Kylie Jue – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Fri, 03 Feb 2017 10:31:50 +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 Kylie Jue – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Editor’s Farewell: Understanding our community https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/03/editors-farewell-understanding-our-community/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/03/editors-farewell-understanding-our-community/#respond Fri, 03 Feb 2017 09:47:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1122428 I’d like to believe that 10 years from now, I’ll look back at my time as editor-in-chief and say that this was the volume that convinced me to go into journalism. I’d like to remember this as the year that changed my career path. And in many ways, it’s certainly brought me closer to that conclusion.

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I’d like to believe that 10 years from now, I’ll look back at my time as editor-in-chief and say that this was the volume that convinced me to go into journalism. I’d like to remember this as the year that changed my career path. And in many ways, it’s certainly brought me closer to that conclusion.

In reality, I can’t know for sure what I’ll be doing after graduation. And since I’ll be “slow-terming” for my master’s degree, I still have a couple years at Stanford before I have to decide. But at the very least, my time at The Daily has convinced me about the importance of the work of news organizations.

I’ve written about my Daily “origin story” in a previous editorial. But what I hope to explain in this letter is why I’ve spent so much time and energy on a single extracurricular activity while at Stanford: a question I’ve asked myself several times over the last four years.

I joined The Daily because I liked writing and editing, but when I felt burnt out after my first volume of editing for the News section, it was the mentorship and encouragement of senior editors that convinced me to stick with the job. And over time, I discovered that the part of editing I really loved was the opportunity to teach. Like my editors before me, I had the chance to help my staffers improve their writing, and one of my favorite experiences at The Daily has been running our high school summer internship program – where I first got my start in college journalism.

As part of The Daily’s executive team, it has been easy to get bogged down in the everyday tasks of printing a daily paper and responding to dozens of emails. I’ve missed editing and teaching, and it’s more difficult to get to know the new staffers. Yet despite the changes, I’ve also found new purpose in the editor-in-chief role. Even more than the mentorship and education components, The Daily has allowed me to connect with and understand the Stanford community in ways I never would have otherwise.

When people come to us with tips or op-eds, they reaffirm our importance as a local newspaper. For me, some of the most rewarding moments on the job have been receiving notes from readers or sources thanking us for our work. The Stanford Daily should produce content that both fosters greater discussion and awareness and also enables community members across campus to have their voices heard.

As I looked through past editors’ farewells, many spoke about the communication, management and leadership skills that they learned through their time here. And while I certainly learned those lessons, too, I think the most important lesson that The Daily has taught me is the importance of not only listening but also working to understand.

During my time as editor-in-chief, I have also come to question the role of college newspapers. Unlike most national papers, we serve a much smaller, very specific audience, and I believe that we have a responsibility to reflect the views and issues valued by our diverse community. But the goal of representing those different groups in both our coverage and our staff is another challenge in and of itself. Especially in today’s heated political climate, it’s difficult to enter into communities in which we have few or no connections. But it’s our duty as journalists to provide well-balanced perspectives while also caring about and understanding the communities we’re covering.

From writing to teaching to understanding, the motivating factors behind my work at The Daily have continued to shift. None of the previous purposes has ever gone away, and each adds to the previous as I continue to learn.

Right now, the journalism and media industry is broken. The way readers interact with online news is sporadic, the technology that originally increased access has created filter bubbles and the sudden proliferation of fake news is frankly scary. But that doesn’t mean the industry isn’t fixable.

The technology that broke the system also has the ability to repair it, and with the widespread national attention on the media, journalists currently have the power to influence a lot of people.

So why did I spend 50 percent of my Stanford career on The Daily? I guess it’s the same reason that I want to work in the media industry when I graduate. On the one hand, there’s the selfish and possibly naive belief that I might actually be able to make a difference through journalism. But on the other hand, The Daily has given me not only the chance to impact the Stanford community, but also the skills to really understand what those people are saying.

As Victor Xu takes over as Volume 251 editor-in-chief, I’m confident in the future of the paper (and the media industry). As for me, we’ll see if I ever make good on my promise to go into journalism as a career. But one thing is certain: There’s so much more work to do.

 

As always, thank you for your readership and support.

Kylie Jue ’17
President and editor-in-chief, Volume CCL

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Why The Daily matters: Learning with The Daily https://stanforddaily.com/2016/12/09/why-the-daily-matters-learning-with-the-daily/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/12/09/why-the-daily-matters-learning-with-the-daily/#respond Sat, 10 Dec 2016 01:34:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1120887 In The Stanford Daily’s Articles of Incorporation, the first general purpose of the organization is “to provide an education opportunity to the Stanford University students to gain journalistic writing, photographic and business experience at Stanford University.” It’s this culture of education and learning that make The Daily such an important institution on Stanford’s campus.

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I wrote my first article for The Daily as a high school intern in July 2012. At the time, computer science had just become Stanford’s most popular major. The story represented a milestone for the University, but as a high school junior, I neither fully understood its gravity nor had the journalism skills to write the story well. My first draft was structured like a high school essay, had a thesis instead of a lede and read like a PR statement for the computer science department. After significant edits from my desk editor, the final version retained only one full quote and one sentence from the original.

In spite of – and largely due to – my rocky start, I learned a lot about college journalism that summer, and my first news desk editor went on to become my first editor-in-chief during my freshman year at Stanford. He and the other editors I’ve worked with at The Daily are the main reason I’ve stayed with the organization for so long. Their mentorship is the reason I’ve begun to consider journalism as a potential career path, despite my longtime intentions to enter into tech as an engineer.

In The Stanford Daily’s Articles of Incorporation, the first general purpose of the organization is “to provide an educational opportunity to the Stanford University students to gain journalistic writing, photographic and business experience at Stanford University.” It’s this culture of education and learning that makes The Daily such an important institution on Stanford’s campus.

The Daily should serve as an educational organization open to anyone who wants to learn about journalism. For the first time this year, we’ve required every editorial section to have training workshops for new staffers, and these have enabled us to maintain open membership in every section except Opinions, which has a cap on its weekly columnists. We should strive to allow anyone to work at The Daily, regardless of prior journalism experience.

But it’s worth noting that the majority of our 200-plus-person staff do not intend on going into journalism after college. The Daily brings together people of all different majors and teaches important communication and leadership skills regardless of our future career paths. I myself have found that the most valuable lessons I’ve learned through The Daily have come from interactions I’ve had with sources and fellow staff members.

As journalists at a student-run college newspaper, we’re in a unique position of being active members of the communities that we’re trying to represent, report on and inform. And as a result, conflicts of interest, personal biases and repercussions from our stories are all the more real. During my time at The Daily, I’ve gained interpersonal skills that no other experience at Stanford could provide: I’ve had the opportunity to engage with a diverse set of viewpoints on a variety of different issues on campus.

In this way, The Daily also acts as an educational institution within Stanford’s campus — giving people a place to have their voices heard while also informing the public about issues that matter, or should matter, to students and community members. Whether reporting objectively and comprehensively in our News section or presenting diverse views in our Opinions section, The Daily and its staff should strive to serve and represent the Stanford community by better educating ourselves about the issues that matter to one another.

Of course, we always have room for improvement. The Daily is no stranger to criticism from both within and outside the Stanford community, and mistakes are a part of the learning process. If my first desk editor and all the editors I had after him had simply rewritten my stories rather than working with me through each mistake, I would not be where I am today. Part of our jobs as journalists and editors is to be educators — both for one another and also for the communities we’re serving.

I view The Daily as both an educational institution and a student community that should be open to anyone.  And given the current sociopolitical climate at college campuses and around the nation, the skills we teach and the learning experiences we provide are more important now than ever.

 

Kylie Jue is the current editor-in-chief for Volume 250. She is a senior majoring in CS+English and coterming in computer science. She began writing for the News section as a high school intern and has also worked as a desk editor and managing editor for News. Contact Kylie at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

This piece is part of the Vol. 250 Editorial Board’s “Why The Daily matters” series. Read the rest of the editorials here.

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President Obama talks inclusive entrepreneurship, moderates panel with Mark Zuckerberg https://stanforddaily.com/2016/06/24/president-obama-talks-inclusive-entrepreneurship-moderates-panel-with-mark-zuckerberg/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/06/24/president-obama-talks-inclusive-entrepreneurship-moderates-panel-with-mark-zuckerberg/#respond Sat, 25 Jun 2016 02:03:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1116220 “[Stanford] is the place that made nerd cool,” said President Barack Obama when he spoke at Stanford on Friday morning as part of the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES). Obama highlighted diversity and accessibility in entrepreneurship in his address.

Following his speech, the president moderated a discussion with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and three young entrepreneurs from around the world.

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President Barack Obama addresses the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford, CA. Photo by Rahim Ullah
President Barack Obama addresses the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford, CA. (RAHIM ULLAH/The Stanford Daily)

“This is the place that made nerd cool,” said President Barack Obama when he spoke at Stanford on Friday morning as part of the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES). Obama highlighted diversity and accessibility in entrepreneurship in his address.

Following his speech, the president moderated a discussion with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and three young entrepreneurs from around the world.

The speech and panel were part of GES’s Partner Plenary, which also included speeches from Google CEO Sundar Pichai and co-founder of AOL Steve Case and welcoming remarks by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker.

Stanford President John Hennessy introduced Obama and emphasized the importance of a diverse workforce, noting that computer science has become the “fastest growing major for women at Stanford.”

“An entrepreneurial mindset — including its constituent characteristics of creativity, collaboration, bold leadership, smart risk-taking — [is] important in all walks of life, especially as we educate young people who will need to address the massive global challenges we have around the world,” Hennessy said.

Obama on why entrepreneurship matters

Following Britain’s vote to withdraw from the European Union (EU) yesterday evening, Obama explained that he had spoken to Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK) David Cameron just a few hours before his speech.

“Based on our conversation, I’m confident that the UK is committed to an orderly transition out of the EU,” Obama said.

“While the UK’s relationship with the EU will change, one thing that will not change is the special relationship that exists between the two nations,” he added. “That will endure. The EU will remain one of our indispensable partners.”

Obama also noted that he believes the UK’s decision reflects today’s challenges of globalization — that “the world has shrunk” and is “interconnected.”

“Part of why this Global Entrepreneurship Summit has been so close to my heart, something that I’ve been so committed to, is because I believe all of you represent all the upside of an interconnected world,” he said. “But it’s also important in these discussions to find ways in which we are expanding and broadening the benefits of that interconnection to more and more people.”

According to the president, 170 countries were represented at GES this year, and this is the first year that Cuban entrepreneurs have attended the summit. Next year’s event will be held in India.

Obama stressed that accessibility to resources like financial support and mentorship is key to increasing diversity in entrepreneurship.

“You deserve the same chance to succeed as everybody else,” he said. “You’ve got to make sure that everybody has a fair shot to reach their potential.  You can’t leave more than half the team on the bench.”

New ventures are vital in creating new jobs for youth all over the world, including the United States, he explained.

“We live in a world where half of our world is under the age of 30 — where all of the young people around the world need to start new ventures and create jobs in the 21st century and help lift up entire populations,” Obama said.

In order to achieve these goals, GES aims to help entrepreneurs pursue social missions that matter to them.  The president announced several new initiatives that have stemmed from GES this year: the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship (PAGE), as well as a White House initiative to connect global investors such as the likes of Bill Gates with clean energy entrepreneurs from developing countries.

These latest schemes aim to give young entrepreneurs the boost they need to access capital and business skills.

“Dozens of tech companies are committing to make technology workforces look like America by publishing data on diversity each year and developing tech talents from all backgrounds,” Obama noted.

In all, 17,000 entrepreneurs have benefited from the GES since it was first held in 2010, Obama explained. Just this morning, he signed an executive order institutionalizing his efforts to promote global entrepreneurship — which include the summit itself — so that the initiatives will persist well into the next presidency.

Focusing on the next generation of entrepreneurs

Even as he outlined the latest policy initiatives, Obama focused chiefly on the young entrepreneurs, urging them to seize the networking opportunities during the remainder of the summit.

“The point is, I believe in you, and America believes in you, and we believe you have the talent, skill and ambition not just to pursue your dreams, but to realize them, to lift up not just your own families but your communities, countries, and create hope for decades to come,” Obama said.

To learn about young entrepreneurs’ stories and challenges from around the world, Obama was joined by a panel of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and three up-and-coming entrepreneurs: Mai Medhat, the founder and CEO of Egyptian event planning company Eventtus; Jean Bosco Nzeyimana, founder and CEO of Rwandan renewable energy firm Habona; and Mariana Costa Checa, founder and CEO of the Peruvian technology education social enterprise Laboratoria.

Medhat shared that her event planning and networking company began from a need she had felt keenly herself: professional women in Egypt often have difficulty networking at events. Her drive as an entrepreneur came from a desire to help others in her position.

“Funding was a real challenge of course,” Medhat said. “The passion [is] really the only thing that keeps me going and keeps me awake every day.”

Like Medhat, Zuckerberg emphasized that young entrepreneurs should begin with an idea that invigorates them rather than an idea aimed just at making money.

“When I started, I cared deeply about giving everyone a voice and giving people the ability to share everything they cared about, and bringing a community  together,” Zuckerberg said, recalling Facebook’s early days. “It started small, in one university, and I didn’t think it would be a company at the time.”

From a more practical perspective, Mehdat pointed out that administrative difficulties also abound in her home country — everything from finding a lawyer to registering a new company with several different government offices.

“Even in the U.S., we still have 16 agencies in charge of doing business,” Obama said. “We tried to streamline them into one, but it requires congressional action.”

He looked to Zuckerberg for technological solutions that could lower barriers for entrepreneurs where the government might fail.

“We have developed a program all over the world — it’s called FbStart, and we give entrepreneurs free access to tools,” Zuckerberg said.

“We also have over 50 million small businesses with pages on Facebook, which they use as their primary presence online,” he added.

Obama concluded the discussion by acknowledging that governments around the world may continue to resist the unfamiliar, especially when it comes to technology. He recalled the landmark use of social networks during the 2008 presidential campaign.

“[The campaign team] had all this stuff I hadn’t heard of,” Obama said. “If I tried to maintain control and said, ‘We’re going with pamphlets because I’m used to pamphlets, and I can control what’s in the pamphlet,’ then I might not be sitting here.”

While he acknowledged the dangers of radicalization on the internet, Obama saw technology and entrepreneurship as vital for creating a better future.

“Part of what has created all this [modern entrepreneurship], what Stanford is all about, is our capacity to say, ‘we don’t know’ — to say all the received wisdom may not be right,” he said. “And we’re willing to test that.”

 

Contact Fangzhou Liu at fzliu96 ‘at’ stanford.edu or Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Hillary Clinton visits Stanford, addresses counterterrorism https://stanforddaily.com/2016/03/23/hillary-clinton-visits-stanford-addresses-counter-terrorism/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/03/23/hillary-clinton-visits-stanford-addresses-counter-terrorism/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2016 05:41:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1112484 Presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech on counter-terrorism at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) on Wednesday morning.

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Presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech on counterterrorism at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) on Wednesday morning.

Clinton was in the area for a private event in Atherton and decided to make a public address after the attacks in Brussels on Tuesday.

According to Hyma Moore, press lead for Clinton’s campaign, over 130 people attended the invite-only event, including Stanford faculty members, students and friends of Clinton. Distinguished guests George Shultz, former Secretary of State and Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and William Perry, former Secretary of Defense and Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor Emeritus at FSI and the School of Engineering, were also in the audience.

Director of FSI Michael McFaul, who first met Clinton when she “delivered her daughter to The Farm as a freshman,” introduced her to the audience at around 11:40 a.m.

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Three main points

Clinton’s speech highlighted three main points about counterterrorism efforts: the constantly adapting adversary, the need to strengthen existing alliances and the importance of relying on what actually works.

In tackling the constantly adapting enemy of ISIS, Clinton highlighted the importance of addressing the issues of network security and privacy.

“The tech community and the government have to stop seeing each other as adversaries and start working together to protect our safety and our privacy,” Clinton said.

“A national commission on encryption like [what] Senator Mark Warner and Congressmen Mike McCaul are proposing could help,” she added.

Clinton also emphasized her own political experience as a New York senator during 9/11 and also as former Secretary of State.

“It would be a serious mistake to stumble into another costly ground war in the Middle East,” she said.

Instead, she said, the United States should focus on reinforcing existing foreign alliances, particularly with European countries. Again referencing 9/11, Clinton argued that there was a huge outpouring of support for the U.S. following the 2001 attacks in New York and that it is now “our turn to stand with Europe.”

In addressing what concrete steps can be taken, Clinton critiqued the plans of GOP presidential contenders as well as outlining her own proposals.

“ISIS is attempting a genocide of religious and ethnic minorities… Walls will not protect us from this threat,” Clinton said, in reference to Donald Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to curtail illegal immigration. “We cannot contain ISIS. We must defeat ISIS.”

The former Secretary of State also called out Republican candidates for inflammatory rhetoric against all Muslims, arguing that insulting allies is a method that “does not work” in building coalitions in the fight against terrorism. According to Clinton, dismantling the global network of terror will necessarily include steps to address propaganda and online extremists that might be fueled by such language.

While criticizing current GOP candidates, Clinton also showed a more bipartisan side, citing Senator John McCain in her denouncement of torture. According to Clinton, experts agree about the ineffectiveness of torture.

“I’m proud to have been part of the administration that banned torture,” Clinton said. “If I am president, the United States will not practice or condone torture, even when we are up against opponents that don’t respect human life or human rights.”

Clinton concluded her address with a focus on the importance of American leadership.

“If we can forge a bipartisan consensus, if we can bring our people to understand what this struggle means to us, if we can maintain our alliances and our partnerships, we will be successful,” she said. “And that will benefit not only our country but the world. And that, when you boil it down, is what American leadership has to be about.”

A 24-hour planning period

According to Chaney Kourouniotis, communications manager for FSI, the event came together in about 24 hours when the Clinton campaign reached out to Stanford following the bombings in Brussels.

“The campaign contacted Stanford wanting to have the opportunity to participate here, since it’s been our practice here at FSI to host a number of world leaders, U.S. leaders, former diplomats, people from all parts of the political spectrum,” Kourouniotis said.

Because FSI has hosted high-level diplomats before, it was more accustomed to accommodating the security required for such an event. Nevertheless, Clinton’s address had an unusually short planning period.

“This is probably one of the quickest times we’ve pulled it together for someone at this level,” Kourouniotis said.

According to Kourouniotis, FSI felt honored to host the former Secretary of State. While none of the other current presidential candidates have spoken at Stanford during their campaigns, FSI remains nonpartisan and is open to more guests.

“We’re happy to host other candidates, and we’re proud to continue to have a role in this type of discussion and this type of dialogue,” Kourouniotis said.

Student reactions

Kourouniotis explained that due to the international affairs focus of Clinton’s speech, student invitations were sent primarily to FSI affiliates. Despite the fact that many were away for spring break, attendees included students from FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, as well as members of related student organizations such as Stanford in Government (SIG) and Stanford Debate Society.

Jake Dow ’19 leveraged his membership in SIG in order to attend the invite-only talk. Dow, already a Clinton supporter, spoke highly of the event, saying that he “had to go.”

“I thought she knocked it out of the park today,” Dow said. “My favorite part was that she unveiled a new line against Donald Trump that ‘loose cannons tend to misfire.’ I thought that was a great and catchy way to say that we can’t elect a man who doesn’t have a steady hand on the issues.”

Another SIG member, Chiamaka Ogwuegbu ’18, also noted the references to the GOP frontrunner.

“There was [a lot] of Trump shade thrown in there,” Ogwuegbu said.

Although Ogwuegbu said he supports Bernie Sanders over Clinton in the primary election, he generally agreed with Clinton’s message on terrorism, calling it a “safe speech, but eloquent.”

Ogwuegbu also noted how Clinton addressed terrorist attacks less publicized than the recent bombing in Brussels, including attacks on hotels in West Africa, beaches in Tunisia and markets in Lebanon.

“I appreciated her initial mention of the non-European terrorist attacks, but after that, it kind of faded and focused more on the European-American connection,” Ogwuegbu said.

Other students attending the event were less decided on a candidate to support in the primaries. Jimmy Zhou ’18, who received an invitation as part of the Stanford Debate Society, said he remains torn between supporting Sanders and Clinton but found getting to hear the former Secretary of State helpful.

“I think that there is something unique about being able to see a presidential candidate in person and helps you evaluate them,” Zhou said. “There is something about having a presidential persona that is important… and I came out more confident in her foreign policy abilities.”

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu and Ada Statler-Throckmorton at adastat ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Past the point of no return: Sitting with Team Sm:)e at TreeHacks https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/19/past-the-point-of-no-return-sitting-with-team-sme-at-treehacks/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/19/past-the-point-of-no-return-sitting-with-team-sme-at-treehacks/#respond Sat, 20 Feb 2016 05:42:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1110949 Team Sm:)e was an all-female team at TreeHacks that “kind of just happened organically” — they hadn’t planned on being a team of all women in advance. Kristen Law ’18, Gracie Young ’18 and Catherina Xu ’18 were all sophomores who had worked together at previous hackathons and for class projects, and Meera Srinivasan ’19 was […]

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Team Sm:)e was an all-female team at TreeHacks that “kind of just happened organically” — they hadn’t planned on being a team of all women in advance.

Kristen Law ’18, Gracie Young ’18 and Catherina Xu ’18 were all sophomores who had worked together at previous hackathons and for class projects, and Meera Srinivasan ’19 was a freshman intern with the Stanford Women in Computer Science group (WICS), of which Young and Xu are also members. Young and Xu were also coordinating WICS annual hackathon for 2016. Coincidentally, Law and Young had first met at a NASA women-in-tech event as high schoolers.

