After an initial shortage of accommodations, Admit Weekend began Thursday with a pairing for every prospective student.
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Following an initial shortage of 295 Room Hosts (RoHos) for Stanford’s Admit Weekend — which began Thursday — every prospective first-year student (ProFro) has received a pairing and dorm room accomodation, the University confirmed.
This year, more than 1,200 ProFros were anticipated to arrive for Admit Weekend, a two and a half-day program for admitted students and their families to explore campus, get to know the community and imagine life at Stanford. The event relies on first-year students and those in four-class dorms to host the prospective students overnight.
An increase in the number of admitted students and overnight lodging sign-ups meant a high demand for RoHos that was not initially met.
To address the shortage, Stanford extended RoHo eligibility to students who live in houses without frosh, including Sally Ride, Twain and Crothers Memorial. The Admit Weekend Team also promised the dorm with the highest RoHo rate a free party.
These efforts paid off. “This year, over 900 students volunteered to become Room Hosts, and we are thrilled that prospective freshmen will have the opportunity to experience this cherished annual tradition,” Assistant Vice President of External Communications Dee Mostofi wrote to The Daily.
Stella Vangelis ’28 was inspired by her own Admit Weekend experience to sign up as a House Host (HoHo) and host three admitted students in her one-room double. “My RoHo last year was so awesome,” she said. “It really gave me a good impression of school, so I want to pay that forward.”
HoHo Rose Garcia ’28 also spoke to the importance of RoHos in shaping the Admit Weekend experience. “[As an admitted student], you sort of want to be able to consult with someone or … have insight into what life for you could look like here.”
If students had not addressed the deficit, Admit Weekend attendees without RoHo assignments would likely have slept in the dorm lounges, according to an email that the Admit Weekend organizing team sent out.
“As a freshman or a ProFro … you want to feel welcomed,” said Lucy Hiller ’28, who volunteered to be a HoHo responsible for dorm programming. “If you come and find out that there’s not enough people who signed up to host you, that’s kind of a crappy feeling.”
In the weeks leading up to Admit Weekend, Hiller and other HoHos encouraged students in their dorms to register as RoHos. This proved more challenging than anticipated, said Hiller.
Some students were reluctant to host ProFros because they had midterms and worried it would interfere with their studying. Others expressed concern about limited space in their rooms.
“I was a little worried about not having enough space in our room for multiple admits but I came to an understanding that there are a lot of them and we all need to do our part,” Audrey Knowles ’28 said.
According to Hiller, hosting an admitted student – potentially a future classmate – is a privilege. “As freshmen this year, getting to host ProFros is a really unique opportunity we get to have to shape the future of Stanford,” she said.
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International student at Stanford has visa restored amid national shiftThe University reported Thursday that an international student had their visa restored after losing their legal status.
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An international student at Stanford who previously lost their visa had the revocation reversed, the University announced in a brief statement Thursday. The reversal lowers the count of visa cancellations to five affecting current students and two affecting recently graduated students.
The update provided no additional details about the students’ background or situation. It came amid a wider national trend, with international students at other colleges and universities reporting a similar restoration of their legal status on Thursday. 12 students at nearby UC Berkeley saw their status restored.
A wave of visa revocations by the Trump administration in recent weeks has reached thousands of international students at hundreds of colleges nationwide. Many of the revocations have targeted students involved in pro-Palestinian activism.
A previous update to the Stanford Immigration website over a week ago stated that six current students and two recent graduates had their visas revoked. The message added that “the University continues to provide support to the students who are affected,” though it did not elaborate on what form this support would take.
At a Stanford Political Union (SPU) event this month, University president Jonathan Levin ’94 said the revocations affecting Stanford students arose from “idiosyncratic” reasons and were not related to activism. He noted that there was “no consistent pattern in any country” across the revocations, and said the students would receive individual assistance from the University for their academic progress.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also requested last month that Stanford turn over aggregate information about Chinese international students, including the institutions they previously attended and current involvement in University research.
The visa revocations have contributed to anxiety among international students at U.S. colleges and universities, including over the attachment of their names to op-eds in campus newspapers. Last month, Department of Homeland Security agents detained Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish citizen who co-authored an article in The Tufts Daily that criticized Tufts’ response to pro-Palestine activism.
The Daily has reached out to the University and the Bechtel International Center for comment on their support for international students, the visa revocations and recent reversal.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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ASSU executive candidates Arzyn and Bhatia want ‘less yapping, more doing’ASSU executive candidates Artem Arzyn ’26 M.S. ’26 and Raina Talwar Bhatia ’25 M.S. ’26 consider the impact of national policies on research and international students and the importance of fighting for marginalized communities.
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The Daily conducted a series of interviews the week before the election with three electoral slates running to serve as ASSU executive officers. The Daily elected not to publish its interview with Ivy Chen ’26 M.A. ’27 and Gordon Allen ’26 after the slate disbanded.
In an interview with The Daily, ASSU Executive candidate slate Artem Arzyn ’26 M.S. ’26 and Raina Talwar Bhatia ’25 M.S. ’26 discussed the impact of national policies on research and international students, experience serving on the Graduate Student Council (GSC) and fighting for marginalized communities.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
The Stanford Daily (TSD): Thank you for speaking to me. Could you introduce yourselves?
Artem Arzyn (AA): I am a senior at this point. I’ll be finishing my undergrad next year and also a co-term in computer science. I’m in electrical engineering and linguistics on the undergraduate side, and I’ve been on the Graduate Student Council this past year.
Raina Talwar Bhatia (RTB): I’m Raina. I’m an international student from Mumbai, India. It’s also my senior year. Me and Artie actually met freshman year NSO. I’m studying bioengineering and international relations as a dual degree, co-terming in bioengineering, and the most important thing about me is I have three dogs that I love the most.
