Leela Srinivasan – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Mon, 21 Sep 2015 04:56:57 +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 Leela Srinivasan – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 d.school promotes Design Thinking on campus https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/26/d-school-promotes-design-thinking-on-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/26/d-school-promotes-design-thinking-on-campus/#respond Fri, 27 Feb 2015 06:46:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1096618 Founded in 2003, the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design, known as the d.school, is still exploring how exactly it fits into the larger Stanford community, according to those who regularly utilize the school.

The core idea of the d.school, according to d.school Executive Director Sarah Stein Greenberg, is based on its human-centered approach. More and more classes across Stanford are beginning to employ “Design Thinking,” a user-friendly methodology of solving the world’s problems, brought to life with stages of empathy, ideation and prototyping, and which focuses strongly on the user.

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The d.school, although primarily for graduate students, still has opportunities for undergraduates (Courtesy of the d.school).
The d.school, although primarily for graduate students, still has opportunities for undergraduates (Courtesy of the d.school).

Founded in 2003, the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design, known as the d.school, is still exploring how exactly it fits into the larger Stanford community, according to those who regularly utilize the school.

The core idea of the d.school, according to d.school Executive Director Sarah Stein Greenberg,  is based on its human-centered approach. More and more classes across Stanford are beginning to employ “Design Thinking,” a user-friendly methodology of solving the world’s problems, brought to life with stages of empathy, ideation and prototyping, and which focuses strongly on the user.

“You need to understand and empathize with the users who you’re designing for before you develop the business type of solution,” Greenberg said. “Often people start with new technology, or an idea, but it’s not until later that you do any piloting to find out whether that idea is useful. Design thinking flips that on its head — we need to understand what matters to the people we’re designing for.”

Recently, the d.school employed eight “Experience Assistants,” or EAs, as faces which people can associate with the d.school and reach out to with any questions. These EAs are a diverse group of students with previous d.school experience who are interested in passing along the lessons they’ve learned to others.

One of these EAs, Alex Scully B.A. ’13 M.A. ’14, came to Stanford as an undergraduate on the pre-medical track before she discovered the d.school.

“I realized that I wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to help people, and I realized I couldn’t help people until I knew what they were really about,” she said.

Following this realization, Scully decided to pursue psychology and sociology and began exploring the d.school more closely.

“I had learned so much about the intricacies of people, and that’s who we were designing for,” she added.

The d.school and Design Thinking have also manifested themselves in students’ extracurricular experiences.

Elizabeth Woodson ’15, the president of the ASSU, credits Design Thinking for her successful campaign last year. She began with a simple question: What does Stanford need? But instead of attempting to come up with the answer herself, she used a key tenet of Design Thinking — empathy — and posed that same question to the student body.

“We knocked on doors and asked everyone ‘What do you think Stanford needs?’ and we got a huge range of answers, but started to see some really important themes that we built our campaign around,” Woodson said. After her win, she noted, “it was really interesting to see that the empathy had paid off.”

Though the d.school can sometimes seem graduate-student-centric for some undergraduates, as three-quarters of the students involved are graduate students, there are many opportunities for interested undergraduates to get involved, according to Greenberg.

Pop-Up Classes are offered in the winter and spring quarters, which are brief forays into the world of the d.school and Design Thinking. These classes meet a few times a quarter for a condensed amount of time, and many are open to students of all years and majors to get a taste of Design Thinking and design methodology. There are also events held at the d.school like Pitch Night, in the fall and winter, an open house where students present their projects.

“If undergrads want more exposure to Design Thinking, one thing they can do is take a product design class; for example, ME101 involves Design Thinking and hands-on making skills,” Greenberg said.

For freshmen and sophomores, there is also the popular “Designing Your Stanford” class, or, for juniors and seniors, “Designing Your Life”–two-unit workshops highlighting aspects of the design process.

The d.school does not grant degrees of its own. Rather, in keeping with its interdisciplinary style, it simply serves as a place to build design-related skills to use in other fields of study.

“There are assets of Design Thinking that are very broadly applicable,” Greenberg said. “There’s interests from all different places. For example, there’s a woman working on the intersection between law and design, and there was also a class taught by a med school professor and designer about redesigning the neonatal center at the hospital. That’s where design can play an important role, because these are profoundly human experiences.”

