officials from Menlo Park and Palo Alto have requested an additional 60 days to evaluate the possible impacts of Stanford’s application for a renewed General Use Permit (GUP) as the upcoming Dec. 4 deadline for the official comment period approaches.

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City officials from Menlo Park and Palo Alto have requested an additional 60 days to evaluate the possible impacts of Stanford’s application for a renewed General Use Permit (GUP) as the upcoming Dec. 4 deadline for the official comment period approaches.

The new permit, if approved, would authorize the University to add up to 2.275 million square feet of academic space, 3,150 housing units and 40,000 square feet of additional building space over the next 17 years.

Santa Clara County Director of Planning and Development Kirk Girard has agreed to an extension of a few days, but city representatives worry that this will not be enough time to review the Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and process community input given the size and complexity of Stanford’s proposed expansion.

Several city council members, including Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, have expressed their support of a longer extension to conduct a thorough review of the GUP and Draft EIR.

“I think it’s smart to let all these issues come out now, so that they don’t come up in the 12th hour,” Simitian said in an interview with the Palo Alto Weekly.

Councilwoman Karen Holman agreed, adding that Stanford still has room for nearly 600,000 square feet of development under its current GUP.

City officials request more time to review Stanford's growth plan
A recent community meeting drew debate over the impacts of Stanford’s proposed GUP (JULIA INGRAM/The Stanford Daily).

Stanford’s own administration has pushed back against the 60-day extension. Associate Vice President and Director for Community Relations Jean McCown acknowledged to the Palo Alto Weekly the importance of public input but noted the already extensive review of the Draft EIR, which has been the subject of over 20 community meetings since its release in early October. She added that, by state law, Stanford is only obligated to provide a maximum evaluation period of 60 days, a requirement which the University has honored.

In a letter to Girard, Associate Vice President Catherine Palter affirmed McCown’s statements and described the call for an extension period as “unwarranted,” adding that there had been “no procedural problem necessitating a lengthy extension of the comment period on the draft EIR.”

The Santa Clara County Planning Commission will decide on Thursday whether to grant the requested extension or to opt for a shorter one.

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, The Daily incorrectly stated Joe Simitian’s position as “Palo Alto County Supervisor.” In fact, Simitian serves as Santa Clara County Supervisor. The Daily regrets this error. 

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Stanford raises environmental standard for Middle Plaza project following concerns https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/09/stanford-raises-environmental-standard-for-middle-plaza-project-following-concerns/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/09/stanford-raises-environmental-standard-for-middle-plaza-project-following-concerns/#comments Tue, 10 Oct 2017 06:12:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1130859 Following concerns raised by a local nonprofit called Menlo Spark, Stanford has agreed to raise environmental standards for its Middle Plaza Project in Menlo Park, which Menlo Park City Council members voted unanimously to approve last week.

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Following concerns raised by a local nonprofit called Menlo Spark, Stanford has agreed to raise environmental standards for its Middle Plaza Project in Menlo Park, which Menlo Park City Council members voted unanimously to approve last week.

The new 8.4-acre mixed-use project will include 215 rental apartments intended for Stanford faculty and staff, along with office and retail space and a publicly accessible plaza.

Diane Bailey, executive director of Menlo Spark, an independent nonprofit working towards climate neutrality, voiced specific concerns at last Tuesday’s Council meeting about the unrevised proposal’s ability to meet recently updated green building standards for Menlo Park’s Bayfront and Bell Haven regions, as well as its ability to match the high sustainability standards to which Stanford holds its buildings on campus. She also cited a Menlo Park Environmental Impact Report which stated the project would add over 2,600 additional car trips per day in the area and said the project fell short of the sustainability measures incorporated in a nearby development, before the proposal was altered in response to community feedback.

“The disappointing thing for us was [that] Stanford University is this incredible intellectual bastion of knowledge, sustainability and green building, and they certainly have the expertise to build to the very highest green standards,” Bailey said. “What we were hoping was that Stanford would match what they were practicing on campus with what they were building in Menlo Park.”

Dan Sakaguchi ’16 M.S. ’18, second-year graduate student in Earth Systems and member of the Stanford Coalition for Planning an Equitable 2035 (SCoPE 2035), echoed Bailey’s sentiments, expressing the difficulty of enforcing a standard of high sustainability measures across the University’s various developments.

“The [Middle Plaza Project and buildings on Stanford’s main campus] are all under completely different regulatory frameworks,” he explained. “On campus, Stanford’s buildings are developed under the regulation of the General Use Permit, which only applies to buildings in Santa Clara County. [The Middle Plaza Project] is in San Mateo County … so there [are] a different set of requirements [to which] the buildings are held.”

Stanford’s on-campus buildings are held to the equivalent of a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification, which is a standard set by the United States Green Building Council to evaluate green building performance. Via this standard, buildings acquire a certain number of points depending on how many LEED requirements they satisfy and are then awarded a certification of Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum.

Since the Council Meeting last week, Stanford has agreed to build the project to the LEED Gold-equivalent sustainability levels that are met on campus and to institute a set of transportation initiatives to reduce its carbon footprint. Previously, the University’s Middle Plaza plans required meeting a LEED Silver rating.

According to Bailey, although the University manages an exemplary Transportation Demand Management (TDM) program on campus, it failed to address such measures in the suite of TDM measures initially proposed in the Middle Plaza Project. On campus, Stanford has reduced single-driver rates by charging for parking and paying for free transit passes. However, these two measures were missing from the proposed TDM measures for Middle Plaza. Bailey noted that another nearby project called Station 1300 does meet such standards and that positive environmental effects have resulted from their implementation.

In a written statement to The Daily, University spokesperson E.J. Miranda addressed these concerns, stating that Stanford “[has] an extensive transportation demand management plan that also was considered by the City Council and includes measures to promote bicycling, transit, walking and car-share.”

“When available,” Miranda added, the University “will purchase renewable energy.”

However, this plan does not currently include paid parking, a tactic which has been shown to reduce single driver rates on Stanford’s main campus.

