Nathaniel Okun – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Wed, 12 Apr 2017 08:16:00 +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 Nathaniel Okun – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Stanford police seek to strengthen relationship with community https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/12/stanford-police-seek-to-strengthen-relationship-with-community/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/12/stanford-police-seek-to-strengthen-relationship-with-community/#respond Wed, 12 Apr 2017 08:16:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1125727 Body cameras and a host of outreach programs, including a new advisory committee, highlight the Stanford Department of Public Safety’s ongoing push to improve community relations.

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Stanford police deputy Ken Bates wears his body camera on the collar of his uniform. The camera records constantly so that the police department can view up to 30 seconds before Bates activates the camera when he begins an enforcement action.

Wearing body cameras is a direct response to public demand for greater transparency, according to Bates. He has worn his since November 2016, when the department rolled them out for the first time at the Big Game.

“It’s kind of become an expectation of the public that if we’re not wearing it, if we’re not recording a specific incident or action, what are we hiding?” Bates said.

Body cameras and a host of outreach programs highlight the Stanford Department of Public Safety’s push to improve its relationship with the community and students’ impressions of police officers.

Last September, Police Chief Laura Wilson ’80 began recruiting students, faculty and staff for the Police Department Advisory Committee, an initiative to help the department better understand issues affecting the Stanford community. Wilson, a Stanford alumna, hopes that students who are uncomfortable reaching out to the police department can talk to committee members instead. According to prospective member Audrey Huynh ’19, the committee will start meeting during the spring, though an exact date has not been set.

Wilson cited “the tension between police and the communities we serve, particularly communities of color” as well as “the national attention on sexual assault” as the reasons for creating the committee in an email to Huynh.

“I think [Wilson] just wants students to know that police have good intentions and that they mean well,” Huynh said. “She doesn’t want there to be this fear or animosity towards them.”

Wilson has overseen the creation of many other programs to improve the department’s relationship with the community during her 14-year tenure as chief. Officers teach dorm staff how to respond to active threats and excessive alcohol use, run a law enforcement class each winter and even hosted several barbeques for graduate students last summer.

These programs are part of a larger trend towards community-oriented policing rather than in response to increased media coverage of police shootings, according to Bates.

He noted that the Stanford police department was the first in the county to outfit its cars with video cameras.

“I’ve been used to being recorded since the day I started,” said Bates’ patrol partner Sergeant Adam Cullen, who began working in the department 14 years ago.

While Cullen and Bates said that the department’s relationship with the community is strong overall, officers periodically deal with the tension caused by highly publicized police shootings, which have stoked national debate about police use of force – particularly toward people of color.

In November of 2014, the night a grand jury released its decision not to indict a Ferguson, MO police officer for the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, special event patrol officers – part-time Stanford Department of Public Safety employees who are often students – received an email warning them to be especially careful when on and off duty.

The email urged patrol officers to cover the patches that identify them as officers when commuting to and from the police department.

Special event patrol officer Brandon Solis ’17 recalled one instance of hostility towards police at a senior banquet in June 2015. An older, white policeman stepped in to guide a heavily intoxicated black student to the medical tent.

According to Solis, the student screamed at the officer, “You’re doing this cause I’m black. You’re racist. I hate you.”

“[The officer] was kinda hurt by it,” he said.

Cullen said that the number of adversarial confrontations he had with community members while on patrol increased at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, but were still “few and far between.”

Students held several Black Lives Matter protests on campus during the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years. However, according to Di’Vennci Lucas ‘17, president of the Stanford NAACP, those events were directed at the student body rather than the Stanford police.

“I don’t even think of them as police,” Lucas said.

Despite experiences like Solis’, police officers’ relationships with the Stanford community have improved over the last decade, according to Cullen. When Cullen joined the department, dorm staff sometimes withheld information from officers when they were called to assist intoxicated students.

“We were directed to start spreading the word – through RAs, through community meetings … to try to gain the trust of the residential community on campus,” said Cullen.

The two groups now work together during staff training and as part of the department’s dorm-officer liaison program.

Roble Dorm residential assistant (RA) Elana Leone ’17 recalled a night when EMTs asked her to accompany a student who had drunk too much to the hospital. A Stanford officer followed the ambulance and drove Leone back to Roble.

“It was kind of scary,” Leone said. “I had never called 911 before. The officer that showed up couldn’t have been nicer.”

Former Casa Zapata RA Calah Hanson ’13 appreciated the police department’s efforts as well.

“I could tell that they had the students’ best interest in mind always,” she said.