The team explained that they felt the community of women studying computer science at Stanford was large enough for the all-female team to form naturally. TreeHacks 2015 had been Gracie’s first hackathon, and this year’s event was Meera’s first.

“This time we aren’t as intense in terms of no sleep, no whatever, but I think we all appreciate that it’s pretty different,” Xu said on Saturday afternoon.

The group was working on a mobile application to track users’ mental health by analyzing their text messages. They had started off knowing that they wanted to create an Android app and had been inspired by TreeHacks’s health theme. Having slept by 1:15 a.m. on Friday night, the group had agreed to keep plans flexible and non-competitive.

“For Stanford it’s really open,” Xu added. “You can come; you can not come… And it’s awesome how they have activities and stuff instead of just sitting all day and coding all day. It’s pretty fun to get up and move.”

But despite wanting a less “intense” hackathon experience at TreeHacks, Team Sm:)e ended up staying awake for most of Saturday night and Sunday morning.

(McKENZIE LYNCH/The Stanford Daily)
(McKENZIE LYNCH/The Stanford Daily)

By midnight on Sunday, they had been sitting at the same table and staring at the same computer screens for over 12 hours. Srinivasan had spent a large portion of that time integrating Windows Media Player into their project to play music, but she had encountered an issue, or “bug,” when trying to open the audio files.

Young was trying to help Srinivasan debug the problem, but by nearly 2:30 a.m., the lack of sleep was catching up with the team.

“Meera, I can’t help you anymore,” Young said. “I believe in you, and I believe that you can fix this but … What’s the econ term my mom always uses?”

“Cost-benefit analysis?” someone suggested jokingly.

Young found the phrase for which she was looking: “This is a pivot point! But it doesn’t mean that the last twelve hours have gone to waste.”

Srinivasan paused and looked Young directly in the eyes.

“That was inspirational,” Srinivasan said genuinely.

The team broke into laughter.

“A 360-degree pivot point!” Young added. “Wait. That would end up in the same direction.”

This time, hackers who overhead the conversation from a nearby table joined in the laughter.

Around 3 a.m., another TreeHacks participant helped Srinivasan fix the problem, and without having been there, it would have been hard to imagine how excited someone could get over a song playing on a phone. Young had a similar rush when she successfully made a photo transition off the phone screen. By 3:30 a.m., Team Sm:)e had hit another wave of energy and were actively discussing different operating systems and APIs.

Empty coffee cups and boba cups were scattered around their laptops, and Law had brought a bag of Snapea Crisps upstairs to keep the team nourished as they worked. Productive moments for the team came and went in surges — one moment they’d make a coding breakthrough and the next they’d be laughing about how Young had misspelled “splash” as “spash” and was too lazy to change the filename.

“I’ve passed the point of no return,” Young said at 5:35 a.m.

At 4:30 a.m., they had promised to leave by 6 a.m., but at 7 a.m., all four members were still sitting at the table. They were laughing deliriously as they filmed a promo video to post with their project submission.

“Hackathon projects don’t even usually get this done, so snaps to us,” Young said.

Xu rested her chin on her keyboard: “I’m just going to smile from my little laptop of a bed.”

At 7:11 a.m., their app was finally live on TreeHacks’s submission site. They debated whether or not they should even go to bed but ultimately decided to get some rest before the final project expo at 12 p.m.

(KYLIE JUE/The Stanford Daily)
Srinivasan, Xu, Young and Law (left to right) presented their app, Sm:)e, at the TreeHacks project expo on Sunday afternoon. (KYLIE JUE/The Stanford Daily)

Later that day, the team presented for over two hours as judges came and went from their table. Their lack of sleep hardly showed.

“It’s really thrilling and almost addicting,” Young said. “I kind of thought that I was going to do the hackathon really chill, maybe go for a couple of hours, work on CS 110 [homework], but I think once you start, you get so excited about your idea, and you just want to see it come to life that you don’t even care how long you sleep. You just want to finish the project.”

And even though they didn’t end up winning any prizes, Team Sm:)e was happy with the final outcome of their project.

“I think the thing we’re most proud of is how it came together,” Xu said.

“When I usually go to a hackathon, there’s at least six hours of work that I do that goes to nothing because I end up not being able to make it work,” Young added. “But everything that we worked on, we got it to the end, and we got it to the final product.  That’s a really big accomplishment.”

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Click here for more stories from TreeHacks 2016.

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Second annual TreeHacks accepts applicants at 50/50 gender ratio https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/16/second-annual-treehacks-hackathon-accepts-applicants-at-5050-gender-ratio/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/16/second-annual-treehacks-hackathon-accepts-applicants-at-5050-gender-ratio/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2016 01:37:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1110950 Stanford’s large-scale annual collegiate hackathon TreeHacks returned for its second year this past weekend and became the first major hackathon at a university with an accepted applicant pool gender ratio of 50/50. Two of the three winning teams were all-female.

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Stanford’s large-scale annual collegiate hackathon TreeHacks returned for its second year this past weekend and became the first major hackathon at a university with an accepted applicant pool gender ratio of 50/50. Two of the three winning teams were all-female.

(VICTOR XU/The Stanford Daily)
(VICTOR XU/The Stanford Daily)

TreeHacks is a 36-hour event in which students from around the world gather to form teams and build something in a single weekend. The hackathon took place in the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center, with the opening and closing ceremonies in Hewlett Teaching Center. At the end of the weekend, 83 teams submitted their work and had the chance to present their projects at an expo. Expo judges then chose the top eight teams to demo during the closing ceremony in front of a panel of six different judges, including partner at Greylock Partners and former CEO of Mozilla John Lilly and Stanford professor of computer science and electrical engineering Mendel Rosenblum.

In addition to the focus on diversity, other changes to TreeHacks this year included increasing mentorship at the event, adding two themed “verticals” around which hackers could base their projects and switching locations from the Alumni Center to Huang. Instead of selecting first, second and third place winners, judges chose winners for three different categories: “Most Creative,” “Most Technically Challenging” and “Most Polished.”

The event received over 3300 applications and had attendees from over 50 different universities and eight different countries. Around 54 percent of the 630 hackers came from Stanford, while the rest traveled from colleges across the country or outside the U.S. A total of 32 participants were international.

“When we were looking for the types of people that we wanted at TreeHacks, one of the biggest considerations was how much of a community member are you,” said co-director Vincent Chen ’18.

“We were able to gauge how much these people would contribute to this cause of bringing women to tech and bringing different groups — no matter what their background — into tech, so that we could start to approach different types of problems from different types of perspectives,” he added.

Chen explained how diversity contributes to TreeHacks’ larger goal of helping hackers “achieve self-efficacy beyond one weekend.” The gender breakdown of applicants was 71 percent male, 26 percent female and less than one percent non-binary, with the rest choosing not to disclose.

During the opening ceremony, organizers also highlighted the two new verticals: TreeHacks Health and TreeHacks Social Good. The ceremony featured talks from Ryan Panchadsaram, former Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, and keynote speaker Timothy Chou, expert in cloud computing and Stanford lecturer in computer science. Chou spoke about how being a student is the best possible business card.

“The quality of a student is not measured by what they know but by the questions they ask,” Chou said in his advice to the crowd.

Organizers emphasized the importance of creating a safe and welcoming community for people of all backgrounds and interests at TreeHacks, and in order to make the hackathon more approachable for beginners, TreeHacks provided “hackpacks” for teams to hit the ground running with a project idea.

Co-director Raphael Palefsky-Smith ’18 drove mentorship efforts and also created an extension for Slack, the mobile and desktop app used for communication over the weekend, through which participants could type “/mentor” along with a question in order to get help quickly for their projects. Over 150 mentors signed up, and according to Palefsky-Smith, the second-most-active mentor’s average response time for the weekend was under a minute.

The event was also enabled by 40 volunteers, 30 organizers and over 100 sponsors, who provided mentors, hosted workshops and gave out prizes over the weekend.

The three winning hacks demonstrated the variety of projects across teams. Pantri, a smart fridge that connected to FitBit and Amazon Alexa, won “Most Creative”; Recon, a search drone that classified objects and could be controlled through Amazon Alexa, won “Most Technically Challenging”; and The Queen’s Speech, a virtual reality app that used Google Cardboard to provide feedback on users’ public speaking skills, won “Most Polished.” The teams won concert tickets, tickets for a flight to a city of their choice and a dinner at a Michelin-star restaurant respectively.

But beyond generating cool projects and prizes, TreeHacks aimed to focus on the hacker experience. Co-director Christina Wadsworth ’18 spoke about the positive feedback many of the participants provided through a survey after the event.

“We got one response that was a 10-sentence paragraph about how [the participant] literally had to focus on nothing but building things,” Wadsworth said.

“That’s the ideal experience — a hacker who, from the moment they leave their house or wherever they’re living to come to TreeHacks, they have to focus on nothing but working and building and learning,” she added. “To hear that that was the case for some people was my favorite part of the weekend by far.”

 

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Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Click here for more stories from TreeHacks 2016.

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A look at the teams from TreeHacks 2016 https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/16/a-look-at-the-teams-from-treehacks-2016/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/16/a-look-at-the-teams-from-treehacks-2016/#respond Tue, 16 Feb 2016 19:08:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1110908 Over the course of the past weekend, The Daily sat down with several of the teams who participated in TreeHacks 2016. Below are only five of over 80 different groups from the event.

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Over the course of the past weekend, The Daily sat down with several of the teams who participated in TreeHacks 2016. Below are only five of over 80 different groups from the event.

Recon

Who they are:

[ubergrid id=1110909]

What they built: 

The team programmed a search drone so that, in response to a consumer’s voice commands, the drone could learn to recognize corresponding objects through computer vision and be able to detect their presence in a camera’s field of vision. In addition, the team worked on a delivery drone. The project won one of the three final prizes at TreeHacks, “Most Technically Challenging.”

Their story:

As students at Stanford, Glaser, Gomez, Chen and Asawa found it relatively easy to make the trek to TreeHacks on the first day. Glaser mentioned that the other three hackers recruited her the day before the event due to their desire for a drone to hack on.

“I guess people come from all over the world, so I might as well make the trip across the street,” Glaser said.

TreeHacks is Glaser’s second hackathon and the first for the rest of the team. The team came up with the idea of creating consumer-friendly object recognition for drones after bouncing around a number of other ideas involving drones. In the future, they hope to use the grant they received to obtain a new drone for more efficient video streaming as well as more precise control of the delivery drones.

Sm:)e

Who they are:

[ubergrid id=1110914]

What they built:

Sm:)e is an Android app that aims to keep a user’s mental health in check. The program analyzes a user’s most recent texts to track mood and promotes relaxation through music and photos. Through the app, the team wanted to “make mental health resources more accessible, personalized and fun.”

Their story:

Young, Xu and Srinivasan are all members of Stanford’s Women in Computer Science (WiCS) organization. Young and Xu are the 2015-16 coordinators for WiCS’ annual hackathon, HackOverflow, and Srinivasan joined the HackOverflow team as an intern this academic year. Young and Law met at a women-in-tech event while they were both in high school and, since coming to Stanford, have worked together with Xu on different projects. TreeHacks is Srinivasan’s first hackathon.

After coming in knowing that they wanted to build an Android app, the team decided on a “CS+mental health app” as a result of TreeHacks’ health and social good verticals. They also explained that they wanted to take a “less intense” approach to the hackathon.

“Our team kind of came together in the last two days,” Xu said on Friday night.

“The fact that we’re an all-female team kind of just happened organically,” Law added. “It wasn’t really planned.”

Pulse

Who they are:

[ubergrid id=1110920]

What they built:

After looking at a list of projects that Stanford doctors recommended for development, the team decided on a tracking app that documents medical events in a patient’s daily life. The app’s simplicity, quick interaction and accessibility to phone metadata make it relevant to today’s increasingly technological health environment.

Their story:

As students from the University of Washington (UW), Colusso, Sethi, and Timmerman already knew each other when they started preparing for TreeHacks. Sethi and Timmerman met through computer science classes, and Timmerman and Colusso organized DubHacks, UW’s annual hackathon.

Timmerman has participated in over 40 hackathons, and Colusso, whose expertise is in web and user interface design, decided to participate in TreeHacks, his first hackathon, after organizing the second DubHacks with Timmerman. Originally considering a medical career, Sethi found her love for computer science through her passion for math and physics and her high school introductory programming class. When Daitzman’s original project plan fell through, the 16-year-old eventually found this welcoming and engaging group of students from UW on the first night of the hackathon. Although TreeHacks is Daitzman’s first national hackathon, the high schooler started hacking his freshman year.

Inspired by after hearing all of the problems facing the healthcare industry today during the opening ceremony, the team wanted to work on a health-focused project. They believe that technological innovations in healthcare have the potential to improve the changing face of medicine.

“At a lot of other hackathons, you don’t really see the resources,” Timmerman said. “It’s really surprising that there’s so many doctors willing to help you out, and it’s really cool being able to build something that could potentially live past these 48 hours.”

Flagtrip

Who they are:

[ubergrid id=1110934]

What they built:

Flagtrip creates a streamlined, real-time travel planning experience for multiple users to pin down travel destinations and to keep track of logistical information such as flight data, Uber pricing and Airbnb stays. The team’s pitch is “Welcome to Flagtrip: a flagship collaborative adventure-planning experience.”

Their story:

Shiferaw and Tang first met in high school in New Jersey, and last year, they attended TreeHacks and HackPrinceton together. TreeHacks 2016 is Shiferaw’s third hackathon and Tang’s fifth. Shiferaw’s part of the project involved using Google’s Maps API to find locations and process data for mapping. Tang worked with Ruby on Rails and location tracking through Facebook.

“This is the craftiest software I’ve ever worked on,” said Tang, referring to Flagtrip.

Luo worked with Tang and Shiferaw last year and explained that he attends hackathons (TreeHacks is his fourth) in order to meet people and form new friendships. For every team he has been on, Luo has worked with someone he did not previously know. This time, that person was Qian.

Qian is a junior from Princeton who first started attending hackathons because she enjoys completing puzzles, which are part of the application process for HackMIT. TreeHacks is her second hackathon, and her role for Flagtrip included working on user-database functionality and webpage design.

The team members brainstormed a long list of hacks before deciding on a project that they felt was applicable to themselves and that they see as having potential for further development beyond TreeHacks.

Ether on a Stick

Who they are:

[ubergrid id=1110935]

What they built:

The team created an application that helps a group reward a person (or corporation) for doing a specific action, through a vote. This ranges from power plants being paid to clean up emissions to baristas being paid to provide quality service. Concisely, the app is “Change.org, with money,” according to Fang.

Their story:

Despite losing two of their original teammates, Fang and Hayes, students at UC Berkeley,  came to TreeHacks with the idea for Ether on a Stick. The two wanted to implement a “smart” dominant assurance contract, a specific type of contract, because they thought it was an interesting mathematical problem.

“The first 20 hours, we didn’t write a single line of code,” Fang said. “It was all learning, reading white papers and sketching out ideas.”

Through the project, the team hopes to contribute to the distributed-systems industry, particularly in economic systems.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu, Albert Zhang at albertzh ‘at’ stanford.edu, Ariel Liu at aliu15 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Isabela Bumanlag at isabela7 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Photos taken by Robert Shi, McKenzie Lynch, Tara Balakrishnan and Kylie Jue.

Click here for more stories from TreeHacks 2016.

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Investigating SAE: A closer look at the fraternity’s removal from campus https://stanforddaily.com/2015/12/02/sae-uncovered/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/12/02/sae-uncovered/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2015 12:29:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1108323 Articles about Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) were some of The Daily’s most read stories over the last two years, but an extensive account about what happened was never published. SAE declined to comment publicly for every past article regarding the situation. Then their alumni advisor reached out to us in June 2015.

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“SAE loses housing indefinitely after second investigation.” “SAE loses housing suspension appeal, will remain on campus through spring.” “SAE housing suspended for two years due to sexual harassment concerns.”

Articles about Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) were some of The Daily’s most read stories over the last two years, but an extensive account about what happened was never published.

During July 2014, a Title IX investigation of SAE was initiated due to concerns that SAE “caused, condoned and tolerated” a “sexually hostile environment” at its 2014 Roman Bath party in May. The Roman Bath was SAE’s annual toga party, with a pre-party tradition during which pledges tell jokes to the audience. After that party, concerns were raised about sexist jokes told by some of the members, and the Title IX investigation results that came out in December placed the fraternity on alcohol suspension, social probation and a two-year housing suspension to start in spring 2015.

In March 2015, the University opened a second Title IX investigation as a result of concerns that SAE had violated their probation and participated in acts of retaliation or harassment that month. In April, the investigation expanded to look into additional potential retaliatory behavior, including posts on Whatsgoodly, against a Title IX witness in Cabo San Lucas over the 2015 spring break. In May 2015, as a result of the investigation, the fraternity lost its housing indefinitely, and the University placed SAE on probationary status for three years.

SAE declined to comment publicly for every past article regarding the situation. Then their alumni advisor reached out to us in June 2015.

A new investigation

I had been working on the story for nearly three months when SAE members said they had a new source for me.

After almost two dozen emails and a month of radio silence, I finally scheduled a meeting with her: 9:15 p.m. outside the Gates Computer Science building.

The entire correspondence felt like something from a spy movie. I didn’t know her name and had never actually communicated with her directly. My email exchange had been with her acquaintance in SAE: one of the only people — or maybe the only person — who knew her identity.

During the 2015 spring break, this female student had allegedly posted a question on Whatsgoodly, an anonymous polling app. The poll was referenced in the Title IX decision letter that took away SAE’s housing on campus indefinitely, and the University considered the poll one of several “retaliation concerns” by the fraternity against a Title IX witness.

During the second Title IX investigation, the female student with whom I would be meeting decided against taking responsibility for the anonymous Whatsgoodly poll. She was worried about potential repercussions from the University. Over emails with her SAE liaison, we considered several different options to allow her to come forward anonymously. We finally decided on a private meeting between just the two of us.

But a few hours before our scheduled interview, she changed her mind — the risk of the University discovering her identity and opening up an investigation was still too great.

In the larger scheme of the case, proving that one Whatsgoodly poll was not authored by SAE would have had little to no effect on the University’s Title IX decision, and for all I knew, SAE could have made this student up. But I found it difficult to believe that they would go to such lengths to challenge a minor point in the investigation.

My experience with this source exemplified many of the problems The Daily faced when investigating SAE’s story. People on all sides were not willing to talk, and when they were, University accounts differed from source accounts, and source accounts could not be 100 percent confirmed.

Furthermore, the more I learned about the case, the more questions I had about the Title IX investigation process. SAE members and lawyers argued that they had not been provided with due process.

“I just do not think that the punishment fits the crime,” said one current SAE member who had gone through the investigations.

But first I needed to find out: What exactly was the crime?

The Roman Bath party

Every year, as part of its annual Roman Bath party, SAE hosts a pre-party event and invites the members of Stanford’s Pi Beta Phi (Pi Phi) to attend. As part of the 20-year-old tradition, each new pledge must stand in front of the crowd, say his name and tell one joke. If the joke does not receive enough of a response, audience members can throw wine and grapes, and the pledge is asked to sit in the rafters for the remainder of the event.

Sometime before the 2014 event, SAE’s president was contacted by Pi Phi’s president at the time. According to the University’s Dec. 11, 2014 Title IX decision letter, she asked him to “tone down the jokes told at the pre-party” and “to stay away from jokes that were racist or sexist.” However, in a screenshot of their exchange provided by SAE, the Pi Phi president did not explicitly mention racism or sexism.

“I’ve been receiving quite a few concerns/worries about the potential to cross the line with some jokes,” she wrote. “Obviously most jokes are just plain hilarious and great, but last year there were a number of people that were offended even if they were intended to be just a joke.”

Despite differing accounts of exactly what happened in the presidents’ exchange, both the Title IX decision letter and the screenshot agree that the SAE president responded that he could not necessarily control what the pledges would say, since the fraternity does not “censor” the jokes. But he agreed to remind them to “keep [the jokes] under control.”

Whether or not this message reached the new members is unclear. According to the Title IX letter, the president notified both the vice president and SAE’s New Member Educator, and while the latter told new members not to be insensitive, he noted that he may not have stressed the message enough. Pledges interviewed for the investigation did not remember being told to “tone down” their jokes based on prior concerns.

Yet that evening, after one pledge told a sexist joke and received a “big response,” according to the Title IX letter, several others, some of whom were drunk, began to search for jokes about women online. The result was at least six sexist jokes cited by the University, including “Why don’t women ever wear watches? Because there’s a clock on the stove” and “What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing: You’ve already told her twice.”

Speaking on behalf of the fraternity, Laird Cagan ’80 M.S. ’80, who has acted as SAE’s alumni advisor since 2003, confirmed this sequence of events. While he said that everyone agreed the jokes were offensive, he questioned the University’s categorization of the jokes as “sexual harassment.”cagan-fix

“It is important to appreciate that the University never established facts to bring the Bath Party jokes within its sexual harassment policy,” Cagan said. “That policy, Administrative Guideline 1.7.1, is very specific and requires much more than offensive conduct or even unwanted sexual advances or requests for sexual favors.”

“Does telling jokes at a joke party at a fraternity, where everyone knows the format, create a hostile living environment under Title IX?” he added.

The Title IX letter said witnesses uniformly described the pre-party as a “rowdy affair,” with some witnesses calling the climate “shocking” and “primitive.” It also stated that women were not able to “easily leave or remove themselves from the situation.”