Although Stanford has promised to take action to meet the sustainability concerns raised by Menlo Spark and SCoPE, some issues with the potential socioeconomic impacts of the development linger for critics.

The University will not be required to pay property taxes on the faculty and staff apartments as part of the development, which raised concerns amongst the Menlo Park City School District. In a public statement made in August, Superintendent Erik Burmeister expressed the worry that educating the children living in Stanford’s apartments would incur major costs to the district, since it is funded by property taxes, and California does not provide per-student funding allocations. He estimated that the development will add an additional 39 new students to the district, costing as much as $660,000 over one year.

In response to community pushback on the issue, University administration officials argued that Stanford already possesses several for-profit properties in Menlo Park that generate upwards of $9 million in annual revenue for the city.

While some local residents express concerns over Stanford’s expansion into neighboring areas, many city officials have been receptive to the University’s growth: Last May, for example, as Stanford celebrated the working development of 35 acres of University facilities off Highway 101 in Redwood City, Mayor John D. Seybert extended his welcome to Stanford, predicting that the Redwood City campus would achieve “an incredible ‘ripple effect’” for both the University and the city.

However, Sakaguchi and fellow SCoPE member Forest Peterson M.S. ’07, a graduate student in Civil and Environmental Engineering, expressed concern over the fairness of the new Plaza development for Stanford employees who may be relocated off-campus. Despite the benefits gained by working at newly built facilities, they worry that the relocation may pose an inconvenience for some.

“The one thing I have heard from the administration’s viewpoint is that the administration cannot put any more facilities on Stanford campus,” Peterson said. “They’ve built it out.”

During last Wednesday’s town hall, President Tessier-Lavigne acknowledged that beginning in the early to mid-2000s, “given the growth limitations on campus and [projected needs for academic buildings] … [the University was] going to have to seek solutions beyond building on campus.”

According to Miranda, Stanford believes that Middle Plaza will be a “significant enhancement” for the Menlo Park community on the whole, replacing the “abandoned car lots” in the area.

“We have done extensive work over the last five years with the city and the community to incorporate their feedback and ensure it is a great project for Menlo Park,” said Miranda.

But concerns regarding the Middle Plaza Project have not abated as final approval of an accompanying development agreement for the Middle Plaza Project is set to occur at the Menlo Park City Council meeting this Tuesday.

“Time and time again, we see Stanford acting as a powerful developer of real estate projects in the Bay Area, from our very own campus to the University’s recent expansion into Redwood City and Menlo Park,” Sakaguchi wrote in an email to The Daily on behalf of SCoPE. “As we learn more about Stanford’s development projects, we want to continue elevating those affected — the workers, local residents and neighboring communities — and ask who these projects benefit and who they harm.”

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

This article has been updated to clarify that residents’ concerns about LEED environmental standards cited early in the article were met in a revised version of the proposal, as well as to incorporate additional quotes from University spokesperson E.J. Miranda on the expected impact of the Middle Plaza project on the community.

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Saller to step down as dean of School of Humanities & Sciences https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/09/saller-to-step-down-as-dean-of-school-of-humanities-sciences/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/09/saller-to-step-down-as-dean-of-school-of-humanities-sciences/#respond Tue, 10 Oct 2017 06:09:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1130838 Kleinheinz Family Professor of European Studies Richard Saller announced that he will step down as dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) on Sept. 1, 2018 and return to teaching full-time at Stanford.

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Saller to step down as dean of School of Humanities & Sciences
Dean Richard Saller is stepping down to teach full-time next fall (LINDA A. CICERO/Stanford News).

Kleinheinz Family Professor of European Studies Richard Saller announced that he will step down as dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) on Sept. 1, 2018 and return to teaching full-time at Stanford. Provost Persis Drell will soon form a committee to conduct an international search for his successor.

“It has been an honor and privilege to serve Stanford University and the faculty, students and staff of the School of Humanities and Sciences,” Saller told Stanford News. “My goal as dean for the last 10 years has been to make the resources and facilities available for our faculty and students to excel in their research, teaching and learning — in general, for them to thrive and share their knowledge with the larger world. Knowing that I was able to play this role and be a part of Stanford’s history gives me great satisfaction.”

University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne told Stanford News that Saller’s decade-long legacy as dean will forever be rooted in his strategic oversight, commitment to mentorship and high standards for faculty recruitment.

Major physical expansion of the University occurred under Saller’s leadership as he oversaw the construction of the Sapp Center for Science Teaching and Learning as well as a Stanford “arts district” that includes Bing Concert Hall, the Anderson Collection and the McMurtry Building for the Department of Art and Art History.

Saller also grew Stanford’s endowed graduate fellowships by 153 percent, putting an emphasis on attracting and supporting the most talented students across a wide variety of fields, many of them interdisciplinary.

Over the course of his tenure, H&S saw a 26 percent increase in faculty who hold endowed chairs. Saller also worked to diversify the faculty — an area in which Stanford has drawn scrutiny — growing the H&S minority faculty by 22 percent from when he began as dean as in 2016.

Prior to his time at Stanford, Saller spent 22 years at the University of Chicago, the last five of which he served as provost. There, he also served as dean of the social sciences division and was a distinguished service professor. He has also held teaching positions at Swarthmore College and Jesus College, Cambridge.

Saller will teach as a faculty member in the Departments of Classics and History come next fall.

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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On this day in Stanford history… https://stanforddaily.com/2017/09/22/on-this-day-in-stanford-history-4/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/09/22/on-this-day-in-stanford-history-4/#respond Fri, 22 Sep 2017 07:01:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1130095 The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details unusual or humorous events that occurred on the same date or week in past years from The Daily archives.

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The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details unusual or humorous events that occurred on the same date or week in past years from The Daily archives.

According to The Stanford Daily archives, on Sept. 22 in …

1897: University President David Starr Jordan and his secretary George A. Clark prepared to leave for the conference of the International Seal Fishery Commission in Washington, D.C. The U.S., Japan and Russia were all part of the commission and anticipated the signing of a treaty protecting the seal herds. Jordan expressed that “rather than see the seal herds exterminated, he prefers to see them pass into the possession of England.” He also requested the sessions of the commission kept secret and without record to “avoid further diplomatic complications.”