TSD: Specifically, what past experiences have helped prepare you for ASSU executive office?
AA: This past year, I have been on the Graduate Student Council. I’ve been the Faculty Senate representative for graduate students. I’ve also been the representative on a variety of committees with administrators related to this work. I’ve also been the liaison, effectively, to get information about international students and their safety on campus.
RTB: As an international student, I try to focus a lot on things that Stanford can do for the global community. For example, in the Bass Biology Building right here, I work at a lab that does research on how climate change and land-use change affect infectious diseases in Latin America. So I’m very passionate about making sure that undergrads have capabilities to keep doing these kinds of research that are probably going to be the first to get their funding [cut] with administrative changes. Additionally, I’m very passionate about policy work. I actually work within the Hoover Institution’s U.S.-India program on higher education policy.
TSD: Why are you running?
AA: If I’m being honest, I am running with hesitancy. I wasn’t originally planning on running. The two of us signed up on the last day, and that was after a lot of urging from the communities that are impacted — undocumented students, trans students, some of the grad students in the union — there has been a variety of people that asked me to run because they have seen the advocacy that I have done and they’re concerns that we need strong leadership moving forward to continue doing that work in the face of all of the changes.
RTB: [Something] that’s really motivated me to run: I recognize that Sanford’s work on a global stage is gonna get affected more and more with all of what’s going on, I knew that this was a moment where we need some level of voice from international students, as well as the groups that are currently most at risk because think about it, how many international students bothered running for ASSU?
TSD: Could you tell me a bit more about what you hope to accomplish in office?
AA: Honestly, a lot of it is continuing the work that’s already been done around students’ rights as students, students rights as people who are international, students rights related to free speech, especially with the University creating a free speech policy and then violating their own policy. Similarly continuing work for not just graduate students, but also undergraduate students, in supporting DEI initiatives.
RTB: Another thing that both of us are very focused on is the state of the dining halls on campus. Coming from India where a large portion of our population is vegetarian, I was appalled at the lack of vegetarian and vegan options for students. As well as, why are there micropstics and rats in the dining hall? That’s just not safe.
TSD: Do you have a campaign slogan?
AA: I mean, do you want us to come up with one?
TSD: Sure.
AA: Getting things done, not just saying that we will.
RTB: Less yapping, more doing, I would say.
TSD: Why should students vote for you?
RTB: First of all, because of various mix ups with the election commission, we haven’t had access to the $500 you’re supposed to to run for executive to spend on campaigning. So as of right now, we’ve spent literally zero dollars on the campaign. But I would say that if any of the ideas that we’ve outlined in this piece, anything we’ve said in the debate, and anything you know from us personally speaks to you, vote for us. We ask you to think about how your vote has changed given the ever changing landscape that we live in, because it’s not the same election that this would have been if this was a year ago. I don’t think that I would have been running if this was a year ago, but things have changed, we need change for the moment and I think that’s where Artie and I come in.
AA: This fight is not one that we fight alone. It is a fight that we [fight] with the people that are with us. And we are not alone, we are backed by a lot of individuals, we are backed by the Union leadership board, we are backed by a lot of people that have asked us to be here.
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ASSU executive candidates Brown and Berriman want to be ‘Your Friendly Neighborhood Cardinal’ASSU executive candidates Ava Brown ’26 and Will Berriman ’26 spoke to The Daily about implementing community centered programming and understanding the impact of decisions from the Department of Education on students.
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The Daily conducted a series of interviews the week before the election with three electoral slates running to serve as ASSU executive officers. The Daily elected not to publish its interview with Ivy Chen ’26 M.A. ’27 and Gordon Allen ’26 after the slate disbanded.
In an interview with The Daily, ASSU executive candidates Ava Brown ’26 and Will Berriman ’26 shared plans to streamline resources for Voluntary Student Organizations (VSO), implement community centered programming and understand the impact of decisions from the Department of Education on students.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
The Stanford Daily (TSD): Thank you for meeting with me. Could you share a bit about yourselves?
Ava Brown (AB): My name is Ava. I’m a junior. I’m studying data science. I think something that was important to Will and I about throughout this campaign is really community engagement, and that really stems from the various campus groups we’re involved with. I’ve run the Stanford TEDx Conference for three years. I’m team manager for the Stanford Equestrian team. I’m involved in the black community through [Divine Nine] Greek life.
Will Berriman (WB): I’m Will. I’m also a junior. I’m studying economics. Similarly very focused on community engagement. I’m a student researcher at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. I’m also on the leadership Board of Habla. We give free ESL lessons to Stanford’s workers that want to improve their English capabilities. And I’m also the IFC president and a fraternity council president. One of my main focuses so far has been trying to bolster philanthropic endeavors within the Greek community here. For instance, we had a very successful clothing drive a couple months ago, for a center in the Tenderloin that was facing a shortage of male clothing.
TSD: How have your past experiences equipped you for ASSU executive office?
AB: Our campaign is called “Your Friendly Neighborhood Cardinal”, and it’s really about community engagement. We met with a bunch of student leaders from across campus, like the [Black Student Union], the club sports, exec boards, Stanford Speakers Bureau, the [Multicultural Greek Council] president, just across the board to really get a sense of what was important to people. For me, I know policy wise, we were really interested in supporting VSOs. For us, that looks like tangible things like publishing an annual VSO handbook, so that you really know what the resources are, who to contact, how to get things done, and also aspects of simplifying within budget funding transfers. And then with DEI and everything with the Department of Education, we’re really committed to supporting cultural spaces, which I know are very important to some of the organizations that I am a part of.