Not all community members agree. Theater and Performance Studies associate professor Branislav Jakovljević had a negative experience with Stanford police after he ran a stop sign on Feb. 24. According to Jakovljević, the ticketing officer, Cullen, aggressively asked about his nationality.

Jakovljević wrote in a recent Daily Op-Ed that campus police still have work to do in order to serve Stanford sensitively. He wrote that his encounter “suggests that some members of Stanford Police have gaps in their education about the community they are policing.”

“Basically it seemed to me as if all of [Cullen]’s training fell by the wayside,” Jakovljević said. “How safe can we feel if police officers are talking to members of our community that way?”

Jakovljević filed a complaint with the department, after which a captain met with him to discuss the incident.

“They responded promptly and appropriately,” Jakovljević said.

Cullen declined to respond publicly to Jakovljević’s complaints.

Cullen and Bates have repeatedly expressed their hope that positive experiences with officers would lead community members to view them in a better light.

“Quite often I’ll say ‘Give me a chance,'” Bates said. “‘Learn the person inside the uniform. Don’t make the uniform be a wall between you and I.’”

 

This article is based on an earlier story written for COMM 104W. 

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Stanford Splash ushers students into the role of teachers https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/10/stanford-splash-ushers-students-into-the-role-of-teachers/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/10/stanford-splash-ushers-students-into-the-role-of-teachers/#respond Tue, 11 Nov 2014 06:35:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1091793 While Stanford students are normally doing the learning, this weekend saw the roles reversed as Stanford Splash hosted 2000 middle and high school students.

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Grant Sanderson '15 taught a class on visualizing the fourth dimension, using a computer program he developed. (ERIC THONG/Stanford Daily)
Grant Sanderson ’15 taught a class on visualizing the fourth dimension, using a computer program he developed. (ERIC THONG/Stanford Daily)

While Stanford students are normally doing the learning, this weekend saw the roles reversed as Stanford Splash hosted 2000 middle school and high school students.

Stanford Splash is a large-scale attempt to help Stanford students, middle schoolers and high schoolers engage on a higher educational level. Stanford students and other community members design and teach classes to local middle and high school students.

“It is education for students by students,” said Alfred Zong ’15, a member of Splash’s administrative team.

The goal of the event is twofold, according to Zong: to expand the educational horizons of high schoolers and to give them a chance to experience college-level classes with a wider selection of classes that are nontraditional.

Classes for the program vary from physics and linguistics to dance, cooking and the ever-popular “Quidditch for Muggles.” The idea is for Stanford students to exercise leadership and understanding in education, said Hilary Noad, a member of the Splash administrative team and a fourth-year Ph.D. student in astrophysics.

“It’s a meta-learning environment in which the Stanford students who are teaching are helping other people learn, but are also learning about teaching,” Noad said.

This emphasis on the nontraditional aspects of education are part of the fun, say participants and instructors.

“I joined Splash because I enjoy teaching, and I think my topic is fascinating,” said Andrew Granato ’17, who taught a class on Karl Marx and capitalism. “My course description emphasized that Marxist theory is highly abstract and difficult, and the students who signed up … were very knowledgeable history buffs.”

Over the course of a year, the Splash administrative team works on logistics, including finding space for the event, which usually takes up most of the available rooms in the Main Quad area. Securing dance space and cooking space is the most difficult, says the Splash team. And an issue they consistently run into is not a lack of space or interested students, but not enough Stanford student-teachers.

To combat this problem, Splash hopes to expand its program in the coming year to include a smaller event called Splash-and-Dash. “[It will] give potential teachers an idea of what they’re getting into,” Zong said.

Below are a sample of the wide variety of classes taught at Stanford Splash.

Into the Fourth Dimension

Have you ever wondered what a four-dimensional cube looks like?

Overview:

Over 100 students crammed into the basement of the psychology building to learn how to visualize the fourth dimension. Led by Grant Sanderson ’15, the class examined three-dimensional projections of the four-dimensional equivalents of the sphere, cube and torus using a program Sanderson developed himself.

Students Speak:

“It makes more sense now, still confusing. But I guess it’s meant to be confusing.” — Ben, an eighth grader from San Jose

Takeaway:

It is very difficult to try and visualize the fourth dimension right away. Start by thinking about how a two-dimensional character might interpret a cube. They wouldn’t see the cube itself — they would see its projection onto the second-dimensional plane. Now try to extrapolate this process to the fourth-dimension.

 

Architecture 4 Humanity

Take a good look at the room around you. How high is the ceiling? Where are the windows located? Why were they placed there?