SAE members present commented that although some women did get up to leave or walk around during the event, the environment did not seem unusual for a Roman Bath pre-party.

“Absolutely not out of the ordinary,” said one SAE member when asked about the environment that night. “It was like any fraternity party I have literally ever been to on this campus. It was no different.”

In their appeal, which included letters of support from several Pi Phi members, SAE argued against the claim that a majority of the women present sat in “stunned silence.” Members of Pi Phi declined to comment for this story.

SAE members and witnesses from the Title IX investigation, however, did agree that concerns about the jokes arose quickly after the pre-party. SAE apologized to individuals who brought concerns to them, and the jokes were discussed at a house meeting after an email sent to all fraternities from the Inter-Sorority Council on May 22 referenced the jokes. According to the Title IX letter, a more focused house discussion was not immediately held, and both Pi Phi and Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority (Kappa) canceled their remaining social events with SAE for the quarter.

What further complicated the situation were two transports from SAE that same evening. The first involved a pledge who, according to Cagan, had stumbled while climbing down a ladder from the rafters and had to receive several stitches on his forehead. The second involved a female student transported as a possible result of being roofied.

In the Dec. 11 Title IX decision letter, the University did not list any specific substantiated instances of SAE’s use of drugs or alcohol to incapacitate women. In a section titled “Other Concerns of Possible Drugging Incidents and Unwanted Physical or Sexual Conduct,” the letter stated “several concerns had been raised” regarding “suspected drugging incidents” and “alleged unwanted physical conduct.” However, it said that the “majority of women involved in these incidents were not willing to participate in this [investigation] or any other formal investigation.”

“Based on information available about other incidents, the University by a preponderance of the evidence is not able to substantiate what exactly occurred or whether what occurred could be attributed to SAE,” the letter reads.

“The number and nature of the concerns involving conduct against women at the SAE house, however, is concerning especially in light of the hostile climate at the Roman Bath pre-party in combination with the nature of SAE’s response to concerns raised before and after the pre-party,” it adds.

When students heard about the alleged roofie incident at the Roman Bath party, several blamed SAE. The fraternity claimed that its own concern to clarify that its members were not responsible for the drugging incident eclipsed much of its concern regarding the jokes.

SAE sources emphasized this point in regard to two meetings between their leadership and members of Kappa, the second of which also involved ASSU representatives. SAE members told The Daily that they were upset not at Kappa’s cancellation of their social events, but rather at an email sent by Kappa leadership that attributed the roofie incident to SAE. But based on witness reports, the University cited these meetings as “concerns regarding retaliation and intimidation” by SAE.

“[SAE members] indicated that they regretted the tone of the meetings, but felt it was necessary to defend their organization against the alleged drugging incident being presented publicly as a proven fact when that was not the case,” the Title IX letter reads.

The first Title IX investigation and appeal

The week following the Roman Bath party, Catherine Criswell Spear stepped into her role as Stanford’s first Title IX coordinator. During Spear’s tenure at Stanford, the Title IX office handled several controversial cases, including Brock Turner’s arrest for alleged rape and an investigation of the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band that led to its ongoing travel ban. Spear stepped down from her position on Sept. 11, 2015 and declined to comment for this article. The investigation of SAE became one of her first Title IX cases at Stanford and the University’s first organizational Title IX incident on campus.

Initiated on July 7, 2014, the case was based on two primary concerns: that SAE had created a “sexually hostile environment” and that SAE had been involved in the use of “high-grain alcohol and drugs to render female students attending SAE-sponsored events susceptible to unwanted sexual advances and actions,” according to the Title IX letter.

Simultaneously, Stanford’s Organization Conduct Board (OCB) also began an investigation that took place in November and December.

SAE received a Title IX decision letter on Dec. 11 and an OCB decision letter on Dec. 19. It appealed to the University on Jan. 14, 2015.

The results of the OCB investigation released on Dec. 19 found that SAE had violated University alcohol and hazing policies by providing alcohol to members under the age of 21 and by requiring pledges to climb into and sit in the rafters at the Roman Bath party. SAE “accepted culpability for these events” in its appeal.

However, SAE’s appeal also included several concerns about the Title IX process, as well as over 250 pages of support letters from SAE brothers, members of Pi Phi and other sororities, SAE chapter alumni and other interested parties.

Although the Title IX letter stated that unsubstantiated claims played no role in the Title IX decision, SAE members, representatives and lawyers questioned why the unsubstantiated incidents were mentioned at all if they had no effects. In an email to The Daily, University spokeswoman Lisa Lapin expanded upon whether or not substantiated instances of sexual harassment by SAE members had been found.

“It is important to note that this situation involved much more than ‘lighthearted jokes,’” Lapin said. “Many examples actually were found to be substantiated with respect to alleged sexual harassment. It is some of the additional allegations of sexual assault and misconduct that could not be substantiated or corroborated.”

However, Cagan, along with SAE members at the time, reported that the University had not told them about any of these substantiated claims and “refused to share any information regarding any unsubstantiated claims.” Despite Cagan’s research into SAE’s history over the past five years, he could not find significant examples supporting alleged sexual harassment.

According to Cagan, members were also never explicitly told to whom the Title IX office spoke or exactly what the claims against them were, besides the two general concerns — creating a sexually hostile living environment and incapacitating women with drugs or alcohol — mentioned at the start of the investigation. In fact, one of the row staff told SAE that “if it is just a bunch of jokes, you have nothing to worry about,” Cagan said.lapin

Lapin clarified some of the details about the origins of the investigation.

“The transports were not the reason for the initiation of the original Title IX investigation,” she said. “The University has a legal obligation to respond when it knew or should have known about the existence of a sexually hostile environment. There were several reports to University staff at the end of spring 2014 that were forwarded to the Title IX office.”

In addition to breaking down the Title IX letter by sections and subsections and responding to particular claims, the appeal brought up two other primary concerns about the investigation process: “procedural irregularities” and “investigative bias.”

SAE’s primary concerns included a low number of witnesses and the investigation’s lack of timeliness. Only six of the 34 people interviewed by the investigator were Pi Phis, despite the Title IX letter’s claim that “[w]hile not all the Pi Phis who heard jokes found them to be offensive, the majority did.”

The Title IX Administrative Policy and Procedures also states the following with regard to investigation timelines: “A Title IX Investigation should normally be completed within 60 calendar days after the University has notice of an allegation of Prohibited Conduct. The Title IX Coordinator or her designee may extend this time frame for good cause, including University breaks.”

The SAE investigation took a total of 157 days from its initiation to its outcome letter. According to SAE’s appeal, the Title IX office also committed to and rescheduled the outcome delivery meeting with SAE leadership six times between October and December before they met in person at 4 p.m. on Dec. 11, 2014 — in the middle of the autumn final exam period. Given the delayed final meeting, the leadership was told they would be able to see the letter in advance but received only a one-hour period starting at 3 p.m. the same day.

Once they were given the letter, SAE leadership were initially told they had only five business days to complete an appeal. However, the University quickly altered this decision to give SAE more time.

Lapin explained that the delay in the investigation resulted from witnesses’ lack of availability over summer break, since the process was initiated in early July.

“Sixty days is a goal,” Lapin said. “For more complex cases involving multiple allegations and witnesses, it is not uncommon for an investigation to take longer.”

“With respect to the initial investigation, part of the delay was due to initial lack of availability of witnesses, in particular SAE witnesses and leadership,” she added.

But one past SAE member said that he had to take an incomplete on a class that quarter — and almost had to take a second incomplete as well — due to the stress and work that resulted from the investigation process.

SAE also argued that the investigator hired by the Title IX office was “a source of bias and discomfort.” SAE members reported that her questions seemed to assume guilt and that she demonstrated a “hostile” and “intimidating” attitude toward the fraternity members she interviewed.

“I just thought that she didn’t seem neutral,” said one past SAE member who was interviewed for the investigation. “Maybe because we were the accused, you can’t really expect to be treated fairly and neutrally.”

“She treated me like a criminal being charged,” he added.

While it acknowledged that the jokes were wrong, the appeal also questioned whether or not the Roman Bath activities constituted sexual harassment.

“I talked to many lawyers and other people knowledgeable about the law [around Title IX], and they said that there’s absolutely no way a joke-telling party at a fraternity house would constitute a hostile living environment for other students who don’t live there,” Cagan said.

“If any hostile environment has been created, it has been created against the SAEs,” he added.

But on Feb. 12, 2015, Greg Boardman, the vice provost for student affairs, upheld the original Title IX decision and denied SAE’s appeal. He explained that the investigation delays did not have a negative impact on the outcome decision and did not find that the appeal demonstrated bias by the investigator. He also addressed the concerns about the low number of Pi Phi witnesses.

“It is undisputed that some number of attendees, more than one and less than all, were upset and offended by ‘The Forum’ [the pre-party],” Boardman wrote. “It is unnecessary to quantify that number, and trying to do so misses the point.”

“The point is that having been advised by the President of Pi Phi to take care to ensure that there was an appropriate environment at ‘The Forum,’ SAE leadership failed to take the opportunity to guide members in a discussion regarding an appropriate environment by the event,” he added.

Boardman also highlighted the difference between intent and impact and SAE’s failure to recognize the distinction when it came to both sexual harassment through the jokes and also hazing. He explained that while a single crude joke was not sexual harassment, what happened at the Roman Bath pre-party was.

“‘The Forum’ involved an onslaught of jokes that rewarded this behavior by the membership,” he wrote.

Boardman’s response disregarded many of the points in SAE’s appeal due to the Title IX appeal requirement that new evidence be “not available at the time of the initial review.” SAE argued that while information brought up in the appeal had been available at the time of the initial investigation, they had not known exactly what specifics they would need to provide, since they had only received general bullet points about the charges against them and had not been able to view witness statements.

“SAE at all times knew the allegations against them and any and all information they wanted to provide would have been reviewed. They were given notice of the concerns,” Lapin wrote to The Daily in response. “The allegations were very specific.”

However, Boardman did make some changes to the original decision. SAE was allowed to live in its house until the end of the 2014-15 school year while on alcohol suspension and social probation. The fraternity could not hold social events in the house with invited guests, and alcohol was not allowed in common areas. SAE would also be eligible to reoccupy the house in fall 2017 if the chapter developed a plan for house management.

The second Title IX investigation and appeal

But less than a month later on March 11, 2015, the University notified SAE of a second Title IX investigation based on a possible party and concerns of retaliation and harassment against an individual to prevent her from reporting possible unwanted sexual contact on March 7-8.

On April 20, SAE received a second notice stating that the investigation would also look into whether or not members had harassed and intimidated a female Stanford student vacationing in Cabo over spring break because they believed she had been a Title IX complainant in the first investigation.

On May 18, Boardman delivered the results of the investigation, and SAE lost its housing indefinitely. For the remainder of the school year, the fraternity could not have alcohol or outside guests within the residence — with the exception of family members — and all members were immediately placed on probationary status for three academic years. Provost John Etchemendy denied SAE’s second appeal on Aug. 4.

The second Title IX decision letter, written by Boardman, references not only the possibility of alcohol and guests in common spaces on March 7-8, but also several other potential social events or instances of alcohol in common spaces later in the quarter.

“Not all reports to the University were substantiated,” Boardman said. “However, I conclude that the evidence establishes that, on a number of occasions, these restrictions were violated or recklessly ignored.”

In an interview with The Daily, SAE admitted that some members held an unofficial “Probation Party” in April, and a Facebook invitation brought the event to the University’s attention. However, it also argued that, despite the fact that members broke probation, the two primary events on which the second Title IX decision was made — an incident involving alleged intimidation by an SAE staff member and SAE’s alleged retaliatory behavior in Cabo — did not justify the outcome decision.

Witness accounts and University accounts differ with regard to what happened on the night of March 7 or in the early morning hours of March 8. All agreed, however, that an intoxicated female student, Beth Jones*, arrived at SAE on March 7-8 with some friends. While she stayed with her group of friends during much of her time there, she also spent some time alone with an SAE member (SAE A) who had never met her prior to this incident.

After Jones went back to her dorm, she said she may have been subjected to unwanted sexual contact sometime during that night but was not sure when or where it had happened.

According to a former SAE member who had been present, Jones had been at other dorms and houses before arriving in tears at SAE. When SAE A heard about Jones’ concern regarding sexual assault, he became worried, and an SAE staff member (SAE B) decided to go to Jones’ dorm to relay information to her resident fellow about what had happened at the house. Both of the other SAE members, and later Jones, confirmed that SAE A had not been involved with any sexual assault, according to SAE’s second appeal.

SAE B took a fellow SAE member (SAE C) with him — as a second witness to the conversations at the dorm, according to a former SAE member. The University saw this as another instance of intimidation.

“The protocol for urgent situations is to call the on-call residence dean,” Boardman wrote in the second decision letter. “It was not a reasonable or sensible decision for the SAE student staff member to bring a fraternity brother along with him to conduct private and sensitive student affairs work.”

When Jones’ resident fellow could not be reached, SAE B ended up speaking with a resident assistant (RA) at the dorm instead.

While the Title IX letter reports that the RA claims SAE B never inquired about Jones’ well-being, SAE’s second appeal claims that both SAE B and SAE C confirmed that this is false. Despite being listed as a witness to the event by SAE B, SAE C was never interviewed for the Title IX investigation. SAE C did later submit a personal statement confirming that SAE B had asked about Jones’ well-being, but the University chose to use the RA’s account of what had happened.

“In his testimony to Ms. Glaze [the Title IX investigator], the SAE staff member indeed reported that he thought he had asked how [Jones] was,” Etchemendy wrote in his appeal response. “I followed up with Ms. Glaze, who said that the staff member did not volunteer this information on his own, but only said so when she explicitly asked him about it.”

“Since the RA had nothing to gain or lose from this testimony, his testimony trumped the SAE staff member’s, who had a great deal at stake,” he added.

The second incident in question occurred in Cabo, where several SAE members decided to spend their 2015 spring break. Three specific instances of retaliation against Title IX witness Jane Smith* were cited in the University’s May 18 Title IX decision letter. Smith also wrote her own account of what happened in a Daily op-ed.

The first encounter referenced in the decision letter talked about a private room SAE had reserved on March 21 at a bar. Smith approached the room, and one SAE member, Jeff Taylor*, was acting as bouncer. The Title IX letter stated that when Taylor asked whom she knew there, Smith answered “something to the effect that she knew everyone,” and Taylor reportedly had a “rude and childish reaction.”

The letter also details two other interactions between Taylor and Smith and cites them as retaliatory behavior and verbal harassment. SAE’s appeal, however, argues that many of the descriptions referenced in the Title IX letter are unsubstantiated, subjective claims by Smith. It also explained that Taylor’s actions were not driven by the fact that he believed Smith was a Title IX witness.

The University also referenced anonymous polls targeting Smith on Whatsgoodly, but the co-founders of the app, one of whom is an SAE member, would not provide IP addresses or demographics about the posts to either the University or to SAE. Despite SAE’s objections that no evidence could attribute the polls’ authorship to fraternity members, Etchemendy emphasized that both authorship and participation in the polls mattered.

“There would have been a very limited pool of people who both could have participated in these polls (given the geographic range of a Whatsgoodly poll) and who would have been interested in doing so,” Etchemendy wrote.

“It defies belief that these respondents were not primarily members of SAE, though no doubt some friends of SAE, both male and female, also participated,” he added.

Smith, who felt unsafe after her interactions with SAE, ultimately went home early from Cabo. When the events from spring break were brought to the University’s attention, the Title IX office was obligated to investigate, and Stanford also opened an Office of Community Standards (OCS) case against Taylor as an individual.

SAE, however, questioned why Etchemendy did not wait for the OCS panel to come to a decision about Taylor before responding to SAE’s second appeal.

“[I]f the student disciplinary panel were to come to a different conclusion about whether one particular individual engaged in retaliation, that would express the judgment on one issue by a small group of individuals versus the judgment of a larger group of highly experienced advisors to Vice Provost Boardman,” Etchemendy wrote.

“Such an outcome would not in itself invalidate the reasoning that led to Vice Provost Boardman’s decision about retaliation by either this individual or by SAE as a chapter — much less about the broad array of incidents on which his decision was based, most of which are not at issue in the student disciplinary case,” he added.

However, on Aug. 14, 2015, the OCS panel found Taylor “not responsible” for retaliation by a vote of 5-0. Robert Ottilie ’77, a Sigma Chi alumnus and the lawyer who represented Taylor in the OCS case, spoke about how he believes a similar decision would have been made for SAE had the Title IX investigation given the organization due process.

“Having the benefit of a much more thorough investigation that was conducted by the individual student and those assisting him [through the OCS case], and having had the advantage of seeing a substantial amount of evidence, I think there were determinations made by the University — as reflected in that May 18 letter — that were not supported by all of the facts,” Ottilie said. “Those facts weren’t assembled.”

“There were findings made against SAE [in the Title IX investigation letter] that I think — given the benefit of the full record that was established throughout the summer — just aren’t supported by the full record,” he added.

A participant in the OCS investigation, however, explained that the University did not dispute the events that happened in Cabo — the jury only found that there was not enough evidence to determine Taylor’s motivation for his actions.

Cagan emphasized the difference in “due process” between the Title IX investigation and the OCS case, particularly in Taylor’s ability to know all of the claims made against him and to cross-examine witnesses. According to Ottilie, the OCS office allowed Taylor to see everything on file against him, including some of the Title IX witness statements. SAE, however, never had the chance to read the reports from either of the Title IX investigations or from any witnesses.

“I think it would have been helpful had a full and accurate record been developed before the organizational decision was made,” Ottilie said. “And I think that would have been the case had Stanford provided the organization the same hearing process that they provided to the individual. Because then [SAE members] would have had the opportunity to see what was in the file — views that supported their position — go out, and develop their own evidence and help contribute to the development of the evidentiary file.”

“Had they also had that opportunity, I think their result would have been the same as the individual’s result,” he added.

In a conversation with The Daily, Lapin clarified the differences between the Title IX and OCS investigations. SAE had received summaries of the Title IX investigations, but to protect witnesses, exact statements were not shared with the organization. In the OCS case, witness statements are shared with the accused individual but are considered confidential. She emphasized that the reason SAE was not allowed to see exact witness statements from the Title IX report was to protect those involved in the investigation.

“The University’s decision in the Title IX case stands that a student at Stanford was subjected to retaliatory conduct,” Lapin wrote. “That one individual in the OCS process was found not individually responsible for conduct does not overturn the University’s Title IX finding. That individual case does not overturn the University finding that the organization did retaliate through social media and events over spring break.”

According to one past SAE member, the only reason some SAE members had even found out about Smith’s name as a Title IX witness was through a flaw in the first investigation process that allowed all interviewees to see who had agreed to participate, through a shared Google document used for signing up for appointments.

Smith, however, never signed up on the Google document herself and was never informed about how her identity had been revealed, despite the University’s having promised her confidentiality as a witness.

In an email response to questions from The Daily, Smith emphasized that despite her concerns surrounding the process, discussions attempting to “delegitimize” Title IX are hurting victims more than helping.

“The rights of victims and witnesses in Title IX proceedings at Stanford are not respected or protected,” Smith said. “But even though the process is flawed, it’s better than nothing. Unless you’re proposing a solution, all you’re doing by attacking the Title IX office is undermining the limited access to resources and opportunities for justice that a victim has.”

“The conversation about due process should not distract us from seeking to improve procedure while empowering and protecting students who come forward,” she added.smith-grey

Other concerns with Title IX and University judicial processes

Ottilie, Cagan and several other sources — both SAE and non-SAE — voiced additional concerns about “due process” in Stanford’s Title IX and judicial processes.

According to Ottilie, who said he had confirmed this with the senior University counsel in Stanford’s Office of the General Counsel a couple of years ago, the disciplinary procedures of OCS cases create a contract between Stanford students and the University. He said this would also be true in Title IX cases through the Alternate Review Process and Procedures and explained that although constitutional due process does not apply to Stanford as a private institution, contractual due process would.

“If the University were to violate their own provisions, it would essentially be a breach of contract,” he said.

“I have been alarmed at the conduct of their Title IX office really since its inception, and I think that alarm has been confirmed by two recent outcomes related to the Title IX office,” he added. “The first, of course, was the University imposed a secondary sanction on the SAEs on May 18.”

He emphasized that the May 18 Title IX decision not only did not give SAE a proper hearing but also was made before all evidence had been developed.

“The problem at Stanford, both in their individual cases but more so in their organizational cases, which they seem to treat differently, is they don’t have a hearing,” Ottilie said. “With no hearing, there’s no adversarial process.”

Ottilie spoke about how, as a lawyer who has dealt with several student law cases, he believes that Stanford also often assumes guilt of the accused. He explained that this bias is largely due to a lack of separation of roles in the judicial process.ottile-edit

Ottilie also works with the Student Justice Project, which focuses on student rights issues at Stanford. In 2011, it released a case study that alleged misconduct by officials assigned to Judicial Affairs cases, and in its second report in 2013, the group conducted an internal review of Stanford’s OCS process through testimonials from 24 individuals. Several of these individuals, all of whom had either been not charged after referrals to OCS or who had been charged and acquitted, reported that the system appeared to presume guilt of the accused.

“My experience at Stanford is the people that are going into that system are, in many many cases, not guilty of what they’re charged,” Ottilie said. “[Stanford has] brought bad charges.”

“And yet, the process isn’t set up, in my view, to let [the accused] prove they’re innocent,” he added.

Cagan said that he met with a number of attorneys, all of whom told him that “the facts and circumstances of the SAE case would be very favorable to SAE in a court of law and SAE would most likely prevail,” he said. He pointed to Corry v. Stanford, in which California’s Leonard Law required that private colleges in California uphold free speech under the First Amendment by law, above any institutions’ private guidelines.