WB: Another big part of our platform is community-centered programming. We have it scheduled by quarter. Fall quarter, people are coming back from summer break, we have brand new students on campus. We’d like a lot of simple get to know you events. Then in the winter, one of our main events we want to do is the Stanford Student Symposium. We want students, as individuals or student groups, to present projects they’ve been working on throughout the year that they’re passionate about. And they would be competing for additional funding from ASSU executive discretionary funds. But then what I’m personally most excited about is spring: we want a philanthropic-focused quarter. I’m from Pennsylvania, so a large part of my high school class went to Penn State. There’s a huge event they have every year. It’s a dance-a-thon. They’ve raised over $200 million for child cancer research. That’s something I would love to emulate here, especially because we have such a big base of passionate students who care about the community, care about these causes.
TSD: What motivated you to run?
AB: I think the goal for us really is community engagement. Something that really catalyzed this for me is I founded a speaker series this year called Black Voices, specifically to promote black voices within the student community, and it just brought very front and center for me that what you get out of community is what you put into it. Will and I are just really interested in investing and spending more time with a community that has done so much for us, so drawing on our wide networks with campus, from VSO leadership, IFC leadership, club sports, cultural organizations, and really just trying to foster community engagement within the diverse communities on campus.
TSD: What’s your campaign slogan?
AB: Our campaign slogan is “Your Friendly Neighborhood Cardinal” — perhaps a nod to Spiderman. For us and, for “Your Friendly Neighborhood Cardinal,” we’re really just looking to provide a safe space for everybody to feel like they are a part of the community and facilitate buy-in so that we can unite Stanford.
TSD: Building on that, could you speak on your campaign goals?
AB: Not to keep saying it, but commuting engagement is huge for us: fostering that buy-in, getting people to really wanting to be out and about. Some of our primary goals are community center programming, which I’ll let Will touch on. But policy wise, to streamline VSO resources. Something else we would be super committed to doing day one is establishing a committee to exclusively look at the policy initiatives coming down from the Department of Education, just so that we can be really aware of how that policy impacts Stanford students.
WB: I can speak to the community center programming once again. We feel like it would be great to have events that just bring everyone together as a whole and especially events that harp on very specific values in Stanford student life. Also, just speaking to the committee for DOE, we’re super committed to supporting, for instance, international students who feel insecure with their F1 or H1B visas. Making sure the school knows we would continuously lobby the school to support those students. The school might have interests in their funding, but no, we want to represent the students and their safety and their rights. That’s our priority above all.
TSD: Why should students vote for you?
AB: I think that the appeal of “Your Friendly Neighborhood Cardinal,” and of Will and I, is just how broad the goal of community engagement is and the efforts that we have made throughout our time here on campus to really tap into the multifaceted aspects of Sanford. We think that community centered programming is a great way to do that to unite people behind shared goals. Our pitch is helping foster community engagement, making Stanford work for you, and just making it a place where everyone can really feel invited into the community.
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Levin defends absence from anti-Trump letter at Faculty Senate meetingUniversity president Jonathan Levin ’94 addressed Stanford’s absence from a list of over 180 colleges opposing the Trump administration.
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During a Faculty Senate meeting on Thursday, University president Jonathan Levin ’94 defended his decision not to sign a Tuesday statement from peer institutions condemning the Trump administration’s actions toward higher education.
Over 180 colleges and universities joined the letter, which opposed cuts to federal research funding and the “retribution, censorship, or deportation” of international students who contribute to “an exchange of ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints.” Among this number were peer institutions such as Harvard, MIT and Princeton.
“I don’t disagree with the sentiments in that letter,” Levin said during the meeting. “I just prefer not to sign open letters in general. I think it’s good practice at a university for people to formulate and express their own views.”
Levin cited a statement that he and Martinez authored in support of Harvard after its president, Alan Garber M.D. ’83, rejected a lengthy list of demands from the Trump administration. On April 14, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal grants as retribution for Harvard’s failure to comply with its demands, which included ceasing recognition of pro-Palestine student groups and commissioning an “audit” of students and staff for viewpoint diversity. Harvard retaliated by suing the administration on Monday amid the administration’s review of a further $9 billion in federal contracts and grants.
Levin also referenced the University’s participation in a recent lawsuit contesting proposed cuts to all Department of Energy research grants.
“The provost and I made clear our views about the issue last week,” Levin said. “I believe in working together with a broad array of peer institutions to advance higher education. We are doing so in several ways, including a second lawsuit against cuts to federal funding that we filed last week.”
Following Levin’s statement, political science professor Anna Grzymala-Busse contended that “a multiplicity of individual letters might not be as powerful as one joining statement.” She asked if the University planned to take collective action with other institutions to oppose federal research funding cuts in the future.
Levin responded that “there are lots of discussions among universities about a range of collective actions and what the best collective way is for research universities to communicate the benefits of federally funded research on the country at large.” He also pointed to the two lawsuits that Stanford has worked to file with other institutions over cuts to research funding.
History professor Jessica Riskin wrote to The Daily that she and other members of Stanford’s American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter are “frustrated that President Levin declines to express his solidarity with hundreds of other university presidents.”
“Collective actions such as joint statements are essential to protecting any institution we hold dear, such as the institution of American higher education, against a brutal attack,” Riskin wrote. “Moreover, we have a duty of solidarity to the universities currently at the focus of the attack and to all the less rich and powerful schools. We owe it to them to stand up and fight back publicly rather than try to negotiate a separate peace.”
Math professor Brian Conrad cited a recent statement by NIH Director and Stanford medicine professor Jay Bhattacharya M.D. ’97 Ph.D. ’00, which proposed making NIH research funding contingent on metrics of campus free speech. Conrad expressed concern that Stanford’s place in college free speech rankings could affect its research funding under Bhattacharya’s proposal.