1899: During a meeting of the senior class, it was reported that the committee on class hats had decided upon the sombrero. On behalf of the girls of the class, a student identified only as Miss Fraser decried the decision, stating that they would adopt the traditional cap and gown and “would begin to wear the mortar-board on the same day that the men of the class put on the sombrero.”

1902: Looks like the petition led by Miss Fraser was overpowered, as on this day the senior class accepted a report by F. F. Gundrum, chairman of the committee on sombreros. The class planned to purchase the hats from a local shop called The Haberdasher.

1916: In this Daily issue’s “Special Notices” section (a precursor to the modern-day “Free and For Sale”), one student posted, “If the party that lost the bicycle, Saturday night, September 9th, at The Wonder Saloon, will call at this office and pay for this ad, they will be told where the wheel is.” Potential open-faced savagery? Or good samaritan trying to help out a poor bicycle-less foot-traipser?

1933: University President Ray Lyman Wilbur gave a friendly welcome to the new freshman class, saying, “We want Stanford to mean something so tangible and so fine to you that it will become a permanent part of your lives. Thousands of Stanford men and women look back upon their days in the University with deep satisfactions and the real appreciation of the associations and opportunities offered them.” (Welcome, class of 2021!)

1945: Soon after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Stanford opened Sequoia Hall up to the War Department for the purpose of housing soldier trainees in the Civilian Defense Training School. After being used as a barracks and training center for soldiers during World War II, Sequoia Hall was finally closed for being in desperate need of repair.

1950: Stanford’s class of ’54 was noted to be the tallest in its history after University officials examined the height records of the 500 freshmen enrolled. After realizing that nearly half of the class was over six feet tall, the University issued an emergency order for more seven-foot beds. According to a Daily article, the “only man at the University who was completely delighted with the situation was Everett Dean — the University’s basketball coach.”

1967: Little-known fact: The freshman “lookbook” that is distributed as part of orientation materials during New Student Orientation was originally intended as a dating guide for incoming frosh. In this issue, it was announced that “Stanford’s Froshbook, the traditional dating guide containing pictures of the entire freshman class, will not appear until early November. The Froshbook is usually distributed during Pre-Registration.”

1995: Following a May 1994 hunger strike on campus that petitioned for a University-wide ban on grapes, Stanford instituted a new policy that called for Resident Assistant (RA)-led “educational sessions on the treatment of workers harvesting California table grapes.” This decision created dissatisfaction among some RAs, who voiced concerns about the divisiveness of the issue in residence communities.

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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How income inequality stacks up at Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2017/06/03/how-income-inequality-stacks-up-at-stanford-2/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/06/03/how-income-inequality-stacks-up-at-stanford-2/#respond Sun, 04 Jun 2017 04:01:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1127532 Undeniably, institutions of higher education are important engines for economic mobility. And while the goals of the University are certainly broader than fattening the wallets of its students in the future, the greater challenge remains: What is the University’s obligation to affect inequality within itself, and what does it still owe to its students in this regard?

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It’s Admit Weekend. Campus has never looked more alive – White Plaza bustles with opportunity in every direction, pamphlets fly between hands and every office opens its doors in eager welcome to the newcomers. To prospective freshmen wandering hopelessly amidst the chaos, Stanford exists as a symbol of new hope and tangible success: the American dream finally realized. The University presents itself as a generous lending hand, lush with resources ready to embrace students from all walks of life and on every level of the socioeconomic spectrum.

Stanford’s admissions website boasts a $22.4 billion endowment to “[provide] an enduring source of financial support for fulfillment of the university’s mission of teaching, learning, and research.” Elsewhere, the words “DIVERSITY” and “OUTREACH” jump off the page.

However, recently released data from studies by economics professor Raj Chetty and his colleagues stands to challenge this rosy image. Their research shows that at 38 colleges in America, including five Ivy League schools, the number of students whose parents belong to the top 1 percent of the income distribution surpasses the number whose parents fall within the entire bottom 60 percent. In other words, more students come from households with incomes exceeding $630,000 per year than come from households earning below $65,000.

At Stanford, the numbers are not much better: As of 2013, more students come from the top 1 percent than the bottom 50 percent of the income scale. This statistic is true for the so-called Ivy-Plus colleges in general, which include the eight Ivy League schools as well as Stanford,  University of Chicago, MIT and Duke.

Amid a host of efforts to make Stanford more socioeconomically inclusive, why does the University’s student body remain so dramatically skewed toward the rich? Despite the expansion of financial aid in recent years, as well as reports of increases in students represented in the lower income quartiles, the lines tracing change in Stanford’s socioeconomic makeup remain remarkably flat. Ultimately, these trends have major implications for promoting social and economic mobility.

How income inequality stacks up at Stanford
(NA HE JEON/The Stanford Daily)

The data

The Equality of Opportunity Project – pioneered by Chetty and colleagues from Brown University, UC Berkeley and the U.S. Treasury – is a collection of studies using big data to understand the relationships between educational opportunity and social mobility. Together, these researchers linked anonymized tax returns to the attendance records of over 30 million college students at nearly every college in the U.S. between 1999 and 2013. They then used this administrative data to develop publicly available “mobility report cards” that provide statistics correlating students’ earnings in their early thirties to their parents’ incomes for each college.

The results Chetty and his collaborators found — recently publicized in a widely-read article in The New York Times — were striking. The data calls into question the role that institutions of higher education play in fostering both upward income mobility and interaction between students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.

“Only 3.8% of students come from the bottom 20% of the income distribution at Ivy-Plus Colleges,” the study states. “As a result, children from families in the top 1% are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college compared to children from families in the bottom 20%.”

Across all colleges, this trend of income segregation parallels the income segregation across neighborhoods in the typical U.S. city.