“There isn’t one allegation of physical assault since the Roman Bath Party to anything later — it’s all been speech, verbal communication,” Cagan said. “Why was SAE punished with the worst punishment in decades because of seven freshmen telling offensive jokes?”

A lawsuit under the Leonard Law would have required a single fraternity member to bring charges against the University, and none of the SAEs wanted to do so. Instead, they chose to refrain from making the case public.

“They wanted to work within the system,” Cagan said. “But I think the system failed them.”

Lapin explained that the Leonard Law was “inapplicable” in this case.

“The Leonard Law does not protect conduct that rises to the level of sexual harassment,” she wrote.

“SAE had organizational privileges withdrawn based on organizational conduct,” she added. “The Leonard Law prohibits discipline, under certain circumstances, of individuals, and here no individual was disciplined.”

The line between harassment and constitutionally protected speech, on campus and off, is a blurry one, constantly re-negotiated. Title IX defines conduct that creates “hostile environments” as pervasive, outrageous and interfering with educational opportunity, and prohibits such conduct. But who’s to say what counts as “pervasive, outrageous and interfering” in each specific situation?

“It’s an issue that is without an absolute answer,” said Joel Siegal, a San Francisco attorney who has argued Title IX cases in federal court.

On a national level, a Congressional bill was introduced this July that would make it more difficult for colleges to discipline alleged perpetrators of sexual assault. Two major fraternity and sorority organizations lobbied for the bill, while Title IX advocates have rallied against it.

Hannah Farr ’15, a Kappa alumna who frequented the SAE house, recalled her perception of the SAE Title IX investigation as a sorority member observing from the outside. She said that she wished there had been more communication from the University clarifying the accusations against SAE.

“There was a lot of talk among sororities about how we wanted to face this issue as a whole sorority group, but in my opinion, there was not a lot of transparency once again about exactly what was going on and what they were being accused of and what the danger was,” Farr said. “There was a lot of discussion about what we wanted to do but no material fact.”

Farr also spoke about how the fraternity was not given an outlet to voice its side of the story.

“I think that these guys were actually slandered last year on campus, because I didn’t really hear their point of view publicly,” she said. “And that just frustrated me.”

Almost every SAE source, including Ottilie, also said that he had been unaware that multiple University offices had been involved in the Title IX decisions or that it seemed like the Title IX office had had a disproportionate amount of power in determining the fraternity’s fate. Cagan said that he felt that “the actions of the Title IX coordinator were unusually harsh.”

“It seemed like she had an agenda to send a message, using SAE as the very first case without concern to the collateral damage to the SAE members whose reputations were unfairly tarnished,” he said.

However, the University emphasized that the Title IX office was not the only one involved in the decision.

“[I]n response to concerns brought to the University’s attention, Vice Provost Boardman requested that the Organizational Conduct Board, Residential Education and the Title IX office conduct a joint investigation,” Etchemendy wrote.

“It is worth mentioning that the opinion of the Title IX representative was by no means an outlier nor the harshest opinion represented in the discussion,” he added. “Several attendees [in the meeting discussing an outcome] felt that the chapter’s charter should be entirely revoked, but that was not Vice Provost Boardman’s ultimate decision.”

Moving forward

SAE members are working to move on from the situation, but for some, that has been easier said than done.

“That whole [investigation] process and then now not being able to live in the house — it sucks,” said one current SAE member. “I don’t get to go and hang out with all my friends every night, and it’s really causing a rift in a lot of my really close friendships where I wish I could be closer.”

“It’s kind of ruined my Stanford experience to be honest,” he added. “I don’t really love Stanford anymore.”

The second Title IX decision in particular affected the fraternity’s recruitment class last year. Only 12 of 33 pledges decided to remain with SAE after the second Title IX decision was released. Those who did decide to stay with the fraternity, along with the returning members, will still be under the three-year social probation.

“I don’t blame them for dropping out,” Cagan said. “I believe they have been treated unfairly. The way the probation was outlined, they would have to walk on eggshells for their entire Stanford experience.”

When reached out to for a comment in September, Brandon Weghorst, the associate director of communications for the national organization SAE, said that staff members and local alumni would be conducting a membership review of the Stanford chapter members within a few weeks.Untitled-5

“During that review, they will evaluate each brother in the chapter to determine if he is following our policies and membership expectations,” Weghorst wrote in an email to The Daily.

On the University’s end, the Title IX office is searching for someone to fill the position of Title IX coordinator.

Despite conflicting accounts and uncertain facts, the facts of which we’re certain boil down to the following: SAE was put on probation and had their housing removed for two years for telling jokes and creating a “sexually hostile environment” at a pre-party event and for violating University alcohol and hazing policies. The fraternity then lost its housing indefinitely for breaking alcohol and social probation and for “retaliation” on two counts: a staff member who disobeyed University protocol and SAE members who were found to have been rude to a Title IX witness, one of whom was deemed not responsible for retaliation against her.

There may have been other substantiated instances of sexual harassment by SAE members, the details of which the University cannot disclose. The staff member may have been intimidating on March 8, and the anonymous Whatsgoodly polls in Cabo may have had many SAE participants.

After months of talking to sources, reading official documents and exploring Title IX, I leave it up to you: Does the Title IX process provide sufficient due process for the accused or protection for witnesses and victims? Did SAE create a “hostile living environment” and deserve to lose their house indefinitely? Did the punishment fit the crime?

 

*Editor’s note: The Daily has chosen to change the names of students involved in the investigations in order to prevent repercussions against those involved.

Abigail Schott-Rosenfield and Skylar Cohen contributed to this report.

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford professor emeritus of public policy, Nathan Rosenberg, dies at 87 https://stanforddaily.com/2015/09/07/stanford-professor-emeritus-of-public-policy-nathan-rosenberg-dies-at-87/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/09/07/stanford-professor-emeritus-of-public-policy-nathan-rosenberg-dies-at-87/#respond Mon, 07 Sep 2015 22:00:29 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1103016 Nathan Rosenberg, Stanford’s Fairleight S. Dickinson Jr. Professor of Public Policy, emeritus, died at the age of 87 on Aug. 24. He was best known for his work on the economic history of technology, and his ideas explored both the source of technological advancement, as well as the role of uncertainty in innovation.

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Nathan Rosenberg was a leading expert on the economic history of technology. (Courtesy of Chuck Painter/Stanford News Service)
Nathan Rosenberg was a leading expert on the economic history of technology. (Courtesy of Chuck Painter/Stanford News Service)

Nathan Rosenberg, Stanford’s Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr. Professor of Public Policy, emeritus, died at the age of 87 on Aug. 24. He was best known for his work on the economic history of technology, and his ideas explored the source of technological advancement as well as the role of uncertainty in innovation.

Born in Passaic, New Jersey on Nov. 22, 1927, Rosenberg received his Bachelor’s degree at Rutgers University and his doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin. He served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army stationed in Korea from 1945-47 and studied at Oxford as a Fulbright Scholar from 1952-54.

Rosenberg first began working at Stanford in 1974, and starting in 1976, he spent two years as the director of the Program on Values, Technology and Society. From 1983-86, he was chair of the department of economics, and for the rest of his career, Rosenberg led the Technology and Economic Growth Program at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He retired in 2002.

One of Rosenberg’s most influential books was titled “Inside the Black Box” and examined the roots of technological progress. When addressing the role of uncertainty in innovation, he spoke about how creators themselves cannot predict how their inventions will be used.

Rosenberg received several awards for his work and was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

In 1996, Rosenberg received the Leonardo da Vinci Medal from the Society for the History of Technology for having “almost single-handedly changed the way economists and economic historians think about technology and the nature of technological change.”

In his final years, Rosenberg suffered from memory loss and was placed under hospice care at the end of his life. He is survived by his wife Rina and their four children.

A funeral service was held in his honor on Aug. 27 at the Los Gatos Memorial Park Cemetery, and the family asks that gifts be made to the American Friends of The Hebrew University.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford alumnus William Frye M.S. ’69 dies at age 83 https://stanforddaily.com/2015/09/07/stanford-alumnus-william-frye-m-s-69-dies-at-age-83/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/09/07/stanford-alumnus-william-frye-m-s-69-dies-at-age-83/#respond Mon, 07 Sep 2015 19:55:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1103134 On Aug. 24, Stanford alumnus William Frye M.S. ’69 died due to prostate cancer. Born on Dec. 29, 1931 in Big Falls, Minnesota, Frye passed away at the age of 83.

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On Aug. 24, Stanford alumnus William Frye M.S. ’69 died due to prostate cancer. Born on Dec. 29, 1931 in Big Falls, Minnesota, Frye passed away at the age of 83.

Frye received his B.S. in mathematics from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and went on to work at the Naval Electronics Laboratory in San Diego. Frye then studied Operations Research at Stanford.

After graduating with his master’s from Stanford, Frye worked at SRI International and contributed directly to its Antiballistic Missile systems, particularly in the area of “Tapering Preferential Defense” models. While working at SRI, he was also acknowledged in a Technical Note Memorandum within the company for his work in anti ballistic game theory.

During the later years of his career, Frye worked at Lockheed Martin as an engineer. His final contribution to the industry was to draft the Software Configuration Management for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Frye is survived by his three children, Barbara, Brenda and Wendy, as well as his two siblings, Vern Frye and Vonnie Pacheco.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Campus Drive gas leak causes evacuation https://stanforddaily.com/2015/07/14/campus-drive-gas-leak-causes-evacuation/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/07/14/campus-drive-gas-leak-causes-evacuation/#respond Wed, 15 Jul 2015 00:57:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1102395 Campus Drive has been closed from Mayfield Avenue to Junipero Serra Boulevard due to a gas leak at 1047 Campus Drive. The leak was first reported at 3:55 p.m., and both the Kappa Sigma and SAE houses were also evacuated at the time.

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Campus Drive has been closed from Mayfield Avenue to Junipero Serra Boulevard due to a gas leak at 1047 Campus Drive. The leak was first reported at 3:55 p.m., and both the Kappa Sigma and SAE houses were also evacuated at the time.

At 5:38 p.m., an AlertSU message notified the community that the gas line had been capped and that it was safe to return to the area and surrounding buildings. Campus Drive was reopened around 6:09 p.m.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Graduate student charged with poisoning labmates’ drinks https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/30/graduate-student-charged-with-poisoning-labmates-drinks/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/30/graduate-student-charged-with-poisoning-labmates-drinks/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2015 06:25:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097971 A graduate student at Stanford’s School of Medicine has been charged with four felony counts of “poisoning any food, drink or medicine” for putting paraformaldehyde (PFA) in labmates’ water bottles. According to a case summary provided to The Daily, the suspect “willingly mingle[d] a harmful substance, paraformaldehyde with a drink, water.” The suspect has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

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A graduate student at Stanford’s School of Medicine has been charged with four felony counts of “poisoning any food, drink or medicine” for putting paraformaldehyde (PFA) in labmates’ water bottles.

According to a case summary provided to The Daily, the suspect “willingly mingle[d] a harmful substance, paraformaldehyde with a drink, water.”

The suspect has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and is no longer a student at Stanford. The University issued a Stay Away Letter to the individual on Nov. 11.

The labmates found PFA in their water bottles in multiple instances during the months of September through November. While two students reported drinking the tainted water and having adverse reactions, a third water bottle was also found to contain a lower amount of PFA.

Prior to these incidents, the graduate student was also suspected of damaging and sabotaging the samples of another researcher in the lab.

According to University spokeswoman Lisa Lapin, Stanford began investigating the situation as soon as a concern was brought forward in mid-November.

“Police referred their findings to the Santa Clara District Attorney,” Lapin wrote in an email to The Daily. “An arrest was made as soon as the suspect was available to be arrested — the length of time between the launch of the investigation and the arrest had to do with the availability of the suspect.”

She also explained that no AlertSU or notification was sent out because the suspect was no longer on campus at the time when the investigation began, and therefore, the suspect was not considered an immediate threat to the University.

“The University acted immediately upon learning of the concerns, and the criminal proceeding under way is a result of the Stanford police investigation,” Lapin said. “This was a confined, isolated circumstance, and there was no threat to the broader campus community.”

Although the suspect admitted to damaging research samples and using a pipette to put PFA in the water bottles, the suspect claimed to be “not conscious” of the act at the time. The suspect had reportedly begun experiencing insomnia and dizziness in September and apologized for allowing those personal issues to progress.

“I am truly sorry for what had happened, but I really didn’t mean to harm people,” the suspect said in a police report contained in the case summary. “It was me crying out for help, and I didn’t know.”

The suspect also claimed to have added chemicals to their own water bottle without having an adverse reaction.

“The victims in this case have asked from the outset of their initial report that the matter remain private,” Lapin stated. “They have reason to request privacy, and the University has respected this request.  In addition, both privacy laws — FERPA and HIPAA — limit what the University can share.”

“This was a sad, heartbreaking situation, and no one could speculate as to why,” she added. ”The University has been providing support to the group impacted. They are a strong team and from the outset requested privacy to move on.”

According to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, the suspect could face up to nine years in prison and is scheduled for a court appearance on May 15.

 

Editor’s note: The Daily has not published the name of the suspect in order to protect the identities of the alleged victims, the suspect’s labmates.

An earlier version of the title incorrectly called the suspect a medical student.  The suspect was a graduate student who worked at the School of Medicine but was not a medical student.  The Daily regrets this error.

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Cedro RFs to resign next Tuesday https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/26/cedro-rfs-to-resign-next-tuesday/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/26/cedro-rfs-to-resign-next-tuesday/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2015 06:19:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1096653 Justin and Terese Grimmer will be stepping down as the resident fellows (RFs) of Cedro next Tuesday, March 3. The couple notified residents of their coming departure on Wednesday evening. This was their first year as RFs.

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Justin and Terese Grimmer will be stepping down as the resident fellows (RFs) of Cedro next Tuesday, March 3. The couple notified residents of their coming departure on Wednesday evening. This was their first year as RFs.

“It just wasn’t a great fit for our family,” Justin Grimmer said.

According to Justin Grimmer, the couple was planning on retiring from their RF roles next year and had been in the process of looking for nearby housing that would allow their autistic son to remain in the Nixon school district, where he could receive a specific kind of special education class.

“It was our intention to stay on as Resident Fellows through the year,” Justin Grimmer said. “We had expressed that intention many times over – that we probably could maintain a presence in the dorm, work with the staff, attend house meetings.”

When they found an opportunity at Stanford West Apartments, the Grimmers had still wanted to work as RFs remotely for the remainder of the year, despite moving to the new apartment. However, according to Justin Grimmer, dean of Residential Education (ResEd) Deborah Golder asked them to resign.

“Deborah articulated a preference to have someone actually in the cottage,” Justin Grimmer said. “There were real concerns about not having an RF in the cottage, and that’s why they asked us to resign.”

Koren Bakkegard, associate dean of ResEd, explained that having RFs living with the residents is an essential part of the RF role.

“Although the Grimmers expressed a desire to continue working with the staff and residents of Cedro from their new home, we believe that a live-in presence in the residence is at the heart of the RF role,” Bakkegard wrote in a statement to The Daily.

When asked if he would ever consider returning to an RF role, Justin Grimmer said that he would need to consult with his wife but also that they would hope to be more involved in the dorm’s intellectual community.

“I think that if there were a role where the RF was this intellectual leader in the dorm and was helping people bridge from their classes to what’s going on in the world and exploring intellectually what is going on, then I think we’d be much more excited to do that role,” Justin Grimmer said.

According to Bakkegard, Residence Dean (RD) Leigh Thiedeman will become the Cedro RF, moving in during finals week. For the remainder of the quarter, RD John Giammalva will act as the interim RF and will live in the Cedro RF cottage.

Bakkegard also explained that ResEd is in the process of looking for RFs for Cedro next year.

“ResEd is very fortunate, every year, to have more interested and qualified RFs than we have RF openings,” Bakkegard said.

The Grimmers’ retirement comes less than a month after three Cedro resident assistants were fired for drinking and smoking with their residents. The new staff members have now completely settled in, Bakkegard said.

Furthermore, the hiring process for Cedro’s 2015-16 staff has also progressed on schedule as planned.

“I don’t think we’ve seen anything at all unusual in the number of candidates applying or interviewing for positions in Cedro,” Bakkegard said. “Staff interviews for all positions conclude this coming weekend with preference lists due from houses and candidates next week.”

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Caleb Smith contributed to this report.

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Three Cedro RAs fired for alleged drinking and smoking on ski trip https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/02/three-cedro-ras-fired-for-alleged-drinking-and-smoking-on-ski-trip/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/02/three-cedro-ras-fired-for-alleged-drinking-and-smoking-on-ski-trip/#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2015 06:07:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1094839 On Saturday, three Cedro resident assistants (RAs) were fired after allegedly drinking or smoking weed with their freshmen residents during their ski trip.

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Three Cedro RAs were fired after allegations of drinking or smoking with their freshmen on ski trip (RAHIM ULLAH/The Stanford Daily)
Three Cedro RAs were fired after allegations of drinking or smoking with their freshmen on ski trip (RAHIM ULLAH/The Stanford Daily)

On Saturday, three Cedro resident assistants (RAs) were fired after allegedly drinking or smoking weed with their freshman residents during their ski trip.

Cedro’s dorm ski trip took place during the weekend of Jan. 23-25, and according to a Cedro resident, investigation of the staff members by Residential Education (ResEd) began on Thursday after Cedro’s resident faculty members (RFs) were allegedly notified of the events that occurred in Tahoe.

The resident also explained that after the return to campus, students had expressed mixed feelings about their RAs’ behavior during the trip. ResEd ultimately made the decision to remove the RAs from their positions and notified them of the possibility on Friday night.

“We always take the decision to remove a student staff member from his or her position very seriously,” wrote Koren Bakkegard, associate dean of ResEd, in a statement to The Daily. “While the General Expectations and Agreement [for Student Staff in Residence] is one part of the evaluation, we also take into account contextual factors such as a staff member’s judgment, decision-making, credibility, efficacy, trust and leadership.”

“Please also note that even when we determine it is necessary to remove a staff member from his or her position, that does not negate for us the positive contributions made by a staff member on other occasions,” she added. “It is possible to be a valuable staff member and to make decisions that necessitate removal from that leadership role.”

Bakkegard also spoke about the investigation process and explained that while the RFs are consulted, the final decision lies with ResEd professional staff.

“When we receive information of concern about a student staff member, we endeavor to talk with individuals with direct knowledge of the situation,” Bakkegard said. “We also talk with the staff members to hear their perspectives on the information we have received. Once we have a sufficient understanding of the situation, we consult among a small number of Residential Education professional staff members to evaluate the nature of the incident and whether it is a violation of the staff member’s contract and relationship of trust with Residential Education. That evaluation includes consideration of the context in which the behavior occurred and whether the staff member can serve as a credible role model for good judgment, decision-making and leadership following an incident.”

 

Hiring new staff

Cedro’s remaining staff members include their resident computer consultant (RCC), peer health educator (PHE) and one RA. According to the Cedro resident, ResEd is looking to hire new RAs as soon as possible.

Since the new staff members need to have already undergone training, the new RA will likely be a senior or coterminal student who has worked as an RA in the past, the resident said.

“Every year we have encountered situations in which a student staff member needed to leave his/her position,” Bakkegard said. “The process for identifying new staff depends on the time of the year. When we are appointing staff mid-year, among the options we typically explore are drawing from existing staff (PHEs, RCCs) and reaching out to students who have been on staff in the past. Outgoing staff receive new housing assignments.”

The fired staff members began moving out on Monday and will have completely relocated to dorms with vacancies by Wednesday.

 

Effects on the community

According to another Cedro resident, many students in the dorm are upset at the firing of their RAs and have been negatively affected by the decision.

“The RA is somebody who’s your mentor, somebody who you look up to, somebody who gives you guidance throughout freshman year,” the resident said. “My RA has made such a big impact on my transition to Stanford and my first quarter here and half of winter quarter that it’s such a shame to see [them] have to leave for just spending the weekend with us at ski trip.”

“The Cedro residents also feel like we’ve been robbed of an integral part of our community,” the resident added. “Beyond just impacting the RAs, it impacts the entire dorm. Overall, I think the entire dorm unanimously thinks it was a horrible decision.”

The resident also expressed concern about the integration of new staff members into the Cedro community, especially given the way in which the previous RAs were fired.

“Think from [the freshmen’s] perspective how weird it would be to have a 25-year-old living in our dorm,” the resident said. “At the end of the day, there’s no way I could ever connect to a 25-year-old, or there’s no way I would ever approach him for any issue or any problem I may have — whether that be personal or academic or school-related.”

Bakkegard said that ResEd understood the difficulties that the dorm was going through and said that they are currently in the process of finding a new team of staff members.

“We know it can be hard on a house community whenever there are changes to the staff team,” Bakkegard wrote. “The primary concern for the Cedro Resident Fellows is building a new staff team that will come together quickly as a team and will connect with the residents to help everyone move forward as a community. I hope that the Cedro residents will welcome any new staff and be open to building new relationships.”

In the broader dorm community, the decision has also sparked conversation about the roles of staff members and their connections with residents.

“What many staff members are feeling is, ‘What if this happened to me?’ Tons of staff members drink with their residents,” said an RA at another freshman dorm. “A lot of staff members are reevaluating their relationships with their residents and co-staff because no one wants to be ratted on.”

According to another Cedro resident, several students have tried contacting ResEd through emails in order to ask them to repeal the decision.