Overview:

To local architect Kenneth Huo, the key to better understanding architecture is careful observation. In the class, he led students to ponder the rationale behind architectural choices. Students examined stairs, arches and even Hoover Tower to figure out why and how they were designed.

The class also formed columns, tension bridges, domes and more with their own bodies in order to gain an intuitive sense of what physical forces are at work in the construction of such structures.

Students Speak:

“I’ve been interested in architecture for a while now, and I just wanted to know more about it.” — Addison, an eighth grader.

Takeaway:

Walk around campus with an open eye. From Memorial Church to the small hills in the Engineering Quad, most structures have had an incredible amount of thought put into their construction. Try to figure out how and why these structures look the way they do.

 

How to Travel for (almost) Free

Eager to travel but hesitant of the cost?

Overview:

Yongjian Si ’15 talked to students about how he traveled through Mexico, China, Japan and Spain while avoiding the tourist traps and expenses frequently associated with trips to other countries.

Takeaway:

With a good amount common sense and precaution, sites that help you stay with and meet locals, such as couchsurfer.org or airbnb.com, can add a valuable perspective to your traveling experience. If you want to find your own lodgings, you can still learn a lot about life abroad by meeting up with a local for a meal.

Contact Nathaniel Okun at nokun ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford in Government encourages voter registration, student political involvement https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/02/stanford-in-government-encourages-voter-registration-student-political-involvement/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/02/stanford-in-government-encourages-voter-registration-student-political-involvement/#respond Mon, 03 Nov 2014 06:00:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1091180 Stanford in Government’s efforts to promote political engagement and voter turnout for the midterm elections peaked with “Candidates,” a midterm election information session hosted at Slavianskii Dorm last Thursday.

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Stanford in Government offers a series of efforts to promote political engagement and student voter turnout, which includes their "Candidates" information session last Thursday, where students could 'speed date' various controversial political issues. (ERIC THONG/The Stanford Daily)
Stanford in Government offers a series of efforts to promote political engagement and student voter turnout, which includes their “Candidates” information session last Thursday, where students could ‘speed date’ various controversial political issues.
(ERIC THONG/The Stanford Daily)

Stanford in Government’s efforts to promote political engagement and voter turnout for the midterm elections peaked with “Candidates,” a midterm election information session hosted at Slavianskii Dom last Thursday.

The event, modeled after speed dating, brought together students to learn about various controversial electoral races around the nation. Students had the opportunity to talk to pairs of Stanford in Government (SIG) members who had researched in depth a particularly heated race of their choosing. Elections covered included Senate races in Kentucky, Georgia and North Carolina, House of Representatives elections in California’s 17th and 21st Congressional Districts and several different California Propositions on the ballot this Tuesday.

“We thought [a speed-dating format] would be the most fun,” said SIG member Grace Wu ’18. Wu spoke to students at the event about the race between Mike Honda and Ro Khanna in California’s 17th Congressional District.

“It’s a very controversial race because Mike Honda has been here a long time and Ro Khanna is a newcomer who has never held an elected position before,” Wu said. “It could go either way.”

The event’s unconventional format underscored SIG’s commitment to make it as approachable as possible. Attendees of the event sat on couches, ate snacks and even received resumes from mock candidates.

“We want as many students as possible to engage in these issues,” said Stefan Norgaard ’15, the current Stanford in Government Chair.

SIG has traditionally been composed mostly of students studying political science, public policy and other majors that lend themselves easily to political engagement. In the past few years SIG has begun efforts to change that.

“If there’s one thing we found so far this year, it’s that our organization is more successful and also more fun and more powerful when we have these different perspectives coming together,” Norgaard said. “A room full of political science majors isn’t going to have the energy or the potential to galvanize the campus community like a diverse group of students from all different backgrounds.”

In addition to information sessions, SIG holds several voter registration events leading up to November elections.

“We’ve been in dining halls, we’ve been at different political events, we’ve been out in White Plaza doing lots of really cool campaigns in order to make sure that students know why they should be registered,” said Anna Blue ’16, director of SIG’s Public Policy Forum. “This year has actually been our most successful year so far.”

SIG’s ultimate goals stretch far beyond election season. They work throughout the year to create a culture of civic and political engagement at Stanford. SIG holds regular events throughout the year, such as trivia nights, peer panels and policy lunches with members of the Stanford faculty. Past speakers at special events have included former Vice President Al Gore, Senator Olympia Snowe and, most recently, General Michael Hayden.

“I think it’s made me more interested in politics and getting other people interested, not necessarily in politics, but just in being involved in general,” said SIG member Kendra Ritterhern ’18. “I can definitely see myself and my perspective changing.”