Scully was quick to add that it’s not about what someone is studying, but rather a curiosity and interest to learn more, and to apply that knowledge in a different manner.

“If you’re introverted, extroverted, a social scientist or a biomedical engineer, I would recommend taking a design class,” Scully said.

“I think [not taking a class at the d.school] is like not ever climbing Hoover Tower, or not ever walking the Dish, or not ever taking a technology class, or something like that,” Woodson said.


Contact Leela Srinivasan at leelas@stanford.edu.

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Asian-American Theater Project presents identity-focused ‘Stanford Monologues’ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/05/asian-american-theater-project-presents-identity-focused-stanford-monologues/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/05/asian-american-theater-project-presents-identity-focused-stanford-monologues/#respond Fri, 06 Feb 2015 01:34:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095072 The Asian-American Theater Project (AATP) has taken a different approach to addressing identity, putting on a show called “Stanford Monologues” this weekend. The show discusses conflicting identities and issues with coming to terms with one’s own background, all told through eight different monologues.

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The Asian-American Theater Project (AATP) has taken a different approach to addressing identity, putting on a show called “Stanford Monologues” this weekend. The show discusses conflicting identities and issues with coming to terms with one’s own background, all told through eight different monologues.

Joseph Lee ’17, the writer of “Stanford Monologues,” heard the idea at an AATP board meeting last year and then decided to run with it. He interviewed a variety of people from diverse communities in the spring quarter of his freshman year and drew on those stories as inspiration for the monologues he wrote. Though the monologues are fictional, the issues are not, and to Lee they represented important discussions that need to be had at Stanford.

Although the play is being put on by the AATP, according to producers the goal was to make sure the program was as inclusive as possible.

“Something I noticed about Stanford is that we have different spaces for different kinds of students,” Lee said, referencing the cultural and LGBT centers. “It’s important that those spaces exist, but I think that unfortunately the discussions that happen in those places lose the opportunity to spread to other people and other communities.”

The monologues explore themes of race, gender, disability and sexual orientation, to name a few. The common thread is that the featured characters are all sharing their stories but refuse to be identified by a label, as their true identities are much more complex.

According to Lilian Kong ’18, a co-director of the show, “Stanford Monologues” is about looking beneath the surface of people to truly understand them.

“There is this facade that America is a place for a lot of voices to be shared, that it’s a safe space, but this isn’t true. Lots of people’s stories don’t get shared, and nobody cares about it. We need to remind ourselves that even though we think we know everyone around us, we really need to go that one step further,” Kong said. “Stories aren’t written on your faces.”

Kong and the other co-directors – Adi Chang ’18 and Praveen Ramesh ’14 – worked closely with each actor to develop their characters and explore these issues with them. However, they also sought to create a cohesive show, where every monologue contributed to the larger group. Chang explained that they began group rehearsals with every actor taking what they had learned from their individual rehearsal and coming together as a group.

“It was really moving, seeing all their stories come together and form a community at the end,” Kong said. “I didn’t think that would touch me so much.”

“I think that as long as it gets them thinking about the possibility of different perspectives, different ways for looking at people, then I would be happy,” Chang said.

“Stanford Monologues” will be running on Friday and Saturday at the Elliott Programming Center. The show will be followed by a panel in which students will talk about their experiences with identity and share their own stories.

 

Contact Leela Srinivasan at leelas ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Cardinal Nights debuts Very Important Cardinal loyalty program https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/18/cardinal-nights-debuts-very-important-cardinal-loyalty-program/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/18/cardinal-nights-debuts-very-important-cardinal-loyalty-program/#respond Wed, 19 Nov 2014 06:02:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1092369 At 3 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 8, 12 Stanford students boarded a bus to Disneyland.

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At 3 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 8, 12 Stanford students boarded a bus to Disneyland. They arrived in Anaheim with enough time to have breakfast with the Disney characters before being let loose to enjoy the day, concluding with watching the fireworks as a group. They then returned to campus on Sunday, 24 hours after having left.

The whole experience was paid for by Stanford.