Robert Fluegge, a predoctoral research fellow involved with Chetty’s work at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), said he was shocked when he first saw the numbers on college socioeconomic diversity.

“It’s not just Stanford,” he said. “I think it’s valuable to put numbers on problems like this because it galvanizes people; it gives them a starting point to get something done about it.”

Despite the initial income gap between students from high- and low-income backgrounds, Chetty’s research found that students from these backgrounds have remarkably similar earnings outcomes at any given college. So it’s not a mere matter of preparedness, as it seems low-income students are more than capable of filling any initial achievement gaps between them and their higher-income peers: The barriers that prevent low-income students from attending elite universities are more complex.

In the United States as a whole, a strong inequality of future earnings persists between students of different backgrounds: Children from high-income families tend to land 30 percentiles higher in the income distribution than peers from the lowest-income families in adulthood. But research indicates that when considering the student pool from any given elite college, this gap shortens to only 7.2 percentiles, a figure 76 percent smaller than is seen nationally.

This trend holds true at Stanford as well. Despite large disparities in the number of students from the highest and lowest quartiles of the income scale, there is little difference among income outcomes.

Chetty’s research also makes a distinction between universities that foster upper-tail mobility, which sends students to the top 1 percent of the earning distribution, and normal mobility, which sends students to the top 20 percent. Mid-tier public schools with high access to low-income students, such as the City University of New York, offer the highest normal mobility rates – much higher than that of Ivy-Plus colleges like Stanford.

Schools that accomplish the highest rates of upper-tail mobility, on the other hand, are generally elite Ivy-Plus colleges with minimal access to low-income students.

“We definitely don’t want to tell Stanford or other institutions what to do, but we think our data suggest [elite schools] could be doing more to admit more poor students,” Fluegge said. “We can’t say that for certain without the admissions data, but the things that we’ve seen … suggest that students at Stanford that are low-income tend to do basically as well as students that are high-income.”

Chetty and his colleagues’ work also reveals that, while the number of low-income students attending college rose quickly during the 2000s, the number of students from bottom-quintile families at four-year colleges and selective schools did not experience significant change. Stanford’s percentage of bottom-quintile families was more or less stagnant at below 5 percent throughout the first decade of the 2000s.

Given Chetty’s data, what’s to explain the lack of socioeconomic diversity among Stanford’s student body?

How income inequality stacks up at Stanford
(NA HE JEON/The Stanford Daily)

Barriers to diversity

One of the major problems Stanford faces in attracting low-income students is that outreach, while extensive, still struggles to connect competitive students with the University.

“Although we tried to increase financial aid, we also have to work very hard to get the message out to low-income students that those resources are available,” said Dereca Blackmon ’91, associate dean and director of Stanford’s Diversity and First-Gen (DGen) Office.

Dean Richard Shaw echoed her sentiment and noted that only 47 percent of Stanford students receive need-based financial aid.

“The reality is there are competitive kids out there from all walks of life, all backgrounds, that will be uber-competitive,” he said. “And in some cases, they don’t apply. … They just [don’t] realize they [can] look outside their own regions or neighborhoods.”

Indeed, there is research being done outside of Chetty’s group that explores why low-income, high-achieving students do not apply to selective colleges at the same rates as wealthier peers that are similarly high-achieving as measured by test scores.

Scott and Donya Bommer Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences Caroline Hoxby, for example, has shown that these high-performing students tend to apply as though they were low-achieving, low-income students. This may be due in part to a lack of advising and college counseling resources at high schools in more low-income areas, Fluegge posited.

“There are a lot of things that are keeping students from applying … [whether or not there exists] emphasis on higher education … at your school: how many students from your school go to a [place] like Stanford versus going into the workforce or community college, whether you have mentorship from your teachers or counselors and how well they support you,” said Anakaren Cervantes ’17, a student staffer at the DGen Office who works in admissions as a diversity outreach associate. “If you don’t have that and you don’t have resources outside of school, then it’s a lot harder for you.”

Less access to resources may starkly influence low-income students’ understanding of which colleges are the best academic and financial choices. Interestingly enough, students from poor families often end up spending more to go to worse colleges, remarked Fluegge.

“[At] colleges like Stanford [and] Harvard … many of these students would be eligible for a full ride,” he said. “And that is not the case at the schools they tend to go to.”

Once at Stanford, though, low-income students face an additional set of challenges as they navigate financial aid and unanticipated expenses. As Angela Umeh ’19 noted, understanding how financial contributions and aid actually work can be a source of endless confusion and frustration.

“There was never a moment that someone came through and talked to me about my financial aid package,” Umeh said. “Stanford still makes you pay a student contribution… that I didn’t know I would owe. The financial aid office staff tries to be helpful, but… they don’t always have the solution to your problem, and at best they can delay the problem.”

Moreover, in a survey of the entire Class of 2016 conducted by the DGen Office, 50 percent of students who responded reported that they send money home. The Office continues to work with students to identify other potentially hidden financial obligations, such as ensuring food security during spring break, finding places to stay during winter break and summer and covering unanticipated medical expenses.

“Random expenses hit really hard,” Umeh added. “[I] accidentally booked the wrong tickets home, [but] school keeps going on.”

What’s being done

Ultimately, it is clear the University has a duty to help mitigate broader systemic issues at play in financial inequality, but the solution is by no means one-shot. And Stanford is working to increase the socioeconomic diversity of its campus.

According to Dean Shaw, the prospective Class of 2021 contains Stanford’s highest percentage of admissions offers to first-generation and low-income students to date. 2015 saw an expansion of the financial aid program: Parents with annual incomes below $125,000 are now expected to provide zero contribution toward tuition, and parents with incomes below $65,000 are expected to provide zero contribution toward tuition, room or board. Previously, those aid cutoffs were $100,000 and $60,000 respectively.

“I think financial aid has made a huge difference, and in fact, we’ve seen some nice increases in students represented in the lower income quartiles and particularly this year,” Shaw said, though he could not specify distributions.