“Everybody is extremely unhappy and shocked,” the resident said.  “We’re all sending out emails to the ResEd [official] who made the decision.”

As of this afternoon, no official emails or announcements had been released to notify Cedro residents regarding the situation, but an emergency dorm meeting will take place at 10 p.m. on Monday.

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu and Catherine Zaw at czaw13 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Palantir co-founder accused of sexually assaulting then-Stanford student https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/28/palantir-co-founder-joe-lonsdale-04-accused-of-sexual-assaulting-then-stanford-student/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/28/palantir-co-founder-joe-lonsdale-04-accused-of-sexual-assaulting-then-stanford-student/#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2015 07:59:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1094544 Joe Lonsdale '04 has been accused of sexual assault and several other charges filed by plaintiff Elise Clougherty ’13. Clougherty was an undergraduate when she first met Lonsdale, and the two began an allegedly abusive relationship in February 2012.

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Joe Lonsdale ’04, co-founder of Palantir and founding partner of venture capital fund Formation 8, has been accused of gender violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment and several other charges by plaintiff Elise Clougherty ’13 in a lawsuit filed on Jan. 27.

Clougherty was an undergraduate when she first met Lonsdale, and the two began an allegedly abusive relationship in February 2012.

Clougherty took a class called High Technology Entrepreneurship in January 2012, and according to the lawsuit, Lonsdale, who had volunteered as a mentor for the class, “used his position of power…to initiate an intimate relationship with Ms. Clougherty.” The lawsuit also alleged that Lonsdale then leveraged his friendship with the course’s professor in order to have Clougherty re-assigned as his mentee.

Lonsdale responded to the lawsuit with a personal statement and called the accusations part of “a vengeful, personal attack by a disturbed former girlfriend.”

“Shortly after I ended the relationship in 2013, my ex-girlfriend began a malicious campaign of lies,” he wrote. “Upset that I was not willing to continue the relationship, she contacted business associates, friends and others advancing a repugnant and increasingly bizarre narrative of ‘abuse’ hoping to hurt me and damage my career. To quote the words she sent in a text to her close friend, this is a ‘Joe take down scheme.'”

Joe Lonsdale '14 (above) co-founded Palantir and is a founding partner of venture capital fund Foundation 8. (Courtesy of Joe Lonsdale, 2013)
Joe Lonsdale ’04 (above) co-founded Palantir and is a founding partner of venture capital fund Foundation 8. (Courtesy of Joe Lonsdale, 2013)

According to the lawsuit, Clougherty and Lonsdale were first introduced over email in 2011 as a result of Clougherty’s interest in technology entrepreneurship. During their first meeting, Lonsdale allegedly stroked Clougherty’s face and hair and leaned in to kiss her before she walked away.

The lawsuit claimed that Lonsdale raped Clougherty several times while serving as her mentor and later hired her as an intern for Formation 8 in May 2012 in order to remain close to her. He allegedly continued to force himself upon Clougherty over the following months, and his interspersed moments of loving behavior caused Clougherty to become “powerfully attached” to Lonsdale.

After Lonsdale’s actions grew even more abusive, Clougherty and her mother reported Lonsdale’s actions to Stanford in February 2013, according to the lawsuit. After an investigation of Clougherty’s allegations, the University banned Lonsdale from campus for a minimum of 10 years under its Title IX policy.

According to Stanford spokeswoman Lisa Lapin, the University cannot comment on the case without a FERPA waiver from Clougherty or her counsel.

In March 2013 Clougherty took a doctor-prescribed medical leave from Stanford and was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The University allowed Clougherty to complete her degree from home, and she graduated on time in June 2013.

“Our client is no longer intimidated by Mr. Lonsdale and his threats, nor is she intimidated by his crafted PR statement,” Clougherty’s counsel wrote in a statement to TechCrunch.

Lonsdale has denied all claims against him and is preparing to file a countersuit for defamation.

“The lawsuit is a vile collection of lies and a transparent attempt to destroy the reputation and good name of Joe Lonsdale,” wrote Lonsdale’s lawyer, Kristen Dumont, to TechCrunch.

In his statement, Lonsdale also published several loving emails from Clougherty and linked to an affidavit from a third party who had allegedly been close to Clougherty.

“She was with Joe for a long time and never said he was abusive in any way when they were together, and nothing I observed suggested the relationship was anything other than ‘normal’ and loving,” wrote the friend.

According to Lonsdale, after Clougherty’s complaints Stanford first found that their relationship was consensual and initially only asked that he disclose its existence to the University. However, Lonsdale claimed that after further pressure from Clougherty and her mother, Stanford conducted another investigation during which the allegations were kept secret.

“Stanford has been in the spotlight in connection with its prior mishandling of on-campus sexual assault claims. Her team of lawyers exploited this political climate to their benefit. Under this pressure from my ex-girlfriend and her lawyers, Stanford initiated a second investigation, dispensing from the outset with any pretense of fairness,” Lonsdale said. “It’s not an overstatement to say that what followed was a Kafka-esque nightmare.”

“The University never spoke to key witnesses with direct, personal knowledge, whose testimony would further prove she was lying,” he added.

During his time as a student at Stanford, Lonsdale was the Editor in Chief of the Stanford Review, and he founded Palantir in the same year he graduated in 2004.

Lonsdale faces counts of sexual battery, sexual assault, domestic violence, gender violence, sexual harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The civil lawsuit also includes a charge of negligent retention and supervision against Formation 8.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

TechCrunch published copies of the lawsuit and Lonsdale’s personal statement on Wednesday:

Formation 8 Joe Lonsdale Lawsuit

Joe Lonsdale Personal Statement Email

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Rabia Chaudry speaks about her experience with the “Serial” podcasts https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/13/rabia-chaudry-speaks-about-her-experience-with-the-serial-podcasts/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/13/rabia-chaudry-speaks-about-her-experience-with-the-serial-podcasts/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2015 17:15:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1093729 On Monday afternoon, Rabia Chaudry, the family friend and past lawyer who brought the case of Adnan Syed to “Serial” host Sarah Koenig, came to Stanford Law School to give her first public talk about her experience with the podcast. Umbreen Bhatti, a lawyer and 2014 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow, facilitated the discussion, "Let's Give Them Something To Talk About: What Serial Can Teach Us About Advocacy."

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On Monday afternoon, Rabia Chaudry, the family friend and past lawyer who brought the case of Adnan Syed to “Serial” host Sarah Koenig, came to Stanford Law School to give her first public talk about her experience with the podcast. Umbreen Bhatti, a lawyer and 2014 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow, facilitated the discussion, “Let’s Give Them Something To Talk About: What Serial Can Teach Us About Advocacy.”

Rabia Chaudry (left) discussed her "Serial" podcasts at Stanford Law School on Monday afternoon. (KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)
Rabia Chaudry (left) discussed her “Serial” podcasts at Stanford Law School on Monday afternoon. (KEVIN HSU/The Stanford Daily)

From October to December, “Serial,” a weekly podcast from the creators of “This American Life,” kept listeners on the edge with the story of Adnan Syed and the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999. Convicted of strangling Lee, Syed was sentenced to life in prison but has maintained his innocence for 15 years.

According to Chaudry, she brought the case to the media’s attention not for show but in the hopes of finding new evidence in the case to support Syed. In fact, she first contacted Koenig without asking Syed beforehand.

“I was looking for a smoking gun – something that would help exonerate Adnan,” Chaudry said.

Chaudry explained that she and Syed’s family first realized how much Koenig could help them when the journalist was able to speak to Asia McClain, a witness who was never contacted for the trial but claimed to have seen Syed in the library at the time of Lee’s murder.

“When that happened, for me and Adnan and his family, we realized the value of Sarah,” Chaudry said.

However, Chaudry also explained that the relationship between Koenig and Syed and his family and friends was complicated. Since Koenig was telling Syed’s story from a journalist’s point of view, Syed and his friends and family always felt they needed to consider how their words might be construed. They also did not have a say in what material would be aired in the podcasts.

One aspect of “Serial” which most dissatisfied Chaudry was Koenig’s portrayal of Syed’s lawyer, Christina Gutierrez.

“I was livid because I thought Sarah was really easy on Gutierrez,” Chaudry said.

Although Gutierrez was dealing with multiple sclerosis at the time of the case, Chaudry said the lawyer’s “ineffective assistance” and “crooked” practices could not be blamed on sickness. Gutierrez often would not answer the family’s questions and was also suspected of misconduct in handling money with several of her clients.

According to Chaudry, the audio clip of Syed talking about his relationship with Gutierrez was only a partial conversation. Koenig failed to include the fact that Syed was speaking about his 17-year-old opinion of Gutierrez and that he had not known how Gutierrez was treating his family.

Chaudry also believed that Koenig did not really understand the bias issues that shaped the way the state framed Syed’s motives for murdering Lee. According to Chaudry, she had to explain to Koenig the incorrect stereotypes included in the research about the Muslim community presented during Syed’s prosecution.

Throughout the airing of “Serial,” Chaudry kept her own blog in response to the podcasts and said that what she initially wrote would sometimes upset Koenig.

“Sarah’s telling a story, but I want to tell Adnan’s story,” Chaudry said. “I wasn’t following her rules.”

Chaudry later agreed to honor Koenig’s conditions of privacy for certain sources and avoided writing about material that would be revealed in future podcasts. However, like the rest of the nation, Chaudry would have to wait until Thursday every week to find out what each episode would include.

“My agenda is different from [Koenig’s] agenda,” Chaudry said. “My agenda is to get him out of jail.”

“I believe Adnan is innocent because I know Adnan,” Chaudry added. “And the case against him is weak.”

Chaudry also spoke about content excluded from the “Serial” podcasts, including a letter Syed wrote to Koenig about his feelings for Lee.

While many of the listeners who believed Syed was guilty asked why he never explicitly said that he did not kill Lee, according to Chaudry, Syed wrote a letter to Koenig that never appeared in the podcasts. The letter stated that Syed would never have murdered Lee, but Koenig would not include the letter in the podcasts.

In terms of the future of Syed’s case, Chaudry explained that they have filed for a post-conviction appeal based on the Asia McClain plea, and the court is required to respond by Jan. 14. Physical evidence is also undergoing testing, and court findings will be coming out in the next couple of weeks.

“We are light-years away from where we were years ago,” Chaudry said. “We have hope now.”

After the discussion, Bhatti explained that the event had been very successful with 500 RSVPs and an entirely full overflow room for those who could not fit into the 200-person law school classroom. The event was hosted by the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Criminal Justice Center and the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford, and according to Lucy Ricca, executive director of the Center on the Legal Profession, somewhere between 325 and 350 people attended.

“I was thrilled to have a chance to think about the larger issues with Rabia of how we take cases forward in the news – what does it mean as lawyers for us to advocate for our clients using every possible means,” Bhatti said.

Chaudry was also happy with the outcome and explained that it helped her understand what audiences want to learn from her.

“It’s my first public appearance to talk about this, but it’s the first of many,” Chaudry said. “It’s good because I know what people are thinking and what they’re interested in talking about.”

“I think “Serial” is a phenomena that nobody could have predicted, and I would do it again over and over and over,” Chaudry added. “I’m ever grateful. It has opened doors we did not have open to us a year ago.”

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Hopkins Marine Station courses canceled this winter due to low enrollment https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/07/hopkins-marine-station-courses-canceled-this-winter-due-to-low-enrollment/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/07/hopkins-marine-station-courses-canceled-this-winter-due-to-low-enrollment/#respond Thu, 08 Jan 2015 05:28:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1093469 After receiving only two applicants for their winter quarter, the Hopkins Marine Station cancelled its courses for the first time in 20 years.

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After receiving only two applicants for their winter quarter, the Hopkins Marine Station canceled its courses for the first time in 20 years.

Stephen Palumbi, director of Hopkins Marine Station and professor in marine sciences, explained that by Nov. 15 they knew there would not be enough students for the program to take place.

“When we came back from Thanksgiving we basically knew,” Palumbi said. “We needed to make sure they had housing and were registered for courses. We did it pretty quickly because we didn’t want to make their lives more difficult.”

According to Palumbi, normal enrollment varies from 40 to 45 students in a quarter, with low numbers around 10. Participants range from sophomores to coterminal students and are usually evenly split between biology and earth systems majors.

Having only a couple of students at Hopkins would not provide them with the right course structure, Palumbi said.

 

Reflective of scheduling problems

Palumbi explained that the problem is not a lack of awareness about the Hopkins program but rather students’ lack of time in their schedules.

“Part of what seems to be going on is students seem to be very busy fulfilling degree requirements,” Palumbi said. “If students are busy meeting requirements of their major and they want to take a quarter off to go overseas and take a quarter in some of these field programs, they may not have a lot of extra time to leave campus for another quarter.”

According to Palumbi, since winter quarter usually includes more specialized, upper-division classes, fewer students tend to participate. Students usually take three or four of the four to six offered classes in the winter, and a typical lecture lab class would have between six and 12 students, although the numbers have dropped as low as four.

Zack Gold ’15, Hopkins’ on-campus undergraduate representative, echoed Palumbi’s views that program advertisement was not the root of the problem.

“We know of at least 150 people that are really excited either to do Hopkins…this spring or the next spring,” Gold said.

Gold believes that the low enrollment numbers are reflective of an overall trend toward taking pre-medical requirements and majoring in computer science at Stanford. Since spring courses at Hopkins can be counted as the biology core, more students can fit it into their schedules.

In addition, Gold explained that Hopkins tends to compete with study abroad options such as the Bing Overseas Study Program in Australia and the Wrigley Field Program in Hawaii.

“People can justify going away from Stanford for one or two quarters at most,” Gold said. “So if they’re going to go and they’re going to learn ecology, why not go to Australia…versus living in Monterey which is only 90 miles away?”

Gold emphasized that although many students choose Australia or Hawaii instead, Hopkins also offers unique opportunities, such as whale watching and diving classes. He also spoke about the appeal of small class sizes and the sense of experiencing what it’s like to be in academia.

“You’re living in this awesome community that you only get if you’re living in a co-op on campus, but you’re living in a city,” Gold said. “It has a completely different vibe than main campus. It’s much more relaxed. It’s a lot more fun…I feel like I learn more down at Hopkins than I do on main campus.”

 

Adjustments for the future

According to Palumbi, faculty are looking for ways to make Hopkins more accessible to students.

“We’ve just started a program evaluation that promotes the center called the Faculty Colleges that’s a way of looking at curricular development and course programs,” Palumbi said. “[We] are quite active right now working on essentially what we can do to provide the students the flexibility to take advantage of Hopkins.”

Both Gold and Hannah Black ’15, the other Hopkins’ other on-campus representative, have spoken with professors about ways to improve the winter quarter curriculum.

“Hannah and I have been working with professors at Hopkins to really review the structure of winter quarter,” Gold said. “The biology department in general is restructuring the entire undergraduate curriculum.”

According to Gold, Stanford’s biology department plans to meet one-on-one with every biology undergraduate student to discuss changes to the major requirements. But for Hopkins, Gold believes that the small bump this quarter is the first step towards important change in its winter program.

“They’re going to revamp Hopkins winter quarter – whether that’s adding a Steinbeck class because that’s where Steinbeck’s from, or there’s a new professor there who does really awesome work with computer science,” Gold said. “Just open it up to more audiences at Stanford.”

In general, Black and Gold have also increased advertising for Hopkins throughout the academic year. As campus representatives, they hold office hours, send messages to email lists and take students to tour Hopkins Marine Station.

“Every quarter we take a trip so we take 20 students down to Hopkins and the aquarium,” Gold said. “We got to meet a couple of professors, explore the area…we’re really just trying to get the word out.”

Faculty from Hopkins are also teaching some on-campus courses this year, including Palumbi’s Bio 21: The Science of the Extreme Life of the Sea this winter.

“Even though we’ve had this enrollment glitch, there has been huge growth in other areas of the program,” Palumbi said.

According to Gold, the Stanford@SEA program in the spring will have at least 100 applicants for the 20-spot program, and Palumbi explained that the Hopkins summer research program has also been growing.

“There seems to be a shift toward experiences that students are seeking,” Palumbi said. “Experiential education and learning seems to be very avidly being sought.”

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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BOSP’s Oxford program re-launches after fall quarter cancellation https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/06/bosps-oxford-program-re-launches-after-fall-quarter-cancellation/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/06/bosps-oxford-program-re-launches-after-fall-quarter-cancellation/#respond Wed, 07 Jan 2015 06:50:26 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1093359 Housing renovations for Stanford’s overseas program in Oxford are scheduled for completion within the first few weeks of winter quarter. The study abroad program had been canceled during remodeling in the fall and will resume when students arrive in Oxford on Jan. 12.

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Housing renovations for Stanford’s overseas program in Oxford are scheduled for completion within the first few weeks of winter quarter. The study abroad program had been canceled during remodeling in the fall and will resume when students arrive in Oxford on Jan. 12.

 

Renovations to be completed during winter quarter

According to Paul Shields ’16, who will be attending the program this winter, the Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP) had notified students in November that the winter program may be also be canceled due to renovations.

“We were first notified about the possibility of the Oxford program being canceled in early November,” Shields said. “It was somewhat shocking having made plans to go abroad and knowing that that might change, but I think Bing and the Bing Overseas Program handled it very well with regards to providing options to the students.”

Within two weeks of the initial message, BOSP confirmed that the program would go on. Shields spoke about how impressed he was with the handling of the situation.

“They were very transparent with the information,” Shields said. “They let us know what was going on, and they let us know very soon whether the program was going to happen.”

For the first two weeks of the quarter, students will be housed in a hotel about a mile and a half away from the campus while the renovations are still being finished. According to Geoffrey Tyack, director of Stanford’s program in Oxford, the hotel can be reached in 10 minutes by bus or about half an hour by walking.

“They’ll have bus passes so that they can go into the center of Oxford,” Tyack said. “All the classes will be in the center of Oxford.”

 

Changes to the program

During the program all of the students live in the same house, which accommodates 45 students total.

According to Tyack, the renovated student bedrooms will make the living quarters more comfortable and spacious. The residence will also have new bathrooms and offices and a kitchen on the ground floor.

Other major changes are scheduled to be finished at the end of winter quarter or in early spring. These include a new common room at the back of the house, a disabled suite to give wheelchair-bound students the opportunity to participate in the program and a remodeled library.

Tyack also explained that in general, he hopes to improve the integration of Stanford students with the Oxford students during the program.

From the moment they arrive, Stanford students are paired with an Oxford student.

“It’s one thing to have the mechanism in place. It’s another to make sure that it actually works,” Tyack said.

Six students from Oxford who attended Stanford’s Sophomore College program in September will be working with Tyack to ensure the Stanford students’ smooth transition into Oxford.

“It’s not a total change, but we want to make sure that the system really works well for everybody,” Tyack said.

 

A larger spring applicant pool

Tyack explained that as a result of the program’s absence this fall, the applicant pool for the 2015 spring was larger than the number of students they could accept.

“For the spring quarter, because we haven’t had any students this past term, we’ve had a much much larger applicant pool than usual,” Tyack said. “Hopefully, the ones who can’t come will be able to apply for next academic year.”

“There’s been a tendency on the whole for applicant numbers to roughly match the number of places available,” Tyack added. “We don’t usually have to turn away too many well-qualified students.”

This winter, 39 students will be attending the Oxford program.

“We’re really looking forward to welcoming our winter students,” Tyack said. “In a sense it’s almost like a re-launch of the program so I feel very excited about it, and I hope they will too.”

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Faculty Senate creates new teaching and learning office and discusses issues in college athletics https://stanforddaily.com/2014/12/08/faculty-senate-creates-new-teaching-and-learning-office-and-discusses-issues-in-college-athletics/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/12/08/faculty-senate-creates-new-teaching-and-learning-office-and-discusses-issues-in-college-athletics/#respond Tue, 09 Dec 2014 02:03:41 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1093073 At last Thursday’s Faculty Senate meeting, Provost John Etchemendy announced the formation of a new Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning. Director of athletics, physical education and recreation Bernard Muir also gave a presentation on issues currently facing college athletics.

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At last Thursday’s Faculty Senate meeting, Provost John Etchemendy announced the formation of a new Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning. Director of athletics, physical education and recreation Bernard Muir also gave a presentation on issues currently facing college athletics.

 

The Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning

In the coming months, Stanford will work on creating the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, which will serve as a central place for resources for learning, teaching, innovating in the classroom and interacting with students online.

A task force of four senior leaders prompted the creation of the office after surveying currently available resources for teaching, learning and using instructional technologies on campus. The group included the vice provost of undergraduate education Harry Elam Jr., vice provost for graduate education Patricia Gumport, University Librarian Michael Keller, and vice provost for faculty development and diversity Karen Cook.

John Mitchell, vice provost for online learning and a professor of computer science, will lead the new office and spoke about its three main goals: encouraging innovation in teaching and learning, using technology to increase the accessibility of Stanford research and scholarship, and supporting extended educational programs such as the Stanford University Online High School and the Stanford Center for Professional Development.

The new office will combine four already existing organizations on campus: the Center for Teaching and Learning, parts of Academic Computing Services, the CourseWork engineering team and the Office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning.

“We’re already working together in many, many ways, so this organizational change simplifies things we’re already doing,” Mitchell said.

 

The rising costs and competition in college athletics

Muir addressed the senate about concerns facing college athletics, in particular the growing competition and costs of collegiate football.

Muir, who sits on an intercollegiate subcommittee that studies football recruiting, explained that some members of the committee believe that high school student athletes should commit to colleges before their senior year.