This Disneyland excursion was the pilot event of Cardinal Nights’ new Very Important Cardinal (VIC) loyalty program, which will be fully implemented in Winter Quarter. Students who are frequent attendees of Cardinal Nights events may enjoy perks like ticket presales, extra treats at events or future “secret trips” with other VICs.

The students who went to Disneyland were selected by the number of Cardinal Nights events they had gone to in the past year. Cardinal Nights uses the website Eventbrite for many of their paid events, so the top attendees were found using Eventbrite’s data. They then sent an email to these students with the subject “Be Our Guest,” inviting them to come on a “magical trip,” and on the morning of Nov. 8, they were off.

During the trip, these students received goodies like backpacks, phone chargers and additional money to spend on food and stuffed animals.

“I was amazed by how much attention they paid to every single detail,” said Tran Lam ’17, one of the students who went on the trip. “They covered the bus — they covered everything.”

“We wanted it to be like a VIP experience,” said Ralph Castro, director of Cardinal Nights.

The students who went to Disneyland had nothing but positive things to say about the VIC program.

“It’s great that [Cardinal Nights] subsidizes everything that they do, and the fact that we get rewarded for going to their events is even better,” Sam Schreiber ’17 said.

Nicole Giron ’16 added, “I’d been wanting to go to Disneyland for a really long time and it’s always busy, and super expensive, so just having the opportunity to go through Cardinal Nights was incredibly amazing.”

“It was a free trip to Disneyland,” Brendon Go ’17 said. “I have no complaints.”

Using footage from the trip, Cardinal Nights prepared a promotional video for the program to draw more people in. Anyone is eligible to be a VIC, with different bonuses depending on how many Cardinal Nights events they attend — three provides automatic membership, seven provides bonus treats and rewards, and 10 provides eligibility for more secret trips like Disneyland. At Cardinal Nights events, students can just check in with a staff member to mark their attendance and be put in the running to be a VIC.

What kinds of things can we expect from the VIC program in the future?

“An event like [Disneyland] was our launch, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t do those types of things again,” Castro said. “I’m a big advocate of seeing the state, showcasing California — there’s so much natural beauty here, so we want to be able to open that up to students. I’d love for everyone to be a part of it.”

Contact Leela Srinivasan at leelas ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Flipside pokes fun at Stanford with Cards Against Humanity parody https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/03/cardinal-against-humanity-pokes-fun-at-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/03/cardinal-against-humanity-pokes-fun-at-stanford/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2014 07:45:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1091276 A few weeks ago, the Stanford Flipside created a Stanford-themed version of Cards Against Humanity, titled “Cardinal Against Humanity,” and released it to freshman dorms. The cards contain the original game’s raunchy humor, but with a Stanford spin, with cards like “Hennessey’s chiseled body” or “Sex noises from the RF apartment.”

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(LEELA SRINIVASAN/The Stanford Daily)

A few weeks ago, the Stanford Flipside created a Stanford-themed version of Cards Against Humanity, titled “Cardinal Against Humanity,” and released it to freshman dorms. The cards contain the original game’s raunchy humor, but with a Stanford spin, with cards like “Hennessey’s chiseled body” or “Sex noises from the RF apartment.”

Why use Cards Against Humanity as their inspiration?

“We played it before at Flipside parties and had a lot of fun,” said the managing editor of the Flipside, Corbin Foucart ’15. “The idea was that we could make a specific game to Stanford, because people tend to make their own cards anyway.”

The idea of creating a full Stanford-themed game came about last year, with the bulk of the work being done in winter quarter. Flipside president Amelia Greenfield ’15 explained that it was a collaborative process, with last year’s staff weeding out cards that were too redundant or too vulgar.

They printed out 30 copies of the final product and distributed them to freshman dorms.

“We figured a lot of freshmen are really excited about being a part of the traditions at Stanford, and we wanted to use the game as partially a recruitment for the Flipside, but also just to build a community in their dorms,” Greenfield said.

One point of contention was that some cards were inside jokes between upperclassmen and weren’t as humorous to freshmen. Normally, freshmen aren’t as versed in things like special fees or specific types of housing, so some didn’t find cards of that nature as amusing.