SIG’s success in these areas throws into doubt a common perception that Stanford students are apathetic towards politics.

“In my general career as a Stanford student I have found that students are very politically inclined and so that myth mystifies me,” Blue said. “I think if you look at OrgSync and you see the number of registered political groups on campus, I think that alone is a testament to the types of students at Stanford.”

SIG helped register over 800 voters this fall, an increase of four percent from 2012. So many students showed up to hear General Hayden speak this October that Cemex Auditorium was full 15 minutes before the event was schedule to start. Last year, SIG received hundreds of applications for the 40 political fellowships it offers each summer.

“I think people are really interested in and motivated by politics and getting engaged and thinking about how to enact change at the level of institutional reform and public policy, but people don’t necessarily have the platform on which to conduct that engagement,” Norgaard said.

“By providing an opportunity… for all Stanford students to participate in the experience we’re actually seeing a pretty exciting response,” he added.

 

Contact Nathaniel Okun at nokun ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford’s hack culture lags behind https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/05/stanfords-hack-culture-lags-behind/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/05/stanfords-hack-culture-lags-behind/#respond Thu, 06 Feb 2014 06:30:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082106 Despite Stanford's technological pedigree, hacking culture on campus has struggled to keep pace with the constant output of coders and startups, according to students active in the scene.

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Stanford students create an Oculus Rift video game at hackTECH Courtesy of Rahim Ullah
Stanford students create an Oculus Rift video game at hackTECH
Courtesy of Rahim Ullah

Despite Stanford’s technological pedigree, hacking culture on campus has struggled to keep pace with the constant output of coders and startups, according to students active in the scene.

“Stanford is much more focused on entrepreneurship,” said Karthik Viswanathan ‘15, president of the Stanford Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). “A lot of people are just interested in building products that will make a lot of money.”

Contrary to popular belief, hacking–a sometimes-misleading label that belies the activity’s creative implications–is actually the general term for building software or hardware outside a classroom environment.

“Hacking is building something because you love to build,” Viswanathan explained.

Viswanathan framed hacking as essential to the process of becoming a truly effective programmer, given the inherent opportunity for participants to learn about the tools currently used in the computer science industry.

Mike Swift, the founder of Hacker League and commissioner of Major League Hacks, echoed Viswanathan’s sentiments. While he acknowledged the value of academic coursework, Swift argued that learning must also happen outside the classroom.

“[Computer science] is not the one-size-fits-all answer for being a programmer,” Swift said. “We have all these resources out there like hackathons and hacker spaces and learn-to-code programs that can supplement what you’re learning…Hacking may not even touch on computer science.”

Both Swift and Viswanathan described hackathons as one of the best places for programmers to begin to explore the full potential of programming. Hackathons are typically 24- or 36-hour marathon coding events with attendance ranging from a few dozen coders to over a thousand.

“Hackathons are all about taking a cool idea or technology and learning how to build it,” said Rahul Gupta-Iwasaki ‘14, a computer science major and ACM officer. “All it takes is [that] you want to do something and your creativity.”

Hackathons are hosted on many college campuses across the nation. This year, three students from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) inaugurated hackTECH, which attracted over 1,500 hackers en route to becoming the largest hackathon on the west coast yet.

Shubji Jain, one of the co-founders of hackTECH, explained his enthusiasm for the marathon coding sessions by emphasizing both the learning and social aspects.

“I learned so much. I met awesome people,” Jain said. “And although the thing that I created didn’t end up working perfectly, at the end of the day what I took away as an experience was phenomenal.”

Back on campus, Stanford ACM has made the development of a hacking community one of the association’s main goals. The club currently hosts bi-annual hackathons, and the spring competition, “The Big Hack,” pits Stanford against its perennial rival, UC Berkeley. In addition, ACM holds frequent workshops designed to bridge the gap between industry and the classroom.

Viswanathan noted an increasing interest in hacking at Stanford compared to earlier years.

“I remember back in freshman year when I joined [ACM], we would get very low turnouts to everything,” Viswanathan explained. “Nowadays we’re getting a constant 50 [students] at everything we hold.”

However, the group still faces considerable obstacles. According to Gupta-Iwasaki, students often shy away from hacking, ruling themselves out due to a perceived lack of experience even as that deficit makes participating in hacker culture even more important.

“When I went to my first hackathon, I also had very little web experience, very little mobile experience,” Gupta-Iwasaki said. “But that was where I learned.”

He acknowledged that making the leap from class to the unknown is difficult.

“We need to do a better job of making people feel comfortable with that uncertainty,” Gupta-Iwasaki said.

 

Contact Nathaniel Okun at nokun ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.

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