In addition, student athletes have filed more than 10 lawsuits nationally over the last year with the goals of increasing the compensation and benefits they receive from colleges. According to Muir, these changes would put athletes on the same level as University employees and would undermine the amateur aspect of college athletics, particularly if athletic scholarships were considered as compensation.

Muir also spoke about the situation in which athletes were able to negotiate for compensation packages and perks like professional athletes. He explained that if this became the case, Stanford would likely withdraw from competition, and many other institutions would not even be able to afford to compete.

According to Muir, the Pac-12 Conference has already adopted several measures to support student-athletes, including providing lifetime scholarships to those who leave school before graduating and later want to return and allowing schools to spend unlimited funds on their athletes’ meals.

However, the reforms have also reflected the increasing competition and costs within athletic programs. Muir learned that some universities spend as much as $1.5 million on student-athlete meals alone. Stanford has invested $250,000 in the area.

“Now I’m not sure what they’re feeding them,” Muir said. “It could be steak and lobster. But now there’s an arms race in meals.”

Muir also spoke about the increasing issue of concussions and explained that Stanford Athletics is working with Stanford Medicine to study concussions and preventative measures among different athletes.

His presentation included a showing of “It’s on Us,” a video of Stanford student-athletes discussing sexual assault on campus, and senators were provided with copies of “Game Changer,” an Stanford magazine article on the future of the University’s athletic program.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Professor emeritus of religious studies dies at 86 https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/17/professor-emeritus-of-religious-studies-dies-at-86/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/17/professor-emeritus-of-religious-studies-dies-at-86/#respond Tue, 18 Nov 2014 05:19:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1092295 On Sept. 12, Edwin “Ted” Good M.A. ’74, professor emeritus of religious studies, died in Eugene, Oregon. Good was 86 years old.

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On September 12, Edwin “Ted” Good M.A. ’74, professor emeritus of religious studies, died in Eugene, Oregon. Good was 86 years old.

Good was best known for his work on the Hebrew Bible, which he saw as a collection of ancient stories. He published literary commentary and several translations of the Bible, studied its origins in oral tradition and explored the stories’ connections with one another. Good also authored several books about the Hebrew Bible, including one that will be released on 2015.

Born in Bibia, French Cameroon on April 23, 1928, Good moved to the United States at the age of five with his parents, who were American Presbyterian missionaries working in West Africa. Good attended several different institutions and received four different degrees in religion and music, including a master’s in music from Stanford.

As a Stanford student, Good studied under William Mahrt Ph.D. ’69, current director of Stanford’s Early Music Singers and associate professor of music in the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. During his time at the University, Good developed his passion for playing the piano and went on to publish “Giraffes, Black Dragons and Other Pianos,” a well-recognized book on the history of the piano.

In 1956, Good joined Stanford’s Religious Studies Department as a faculty member and chaired the department from 1986 to 1989. He also held a Department of Classics courtesy appointment from 1970 to 1991 when he retired from the University.

After his retirement, Good worked at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. on a transcription of the German diaries of one of the Steinway brothers, the men who were responsible for bringing the famous piano company to the U.S.

Good spent the last 14 years of his life in Eugene, Oregon, and is survived by his wife, poet Anita Sullivan; his three sons; his first wife Janice S. Good; and three grandchildren. A memorial service was held in his honor on October 18.

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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New case of bedbugs found in Toyon after reported eradication https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/15/new-case-of-bedbugs-found-in-toyon-after-reported-eradication/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/15/new-case-of-bedbugs-found-in-toyon-after-reported-eradication/#respond Sun, 16 Nov 2014 01:53:29 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1092149 Late last week, another case of bedbugs was discovered in Toyon Hall in a room previously unaffected by the problem. The student, who wished to remain anonymous, was moved to temporary housing at Lasuen during the poisoning process but returned to his room early this week. Residents have not reported any further problems.

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Late last week, another case of bedbugs was discovered in Toyon Hall in a room previously unaffected by the problem. The student, who wished to remain anonymous, was moved to temporary housing at Lasuen during the poisoning process but returned to his room early this week. Residents have not reported any further problems.

Residential & Dining Enterprises was not immediately available for a comment.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Eugene Bleck, prominent figure in pediatric orthopedics, dies at 91 https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/05/eugene-bleck-prominent-figure-in-pediatric-orthopedics-dies-at-91/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/05/eugene-bleck-prominent-figure-in-pediatric-orthopedics-dies-at-91/#respond Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:00:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1091468 On Sept. 14, Eugene Bleck, founder of the School of Medicine’s pediatric orthopedics department, died of respiratory failure at the Mills-Peninsula Hospital in San Mateo. He was 91.

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On Sept. 14, Eugene Bleck, founder of the School of Medicine’s pediatric orthopedics department, died of respiratory failure at the Mills-Peninsula Hospital in San Mateo. He was 91.

Bleck was a father figure in the field of orthopedic treatment and established some of the first standards of care for pediatric orthopedics at Stanford, Stanford Medicine News reported this week.

He published his first book, “An Atlas of Plaster Cast Techniques,” as a resident in orthopedic surgery at Duke University Medical Center, and his book “The Orthopaedic Treatment of Cerebral Palsy” is considered one of the top references in the field. He also authored four other books and 85 journal publications.

After his residency at Duke, Bleck moved to San Mateo with his wife in 1955 and established his own private practice that centered on care for children with cerebral palsy. In 1972, he came to Stanford as an associate professor of orthopedic surgery and went on to become the chief of the Orthopedics Division at Stanford Hospital, now Stanford Health Care, from 1982 to 1988.

During his time at Stanford, Bleck mentored several residents and constantly broke tradition through his work. He treated his residents as postdoctoral students by giving them significant work rather than grunt work, and he also established many of the department’s “firsts,” according to Stanford Medicine News.

Bleck admitted Stanford’s first female resident in orthopedic surgery and ended the reuse of surgical tourniquets in order to prevent infection in patients. He also performed Stanford’s first anterior scoliosis surgery and brought arthroscopy to the University.

Outside Stanford, Bleck was also a founder and past president of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America and was a member of the American Orthopedic Association and the American Academy for Celebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine.

Bleck was also active with the U.S. Navy in several different forms. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve as a medical corpsman and volunteered for active duty as a U.S. Navy medical officer during the Korean War.

Upon returning to the U.S., he worked at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, and treated patients at the naval amputation center.

Blake is survived by two sons and two daughters as well as three brothers, a sister and seven grandchildren. His memorial was held on Sept. 22.

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford student reportedly drugged and sexually assaulted https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/27/stanford-student-reportedly-drugged-and-sexually-assaulted/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/27/stanford-student-reportedly-drugged-and-sexually-assaulted/#respond Tue, 28 Oct 2014 00:26:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1090737 On Sunday, Oct. 26, a “distressed” Stanford student reported that she may have been drugged and sexually assaulted. The Stanford Police responded to the call at Page Mill Road and Hansen Way around 5:10 a.m. that morning.

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On Sunday, Oct. 26, a “distressed” Stanford student reported that she may have been drugged and sexually assaulted. The Stanford police responded to the call at Page Mill Road and Hansen Way around 5:10 a.m. that morning.

The University sent out a Community Alert just before 7:45 a.m. on Sunday to notify the campus of the incident in accordance with the Clery Act. The email explained that the location and time of the assault remain unknown, and it also included information about reporting sexual misconduct or harassment.

On Monday, Bill Larson, spokesman for the Stanford University Department of Public Safety, told Palo Alto Online that campus police are still looking into the location of the assault.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford researchers develop ant-sized radio https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/21/stanford-researchers-develop-ant-sized-radio/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/21/stanford-researchers-develop-ant-sized-radio/#respond Tue, 21 Oct 2014 21:38:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1090169 Amin Arbabian, assistant professor of Electrical Engineering, and his team of researchers have developed ant-sized radios that bring the Internet of Things (IoT)—the interconnectedness among people, devices and wireless data—one-step closer to reality.

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Amin Arbabian, assistant professor of electrical engineering, and his team of researchers have developed ant-sized radios that bring the Internet of Things (IoT) — the interconnectedness among people, devices and wireless data — one step closer to reality.

Stanford engineers developed a battery the size of an ant, shown to scale here on a penny. (Courtesy of Amin Arbabian)
Stanford engineers developed a battery the size of an ant, shown to scale here on a penny. (Courtesy of Amin Arbabian)

In collaboration with researchers at UC Berkeley, Arbabian’s team has managed to construct a wireless, cost-effective and self-powering chip that may bridge the gap between the Internet and smart gadgets.

Arbabian’s research was initially spurred by the concept of making a radio so small it could potentially be put on bank notes or pills. There were two main challenges to his pursuit: effective power delivery and operations within a dense network.

“Making it very small is difficult, but the biggest challenge in making it small is how to deliver power to it,” Arbabian said.

To address these issues, Arbabian had to rethink the individual components of a radio from the ground up.

“Most radios have many, many external components,” Arbabian said.

Thus, in order to approach miniaturization Arbabian needed to look at how to eliminate the conventional external components.

“You don’t have an antenna, power supply or crystal reference as a clock,” he said. “All your algorithms have to change because you do not have access to the same resources that conventional radio designs have.”

In terms of power delivery, the team was able to achieve this feat because their chip uses a much higher frequency millimeter wave than the conventional radio.

“[These ant-sized radios] have electromagnetic waves to not only deliver the message but also deliver the power,” Arbabian said.

The future looks promising for these devices, which shed light on the concept of IoT. Arbabian explained that we may use a user’s central node, such as a laptop, cellular phone or tablet, and his radios to communicate with other people.

“Wireless technology started out from connecting station to station, and then connecting stations to people like broadcasting, and then people to people,” Arbabian said.

“The next phase is going to be connecting these objects together,” he added.

However, with a limited range of two to three meters, there are still many obstacles ahead.

“You definitely need a lot more work to do from the ground up,” Arbabian said. “You need to design new radios obviously, but you need a new infrastructure, algorithms, applications — everything has to come to sync. This is just the step in the right direction.”

Vincent Cao contributed to this report.

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu and Vincent Cao at vcao2 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Flashback Friday: the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/17/flashback-friday-the-1989-loma-prieta-earthquake/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/17/flashback-friday-the-1989-loma-prieta-earthquake/#respond Fri, 17 Oct 2014 07:18:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1090050 [justified_image_grid ids=”1090017, 1090018, 1090019, 1090020, 1090021, 1090022, 1090023, 1090024, 1090025, 1090026, 1090027, 1090029″]

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Board approves new institutes, residential construction and reviews the Anderson Collection https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/08/board-approves-new-institutes-residential-construction-and-reviews-the-anderson-collection/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/08/board-approves-new-institutes-residential-construction-and-reviews-the-anderson-collection/#respond Wed, 08 Oct 2014 16:37:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1089247 At their Oct. 6-7 meeting, Stanford’s Board of Trustees visited the new Anderson Collection and reviewed several plans regarding construction on campus. President John Hennessy also gave his assessment of the prior academic year.

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At their Oct. 6-7 meeting, Stanford’s Board of Trustees visited the new Anderson Collection and reviewed several plans regarding construction on campus.   President John Hennessy also gave his assessment of the prior academic year.

 

Visiting the Anderson Collection

According to Steven Denning, chair of the Board, the meeting centered around introducing the trustees to the Anderson Collection and allowing them to see the new space in person.

The visit included presentations from Alexander Nemerov, professor in the arts and humanities, and Jason Linetzky, director of the Collection, and the trustees also attended a celebratory dinner with the Andersons to thank the family for their gift to the University.

“It is something that I think we all feel is quite transformative in terms of its ultimate impact on the campus and the surrounding community,” Denning said.

You’re really beginning to see the Arts District come to life,” he added.

 

Concept and site approved projects

Denning emphasized Land, Building & Real Estate’s new “Heads Up” Campaign, which encourages students to be aware of their surroundings. The safety initiative aims to prevent accidents with all of the current construction on campus. He explained that much of the construction is due to the Stanford Energy System Innovations project, which is also making good progress.

In addition to the ongoing construction, three projects received concept and site approval at the meeting: the Chemistry, Engineering & Medicine for Human Health (ChEM-H) and Neuroscience Institute Building, a new conference center for the Hoover Institution and the Photon Science Laboratory building.

The ChEM-H and Neuroscience Institute Building will support two institutes: Stanford ChEM-H, a joint institute under the schools of Medicine, Engineering and Humanities and Sciences and focuses on the chemistry behind human health, and the Neurosciences Institute.

“[The ChEM-H Institute and the Neurosciences Institute] are really reflective of what we see in major changes in the underlying science and then the need for something that’s pursued on a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary basis,” Denning said.

The building will be located on the site of the current Cogen Facility.

With the planned removal of the Cummings Art building, the Hoover Institution’s new conference center will be built around a 400-seat auditorium. The center will also feature open conference and office spaces.

According to Denning, the Photon Science Laboratory at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory will be a three-story, 100,000-square-foot facility with state-of-the-art equipment for photon science. Although built by Stanford, the building will be outfitted by the Department of Energy.

“It really dovetails with everything that’s being done around SLAC and the new x-ray laser that’s resident over there,” Denning said. “It’s basically all designed around research to support the work that they’re doing on an interdisciplinary basis, both at Stanford and abroad with a number of institutions.”

All three buildings are scheduled for completion in 2017 with design approval early next year.

 

Facilities approved for construction

The board also approved three other facilities for construction: the Graduate School of Business (GSB) Graduate Residences, two new dorms at Lagunita and the Stadium Field House.

Adjacent to the Schwab Residential Center, the GSB Graduate Residences will add 200 beds and will allow unmarried first-year graduate students to live in a contiguous space with a collaborative environment, said Denning.

The two new dorms at Lagunita will continue the University’s efforts to provide more undergraduate housing, which began with the current construction of a new Manzanita residence.

The Stadium Field House will support Stanford Football and visiting teams and will replace existing facilities including showers, lockers and game evaluation technology.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Ebola fears cuts students’ summers short https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/30/ebola-fears-cuts-students-summers-short/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/30/ebola-fears-cuts-students-summers-short/#respond Wed, 01 Oct 2014 02:40:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088636 Due to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa this year, several students’ trips overseas were cut short this summer. In August, the University released a statement advising Stanford travelers to avoid West Africa and to return home if they were visiting the area.

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Due to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa this year, several students’ trips overseas were cut short this summer. In August, the University released a statement advising Stanford travelers to avoid West Africa and to return home if they were visiting the area.

The Bing Overseas Study Program canceled a planned summer seminar in Ghana and the Haas Center for Public Service recalled students who were interning in the area.

“The Haas Center worked with the University to evacuate all students, including six summer fellows, from West African countries due to the outbreak of the Ebola virus,” wrote Megan Swezey Fogarty, deputy director of Stanford University’s Haas Center for Public Service, in a statement to The Daily. “The decision was less about the possibility of infection as it was about potential disruption to medical and transportation infrastructure were the disease to spread further into unaffected countries.”

Mina Shah ’16, who was working in Ghana with the West African AIDS Foundation, explained that she received an email from the Haas Center around three weeks before she was supposed to go home.

“The subject line was ‘exit Africa order,’ and [the email] basically just explained that they thought it was in our best interest to come home early and shorten our stays,” Shah said. “I was probably going to stay [in Ghana], but the next day they sent a follow-up email saying that they had changed their minds and made it mandatory.”

Shah explained that she was surprised about the decision since there were still two-country buffers between her location and the infected regions.

“The urgency of the emails that were sent seemed to not match the urgency of the situation where I was,” Shah said.

“With my interactions with people I was living around and shop-owners in the area, you would never know that anything was wrong,” she added.

Shah also wished she had had more time to prepare for the “reverse culture shock” of returning home.

“I understand [why the University] did what they did,” Shah said. “But I wish I had the extra time in Ghana to prepare for coming back. I’ve had a really hard time being back in the states. I think a lot of that has to do with not having adequate time to prepare myself for being back.”

Christine Chen ’17 also left Ghana two weeks early as a precaution against the Ebola outbreak.  Chen had been working with Kaeme, an organization that partners with the Ghanaian Department of Social Welfare to survey orphanages.  Although not affiliated with Stanford, Kaeme made its decision to leave Ghana early since six of its interns were Stanford students.

“We had heard that [Stanford was] pulling people out,” Chen said. “It wasn’t just Stanford that were pulling people out – a lot of other universities were too.”

The first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States was confirmed today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at a hospital in Dallas, Texas. The infected individual left Liberia on Sept. 19 and had no symptoms before boarding the flight back to the U.S.

“I have no doubt that we will control this case of Ebola so that it does not spread widely in this country,” said CDC director Tom Frieden at a news conference.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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Recent graduate dies in mountaineering accident https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/05/recent-graduate-passes-away-in-mountaineering-accident/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/05/recent-graduate-passes-away-in-mountaineering-accident/#comments Sat, 05 Jul 2014 08:45:44 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1086678 Stanford co-terminal student Bryant Tan ’14 passed away in a mountaineering accident earlier this week.

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Stanford co-terminal student Bryant Tan ’14 died in a mountaineering accident on June 29 while hiking alone in Triglav National Park in Slovenia.

Tan had fallen and broken his leg while descending the Triglav peak, and rescuers could not reach him until four hours later due to bad weather. The cause of death was determined to be hypothermia.

Tan graduated in June with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in electrical engineering and was also the recipient of the Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Scholastic Award. During his time at Stanford, he was involved with the Stanford Solar Car Project and had worked at SpaceX since 2013.

In memory of their son, Tan’s parents have created a website where family and friends can share stories about Tan.

“We have been devastated by his passing and take great comfort from the outpouring of support from friends who have known Bryant,” his parents wrote in an email to The Daily.

Friends who wish to communicate with Tan’s parents or contribute a post to the website can send messages to rememberbryant@gmail.com.

This post will be updated.

 

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Two-alarm fire breaks out at SLAC https://stanforddaily.com/2014/06/26/two-alarm-fire-breaks-out-at-slac/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/06/26/two-alarm-fire-breaks-out-at-slac/#respond Thu, 26 Jun 2014 10:55:57 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1086569 On Wednesday evening a two-alarm fire broke out at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, less than a mile from Stanford campus.

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On Wednesday evening a two-alarm fire broke out at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, less than a mile from Stanford campus.

According to a post on KTVU news, a transformer attached to the accelerator reportedly caused the fire.

The flames were first sighted just before 10 p.m., and the Menlo Park Fire Department reported that smoke was dissipating by 10:30 p.m.

Authorities announced that they had contained the blaze shortly afterward, and fire officials worked with staff on site to ensure that the accelerator was isolated and safely shut down.

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Hoover Senior Fellow Fouad Ajami passes away at age 68 https://stanforddaily.com/2014/06/25/hoover-senior-fellow-fouad-ajami-passes-away-at-age-68/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/06/25/hoover-senior-fellow-fouad-ajami-passes-away-at-age-68/#respond Wed, 25 Jun 2014 22:03:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1086564 On Sunday Fouad Ajami, Herbert and Jane Dwight Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, passed away at the age of 68 due to prostate cancer.

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On Sunday Fouad Ajami, Herbert and Jane Dwight Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, passed away at the age of 68 due to prostate cancer.

With a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Washington, Ajami authored hundreds of essays on foreign policy, Arab and Islamic politics, and international history.  He covered topics including 9/11 and the Iraq war and received several awards for his work, including the 2006 National Humanities Medal and the 1982 MacArthur Fellows Award.

In addition to his contributions in academia, Ajami also acted as an analyst during the Persian Gulf War and as an unofficial political advisor for the George W. Bush administration in the early 2000s.

His writings expressed his support of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and despite his controversial interpretations, his expertise made him “the most politically influential Arab intellectual of his generation in the United States,” according to The Nation magazine.

“Fouad is truly one of the most brilliant Middle East scholars of our time,” wrote John Raisian, director of the Hoover Institution, in a statement released on June 22. “His Hoover Institution family will forever miss his superb scholarship, quick wit and gentle spirit.”

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Stanford CS department battles honor code violations https://stanforddaily.com/2014/06/03/stanford-cs-department-battles-honor-code-violations/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/06/03/stanford-cs-department-battles-honor-code-violations/#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2014 11:47:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1086294 Stanford’s Office of Community Standards’ annual case reports demonstrate a steady increase in the number of Honor Code violations in computer science (CS) each year.

However, the enrollment in CS classes has also risen significantly over the last five years. In the 2013-14 academic year, over 1,500 students took CS 106A: Programming Methodology, the first course of the introductory programming series in the CS department, and computer science has grown into the largest major on campus.

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VICTOR XU/The Stanford Daily
VICTOR XU/The Stanford Daily

It’s 11 p.m. Your program is crashing, and the assignment is due at midnight. You know where your error is, but you don’t know how to fix it. A simple Google search pulls up tons of working code, but copying that directly into your program would be violating the Honor Code.

Yet it seems like there are always some students who give in to the temptation.

Stanford’s Office of Community Standards’ annual case reports demonstrate a steady increase in the number of Honor Code violations in computer science (CS) each year.

However, the enrollment in CS classes has also risen significantly over the last five years. In the 2013-14 academic year, over 1,500 students took CS 106A: Programming Methodology, the first course of the introductory programming series in the CS department, and computer science has grown into the largest major on campus.

“Enrollments are on the rise,” said Mehran Sahami ’92 M.S. ’93 Ph.D. ’99, professor of computer science and associate chair of education for the CS department. “If you imagine the same percentage of Honor Code violations is taking place but now the enrollment in the class is twice what it used to be, you’re going to see twice as many violations.”

 

Moss: a measure of software similarity

Few students realize that each assignment they submit is run through a program called Measure of Software Similarity (Moss). Moss is used to detect similarities between code submissions and is considered a standard across most U.S. institutions. Used by computer science departments worldwide, Moss was developed by Stanford computer science professor Alex Aiken.