“I think that’s to be expected, though,” said Shubha Raghvendra ’16, the Twain Peer Health Educator (PHE). “As freshmen, you don’t have as much familiarity with Stanford, so you wouldn’t understand those jokes. But they’ll get funnier and funnier as time goes on.”

“I played the game with my RAs, and we would just ask them to explain cards we didn’t understand,” Burbank resident Litawn Gan ’18 said. “But it was really nice for bringing the dorm together. Sharing those Stanford-specific inside jokes made more of a community feeling.”

Greenfield and Foucart emphasized that the Flipside was “blown away” with the positive reaction the game has garnered thus far.

“It’s that kind of thing that made me fall in love with Stanford in the first place,” FroSoCo resident Carolyn Kravitz ’18 said.

Contact Leela Srinivasan at leelas ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Events in Ferguson inspire activism on campus https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/29/events-in-ferguson-inspire-activism-on-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/29/events-in-ferguson-inspire-activism-on-campus/#respond Thu, 30 Oct 2014 03:12:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1090908 On Monday night, Cemex Auditorium was filled with students for a panel discussion about Michael Brown and the events that happened in Ferguson, Missouri, over the summer surrounding his death.

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Students surrounded the Circle of Death on Monday with “Slow Down for Michael Brown” signs. (KRISTEN STIPANOV/The Stanford Daily)

On Monday night, Cemex Auditorium was filled with students for a panel discussion about Michael Brown and the events that happened in Ferguson, Missouri, over the summer surrounding his death. The panelists included hip-hop artists and activists David Banner and Tef Poe, Missouri state senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal and television personality and educator Marc Lamont-Hill.

The event was sponsored by the Black Community Services Center, the Stanford African and African-American Studies program, the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, the Stanford Black Student Union (BSU) and the Stanford NAACP.

Student groups and organizations on Stanford’s campus have been in talks about planning this panel since the summer. Michael Brown’s death occurred on August 9, and as soon as it happened there was an uproar in communities around the country. Even at Stanford, discussions about Ferguson have been taking place all school year.

The BSU worked with the NAACP to launch a social media campaign to raise awareness about the events in Ferguson. They took photographs of black Stanford students standing in front of iconic Stanford locations like the Hoover Tower, the claw fountain, and Green Library, to name a few, all with their hands up in a “Don’t Shoot” position, with the text “#BlackLivesMatter” overlaid on each picture. A slideshow of all of these pictures, in addition to slides containing pictures, names and ages of black Americans shot unarmed at the hands of police officers, was displayed at the start of Monday’s panel. The entire audience fell silent as they watched the presentation.

“Even though we attend such a beautiful school, we’re aware of the injustices that are happening in America,” said Jessica Reed ’15, co-president of the Stanford BSU. “Our degree does not protect us from these injustices.”

There was also an event on October 17 called “Black Plaza,” a yearly tradition at Stanford, although this year, organizers passed out T-shirts bearing the slogan “Survival is political,” in reference to Ferguson.

During the day on Monday, October 27, student organizers conducted a protest called “Moral Monday” to raise awareness about Michael Brown’s death and encourage student turnout for the panel that evening. Protesters stood all around the Circle of Death in a “disruptive demonstration” outside the clock tower, obstructing large parts of the street and holding signs that bore messages like “Slow Down for Michael Brown” and “No Justice, No Peace,” forcing bikers to slow down and take notice as they went through the roundabout. There were also protesters handing out flyers announcing and explaining the panel.

“The point of this was to make sure that Stanford students were interrupted in their day to day lives, as is what occurs when someone gets killed,” said Tianay Pulphus ’15, president of Stanford’s NAACP chapter and organizer of the protest.

The protesters stood for four and a half hours, the same amount of time Michael Brown’s body was left on the street after he was shot. Many reacted positively to the demonstration, but others were not so receptive.

“We’ve had a few incidents where people have been hostile,” Pulphus said. But student organizers were not put off by any detractors.

“We don’t expect everyone to understand or get it,” Pulphus explained, adding that the primary purpose of the demonstration was not to convince people who disagreed with the protest, but to promote active and engaged turnout for the panel.