However, some argue Stanford must do more to grow its financial aid. Unlike some peer schools such as Harvard and Princeton, Stanford still does not extend its need-blind admissions policy to international applicants. Shaw said that need-blind international admissions are “still very much on [Stanford’s] agenda” but that budgetary constraints following 2008’s economic downturn set it back as a priority.

With an endowment of over $20 billion, expanding need-blind admissions to all prospective students might seem a no-brainer. But according to Shaw, the necessary funds are still lacking. However, he said, Stanford has been increasing the amount of aid it gives students from abroad.

Need-blind policies aside, the latest increases in financial aid may not make much of an impact on students from the poorest families, who were likely already covered with near-full aid. To combat persistent underrepresentation of low-income students, Stanford will need to pursue other strategies. 

Stanford recently joined the American Talent Initiative, a consortium of 68 universities with a commitment to expanding college access to 50,000 additional low-income students within the next decade. Every summer, Stanford invites and covers the cost of travel for 30 to 50 high school counselors from public high schools and community-based organizations in low-income communities to help them learn to advise their students to apply to places like Stanford. Last summer, the University also launched the Coalition Application, an alternate online college application established by a group of universities with a commitment to helping high school students acquire information and plan for application to selective colleges.

A number of initiatives are also in place to help low-income students overcome socioeconomic barriers once on campus: The Leland Scholars Program, for example, exists as a summer bridge program that allows students to get an academic head start by taking courses during the summer before their freshman year — as well as by exposing them to faculty members who seek to increase students’ sense of belonging at Stanford.

Meanwhile, at New Student Orientation, the DGen Office hosts luncheons and outreach events for parents and students to provide information about the resources and support systems provided at Stanford. During the school year, the University also provides a generous Opportunity Fund to help students overcome financial challenges such as paying to fix a broken computer or bicycle, traveling to attend conferences, buying textbooks and meeting unforeseen medical expenses. Furthermore, Student Financial Services hosts financial literacy workshops on campus to help first-generation and low-income students navigate loans, taxes and more.

Umeh applied to Stanford through the national QuestBridge program, said that Stanford’s participation in the initiative strikes her as a notable positive step towards including low-income students. QuestBridge links high-achieving, low-income high school students with elite schools through a matching system. Participants in the program include six Ivy League schools; Harvard is absent from the list.

In terms of her dorm experience, Umeh noted that accessing financial aid has never presented an issue and that the First Generation and/or Low Income Partnership (FLIP) program also provides useful alternatives to University programs, helping out with, for example, an emergency grant for a sudden flight home.

“As a whole institution compared to other elite schools, Stanford does do a pretty good job trying to help the low-income community and be aware,” Umeh said. “It’s definitely doing a lot, and I don’t want to disregard that — but on a personal level, you do notice where the gaps are, and talking about that can help Stanford be aware of it. … [I]t’s kind of hard when you’re getting so much money from a school to be like, ‘Actually, do you have more?’ You don’t want to be ungrateful, but honestly, sometimes you do need more resources — or at least recognition that it’s hard.”

A complex problem

The challenges faced by low-income students are more than just economic; they’re also psychological. Blackmon cited research by Associate Professor of Psychology Greg Walton describing the “stereotype threat” that exists for both low-income and high-income students, who feel at risk of personally fulfilling negative stereotypes about their broader groups.

“There is this image of [Stanford] in terms of being high-income that is intimidating for low-income and/or first-generation students,” she said. “Folks come in wondering [if] everything from where they buy their clothes to what they can afford to eat is going to impact their ability to have a sense of belonging here.”

In a social setting, income inequality can create stress for low-income students as they struggle to decide whether or not they can convey to their higher-income peers that they cannot afford certain luxuries such as eating out, joining organizations with fees or participating in extracurricular activities with high costs. Such stress extends into the classroom, too: For example, Blackmon cited an assignment in which a professor asked students to write about their last vacation.

“If you’re high income, then that’s something you often can readily think about, whereas if you’re low-income, it might not be,” she said.  

She said professors sometimes make outright assumptions about whether or not their students relate to being low-income, though a significant percentage of students do.

Umeh said that some professors make more of an effort than others to provide cheap textbook options, but she added that it’s difficult to predict how sensitive professors will be towards low-income students’ circumstances.

“Professors can go either way – some are more aware than others,” Umeh said. “You never know if you can tell a professor, ‘I can’t afford this.’”

Still, she stressed that that students from high-earning families ought not to receive stigma for the way they grew up.  

From pre-admission through their time at the University, students ask themselves, “Will I be able to afford Stanford?” And “afford,” these days, is a loaded word – not just for Stanford. There is a sociological, psychological, socioeconomically untenable cost to the effects of an institutional setting in which such striking economic disparity exists within the student body.

“Income mobility for low-income [college] students is parallel to [that of] middle-income and high-income students,” Blackmon said.  “[They are all] equally likely to end up in the top 1 percent. Is Stanford’s primary objective to make students high-income? No. But if we’re going to challenge economic disparity, don’t they have to have the economic mobility to do that?”

Undeniably, institutions of higher education are important engines for economic mobility. And while the goals of the University are certainly broader than fattening the wallets of its students in the future, the greater challenge remains: What is the University’s obligation to affect inequality within itself, and what does it still owe to its students in this regard?

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Contract ending, nonprofit EPATT must leave Stanford campus https://stanforddaily.com/2017/06/02/contract-ending-nonprofit-epatt-must-leave-stanford-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/06/02/contract-ending-nonprofit-epatt-must-leave-stanford-campus/#respond Fri, 02 Jun 2017 09:04:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1128817 Come August 2019, East Palo Alto Tennis and Tutoring (EPATT), an independent non-profit youth development organization with deep ties to the Stanford community, will no longer be allowed to conduct its services on campus as its contract with the University comes to an end.

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Come August 2019, East Palo Alto Tennis and Tutoring (EPATT), an independent non-profit youth development organization with deep ties to the Stanford community, will no longer be allowed to conduct its services on campus as its contract with the University comes to an end.

The group has been on campus for 20 years and provides one-on-one tutoring, tennis instruction and parent coaching to families with children in kindergarten through 12th grade.

