Stanford is imposing a heightened slate of social restrictions on graduate students, making the return to socialization an uphill battle

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Members of Queer Student Resources disrupted the speeches of administrators at a LGBTQ+ forum and sported flags with messages such as “Stanford Medicine Kills Trans People."

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Stanford undergraduates and graduate students returned to campus to lost packages and unending lines to pick up mail. Despite improvements in the new package service system, students are still looking for answers.

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Organizers are asking the University to mandate that professors offer remote learning options for students who are in COVID-19 isolation.

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GSC councilors and graduate students pressed representatives on the glacial pace of package delivery processing stemming from the switch from FedEx to UG2

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Following a firestorm of controversy over online discourse, Stanford community members are calling into question whether the Fundamental Standard is still capable of effectively regulating campus behavior.

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A key revision that would allow faculty to proctor in-person exams sparked debate over the purpose of the Honor Code. Councilors also argued over the role of undergraduate input in the approval process.

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After five months of candidate-searching, Bikal Sharma will fill the Vice-President vacancy, joining ASSU President Christian Giadolor on the Executive Committee.

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The Diversity and Advocacy Committee plans to advocate for affordability and accessibility using data collected by the University.

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Now effectively forced to enter the graduate housing draw following the last-minute change, some coterms are unsure of whether they will be able to afford the higher cost of Stanford graduate housing, while others worry that they may not even receive on-campus housing at all.

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R&DE representatives said that they are preparing for a seamless transition between the current system and the third-party vendor. However, each additional day that the mail situation remains unresolved acutely impacts the graduate student community.

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Jason Anderson, a second-year aeronautics and astronautics Ph.D. student, and Chloe Glikbarg ’21 M.S. ’22 will fill the council's remaining open seats.

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The controversy stems from a satirical flyer Nicholas Wallace J.D. ’21 sent to a law school mailing list on Jan. 25, advertising a fictitious event that lampooned the Stanford Federalist Society. Despite lifting the hold, Stanford continues to face intensifying questions over the bounds of free speech on campus and its enforcement of policies.

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Former ASSU vice president Cricket Bidleman ’21 M.A. ’22, Ph.D. student Jason Anderson and Chloe Glikbarg ’21 M.S. ’22 are running for the two open seats, but a failure to reach quorum meant the vote was postponed until later this month.

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Santa Clara County will soon provide free period products in all its public facilities. Now, leaders in the Stanford and Santa Clara communities are calling on the University to do the same.

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The council’s support of the resolution comes weeks after it was passed in the Undergraduate Senate, solidifying student government’s call for change to the University’s standardized testing policies.

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In the 2020-21 academic year, salaried graduate students working as teaching assistants or research assistants shelled out approximately 40% of their salary to Stanford to cover on-campus housing costs each quarter.

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Although Stanford will hold a university-wide in-person commencement, the decision to allow the GSB its own in-person ceremony has drawn the consternation of students in other schools, who have called the exception “a slap in the face” to excluded graduate student communities.

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The induction ceremony, where 13 new and returning councilors were sworn in, came approximately one week after the results of this year’s general election were announced.

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The certification comes in the wake of historically low voter turnout across the board, and especially within the graduate student body. The record-low turnout within the graduate student voting population fell between five and seven percent for amendments on the ballot.

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The GSC, which has struggled to gain visibility within the graduate student community during the COVID-19 pandemic, faced low turnout and several unexpected elections. Only 8.74% of the graduate community voted in the election, a figure considerably lower than last year’s 23.02% turnout, and one-third of the elected officials were written in.

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The resolution is the latest in student activism against the University’s decision to cut its only salaried Cantonese language lectureship last December.

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The decentralization of different graduate programs, coupled with a communication bottleneck, has resulted in a perennial struggle to gain awareness and active participation within the GSC — a problem that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, according to former and current councilors.

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Thursday night might have been the end of the road for the Stanford men’s volleyball program as the Cardinal (3-13, 3-13 MPSF) dropped a quarterfinal elimination match to No. 5 Pepperdine (12-5, 11-5 MPSF) in a 3-1 loss.

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