Both the NAACP and the BSU encourage Stanford students to not just be aware of these issues, but to actively work to produce change. According to Reed, that can be as simple as just reaching out into the larger community. “I think sometimes we learn the most just by sharing our stories,” she said. “Being able to bridge gaps that way is a really impactful way to inform students who may not have been well-versed in these issues.”

The other co-president of the BSU, Shelby Sinclair ‘15, added that as a university, Stanford offers unique and unparalleled abilities to get involved with the issue of race through academics.

“We have an incredible ethnic studies program, a very robust African and African-American course offering, a very robust CSRE offering, and so many other courses that deal with intersections,” she said. “Finding ways to explore these topics can be a great way to help you understand your peers or understand some of the struggles that people face on a day-to-day basis.”

Pulphus also emphasized that Michael Brown’s death isn’t the first issue of its kind, but is representative of more deaths and larger systemic problems.

“This has been going on for hundreds of years,” Sinclair said.

Reed added that social media was an important tool in exposing the events in Ferguson and making Michael Brown’s death into a national issue, which does not always happen with other such incidents.

“I think people have more agency in terms of voicing their opinions about this issue,” Reed said.

Sinclair agreed, saying, “If you really frame social media as media, and think about the ways that people are putting their opinions out there, and the support that they garner, and the attention that people are able to get, I think it is something more powerful than we dismiss it as.”

Another reason Sinclair felt that Michael Brown’s death had become so pervasive throughout the country was due to his young age.

“I think a lot of activists and a lot of people who are very interested and invested in this issue have noted that the face of the movement is not just adults, but also children, high school students, and college students,” she said. “A lot of the people who were involved have pointed out that our children and our young people are hurting.”

The event at Cemex on Monday evening, which began with a spoken word performance from students in the BSU, IDA, NAACP, and the BSCS, followed by the panel Q&A, also moved the issue of Ferguson beyond one death. Tef Poe spoke about the deaths of other young black Americans at the hands of cops since Michael Brown’s, including another killed in St. Louis in the last week. Lamont-Hill also expanded the topic beyond Michael Brown, speaking more generally about police brutality as directed towards African-Americans, and how to battle it with a “reimagined resistance.”

“Do we want ‘hands up, don’t shoot,’ to be our moniker?” he exclaimed, the crowd murmuring in agreement. “Let’s not lose sight of resistance.”

Among other topics were issues of privilege, class and gender, and how that tied into injustice as a whole, especially in a racial context. But the common thread between each topic was the necessity of getting involved to make a change; the eradication of what Tef Poe referred to as the “casual revolution” in which people are aware that something is wrong, but do nothing about it.

The panelists believed that their audience that night had the power to do more.

“You know what your mission is,” Lamont-Hill said. “You choose whether to fulfill or betray it.”

For many attendees, the discussion was provocative, engaging, and ultimately eye-opening. The panel ended with a standing ovation.

“I was surprisingly ignorant about the topic,” said BSU member Gabby Daso ’18 as to why she attended. “I was lit up like the damn sun, forget the light bulb.”

Contact Sarah Wishingrad at swishing ‘at’ stanford.edu and Leela Srinivasan at leelas ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Correction: The spoken word performance was from students in the BSU, IDA, NAACP, and the BSCS.

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Band major Mac Goodspeed discusses experiences with the LSJUMB https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/24/band-major-mac-goodspeed-discusses-experiences-with-the-lsjumb/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/24/band-major-mac-goodspeed-discusses-experiences-with-the-lsjumb/#comments Fri, 24 Oct 2014 16:27:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1090486 Every year, a new drum major is selected to lead the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band (LSJUMB). The Daily sat down with this year’s drum major, Mac Goodspeed ’16 to talk about his experiences in the band and what he loves about it.

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Every year, a new drum major is selected to lead the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band (LSJUMB). The Daily sat down with this year’s drum major, Mac Goodspeed ’16, to talk about his experiences in the band and what he loves about it.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): When/why did you join the band?

Mac Goodspeed (MG): My original knowledge of the Stanford Band was through “The Play,” which is in a classic Big Game; it was 1982, between Stanford and Cal, and the band was on the field in the last play of the game and Cal ended up winning, but there’s just this classic sports clip that’s always used in historical college football reels, and the band’s always there and they’re like the pinnacle of goofy silliness in a college football setting. When I came here during Admit Weekend, by far the most distinct memory I had was coming out of Memorial Auditorium after being stuck in there for awhile listening to a lot of administrative stuff, and seeing the band play. I saw it and immediately knew that was what I wanted to do.