The “growing needs of the Stanford Athletics Department — including programming support for student-athletes and the expansion and creation of recreational and wellness programs for students and staff” — led Stanford to end the agreement that allows EPATT to use its facilities, wrote University spokesperson E.J. Miranda in an email to The Daily.

Executive Director of EPATT Dave Higaki shared that other groups currently operating on campus were also affected, although he declined to name any specifically.

According to academic director and middle school group director Kesha Weekes ’97, EPATT originally intended to remain at Stanford only for a temporary period while its leadership searched for a more permanent space.

“We’re an East Palo Alto-based nonprofit,” she said. “That’s where we were born. That’s where our kids come from. That’s where our heart is.”

In the late 1990s, one of EPATT’s board members, Dick Gould BA ’59 MA ’60, suggested that the group conduct its operations in the newly built Fluegel Conference Room of the Taube Family Tennis Stadium at Stanford while looking for a permanent facility elsewhere. At the time, the facility had none of its current furnishings — no windows, doors or classrooms — and was merely an undeveloped cement floor with spray-on insulation.

“The months became years, and eventually we all recognized that being here has a lot of advantages,” Weekes explained.

Stanford students no longer had to commute off-campus in order to volunteer, and EPATT’s volunteer base grew to its current size of 120 Stanford student tutors. EPATT was also able to utilize Stanford’s tennis courts and raised $1 million through a capital campaign, half of which went into an investment in lighting for eight tennis courts. The other half went into developing the Conference Room into what it is today: fully-functional classrooms stocked with computers, books, desks and other academic supplies.

EPATT emphasizes students’ development of study skills beginning at an early age in order to prepare them to achieve future goals such as attending college or going to work. The organization also works to help students feel socially and emotionally connected with each other and with their teachers. Outside of academics, the program helps kids to develop team-building skills and sportsmanship through tennis.

“Helping students achieve their dreams is what we’re really trying to do,” Weekes said. “We want people to actually be competitive in the thing that they say they want to do so that they can actually achieve it.”

Aside from supporting students through academic tutoring and tennis instruction, EPATT also works hard to prioritize parent coaching.

“At the gate we put stock in relationships that we have with the parents that are bringing their children here,” said elementary school group director Christina Erwin ’00. “[It’s important] for us to make sure that we’re supporting them, to make sure that they’re empowered and continue to advocate for and support their children outside of EPATT.”

Students can choose to remain with EPATT for as long as they wish, and this year’s senior class has some students who have been with the program for over a decade. Several are preparing to go to college at universities such as the University of Southern California, Northwestern, Loyola Marymount and St. Mary’s.

“Last year’s senior class had a student who when he came to us in eighth grade couldn’t read,” Weekes said. “We worked with him, and now he’s a sous chef at a restaurant that just received a Michelin star in San Jose.”

Erwin agreed, stating that the most rewarding part of the program for her has been having successful graduates of the program return to visit.

EPATT has also left a mark on the lives of its volunteers. Both Weekes and Erwin expressed their gratitude to all tutors and tutor coordinators at Stanford who have given their time to EPATT.

“Stanford has been a wonderful partner,” Higaki said. “But I think one of the underlooked things is how much of an impact we’ve made on the Stanford student experience.”

Several Stanford volunteers have remarked that EPATT “kept [them] sane” and significantly influenced them, Higaki said.

Weekes expressed a similar view, stating that many undergraduate tutors who were originally studying STEM-exclusive topics decided to minor or double major in the social sciences or humanities after working with EPATT.

“There are people at Stanford who have no concept of what our students’ experiences have been,” Weekes said. “It really changes their mentality about the world they live in and what they can potentially do to impact it.”

Erwin echoed her sentiment, citing a Ph.D. student in nanotechnology who, after volunteering at EPATT, decided to become a high school math teacher in Boston.

“We want people to leave Stanford with [not only] their degree and all the wonderful things that brings … [but also with] an attitude and a mentality of giving when they leave,” Weekes said.

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Q&A: Ron Albucher talks CAPS challenges and changes https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/18/qa-ron-albucher-talks-caps-challenges-and-changes/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/18/qa-ron-albucher-talks-caps-challenges-and-changes/#respond Tue, 18 Apr 2017 07:35:44 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1126037 After nine years of service, Dr. Ron Albucher will be stepping down from his role as director of Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at Vaden Health Center. He will remain on board as a part-time psychiatrist at CAPS, splitting his time between CAPS and t his private practice in San Francisco as the program transitions to a new director next fall. The Daily sat down with Dr. Albucher to learn more about the impact he has made during his nine years at CAPS and the challenges CAPS still faces moving forward.

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Q&A: Ron Albucher talks CAPS challenges and changes
Ron Albucher will step down this year after nine years as director of CAPS (Courtesy of Stanford News).

After nine years of service, Dr. Ron Albucher will be stepping down from his role as director of Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at Vaden Health Center. He will remain on board as a part-time psychiatrist at CAPS, splitting his time between CAPS and his private practice in San Francisco as the program transitions to a new director next fall.

The Daily sat down with Dr. Albucher to learn more about the impact he has made during his nine years at CAPS and the challenges CAPS still faces moving forward.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): Why are you leaving your position as director of CAPS at Stanford?

Ron Albucher (RA): I came on board nine years ago and at that point was asked to begin to make some changes in CAPS. I think college mental health in general was seeing an increasing grade of acuity and a need for both the medical side of treatment as well as the psychological side, so a search began a year or two before I began looking for somebody who could help transition the organization to that new model.

I feel we’ve gotten a lot of good work done in terms of trying to keep pace with student needs, and there’s always more to do. But I also feel it’s important after this length of time to bring a fresh pair of eyes into the organization. I’ll actually be stepping down as director and going from 100 percent time at Stanford to 50 percent. I’ll stay on continuing to see students in a clinical capacity.

TSD: Could you elaborate more upon what you mean by the medical and psychological halves of mental health?