In response, Martinez noted praise from Greg Lukianoff, the CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a non-profit civil rights group that aims to protect free speech at U.S. colleges and universities. Marinez repeated Lukianoff’s sentiment from comments he made after the release of this year’s ranking that “Stanford is an institution to look towards” in matters of campus free speech.
“The criteria for awarding NIH and other grants should be the merit of the researcher’s proposal, and not other things,” Martinez said. “FIRE itself has said that it would not be appropriate to use its rankings as a metric to award federal funding.”
Following this discussion, chemistry professor and Academic Integrity Working Group (AIWG) Faculty co-chair Jennifer Schwartz Poehlmann and student co-chair Xavier Millan ’26 gave a presentation on AIWG’s recent initiatives, highlighting its proctoring pilot program.
The program, which is one year into an implementation plan of 2-4 years, aims to promote best practices in exams, such as seating charts and student ID verification, in addition to rolling out live exam proctors.
According to Schwartz, the AIWG has conducted listening sessions with students in classes testing the pilot program, and found that the initiative “has relaxed the [test-taking] environment in a good way.”
“Students feel that the deliberate nature with which these guidelines have been structured make taking exams less stressful than in high school or previous institutions,” Millan said.
A previous version of this article misspelled Provost Jenny Martinez’s name. The Daily regrets this error.
A previous version of this article misstated the source of comments about Stanford’s free speech ranking from FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff. The Daily regrets this error.
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Your personality based on your favorite fontRoss Hamilton and Mason Barrett '28 have some bold takes that may surprise you.
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Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.
Luminari
You speak four languages, but they are all from Lord of The Rings.
Menlo
You drive a Tesla, and I can confirm autopilot does drive better than you.
Rubik
Your ADHD meds have such high concentration that you cannot legally operate any kind of machinery. At least your messaging start-up has investor interest.
Sign Painter
You think you are salt of the earth, but you know that you can always go back to the family business if (when) film school doesn’t pan out.
Courier New
You prefer the old movie theater in Palo Alto but you (shocker!) never have a date.
Baskerville
You tell yourself you are okay with being different, but you actually just got stuck being a wallflower.
Chalkduster
Your parents had to send you to school with a note about locking up the glue cabinet. You still miss the taste.
Arial Narrow
You are nervous, anxious, and leave extra room in the margins to doodle.
Times New Roman
You are basic.
Georgia
Times New Roman but you wear a Carhartt.
Courier
Your dreams are Pulp Fiction and you’re gonna live fast and Die Hard.
Impact
You walk in the footsteps of other alpha males like Jake Paul, George Washington and Martha Stewart.
Comic Sans
Listen: I know you think that nobody loves you. You think you’re alone, you aren’t seen, you aren’t supported. Day after day, week after week, you look at your reflection in the mirror hoping that somebody will see that wonderful side of you, questioning if there’s even a wonderful side to see. I do. I see it. You say you need somebody, well I can be that somebody. The world may not accept you, but I do. Take me in your arms and kiss me like there’s no page break. I love you. Call me, please.
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Daily Diminutive #054 (April 25, 2025)Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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Allen | Stanford responds to the oversaturation crisis with apathyIn her latest column installment, Allen observes the political apathy on Stanford campus thanks to an over saturation of crisis.
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The last few months have been a whirlwind of catastrophic news — news channels are filled with Trump’s latest stunts, tariffs, demands and tantrums. The magnitude of this mess, however, has not generated the response it warrants.
People can’t even seem to talk about it. We are behaving like we’re in the presence of a dying loved one. We speak softly about the crises we see in the news. Its mention brings about an uncomfortable itch; we shake it off with our sad acknowledgment and quick change of topic. America, and Stanford especially, is eerily quiet, blanketed by a snow of fear and helplessness.
The damage the recent actions of the current administration to the well-being and free thought of Americans is obvious. Somehow, we are entrenched in a reality in which international students with a history of activism are abducted from their campuses and detained for “unspecified criminal charges.” Estimates of the number of student visas revoked under the Trump administration range from 600 to 1,500, and Stanford itself has so far seen six revocations.
The administration has not just targeted the diversity and intellectual freedom of our students, but Universities themselves. In an Orwellian conflict, Harvard recently lost billions in funding after publicly rejecting a series of government demands, including that they “audit” student and faculty views, “prevent admitting students hostile to the American values,” and discontinue all DEI practices.
We’ve seen tariffs levied and compromised, 129 executive orders since January, funding cuts across fields — and this is just the beginning.
The constant fire of assaults has led to some dissent: on April 5, thousands of “hands off” protests were held across the country. Faced with an immense list of grievances, those who convened couldn’t simply reject a specific bill or action: their target was the Trump administration in all of its totality, specifically, its authoritative actions. It was almost as if Americans were so blinded by our government’s stream of wrongdoings that they were forced to dazedly deplore not just one of its actions, but nearly every move it made.
On that day, I watched videos from loved ones of their involvement while Stanford offered nothing. Since then, University president Levin ’94 voiced “support” for Harvard’s declaration, but abstained from signing a letter to denounce the actions of the administration. Beyond our campus, I heard no more of national protest, even as the news got worse and worse. There were small gatherings, of course, but the millions of people hurt by Trump’s orders remained home.
In some ways, it’s understandable — the tactics of the current administration seem as if they are intended to overwhelm, to force us into submission and pacify us with helplessness. Many struggle to muster enough courage and energy to fight with the capacity required of us. We are stuck, or worse, some of us may still cling to the belief that politics remains optional.
This lethargy is a familiar phenomenon, even for our country. In the 1960’s, Betty Friedan characterized the crushing weight of patriarchal gender roles on 1960’s housewives as “the problem with no name.” Women noticed a pain in their stomachs, a lack in their soul. They spoke about it in hushed tones, dancing around naming the problem. But many of them still clung to a kind of apathy about the situation as they were beaten down by the patriarchy — just as we now cling to our apathy as we are beaten down by our administration.