TSD: How would you say the band contributed to your Stanford experience?

MG: Right now it’s all-encompassing. I would say that it’s definitely taught me many more valuable lessons than I expected to learn from it. I expected to come in and have a lot of great experiences, which I have, but I definitely picked up on some more important ways to carry myself. I learned to take some things less seriously; that I needed to let go a bit and learn to just add an element of fun to whatever I’m doing. Band rallies, no matter what we’re doing, are a group of people who are creative and witty enough to make sure that no matter what’s going on you’re having a good time. So I’ve been able to translate that to pretty much every aspect of my life. It’s also a good lesson in that same vein of taking something like music, which as a discipline can seem very formal or stiff in a lot of ways, especially in a marching band setting. The Stanford band is pretty much the polar opposite of that. It’s a good way to make sure that things don’t have to be as they are.

TSD: How do you think the band at Stanford differs from other bands?

MG: Logistically, the clear difference is that we’re something called a scatter band rather than a typical marching band, which means that instead of having a clear marching technique we scatter from formation to formation in the field shows. Also, I’d say logistically, we do a lot more in terms of community-oriented activities rather than just shows and playing for athletic events. We play at Special Olympics every year, we do a lot of stuff on campus and for our alumni, and in pretty much any aspect of Stanford or within the Palo Alto area, we’re invited to random things. For example, if the Giants win the World Series, we’ll be in the World Series parade in San Francisco.We do various sporting events in San Francisco and San Jose as well. Special Olympics, again, is a huge one. So it’s athletic events, rallies, but also community service, you could call it, too. Like alumni birthday parties, children’s fairs, things like that. Babies love us.

TSD: What would you say is the hardest part of working with the band?

MG: The band is always a delicate balance between progressing and having fun in a chaotic sense, so I’d say it’s very much a controlled chaos, and being in the management team which is three people — myself, drum major, the manager and the assistant manager, who work more on the logistical side of things — it really falls to those people to control the chaos, and obviously it’s like holding a bird. You don’t want to grip it too tightly because it’ll die, but you don’t want to let it fly away, so it’s definitely tough sometimes to strike a balance. Especially for something that I care so much about, it’s tough to sometimes get people whose main goal in the band is just to be there very infrequently just to have fun, so it’s sometimes tough to work with that, but at the same time you have to cater to it because that’s what keeps the spirit alive. The whole mantra of you don’t have to play an instrument, just come at football games and be with us, that’s the driving force behind the band. So catering to all different perspectives, I think, is tough, but it’s the core of what we do.

TSD: Where do you hope to take music in the future after Stanford?

MG: That’s a fantastic question! I’d love to hear from a CDC counselor on that. Right now, I keep it as a personal-fulfillment aspect of my life, so I’ll always be practicing instruments by myself and I hope to have a band, at least, on the side. I don’t foresee it being too much of my career, but at some point I’d love to incorporate it in some way. 20 years young, trying to keep my options open.

TSD: What are you most excited about for the band this year?

MG: I think there’s a fantastic renewed energy of creation in the band in terms of each member, regardless of their managerial position, feeling as if they can bring something unique: whether that’s doing a really cool rally project for themselves and the people around them, bringing a really great idea to the table, saying that we should do a new thing on campus, or really just spurring anything within band. I think there’s a good feeling of autonomy within each member, so that’s allowed us to make a lot of great strides in it. I also think that in the past, there’s been a distinction between our musical and performance life and our social vibe, and I think the processes are becoming more entwined in the sense that there’s a greater value placed upon the mutual respect and interpersonal relationships within the band. I think that serves very well not only for people’s experience coming there, but also how we sound, because a happy band likes to play the music well.

TSD: If there’s one thing you want the readers to know about the band, what would it be?

MG: We put in more work than we look like we do! But at the same time we just know how to have fun with it. We do it for the fun and we hope people can enjoy that with us.

Contact Leela Srinivasan at leelas ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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