Developed 20 years ago during Aiken’s time as a professor at UC-Berkeley, Moss is designed to cut down the manual labor of searching for plagiarism. However, Aiken emphasized that Moss is not a system for detecting plagiarism directly.

“What Moss detects is similarity,” Aiken said. “Why the code is similar is a human judgment that has to be made.”

Since code might be similar for various reasons, including shared libraries or starter code provided for the course, an instructor must check to see whether or not the similarity returned by Moss constitutes plagiarism. Moss simply helps professors determine which programs should be flagged with a higher priority for further review.

“It’s kind of smart about what ‘the same’ means. It knows, for example, that if you go through and change all the variable names, it doesn’t matter,” Aiken said. “It knows some things about programming that allow it to make some judgments about when two things are really the same and when they’re not.”

Aiken explained that Stanford uses Moss to compare submissions not only against other students’ work in the class but also against code available online and submissions from previous years and quarters. The program looks for aspects such as similar structure, identical bugs and other unusual commonalities.

According to Stanford computer science lecturer Julie Zelenski ’89 M.S. ’96, Moss also accounts for algorithms used by a significant number of students.

“It also knows how to recognize when something is just so idiomatic that everyone did it the same way,” Zelenski said.

Zelenski also explained that since the introductory classes are so large, a graduate student has been hired to build tools to manage the logistics of finding high-priority matches in Moss for 106A and 106B before passing the data on to the course instructor.

Computer science lecturer Marty Stepp also spoke about the importance of having a teaching assistant (TA) to examine the Moss results first.

“He does all of that part for us, basically gets [the MOSS results] all ready for us to look over, produces a nice executive summary for us of the data and places it in front of us in an easy way for us to examine,” Stepp said. “We look over the top matches and decide which ones are concerning to us, and that works really well because he can help us have a faster turnaround.”

Stepp also emphasized that the student does not play a role in deciding whether or not a case should be pursued.

“The instructor should make that decision so it’s important to note that his role has nothing to do with innocence,” Stepp said. “[The TA] doesn’t make that call for us. We wouldn’t ever farm that out to a third party.”

Stepp also explained that although the section leading program plays a large role in grading assignments for students in 106A and 106B, section leaders are not responsible for looking for plagiarism. Instead, they are told to contact the instructor if misconduct is suspected, and according to Stepp, most of the time section leaders do not have the experience to accurately recognize an Honor Code violation.

 

Dealing with violations

If a violation is discovered, students usually have two options: choosing the Early Resolution Option (ERO) or allowing the case to go to a hearing.

When a case is brought to the Office of Community Standards (OCS), a student is assigned a judicial officer to advocate for the student. If the case moves to trial and eventually a hearing, a panel of five students and one faculty member determines whether or not the student’s actions constitute a violation of the Honor Code. If a student is found guilty by a five-to-one vote, the panel assigns a sanction to the student.

According to Stanford’s OCS, standard first-time sanctions are usually a quarter of suspension and 40 hours of community service unless the panel finds that another response is more appropriate.

First instituted in 2009, the ERO gives students the opportunity to immediately accept responsibility for their actions and skip the judicial hearing process. Zelenski explained that the ERO gives students an incentive to take responsibility for their actions rather than lying to avoid a sanction. In addition, while hearings can take two months or longer, the ERO can be resolved within a few weeks.

“The vast majority of the students who I’m sending [to OCS] are choosing to pursue an ERO alternative [rather] than go to a full hearing,” Zelenski said.

Even before sending a student to the OCS, different instructors handle potential honor code violations differently, Sahami said.

“Depending on the results they get back [from Moss], some [instructors] will just report them immediately without talking to the student. Some prefer to talk to the student,” Sahami said. “We try to be consistent with respect to how we handle the Honor Code – it’s just a matter of time constraints and personal preference.”

Sahami himself asks to meet with students and gives them the chance to take responsibility in advance before telling them about the Moss match.

“We have a conversation of what happened, and what I look at are things like how contrite is the student,” Sahami said. “Virtually every time I’ve talked to a student they’re very straightforward about what happened. In some cases, it sometimes takes them a little while to realize that honesty is the best policy, and they shouldn’t make up some story to get out of the situation.”

Sahami also explained that while he is required to report the case to the OCS, he is on a student’s side once he or she admits to violating the Honor Code.

“I think the issue of academic honesty should also be one that’s not just punitive but is really about learning,” Sahami said. “I’m in favor for leniency on the side of students who take responsibility.”

As a new instructor in the CS department this year, Stepp explained that he in fact has not yet dealt with any Honor Code violations, although he has not finished looking through assignments from this quarter.

“I’m lucky enough to say that I have not forwarded any cases so far in my last two quarters here at Stanford,” Stepp said.

“I think that there are always programs that come up in our listings that I feel are suspicious,” he added. “But I feel I have to be very confident in a match in order to make an accusation, and I haven’t done so.”

In terms of repercussions, an Honor Code case does not show up on a student’s transcript, but a notation is kept on administrative record for reference in case of future violations.

According to Zelenski, common forms of punishment include a failing grade in the course, community service, suspension or probation. For repeated or unusual cases, expulsion is also a rare consequence.

 

Why it happens: instructor perspectives

Despite Stepp’s violation-free stint on the Farm, Zelenski explained that in her experience teaching CS 107: Computer Organization and Systems, she usually encounters one or two cases for each of the seven assignments.

Zelenski spoke about some of the main causes for Honor Code violations in CS, including the stress created by midnight deadlines and code that does not work. She explained that even if a program is well written, a small bug can cause big problems that feel like failure.

“When you have a program that doesn’t work, it’s usually really obvious and really hard to cope with,” Zelenski said. “The arbiter of correctness is obvious and apparent.”

“Having our deadlines at midnight probably doesn’t help because in some sense that’s maybe when you’re most weak – when you’re tired,” she added.

Furthermore, copying and pasting working code from an online source makes cheating in CS especially easy compared to in other subjects.

“It’s ridiculously easy,” Zelenski said. “It can all happen in just the space of a few minutes when [a student is] just starting to feel panicked and desperate.”

In general, the availability of code on the web has become an inevitable problem, especially since that form of plagiarism does not require the consent of two parties. Although Zelenski regularly searches the web for online versions of assignments, she explained that catching every instance is difficult and spoke about a case from this quarter in which around 10 students in CS 107 used parts of code that had been uploaded to the software hosting site GitHub.

“At the beginning of the quarter and a couple times along the way I just do the obvious searches on all the places that code gets put,” Zelenski said. “If I ever find it and it’s from a student of mine, I send them a very nice note and say I really want this down.”

In February, Zelenski discovered that a former CS 107 student had uploaded the CrashReporter assignment online. She requested the code be taken down, and the student complied, but not before a non-Stanford student forked the repository and copied it to a completely different location. When she later discovered the second version of the code, Zelenski assumed students would not find it.

“You have to be looking for the code in ways [in which you] will find code so I [thought], no one’s going to find it,” Zelenski said. “Well, it turns out I would be wrong about that – that there were a number of students who found it and totally used it.”

When 10 Honor Code cases were revealed by the Moss results, Zelenski tried to ask the non-Stanford student to take down the program. After a lack of response, she eventually worked with the student who originally owned the code to use a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) procedure to remove the code from GitHub.

Despite the hassle, Zelenski explained that getting assignments off the web was worth the time. She used the incident as proof that, given the opportunity, some students will plagiarize.

“If you get the code off the web, you just bring down the incident rate,” Zelenski said.

Stepp further emphasized the effects of having code available online, especially for introductory classes. He explained that the problem is compounded by the fact that assignments in CS classes are often kept constant for several years, and new ones are difficult to create.

“It takes more time to produce a high-quality computer science homework assignment than, say, a math assignment,” Stepp said. “On a math assignment, you can produce some new problems by changing some of the numbers and some of the variables, and you have a new equation to solve.”

Stepp also discussed the fact that students who took the class in the past are more likely to share their solutions than students currently taking it.

“I think students who took a class a long time ago are more cavalier about handing out their solution,” Stepp said. “But if they just wrote it and someone else didn’t write it and they want to take it, I think the friend is less likely to [share the code].”

Zelenski believes that another source of Honor Code violations is students’ belief that they can beat the system. With Moss mostly unadvertised in Honor Code discussions at the beginning of courses, many students do not understand how easy it is for instructors to catch plagiarism.

“I do not think that the computer science students at Stanford are somehow more vulnerable, less committed to integrity than our political science students or [other majors],” Zelenski said. “There’s a certain kind of confluence of motive and opportunity and desperation, and I think there’s also the fact that we can find it.”

Stepp also emphasized that, despite stereotypes in the discipline, collaboration is not the same as plagiarism.

“We do want people to work together and talk to each other – we just don’t want them to share their solutions with each other,” Stepp said. “There’s a line. I think most people know what that line is, and it’s unfortunate that some people cross the line, but I think it’s possible to have a decent amount of collaboration with other students without crossing that line.”

 

Why it happens: student perspectives

Unsurprisingly, students told a similar story about the effects of stress in contributing to Honor Code violations. Two students, Jeff Taylor and Walter Smith – both names have been changed to protect their identities – spoke about their experience with the ERO system in particular.

Taylor and Smith had been working as a pair on a group CS final project, but when Smith allowed a friend outside the team to look at their code, they received an unexpected email from their instructor after assignments were submitted.

Unknown to either student, the friend had copied part of Taylor and Smith’s code and submitted it as his own. The friend claimed that the submission had been an accident, and the case ended with an ERO. Although neither Taylor nor Smith were charged with an Honor Code violation, Smith’s friend reportedly received a failing grade on the assignment.

When asked about the case, Smith and Taylor shared their thoughts about why students might choose to plagiarize.

“There are very few times in which you break the Honor Code for anything but grades. It’s just pressure,” Smith said. “The deadline is set at 12 a.m., and you’ve been working on it for 10 hours, and you just have one bug left, but you’re helpless, and so you go to someone for help just to get this one bug.”

Taylor spoke about the fine line between getting help from a friend and cheating in writing code.

“There’s a very fuzzy line from getting help and cheating in CS,” Taylor said. “If you need to find a bug, instead of spending three hours doing it, you can go to someone and do it in five minutes. And if you get in the habit of doing that, you will basically have other people writing your code. A lot of it is pressure or procrastination.”

“In the case of CS specifically, the getting help expedites the process so much,” he added. “And it can snowball into cheating.”

Smith observed that international students in particular feel pressure to do well from family at home.

“International students seem to face this [pressure] a little bit more than people from [the United States],” Smith said. “There’s more pressure from back home to do well in academics, to do really well. If you get a B, it’s unacceptable at any level. While here, people realize that it’s Stanford and that getting a B here is not that bad. But back home no one knows what Stanford is or the grading scheme.”

Yet neither student felt that cheating was ever justified, and both believed that plagiarizing without learning the material would only hurt a student in the long run.

“The popular opinion is that it’s morally wrong to cheat because you should learn the material for yourself,” Taylor said. “In other countries, cheating is an option.”

 

Curbing cheating in the future

With the rising number of online sources for code, instructors have continued to investigate ways to discourage students from plagiarizing. Stepp attributed his lack of Honor Code cases to his slight alterations to the assignments as a new lecturer.

Stepp has also added popups to the class websites to caution students against plagiarism whenever they download or submit an assignment. According to Stepp, research has shown that reminders do in fact affect the probability of a student’s choosing to cheat, especially if the reminder comes before the student starts an assignment.

“It’s really hard to know what factors have an impact and which ones don’t, but there has been educational research that shows if you remind students about these things at key moments that it can make a difference,” Stepp said.

Jessie Duan ’15, a student on the Board of Judicial Affairs, spoke about how the Board has been discussing raising awareness about Honor Code violations. One potential effort includes talking to freshmen about plagiarism.

“One thing we have been focusing on is raising awareness,” Duan said. “We’ve been talking about reaching out to freshman dorms more, making it more obvious from the moment you get accepted into Stanford [that] the Fundamental Standard is this very important thing.”

Each computer science lecturer and professor emphasized that the department has gained a bad reputation for Honor Code violations simply because it has the tools to search for plagiarism.

“I think that it is true that computer science departments as a whole tend to do more checking than other departments,” Aiken said. “A lot of what you find depends on whether you’re looking.”

Stepp also wanted to dispel the misconception that students need to work alone on CS assignments.

“There is a stereotype that we don’t want anyone to talk to anyone and that computer science is isolated and that you’re not allowed to have any contact with other people, and you have to figure it out all by yourself with no help whatsoever,” Stepp said. “And I think that’s a little bit unfortunate because it’s not true.”

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Cooliris rises out of Stanford’s Silicon spirit https://stanforddaily.com/2014/06/03/cooliris-rises-out-of-stanfords-silicon-spirit/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/06/03/cooliris-rises-out-of-stanfords-silicon-spirit/#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2014 11:16:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1086248 Established in 2006 by Soujanya Bhumkar, Austin Shoemaker '05 and their co-founders, Cooliris is a company that focuses on optimizing users’ online and mobile media experiences.

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Cooliris, established in 2006 by Soujanya Bhumkar, Asutin Shoemaker '05 and other co-founders, is a company that has deep roots in the Stanford community. (Courtesy of Lucyna Cyganek)
Cooliris, established in 2006 by Soujanya Bhumkar, Austin Shoemaker ’05 and other co-founders, is a company that has deep roots in the Stanford community. (Courtesy of Lucyna Cyganek)

Established in 2006 by Soujanya Bhumkar, Austin Shoemaker ’05 and their co-founders, Cooliris is a company that focuses on optimizing users’ online and mobile media experiences. From the start, the company has had deep roots in the Stanford community — in fact, the startup began with eight full-time workers and 40 Stanford interns.

 

Who They Are

Shoemaker, founder and current chief technology officer of Cooliris, attended Stanford as an undergraduate and eventually left the master’s program in computer science in 2007 to work full time on the startup with his co-founder, who he met in his Stanford MS&E 180 course.

Their first product ideas focused on allowing web users to preview links without leaving the current page and used a similar hover effect for viewing higher-resolution versions of photos online. Their second product further explored the potentials of online media.

“[We asked], ‘Why not go beyond the browser frame and launch it into a full-screen experience?’” Shoemaker said, “which had us move onto the next product and which had us bringing media to life, creating a more visual immersive experience for media on the web.”

Today, Cooliris’s primary product is an app that allows users to browse, share and view their photos in one place.

Bhumkar, also a co-founder and the current CEO of Cooliris, was a chemical engineer before receiving his MBA from the University of Chicago. He then moved to the Bay Area and worked at several different startups before joining the Cooliris team.

“Cooliris always has been focused on giving a highly relevant yet delightful experience to users,” Bhumkar said.

Bhumkar explained how the company has shifted its focus with the rise of iOS and Android. Cooliris began by looking at media such as photos and videos in the web space, and has now expanded to include mobile applications to accommodate the smartphone ecosystem. In general, the company aims to create a unique media experience for users.

“We’ve actually done a series of products where we now find ourselves in a very interesting space where privacy is very important to the consumers, and media is to be considered a first-class experience rather than an attachment,” Bhumkar said.

Although the company is already over six years old, it has maintained its label as a startup with a team of 16 people, half in engineering and half in other business and design fields. Earlier this year, the company relocated from Palo Alto to its new office in San Francisco.

“We’ve filed over 22 [patents] and two of them have already been granted,” Bhumkar said. “That’s one big advantage of being in the business for that long.”

 

Stanford’s impact

Since its founding in 2006, Cooliris has had over 200 interns, and over three quarters of them have come from Stanford. Both Shoemaker and Bhumkar explained that the company’s Stanford roots have not only given students the opportunity to work at the startup, but also have benefited Cooliris itself.

Cooliris’s first investor, a Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KP) partner, was one of Shoemaker’s professors at Stanford. Shoemaker also spoke about the importance of taking ENGR 145: Technology Entrepreneurship for helping him build connections and putting him in a real-world situation similar to running a company.

“Having Stanford in the community and just having all of the people who really want to be a part of doing something new was great,” Shoemaker said. “We were able to get a bunch of really talented, smart, driven people to help us push our vision forward.”

Shoemaker explained that the company is always looking for more Stanford students to join the team, and according to Bhumkar, Stanford’s Mayfield Fellows program has paired fellows with Cooliris.

“What I find about Stanford students is they’re not afraid about challenging the status quo,” Bhumkar said. “I’m always amazed at how that thinking comes in, and the passion is to always make things obsolete — things that were until yesterday making sense… I do not find that trait in other schools.”

In addition, Stanford’s Women in Business Springternship program has been directly connecting the company with Stanford interns for the last four to five spring quarters. This quarter Kitty Kwan ‘17 and Tess Bloch-Horowitz ‘17 interned at Cooliris.

Bloch-Horowitz spoke about the difference between attending a university where entrepreneurship is so prominent and actually understanding what it means to work at a startup.

“It’s been great to bridge that gap between Stanford and the real world and actually have a learning experience that’s not just in the classroom,” Bloch-Horowitz said. “[It’s] taking what I’ve learned in the classroom and applying it with fellow Stanford students and graduates and actually having a concrete product that comes out of that work.”

Bloch-Horowitz explained that employees at Cooliris can work on projects unrelated to their field and that everyone claims to work on the “whatever-it-takes” team.

“As interns, we’re definitely just as much a part of the process, and you can see that it makes more of an environment where people feel comfortable asking for help,” Bloch-Horowitz said. “You’ll see an engineer working on something completely irrelevant [to their field] but really willing and happy to do it.”

Kwan expressed similar sentiments and agreed that even interns can be heavily involved with the company.

“I really like that I’m able to talk directly to the CEO about my concerns and what I want to accomplish and projects I want to do to give me skill sets that I want to learn,” Kwan said.

 

The new app

Cooliris has plans to release a new visual messaging app in mid-June. The product will focus on photo sharing. Bhumkar explained that the app follows trends that demonstrate consumers’ decreasing differentiation between messaging and sharing.

“Most of the time I would say that messaging apps were aimed at letting you stay connected, and we feel like that phase is over,” Bhumkar said. “It’s about going beyond just staying connected. It’s about enriching that experience.”

While still keeping data private, the app will transform users’ conversations into a visual messaging format for easy photo sharing and access to additional features. Kwan spoke about the app’s relevance to the Stanford community.

“The new product [Cooliris is] launching can really help to organize the way photos are sent between two people,” Kwan said. “I think it’s a really useful medium of communication, especially between groups.”

With the founders of WhatsApp and Snapchat also coming from Stanford, Bhumkar believes that there is a connection between the University and messaging in general.

“There is something about Stanford and messaging,” Bhumkar said.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ Stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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CSRE major grows out of 1994 hunger strike into fastest-growing major https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/23/csre-major-grows-out-of-1994-hunger-strike-into-fastest-growing-major/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/23/csre-major-grows-out-of-1994-hunger-strike-into-fastest-growing-major/#comments Fri, 23 May 2014 09:54:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085972 Established in 1996, shortly after and partly in response to the hunger strike of 1994, Stanford’s undergraduate program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE) is the fastest-growing major at the University. The CSRE major is the largest of five offered by the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE).

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Established in 1996, shortly after and partly in response to the hunger strike of 1994, Stanford’s undergraduate program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE) is the fastest-growing major at the University. The CSRE major is the largest of five offered by the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE).

According to professor of comparative literature David Palumbo-Liu, one of CCSRE’s founding faculty members and director of the Undergraduate Program in CSRE, the program’s flexible curriculum and unique focus on comparative studies draws on average 25 to 30 new majors each year.

The Director of the CCSRE, José David Saldívar M.A. ’79 Ph.D. ’83, also spoke about the program’s growth.

“Since 1996, CSRE has probably been the fastest-growing major in the University,” Saldívar said. “We’ve had over 450 majors and minors…In June 2013, we graduated our largest undergraduate class — close to 55 to 60 [students].”

 

An interdepartmental program

The CSRE program is an interdepartmental program that houses five different majors: Asian American Studies, Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies, Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Jewish Studies and Native American Studies.

“One of the things that we were adamant about was that it would comparative,” Palumbo-Liu said. “We created this umbrella — CSRE — under which those programs sit, but there is also yet another major simply called Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and that’s by far our most popular major.”

Palumbo-Liu also emphasized the program’s flexibility and explained that students can design their course path around a theme of their choice.

“Our actual requirements are not onerous at all, but we do leave it up to the students to either create a thematic cluster of their own or else adapt one that we already have — intersectional, public health, migrations, sexuality,” Palumbo-Liu said.

Since the program is interdepartmental, all affiliated faculty members are volunteers and come from several different departments on campus. The CCSRE encompasses two major components: research and the undergraduate study program.

“It’s a volunteer interdepartmental program,” Palumbo-Liu said.“We’re here because we want to invest a certain amount of our time sustaining the program, and it’s been sustained now for a good long time.”

 

How it began

Despite being approved shortly after the protests in November 1996, the CSRE program had origins well before the 1994 hunger strike.

Palumbo-Liu spoke about the University Committee on Minority Issues (UCMI), which compiled a commission in 1989 that contained extensive research on minority issues on campus. He explained that although the commission was looked over, the issues were not directly addressed. The committee was chaired by Albert Camarillo, professor of American History and the founding director of the CCSRE.

However, Camarillo emphasized the importance of discussions about race and ethnicity rather than the UCMI in the development of the CCSRE. According to Camarillo, before the CSRE program, a group of faculty from the humanities and social science departments received a two-year grant to hold seminars around the topics in 1992 or 1993.