The aware among us may be able to name the threats facing us, but most are afraid to talk about it. Instead, we dance around it. Perhaps we convince ourselves that the administration’s outright denial of free speech, protest, movement and trade hasn’t yet reached a point to deserve the word: “tyranny.” When the word slides out of someone’s lips, we grow cold. We shudder and redirect ourselves. Now more than ever, we are scared and tired. Now more than ever, I understand how this was able to unfold many times before.
We are failing our country and ourselves. “On Tyranny” by Timothy Synder recounts ways we can fight against oppressive governments, notably: “do not obey in advance.” Stanford as an institution has so far obeyed in advance by remaining passive while other institutions speak out. We obey when we let the overwhelming crises keep us at home. We obey as long as we aren’t actively speaking out and fighting against the deplorable actions that face us. We obey as long as we dance around the unspeakability of it all, as long as we let Trump beat us into submission.
Audre Lorde once wrote that to care for ourselves “is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Our government is attempting to weaken us with a barrage of battery and bullying, and we are faced now with a challenge: a challenge to preserve ourselves against the decay this assault causes in our minds and bodies. A challenge to our strength, to our dedication and to our freedom.
Please, remain steadfast in its face. Guard yourselves and your spirit so that we can withstand and fight against these challenges. We are students at an incredibly wealthy university and citizens of an ailing country in danger. Protest more. Write more. Urge the university to do more. And most fundamentally, actually talk more.
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‘Sky Daddy’ explores sex with airplanes, and what it means to be humanKate Folk’s debut novel follows a woman who is sexually attracted to airplanes. Far from mere wackiness, “Sky Daddy” speaks uniquely to the human experience and our relationships with others, writes Burtner.
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In Kate Folk’s debut novel “Sky Daddy,” readers careen toward an uncertain destiny through the eyes of Linda, a woman who plans to dedicate her life to her erotic love of airplanes. “All planes are male,” Linda declares decisively. She longs for a plane to “marry” her — that is, kill her in a plane crash.
The book is set in San Francisco, where the author also lives. Folk was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford from 2019 to 2021. During that time, she workshopped the initial drafts of “Sky Daddy” with her fellowship cohort.
“Everyone was really excited about the project,” Folk told The Daily. “It did feel like a dangerous project, or something I felt a little weird about. Like, I don’t know if I should be writing this. Is this ridiculous?”
To Folk, I want to scream an emphatic, “No!” I smiled the entire time while reading “Sky Daddy.” I found protagonist Linda’s pursuit of happiness infectious and her unrelenting intensity quite relatable. I also spent the whole book hoping she would fall victim to an aviation fatality, creating a decisively unique tension.
Linda works as a content moderator and lives in a windowless in-law apartment. Her social connections mostly stem from her best friend Karina, who introduces her to the “Vision Board Brunch” (VBB) group — a group of successful women who come together four times a year for their eponymous brunch. Although Linda’s life conditions are “pretty bleak,” she is “actually someone who is pretty hopeful about her life,” said Folk.
In earlier drafts, Linda lived a more conventional life and narrated through a somewhat harsher voice, according to Folk. It was through “rereading ‘Moby Dick,’ about six months after I started working on the project, that I was just so struck by the voice of Ishmael,” said Folk, who sees the classic novel as a major influence. The novel is “fascinated with whales in the way that I imagine my book being fascinated with planes,” said Folk. “That gave me a new way into Linda’s voice and character.”
While I think Linda succeeded as a commanding Ishmael equivalent, the other characters in her orbit ultimately defined this book’s excellence for me. Linda’s friendship with Karina ebbs and flows in a way I found beautiful and true to life. Their bond embodies the adage that lovers come and go, but friends remain forever — except this time, the lovers are planes, and Linda literally watches them arrive and depart from SFO for hours at a time. Even though Linda longs for an airplane suitor to pursue her, it is Karina who rescues her in the end. Throughout the novel, it is Karina who brings human connection into Linda’s mechanized world.
Folk is fascinated by female friendships, attesting that they are “underwritten about.” The two central female characters in “Sky Daddy” fit together curiously: while Karina was popular (and an occasional bully) while growing up, Linda was a total misfit.
“To Linda, [Karina] is built up as this amazing person. Her approval would mean so much,” said Folk. Throughout the novel, Linda’s self-image walks the line of passivity without ever slipping into self-doubt. She is surprised when she receives a compliment; she rarely considers how she might benefit the lives of others. Yet she is strong: she goes after what she wants and proves over and over that she can connect with others in meaningful ways.
Folk described the broader scope of this mindset well. She sees Linda as “thinking in this self-centered way that is really common, that she is the only weird one and that everyone else has it all figured out. She sees through the course of the book that everyone has a lot of issues and doesn’t have it figured out.”
If the sexy planes didn’t convince you to read “Sky Daddy,” surely the deeply human truths that Folk exposes will.
Through the VBBs and Linda’s sense of being destined for airplane “marriage,” “Sky Daddy” raises questions of destiny and free will. Is Linda’s coincidental encounter with that airline CEO spurred on by her “manifesting’ practices? Or is there a pesky rational explanation pulling the strings? Ultimately, as readers, we always know the ending is predetermined — written out before we get to it. What is the role of the author in all this?
Folk said that the novel’s deterministic nature was emulative of its subject matter. “Getting on a plane feels like the ultimate surrender of one’s will,” she said. To her, flying is “a pure expression of the limitations” of one’s control over life.