RA: With increased awareness and research in mental health, well-being [and] mental illness, it has become clear that … an individual’s psychology, their social surroundings and their biology [affects their life]. That can go all the way down to genetics — we have a propensity to inherit different illnesses outright or a tendency toward having greater amounts of symptoms like anxiety or depression. A lot of research under the biomedical model in psychiatry has looked at trying to understand this aspect of mental health and look for ways to intervene. This has led to not only a variety of medications that are available, but also other novel treatments or care, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation.

TSD: Shifting the conversation back to you, what have been some of your main accomplishments or initiatives within CAPS as the director?

RA: The clinic and its mission have changed so much since I came on board nine years ago. At that point we were still using paper charts; we were operating more so in a private-practice model where people would see students for as long as they needed to. Students would sometimes have to wait a while to get in. There was more of a focus on operating as a traditional psychotherapy clinic, which definitely has its plusses, but wasn’t meeting the complexity of needs that students had [and] the challenges they were facing as well.

One of the major shifts has been to move from that type of model to a model that offers many different things. We still do offer individual therapy, and we still offer medication evaluation and medication management and have actually expanded that. But now we have also done some other things, like significantly increasing our outreach to the community, especially traditionally underserved or underrepresented groups. We have offices all over campus now that didn’t exist when I came on board — we have offices in most of the community centers as well as other locations on campus, such as the medical school, the business school and the engineering school. I think that is a huge change — that we wanted to bring the services to the community. We experimented with different ways of doing that. For instance, in the previous year, we tried out having clinicians in some of the dorms, and having dinners with students. Students liked that, but it also didn’t provide enough anonymity for students — we found that people were not taking advantages of the counselor when it was embedded that way.

The other area where I think we’ve made a significant change is in supporting students who need higher levels of care. Any student who is admitted to a hospital for mental health reasons will have a visit by one of our case managers within a day or so. That person stays in close contact with the student while they’re in the hospital and also helps make the transition to care outside.

TSD: You mentioned that you’ve helped increase outreach to underrepresented groups. Could you specify what you mean by “outreach?”

RA: The easiest way for us to do that was to begin sending our staff to help us with reaching out to the community centers on campus. We’ve reached out to the LGBT Center, the Native American Center, El Centro Chicano y Latino, the Black Community Services Center, the Women’s Center and most recently the Muslim Community Center. Usually staff do a mixture of things — they see students, they provide on-site treatment, provided the community center can give us a private office to do that in. Oftentimes, we’ll do drop-in hours, where people from the community can come to talk or get information. This has been a way of providing a lower threshold that students have to overcome to talk with a mental health care professional. They don’t have to come all the way to CAPS, and we try to have consistent hours each week.

TSD: What challenges do you still see for the future of the CAPS program?

RA: One of the things that is increasingly the case is that Stanford both has grown the population of students on campus, but also the population of students themselves is continuing to become more diverse [and] have more complex needs. We now routinely have students contacting us before school starts, wanting to transfer their mental health care into our program. That never happened my first two years here — we never got phone calls or emails like that, and now it happens fairly often. We need to adapt to that kind of a need and encourage that, actually. We’ve even changed the forms that go out to students … We’ve now started asking about any mental health issues that they want us to know about so that we can reach out.

I think being proactive that way is a very positive thing, but it also taxes the system — we have a limited number of people and a limited number of hours each week. We’ve certainly done more with the same number of staff and my hope is that the administration will see this as a need as we grow the student population, and we’ll continue to get increased resources to meet student needs that way.

The other area that had I stayed on a little longer, I would have wanted to develop more — and still may in some capacity — is trying to develop resources on campus for more intermediate-length care. I think CAPS does a great job at on-call and emergency issues. I think we also do a great job with brief treatments. But once a brief time period has gone by, we often need to refer students for longer care out into the community. We do know that most students don’t make it to connect with somebody successfully. We’ve tried to intervene by hiring a referral coordinator who helps students in navigating their insurance company and finding out which services are covered and by whom, but even with that, most students don’t end up getting connected. I would like CAPS to develop additional resources on campus to give students — especially underserved students — access to mental health care for longer periods of time.

 

This transcript has been lightly edited and condensed.

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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SPOON delivers Stanford’s leftovers to fight hunger https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/31/spoon-delivers-stanfords-leftovers-to-fight-hunger/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/31/spoon-delivers-stanfords-leftovers-to-fight-hunger/#respond Tue, 31 Jan 2017 09:20:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1122095 As a bustling research university, Stanford has long been an incubator for start-ups and ideas -- and thousands of pounds of leftover event food.

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As a bustling research university, Stanford has long been an incubator for start-ups and ideas — and thousands of pounds of leftover event food. After President Marc Tessier-Levigne’s inauguration, some 4,000 pounds of food were left uneaten. Thousands of pounds of prepared food also go uneaten every quarter in the dining halls.

But where do all the leftovers go? That’s where the Stanford Project on Hunger (SPOON) comes in.

SPOON is a student-led group on campus that seeks to alleviate the hunger problem in the Palo Alto community by salvaging uneaten food from dining halls, cafes and catered events around Stanford’s campus.

Financial officer and former co-director Annie Hu ’17 says she stayed with the group because she finds both the cause and the community a worthy commitment.

“Knowing the food is going somewhere worthwhile and not just the garbage [and] knowing that there’s so many people on campus who are willing to put in the time and effort to make this happen … has been really rewarding for me,” said Hu.

The work is not easy. Every quarter, SPOON’s board develops a weekly afternoon food pickup schedule for its volunteers. Members sign up for 30-minute shifts that begin with a trip to the Haas Center for Public Service, where they pick up aluminum tins for storing food. They then take these tins to the dining halls, where they collect and package excess food from the main lines — easily frozen items such as cooked meats, soup and pizzas. This food gets transported back to the Haas Center and stored it in freezers for pickup by representatives of the Ecumenical Hunger Program in East Palo Alto, which then redistributes the food to those in need.