Just as faculty began considering the development of a research center, protests around the issues surrounding ethnicity began to heat up, and the firing of University administrator Cecilia Burciaga sparked the 1994 hunger strike. The strikers’ demands included a request for a Chicano studies program, and after the protests, several University committees were established to address the protesters’ concerns.

“It made the University pay serious attention to the undergraduate curriculum in terms of ethnicity and race,” Camarillo said. “In the end it was more than just Chicano Studies. It really addressed broad issues about ethnic curriculum at Stanford.”

“It probably would have taken several more years for the University to formally recognize ethnic studies in many areas across the board without that prompting that the hunger strike created,” he added.

Palumbo-Liu explained that he and humanities professor Gordon Chang M.A. ’72 Ph.D. ’87 came to Stanford in 1990 under efforts to increase faculty diversity.

“We were hired under that reinvigorated efforts to recruit a diverse faculty,” Palumbo-Liu said. “There was increased and intensified student interest [in diversity issues]… There were more faculty from different schools — not just H&S, but the medical school, the law school.”

Palumbo-Liu became one of the founding faculty members of the CCSRE who was present when the program was approved under Dean John Shoven.

“We were rather late in the game in terms of developing an ethnic studies program here at Stanford,” Palumbo-Liu said. “Earlier programs had existed at UCLA and Berkeley, of course, but the fact that we started late also let us take advantage of how other institutions had done it.”

 

Growth and development

Since its establishment, the program has continued to grow steadily, and according to Student Services Coordinator Jaime Barajas Hernandez, the program currently has 52 active students in one of the minors or majors.

“We started out with like two or three students in the first year and then afterwards it was the fastest growing major at Stanford,” Camarillo said.

The number of affiliated faculty has also grown from the original 33 or 35 to over 140 volunteers.Saldívar himself came to Stanford under the CCSRE’s Faculty Diversity Initiative, which aims to recruit top scholars in their fields to teach courses specifically through the CCSRE.

In terms of growth, Saldívar explained that the program will graduate its third cohort of honors students through the Bing Honor College this year.

Palumbo-Liu spoke about how CSRE has also seen a shift in the themes over time, as more students have become interested in topics such as feminism and sexuality. The center is also working to develop stronger connections with Stanford’s other schools like the Law School and the School of Medicine.

“There is some talk of starting a graduate program, but that’s at the very early stages of conceptualization,” Palumbo-Liu said. “I think right now we are putting a lot of energy behind community-based learning and [our partnership with] the Institute for Diversity in the Arts.”

Focusing on international expansion and community engagement, the CCSRE also received a grant to hire its first director of service learning, Nadia De Leon. Palumbo-Liu explained that the center hopes the program will continue to grow and gain more recognition.

“For the people who are involved in teaching for CSRE, we say it’s one of the most enjoyable aspects of teaching at Stanford,” Palumbo-Liu said. “Not just in terms of the topic, but for the colleagues that we meet and also the students are fabulous — we’re a big happy community.”

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Albert Camarillo, founding director of CCSRE, discusses the origins of the program as well as hopes for the future https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/23/albert-camarillo-founding-director-of-ccsre-discusses-the-origins-of-the-program-as-well-as-hopes-for-the-future/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/23/albert-camarillo-founding-director-of-ccsre-discusses-the-origins-of-the-program-as-well-as-hopes-for-the-future/#respond Fri, 23 May 2014 09:38:44 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085962 Albert Camarillo, professor of American history, was the founding director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) in 1996.

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Albert Camarillo was the founding director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) in 1996 and played a large supporting role during the student hunger strike in 1994. (Courtesy of Albert Camarillo)
Albert Camarillo was the founding director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) in 1996 and played a large supporting role during the student hunger strike in 1994. (Courtesy of Albert Camarillo)

Albert Camarillo, professor of American history, was the founding director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) in 1996. A member of the History Department since 1975, Camarillo was also the founding director of the Stanford Center for Chicano Research from 1980-1985, and played a large supporting role during the student hunger strike in 1994.

The Daily sat down to discuss the development of the CCSRE in the aftermath of the hunger strike as well as his thoughts on the changes in the campus culture regarding race and ethnicity.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): So do you think you can start by talking about how the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity began in context of the hunger strike of 1994?

Albert Camarillo (AC):The idea for something like CCSRE formed before the hunger strike. Back in 1993 there was a group of faculty, across a number of social sciences and humanities departments that were discussing the idea of possibly bringing together the faculty to create some center. [At the time,] there were seminars that the University had funded from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and gave money to the University to support faculty seminars. And so we received a two-year grant to bring together faculty and start talking about race and ethnicity.

So there was already a group of people thinking about making a subset, a research center, not so much for students and teaching. And that’s when the hunger strike came along demanding a Chicano studies program…and the decision at the time, because of the intellectual inertia already in comparative studies, was not to develop a Chicano Studies program separate from, but be a part of programming comparing race and ethnicity. And so at that time we decided, the faculty together with students, that we were going to create a center that had both an undergraduate program and a research institute to support the research and other intellectual activities of faculty and graduate students. So the two things converged.

TSD:Could you talk a bit about how the committee developed the CCSRE program?

AC: Typically what happens is that the dean, or sometimes it could be a provost or president, they call a committee together and they give the committee a great deal of autonomy to come up with proposals or recommendations.

And so the committee [for developing CCSRE] met for quite a few months, did a big assessment of ethnic studies, related programs across the nation, to see what kind of models existed. And in the end, [it] decided to do something pretty different — no other program that had been created had been comparative across and between groups, domestic and international.

TSD: How was the campus culture then compared to what it is today, and what was it like to be on campus at the time of the protest?

AC:It was an intense period of time, and as long as I’ve been here, in 40 years, there have never been hunger strikes. There have been demonstrations, but nothing as dramatic as a hunger strike. When you get people fasting for one or two, three or four days, then it becomes a medical issue, it becomes a crisis. Everyone wanted to avert the crisis of actually harming student health and taking up the issues that they felt the University could deal with. There were a number of committees that were established to take up particular parts of the demands by the strikers. I was involved with only the one with the curricula side of it.

TSD: What would you say was the long-term impact of the protests?

AC:The protests mobilized the students and it later mobilized the administration and the faculty to create something that now is almost 20 years old. And in the end, I think it was an important factor as an impetus for the institutionalization of ethnic studies at Stanford.

TSD: What is your involvement with CCSRE now and what are your hopes for the future of the center?

AC:I’m not the director of the center anymore. But my current role is to help departments and schools find new faculty and hopefully appoint them. By the beginning of next year, we would have 13 faculty appointed over the last seven years whose work focuses on the study of race and ethnicity. And these are really successful people that we’ve hired.

My involvement with the center all these years…we viewed our mission — and this with faculty and students and staff together — to create the premier intellectual center of its time in the world studying race and ethnicity, and we’ve achieved that goal already.

 

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ Stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Baidu, Chinese Internet company, hires Stanford artificial intelligence professor Andrew Ng https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/19/baidu-chinese-internet-company-hires-stanford-artificial-intelligence-professor-andrew-ng/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/19/baidu-chinese-internet-company-hires-stanford-artificial-intelligence-professor-andrew-ng/#comments Mon, 19 May 2014 08:12:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085715 On Friday, Chinese Internet company Baidu announced that it had hired Stanford researcher and previous computer science professor Andrew Ng ‘08 as its chief scientist. Ng is also the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and co-founder of the massive open online courses (MOOC) platform Coursera.

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On Friday, Chinese Internet company Baidu announced that it had hired Stanford researcher and previous computer science professor Andrew Ng ’08 as its chief scientist. Ng is also the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and co-founder of the massive open online courses (MOOC) platform Coursera.

Known for his work on neural networks, Ng has contributed to projects for Google X and is currently on leave from Stanford. Although he will remain a chairman at Coursera, he also plans on stepping away from the MOOC provider.

As Baidu’s chief scientist, Ng will head research at the company’s artificial intelligence labs in Beijing and Sunnyvale, California. Many consider his transition a sign that artificial intelligence is of growing importance for Internet companies.

With an office in Cupertino, California to support its “Deep Learning Institute,” Baidu is considered China’s leading Internet search engine. CEO Robin Li spoke about Ng’s noteworthy credentials in a prepared statement.

“Andrew is the ideal individual to lead our research efforts as we enter an era where AI plays an increasingly pronounced role,” Li said.

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Invasive species of mosquitoes found in Santa Clara County https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/19/invasive-species-of-mosquitoes-found-in-santa-clara-county/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/19/invasive-species-of-mosquitoes-found-in-santa-clara-county/#comments Mon, 19 May 2014 08:03:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085761 On May 5, the Santa Clara County Vector Control District began a campaign to notify Palo Alto residents of a species of small, invasive mosquitoes that are new to the area.

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On May 5, the Santa Clara County Vector Control District began a campaign to notify Palo Alto residents of a species of small, invasive mosquitoes that are new to the area.

According to the University’s biosafety manager, Ellyn Segal, these Yellow Fever Mosquitoes were eradicated from an area near the San Francisco airport in 1979. However, they were discovered in Los Angeles in 2011 and first reappeared in Northern California in Fresno and San Mateo in 2013. In August, they were found in a residential area of Menlo Park, close to the Palo Alto border.

Although being bitten by one of the mosquitoes is not in itself dangerous, the species has the ability to carry pathogens foreign to the area, such as dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya. Dengue in particular can have severe effects for someone who has been previously infected with the virus.

Segal explained that residents should take the same precautions that they would against normal mosquitoes, such as wearing long sleeves and pants, using insect repellent and getting rid of standing water. However, one distinctive characteristic sets yellow fever mosquitoes apart from other species in the area.

“The difference between these mosquitoes and California mosquitos is that they are active during the day,” Segal said.

At only a quarter of an inch in size, the Yellow Fever Mosquito is also distinguishable by the white dots on its black body. Due to their small size, members of the species do not need much water to plant their eggs — a supply as small as dew on a leaf would be sufficient.

Although the species has not yet been detected in Palo Alto and all cases of dengue in the area have affected overseas travelers, the district has placed traps along the border to detect mosquito activity. The district has also requested that any sightings of the mosquitoes or daytime bites be reported to the county.

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Assassins games bring both paranoia and community to dorms https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/13/assassins-games-bring-both-paranoia-and-community-to-dorms/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/13/assassins-games-bring-both-paranoia-and-community-to-dorms/#comments Tue, 13 May 2014 09:01:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085538 A tradition so embedded in Stanford culture that its origins are unknown, the game of Assassins brings a stronger sense of community, a fun distraction and temporary paranoia to many dorms each year.

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SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily
SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily

A tradition so embedded in Stanford culture that its origins are unknown, the game of Assassins brings a stronger sense of community, a fun distraction and temporary paranoia to many dorms each year.

Game rules vary among the residences. Players in the live-action game are each assigned another player to “assassinate.” Depending on the rules, kills may involve shooting the victim with a water or Nerf gun, throwing a sock at the target or poking the individual with a spoon, usually without anyone witnessing the kill.

Some dorms also make areas such as in-session classes, bathrooms, dining halls or dorm rooms “safe zones” – places where players cannot be killed. Other variations of the game describe who can witness a kill for it to remain valid, whether or not targets can pursue their assassins and how long assassins can take to pursue their victims before timing out.

 

The organizers and the winners

Dorm staff, especially resident computer consultants (RCCs) in freshman dorms, typically organize the game. Gavilan Galloway ’15, an RCC in Serra and the dorm’s “game master” for the last two weeks, created and hosted an Assassins website on his Raspberry Pi, a credit card-sized computer. The project began in the fall with his desire to create a web-server from scratch, and the site, which automatically assigns targets and allows players to report kills, has been used by Otero, Trancos and Serra this year.

Galloway explained that he modeled his version of the rules off his previous dorm Assassins games and added small fixes to areas that he found had been problematic. He also spoke about his experiences as a freshman and sophomore.

“It consumed everyone for the week that we played, and everyone was talking about it,” Galloway said. “It was actually a big stress for a lot of people, but it was a good experience. I got pretty into it. I took the final three even as far as to break a couple friendships for a little while.”

“Game masters” can also be the residents themselves. This year, Teddy Morris-Knower ’17, a member of Larkin’s dorm government, coordinated his dorm’s game of Assassins during winter quarter by getting feedback from his peers and developing rules based on his previous experience playing during camp.

“I talked to the staff members to figure out how they played it last year,” Morris-Knower said, “and I talked to some other kids who had played it either at their high schools or at other events to try to figure out what would the best way to do it in a dorm situation.”

He said that over 80 percent of the dorm played and that the game brought members of the dorm together.

“People are definitely much more focused on their dorm [when playing],” Morris-Knower said. “It was definitely a different atmosphere that I haven’t seen since. It was really cool.”

Morris-Knower said that one student changed the HTML of one of the target emails in order to trick another player. Larkin’s winner was a basketball player whose four days of absence brought her automatically into the final three.

Katelyn Phan ’15, this year’s winner in Okada, worked with her roommate to stay alive together until the final three. Despite her opponent “stalking” Phan to her midterm, she managed to catch him on a staircase.

 

The good, bad and ugly

Like Morris-Knower, Phan spoke about the positive sense of community and fun that the game brought to the dorm.

However, not all of the effects of Assassins are positive. Students in general agreed that players can get extremely involved in Assassins and end up taking the game very seriously.

“People would have a lot of negative feelings because people would just get…really competitive [during Assassins],” Phan said. “In the end, everyone’s just like, ‘Oh, it’s just a game,’ but people do get paranoid.”

Living in constant paranoia that a friend could shoot you when your guard is down often creates an additional stress for students. Camille Townshend ’17 spoke about the Freshman-Sophomore College’s (FroSoCo) game this year, which ended abruptly after a weekend break.

“It was stressful,” Townshend said. “I had a super-elaborate plan for my person. I even know them. I stalked them on Facebook. I actually looked them up in my email and I figured out that he was [an ASSU Senator].”

Townshend explained that after organizers gave the residents a weekend off to do work, no one wanted to resume playing.

Organizers implemented a break over the weekend to give everyone a chance to study but after the two days, no one went back to playing. Even one of the most successful players did not want to restart after the weekend since “Assassins was consuming [his] life.”

The negative effects were also felt by the FroSoCo coordinator, who was asked many questions about gameplay and eventually driven to pass the responsibility to a different staff member.

Yet despite its negative aspects, Townshend still agreed that Assassins still had redeeming values.

“It was fun while I was there,” Townshend said. “I especially liked helping other people stay in the game.”

Galloway, who explained that the tradition is less of a big deal in upperclass dorms than it is for freshmen, spoke about the effects of Assassins from the perspective of a “game master.”

“It has a very disruptive effect, and I say this in the kindest way,” Galloway said. “It rustles everyone necessarily for a good week and gets everyone’s juices flowing and gets them out of their rut for a while. It’s like a good jolt in the system for a brief amount of time.”

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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Nobel Prize winner and Hoover senior fellow passes away https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/05/nobel-prize-winner-and-hoover-senior-fellow-passes-away/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/05/nobel-prize-winner-and-hoover-senior-fellow-passes-away/#respond Mon, 05 May 2014 08:45:18 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085257 Gary Becker, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, died at the age of 83 in Chicago on Saturday, May 3. Becker passed away from complications after a recent surgery that followed on from a longtime illness.

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Gary Becker, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, died at the age of 83 in Chicago on Saturday, May 3. Becker passed away from complications after a recent surgery that followed on from a longtime illness.

The recipient of the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science, Becker was a professor of economics and of sociology at the University of Chicago. His work focused on understanding everyday decisions in aspects of life such as marriage, racial discrimination, addiction and crime. Becker is best known for his studies in labor economics, and his groundbreaking interdisciplinary work made him the first to see economics as the study of human behavior.

Becker is also one of two scholars who have received both the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President George W. Bush presented Becker with the medal at the White House in 2007.

In honor of Becker’s life and work, the University of Chicago will hold a memorial service, the details of which will be announced at a later date.

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Condoleezza Rice turns down Rutgers commencement address https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/05/condoleezza-rice-turns-down-rutgers-commencement-address/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/05/05/condoleezza-rice-turns-down-rutgers-commencement-address/#comments Mon, 05 May 2014 08:44:26 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1085250 On Saturday, Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State and professor at the Graduate School of Business, announced that she would not give this year’s Rutgers University commencement address following protests from Rutgers student and faculty.

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On Saturday, Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State and professor at the Graduate School of Business, announced that she would not give this year’s Rutgers University commencement address following protests from Rutgers student and faculty.

The protesters argued that Rice should not have been chosen as a result of her involvement in the Iraq War. In February, the university’s faculty council approved a resolution that requested officials rescind the invitation on the grounds that Rice had misled the public about the reasons for the Iraq War.

Last week, students held a sit-in outside the office of Robert L. Barchi, the university’s president, and on Friday, protesters confronted Barchi as he left a meeting.

Although Barchi stood by the invitation, Rice explained in her statement that she did not want to be a distraction during the joyous time of commencement and turned down the $35,000 she would have been paid for the speech.

“Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families,” Rice said in her statement. “Rutgers’ invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time.”

The university said that it would soon announce who will replace Rice at the May 18 event.

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Stanford Dragonboat focuses on team organization and community https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/23/stanford-dragonboat-focuses-on-team-organization-and-community/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/04/23/stanford-dragonboat-focuses-on-team-organization-and-community/#respond Wed, 23 Apr 2014 09:42:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1084735 Most people have heard of crew, but few are familiar with dragonboating, another highly competitive aquatic team sport. In fact, many of the Stanford Dragonboat team members themselves had never heard of the sport before coming to Stanford.

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Courtesy of David Calica
Courtesy of David Calica

Most people have heard of crew, but few are familiar with dragonboating, another highly competitive aquatic team sport. In fact, many of the Stanford Dragonboat team members themselves had never heard of the sport before coming to Stanford.

In a given race, boats usually each have approximately 20 paddlers sitting in pairs, with a drummer at the front shouting instructions and one person at the back steering. The Stanford team includes 35 members, most of whom joined the team with little to no prior experience.

David Lam ’15, who has spent three years on the team and is currently acting as interim president, emphasized the team’s open policy for new members. Regardless of their backgrounds, interested students can participate in a trial period at the beginning of the school year to see if the sport appeals to them.

“We usually don’t have tryouts because we’re a pretty accepting team,” Lam said. “For a lot of people it’s their first time ever picking up a paddle and doing dragonboat.”

“Coming to Stanford, I really wanted to something that was athletic in nature but didn’t require too much of a time commitment like other club sports,” he added.

Christine Li ’16 joined the dragonboat team during winter quarter of her freshman year after leaving the crew team as a fall quarter walk-on. Although she did not know what the sport was at the time, she explained that she had also been looking for a water sport with a lower commitment.

“I wanted to do some kind of unique team sport, and I also loved being on the water,” Li said.

With its no-cuts policy, the sport has created a welcoming community that has allowed Li to meet people she never would have otherwise, whether they come from different majors or from the graduate community. Li also emphasized that the team has made exercising more enjoyable.

“I found that working out with a team is way more fun than by yourself, and everyone’s really supportive no matter what level you’re at,” Li said. “Anyone can join Dragonboat…It has more to do with your commitment, and it’s more about how much you improve rather than the skills that you have.”

The team practices three times a week: Tuesdays on the track, Thursdays in the gym and Sundays on the water at a local estuary in Redwood City called Bair Island.

Haiyin Wang ’17, a freshman with prior experience in water polo, joined Dragonboat to try a new sport that would allow him to remain close to the water. He also explained that the weekly workouts make the sport an even more distinct experience.

“I really appreciate how it’s a very diverse sport, and the exercise regimen that comes with it is really unique,” Wang said. “And [spending] Sunday mornings paddling on the water is really nice and cathartic.”

According to Lam, practices take place year-round as the real Dragonboat season technically falls in the summer. He also explained that since most students are not around in the summer, Stanford’s team misses many of the races that occur during the actual season.

However, Lam doesn’t see this as detrimental.

“It’s just good to get as much practice as possible because when we do race, there are very few opportunities so we want to do our best at the races we go to,” Lam said. “Our goal isn’t necessarily to win, but [we try] to always improve on what we’ve done before and to make sure that everyone feels that they gave it their very best.”

The team participates in three or four competitions each year, and races include various divisions such as single-gender, mixed-gender and college-only teams. The team recently competed in Arizona and will have their fourth race of the season at Lake Merced in San Francisco on May 3.

“We’re a very small team and we’re very new so we tend to not do as well as some of the UC schools,” Li said. “They have bigger dragonboat teams, and they tend to be pretty competitive; we’re a lot smaller, but we’re trying to get up there and be as competitive as them.”

Lam explained that this year has also seen a transition in the team’s leadership committee. The core is elected every spring and splits administrative and logistical roles such as coordinating which races the team will attend and which team members will compete.

“We’ve been transitioning from a very one-person-dominated team to a leadership group of many different people, and it’s been really interesting to see that transition occur,” Lam said. “Even though it hasn’t necessarily grown in terms of the size of the team, [the team] has definitely grown in terms of the organization.”

According to Lam, this year the core has focused on building a community and on making sure team members feel they have done the best they can.

“I’ve gotten a lot of workouts in, made a lot of good friends, gone to pretty cool places with reduced cost,” Lam said. “It’s also taught me to be a more responsible person.”

Li also spoke about the team’s emphasis on improvement rather than winning.

“It’s all about the team and the boat as a whole…but you feel like you’re a necessary part of the team as well,” Li said. “It really encourages you to feel this connection with the rest of the boat.”

“The feeling of competing and going as fast as you can is very exciting and rewarding even if you don’t win,” she added.

 

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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