It would be easy to sensationalize “Sky Daddy.” After all, it has strange obsession, inanimate lovers and total surrender to the powers of destiny. Linda surprises herself on every page, yet it all feels real. Linda’s friendship with Karina broke my heart and pieced it back together. Her fling with her work superior Dave depicted the crossing of life paths with accuracy and loveliness. Dave is older, and clearly not over his ex-wife. When Linda reencounters him weeks later, she finds a stronger and more fulfilled person.
People go through hard times, people grow apart and back together. Whether the outcome of destiny or free will, “Sky Daddy” is great because what it represents is just true.
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Asking Stanford: Share a story about EarthIn honor of Earth Day and Stanford Climate Week, we asked members of The Daily to share stories about the place we all call home.
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“Asking Stanford” is a series of small stories from Stanford students, each of which comes together to highlight the diversity of experiences and perspectives on campus. In honor of Earth Day and Stanford Climate Week, we’re sharing stories about the place we all call home.
I have taken a few hundred photos capturing the Earth; none of the photos compare to the moments where the Earth has captured me. Outside Encina West, I saw a hummingbird dart between branches, and searched for its jewel-toned feathers in the leaves until I was nearly late for section. In Arches National Park, the shadows of the eons-old sandstone structures engulfed the shadows I cast. At the Grand Canyon South Rim, an elk looked me in the eye while chewing on a bone-shaped stick. Several minutes passed before I could remember my own name and uproot myself from where I stood. — Grace Liang
The Earth I know smells like fishy, salty Galveston beaches. It’s the sprawling of mangroves along the coast and the beautiful, blue waters of the Great Lakes. It’s the fresh air of Muir Woods and the sunset by Half Moon Bay. The Earth that I live in changes. In Texas, it felt like a child’s playground. In Michigan, it felt like a canvas that I was tasked with painting. In California, it feels like a horizon that I have to decide to go into. Sometimes, the Earth is my world and sometimes they’re completely different. Sometimes the Earth feels impossibly ancient, indifferent to my brief passage across its surface. Other times, when I notice the bend of a particular branch or the quality of light on water that will never exist exactly that way again, it feels as ephemeral as I am — both of us caught in a moment together, inhabiting the same space, constrained by the same physical laws, participants in the same brief miracle. — Sonnet Xu
A few days ago, my friend and I stopped on our walk to pick some orange flowers. We were making bouquets, and they needed some small pop of color. Climbing through the light brown weeds, we ritualistically snapped the stems, careful to avoid upsetting the bees foraging, and carefully interspersed them alongside the $4.99 Trader Joe’s dandelions. I gave up earlier than he did, and when I stepped onto the pavement again, a small piercing feeling ran through my body from my foot. A thistle had caught onto my sock, poking me in such a way that I exclaimed and insisted we leave. As if the thistles had all activated at the same time, my friend promptly began howling — having gone deeper into the flowers, his ankles were assailed with the tiny pricks. We began our walk of shame back to campus, stopping every few seconds to groan or bend down and remove a thistle.
Maybe this was the earth’s way of telling us to “get off my territory. Stop messing with what isn’t yours to take.” I’m sorry for taking your flowers, earth. People take from you too often. If it’s any consolation, you made the recipients’ day. The bright orange petals sit in a makeshift purple vase. Thank you for your flowers, earth. Thank you for making life colorful. — Jennifer Levine
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Annual Take Back the Night rally advocates for sexual violence preventionTake Back the Night attendees rallied against sexual assault and harassment on Tuesday night. The event featured student speakers and a “speak out,” a space where survivors and allies can share their experiences.
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On Tuesday, student speakers shared stories about the importance of sexual violence prevention during the annual Take Back the Night (TBTN) rally, presented by the Sexual Harassment/Assault Response & Education (SHARE) Title IX Office.
The event began at 7 p.m. in White Plaza and was split into three separate parts, a rally, a march and a speak-out. SHARE student staff Sofia Penglase ’25 and Zoya Fasihuddin ’26 opened the rally by introducing three speakers Anya Gruener ’28, SHARE assistant director/education Nina Lee and outreach manager Kristen Lew ’28.
Lew’s own experiences as a sexual violence survivor inspired her to go into sexual assault prevention advocacy. In an interview with The Daily, she shared that her community at home felt similar to Stanford in that it can feel isolated or like a “bubble,” which led to her feel as though there weren’t any resources for her after her assault.
“What I noticed in my community is that there were so many other survivors around me and no one was talking about it. There weren’t many resources within my community,” Lew said.
Gruener, a SHARE student ambassador and the founder of a nonprofit organization aiming to “assist and empower survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence,” shared her involvement in allyship and advocacy.
In her speech, Gruener recalled reading her first-ever sexual assault case and its impact on her. “That file marked the beginning of not just my work but how I saw the world,” she said. Gruener spoke on her work helping refugees of the Russia-Ukraine war and how she cared for children vulnerable to human trafficking.
Stanford has been hosting TBTN rallies for over ten years, according to Lee. The purpose of TBTN is to bring awareness to the prevalence of assault that can happen at night on college campuses.
“Take Back the Night is one night, but the care, the solidarity and the belief of survivors must continue every day,” Lee said in her speech.
“TBTN isn’t just about the scary man in the bushes that jumps out and does something, right? It’s also about assault happening between friends, between partners, about people who have gained trust and love,” she added.
Fasihuddin, who is also the director of sexual violence prevention for the ASSU, said the event is about “reclaiming the spaces, the experiences and the communites that have long been plagued by sexual violence” and “being able to navigate the world at large, freely, without fear and without restrictions.” Fasihuddin further emphasized that TBTN fights for peoples’ right to feel comfortable in everyday life, no matter the time of day or location, with familiar people and strangers.