This year’s co-presidents Niki Mani ’19 and Simar Malholtra ’19 have been working hard to expand SPOON’s presence across various eateries on campus. According to Mani, they recently succeeded in getting several more dining halls and cafes involved in the program. Dara Silverstein, who manages Residential & Dining Enterprises’s (R&DE) sustainable food program, is also currently working with interns to get all dining halls on board.

“Last year, we were only picking up from the Faculty Club and Russo Cafe. Those are only two places on campus, [but] we have nine dining halls on campus and [many] more cafes,” Mani said. “When we were taking over this role this year, [Simar] and I realized there was so much more food that’s being wasted, so our goal was to try to get all dining halls on campus on board.”

Volunteers in the student group spent much of fall quarter going to Stern and Ricker to lead staff members in training workshops on how to prepare food for collection, the types of food they can and cannot collect, and other logistics. Though the process has not been without its challenges, SPOON has succeeded in laying the foundation for excess food collection on Stanford’s campus for years to come. With the additional involvement of these dining halls, the group has the potential to easily surpass its prior record of 12,000 pounds of excess food collected over the course of a year.

Outside of food collection, SPOON also organizes a program called Breakfast Cooks, through which other student groups and dorms may register to cook breakfast together and serve it to homeless community members at the Palo Alto Opportunity Center. According to Hu, the group is currently working to increase student groups’ participation in this program, as well as the number of events from which SPOON collects food each year. For instance, the group also hopes to partner with Stanford Athletics to collect leftover food from basketball and football games.

One of SPOON’s recent collaborators is Students for a Sustainable Stanford (SSS), a connection facilitated by dining hall coordinator Chris LeBoa ’19, who also serves as an SSS project lead. Together, the two groups are working to implement an initiative in which ASSU will be funding compostable bags and trays to transport excess food for each student group after meetings and events.

They’re not stopping there, though. SPOON members are constantly searching for ways to optimize their food collection process on campus. According to Mani, some other items on the group’s to-do list include getting Dining Hall Ambassadors to act as facilitators between SPOON and dining hall staff and working with another hunger program called Peninsula Food Runners, which collects excess food from restaurants along University Avenue and the surrounding area.

“[Our] goal is to one day have it so Stanford takes it upon itself to get its extra food donated,” said LeBoa. “I would love to in the future see every dining hall … cafe … and student event have [its extra] food get picked up.”

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

Correction: a former version of this article incorrectly stated that “1,400 pounds of food” are left uneaten every quarter from dining halls. It is actually an unconfirmed number somewhere in the thousands, which the updated article now reflects. The Daily regrets these errors.

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Emergency medical technicians will be on standby at FMOTQ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/12/emergency-medical-technicians-will-be-on-standby-at-fmotq/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/12/emergency-medical-technicians-will-be-on-standby-at-fmotq/#respond Thu, 12 Jan 2017 08:00:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1121327 Student EMTs with the Stanford Emergency Medical Service will be at tonight’s Full Moon on the Quad (FMOTQ) to provide safety and medical care to participating students.

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The Stanford Emergency Medical Service, better known as StEMS, will be at tonight’s Full Moon on the Quad (FMOTQ) to provide safety and medical care to participating students. The group, made up of student EMTs, provides standby medical service to members of the Stanford community during campus events such as football games, equestrian events, concerts and campus-wide parties.

According to StEMS president and BLS (Basic Life Support) coordinator Mike Dacre, the group consists of three levels of EMTs, all of which are ready to act in moments of need. The organization functions under the Department of Public Safety at Stanford and is trained in everything from basic wound care to the management of more serious conditions such as heart attacks and strokes.

“All of us in StEMS are certified EMTs at the basic life support level, so we are trained … in a wide range of medical and trauma-type scenarios — anything from cardiovascular issues that would require CPR or use of the AED [automated external defibrillator], musculoskeletal injuries [and] oxygen delivery,” said Joyce Kang ’18, a full member of StEMS and director of group logistics. “StEMS members also [perform] a lot of physical examinations, which includes taking vitals and patient histories.”

Probationary members, the newest to the group, must have have completed their EMT certifications. After volunteering for over 50 hours and showing readiness and commitment, probationary members may be promoted to full members. The most senior members, crew chiefs, lead the teams that work events at Stanford.

Organizations hosting events may request the services of StEMS through their website or by visiting the resources page of Orgsync. Once they receive a request, StEMS members plan for the event by determining how many teams to send into the field.

Teams travel with two ambulances, each complete with gurneys to transport patients to the Palo Alto Fire Department, a trauma bag for taking care of physical injuries and a medical airway bag containing oxygen and an AED.

StEMS was founded in 2007 by a group of ten TAs and graduates from the recently formed EMT training program in collaboration with Vaden Health Center and the Department of Public Safety. Since its foundation, the group has grown to include over 35 members, and has logged over 3,000 hours of service.

“It’s a chance to give back to the community and to improve your skills in handling difficult situations,” said probationary member Sean Mullane ’18. “It really improves your confidence to know that if something happens, you’ll be able to manage the situation.”

For minor injuries such as a sprained ankle, the EMTs on site will treat the injury immediately, but for something more serious, such as unconsciousness, they may call the fire department to take the patient to the hospital. The EMTs then work to stabilize the patient before paramedics arrive to provide more advanced life support.

According to several members of the group, being part of StEMS may also help students determine whether or not a career in medicine is right for them.

“After [becoming] an EMT, [I realized] that I love providing patient care, being in charge in emergency situations and working on a team,” said crew chief Maria Filsinger Interrante ’16. “It actually made me decide to pursue an MD.”

Many students come to StEMS having obtained their training from the EMT training course, EMED 111/112: “Emergency Medical Technician Training,” taught through the Stanford Medical School. Through StEMS, students are able to apply the training they have learned in class to real-life scenarios.

Dacre emphasized that undergraduates are often limited in their ability to find opportunities to provide direct medical care to patients.

“StEMS provides a unique opportunity for our volunteers, particularly undergraduates, to be able to give back to the Stanford community in a medical capacity,” he said.

 

Contact Claire Wang at clwang32 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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