The rally closed with Lew speaking on her experience as a survivor of sexual violence and how that led her to create a chapter of TBTN in her hometown of Orange County. Lew highlighted the importance of supporting movements such as “Me Too” and attacking harmful narratives such as “Not All Men.”
“What terrifies me the most is that when I say ‘Me Too,’ less and less people remember what that means, and when I whisper ‘Not All Men,’ I hear back silence,” she said.
The second part of the evening was a march through campus led by the SHARE volunteers from White Plaza to Toyon Hall. The march occurred in silence while protestors held various posters in support of survivors.
The march concluded at Toyon around 8 p.m., where the the speak-out occurred in the dorm’s lounge. SHARE staff and volunteers set up multiple “safe spaces” within Toyon with fidget toys and tools, as well as food and beverages for event attendees.
The speak-out was held open-microphone style, with strict norms being outlined at the beginning and attendees and audience members being invited to come forward and share their stories or their thoughts with the group, lasting about an hour and a half in total.
The TBTN event was confidential, which Penglase and Fasihuddin clarified at the start of the rally, meaning mandatory reporters would not be obligated to report stories shared by survivors. Each person quoted here gave express permission for their name to be published.
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Best Stanford athletics events during Admit WeekendAdmit Weekend sports slate features Payton Jordan Invitational, No. 15 softball hosting Virginia, and baseball seeking momentum versus Wake Forest on the Farm.
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Admit Weekend is here, and prospective frosh and their families will have plenty of chances to soak in Stanford athletics. Three teams are in action on the Farm Friday through Sunday. Here is what’s on tap.
Track and field: Payton Jordan Invitational — Friday at 4 p.m.
The 29th Payton Jordan Invitational kicks off the weekend at Cobb Track and Angell Field. The meet will open with a senior recognition ceremony at 3:15 p.m., followed by the sprint and jump events at 4 p.m. with distance races beginning at 6:30 p.m.
The meet serves as a potential late-season qualifier for the NCAA West Prelims and features several Olympians and nationally ranked Cardinal athletes. Defending NCAA outdoor 800m champion and 2024 Paris Olympian Juliette Whittaker ‘26 will run the 1,500m. Paralympian Sydney Barta ‘26 is slated to make her collegiate debut in the 100 and 200-meter dashes. 2022 world U-20 discus champion Emma Sralla ‘27 will compete at home for the first time in her collegiate career.
Softball: No. 15 Stanford vs. No. 25 Virginia
Head coach Jessica Allister’s club returns home after a 14-4 run-rule win at Sacramento State that pushed the Cardinal’s record to 33-9 overall and extended junior Kyra Chan’s hitting streak to 20 games. Freshman pitcher Zoe Prystajko bounced back from a tough outing against Cal last weekend with a career-high eight strikeouts and recorded the win.
Stanford also rides momentum from last weekend’s record-setting Big Swing series, when 13,207 fans packed Stanford Stadium to break the NCAA single-game attendance in the series finale against Cal.
The Virginia Cavaliers arrive for a three-game ACC set that begins Friday at 6 p.m. and continues Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at noon.
Baseball: Stanford vs. Wake Forest
At Sunken Diamond, Stanford (20-17, 6-15 ACC) opens a home series against Wake Forest (27-15, 10-11 ACC) looking to climb back toward .500 in league play. The Cardinal snapped a three-game skid Monday when junior right-hander Nick Dugan spun a seven-inning complete game in an 11-1 run-rule win over UC Davis. Dugan only allowed six hits, one run and no walks with four strikeouts.
Despite dropping last weekend’s set to Notre Dame (21-17, 7-14 ACC), there is still a lot of optimism with an offense that ranks fifth in the conference. With a pitching attack that ranks dead last in the ACC, Dugan’s performance provided much needed hope.
The Wake Forest matchup begins Friday at 6:05 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:05 p.m. and 1:05 p.m., respectively.
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UGS promotes voting and civic duties, expresses disappointment with institutional silenceThe UGS met Wednesday, expressing frustration with University leadership and speaking about the importance of voting in the upcoming Stanford elections.
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At its meeting Wednesday, the Undergraduate Senate (UGS) expressed disappointment over University leadership’s absence in a letter published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) opposing “undue government intrusion” and “abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education.”
The letter was signed by over 180 college and university presidents across the country including leadership at Harvard, MIT and Princeton.
“Stanford’s continued silence has failed to condemn actions that threaten academic freedom,” UGS co-chair Ivy Chen ’26 said.
Last week, University president Jonathan Levin ’94 and Provost Jenny Martinez issued a statement expressing support for Harvard’s resistance to the Trump Administration’s demands. The UGS expressed that they don’t believe these actions are enough.
“We believe that stronger public action and solidarity are urgently needed, especially in times like this. We need to protect the role of our education, and foster innovation and civic engagement,” Chen said.
The UGS also listened to a video presentation by three members of the Senate Associate Program (SAP) who spoke out against the Trump administration’s stance on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The video called on Stanford to reaffirm its commitment to DEI in order to protect diverse perspectives and marginalized populations. “As an elite institution, Stanford should take advantage of its standing and its power to make a stance like this,” said the SAP members.
As election day approaches for new UGS and executive slate candidates, current UGS senators also spoke about the importance of voting.
“You all need to vote. No matter who or what you vote for, it’s something that is really important,” said UGS Treasurer Jadon Urogdy ’27.
UGS deputy chair Ethan Alfonso ’27 mentioned that many programs would not have been possible without student activism. “I really urge everyone who is voting to really vote like your communities depend on it, because they do,” he said. “Align yourself with your values.”
Additionally, the UGS passed bills that updated eligibility requirements of UGS senators, confirmed a new funding manager and established the Political Action Committee as a standing committee of UGS. The twenty SAP members were also congratulated for their active participation in UGS duties in a resolution that passed unanimously.
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ASSU executive candidates debate student community, respond to national politicsThe three slates running for ASSU Executive Board debated the best response to national policies affecting students, student social life and qualifications for the position on Tuesday.
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The three candidate slates running for Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Executive President and Vice President debated the impact of national politics on the University and student campus life at the 2025 ASSU Executive Debate on Tuesday.
The debate was hosted by the ASSU Elections Commission at The Arbor. The Executive Branch serves both undergraduate and graduate students, unlike the Undergraduate Senate (UGS) and Graduate Student Council (GSC). The ASSU Executive Branch aims to “advocate for the well-being and collective empowerment of the entire Stanford student body,” according to an email sent to the student body on Tuesday.
Candidate slate Ava Brown ’26 and Will Berriman ’26, whose platform is named “Your Friendly Neighborhood Cardinal,” focused on community-centered programming and policy initiatives. Proposed community programming included get-to-know-you events, a winter “Stanford Student Symposium” for students to present on projects for additional ASSU discretionary funding and spring philanthropy events.
In terms of policy, Brown and Berriman pledged during the debate to “establish a committee to focus on how the Department of Education rulings impact Stanford students to be best educated on protecting students’ rights.”
The two highlighted the campaign’s focus on student needs, noting that they had met with over 25 student leaders.
Candidate slate and current UGS co-chairs Ivy Chen ’26 M.A. ’27 and Gordon Allen ’26 shared that the focus of their campaign, “BUILD,” is “student life, social life and graduate students.”
Chen and Allen pointed to UGS initiatives they spearheaded to extend Green Library hours, create a continuous four-year sexual violence education program and increase meal plan dollars. At the debate, the team committed to creating a “coalition of multicultural groups,” establishing an end-of-year “Cardinal Fair” and fighting for graduate student needs like fair housing and affordable transportation next year.
Chen and Allen highlighted their strong faculty connections, mentioning past meetings with University president Jonathan Levin ’94 and Provost Jenny Martinez. “We met with these faculty to [understand] how we can better serve students, and through these meetings we’ve gained experience on how to fight back against faculty, how to push them,” Chen said.
Candidate slate Artem Arzyn ’25 M.S. ’25 and Raina Talwar Bhatia B.A, B.S. ’25 M.S. ’26 emphasized student rights, particularly free speech and the rights of international students. The leadership board of the Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU) formally recommended voting for Arzyn due to his past accomplishments in housing affordability for graduate students, free speech and international student rights.
If elected, Arzyn and Bhatia pledged to work with Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) to improve vegetarian dining options, streamline and simplify the Office of Accessible Education (OAE) process, reduce the cost of renting on-campus venues for student groups and advocate for funding for researchers in light of recent NIH cuts.
Arzyn noted that students frequently reached out to them for support, including when rumors spread of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on campus and when they “thought the University would no longer be covered under sanctuary state policy.”
“We are here because people from a variety of marginalized communities have asked that we come here, have asked that we speak up,” Arzyn said.
The candidates also debated how best to respond to the effects of national politics on students after an audience member asked whether they “promise to sue Trump and his administration.”
Berriman shared that his slate doesn’t “want to unnecessarily draw the ire of the federal government, as this could have direct consequences to the rights and protections students want.”
“I think it’s important to consider every action we do in response to the [Department of Education], in response to the federal government, in response to the Trump administration before we actually try to implement something,” Berriman said.
Chen and Allen promised to take a stand on political issues. “We live in scary times. We live in uncertain times. And we live in terrifying times. But one thing Gordon and I can promise you is that the ASSU will not remain neutral anymore,” Chen said. “For the past couple years, the association has been too neutral. Being neutral, being silent, is being complicit. We will not shut up about this.”
Bhatia emphasized the need to work with University administration. “I understand that the instinct right now is to fight admin with everything we have. The reality is admin makes these decisions,” she said. “We can fight them as hard as we want, but we need to figure out a way to work with them to make sure that they make the decisions that we want.”
In closing statements, Brown and Berriman emphasized their ability “to speak to the entire Stanford experience.”
“At the end of the day, Your Friendly Neighborhood Cardinal is really here for neighborhood engagement, and Will and I truly have that experience with community leadership to be a mouthpiece for multiple aspects of Stanford,” Brown said.
Chen and Allen highlighted their determination to advocate for students, emphasizing that their standout point was “not just the experience, but the passion, the grit, the determination and the will to fight for you guys, to make sure that we continue to fight for students.”
Arzyn and Bhatia underlined the communities that asked them to run including undergraduate students, transgender students and undocumented students.
“I am concerned by the fact that there is not faith in the people leading the Undergraduate Senate,” Arzyn said. “There’s a lot of people that are behind us, both undergraduate and graduate, that have reached out to us because they trust us, they believe in us, and they asked us to run to represent them.”
The election will be held from Friday at 12 a.m. to Saturday at 11:59 p.m. Ballots will be delivered electronically via email to all students.
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Bhatia’s degrees and misphrased the recommendation of the SGWU. The Daily regrets these errors.
This article has been updated to reflect the correct times that the election will be held.
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Biology professor Rodolfo Dirzo bridges cultures while preserving speciesBiology professor Rodolfo Dirzo revealed the personal challenges of his journey through STEM and offered guidance to young scientists at an April 11 talk.
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Biology professor Rodolfo Dirzo began his talk for the “Growing Up in Science” seminar series at the Neurosciences Building on April 11 with a photograph, taken in his hometown of Cuernavaca, the lush capital of Mexico’s Morelos state. In it, a very young Dirzo poses for his professional portrait standing atop a skinned jaguar — an endangered species in Mexico.
Dirzo proceeded to illuminate his formative years, recounting his journey from an environmental miscreant to becoming one of the leading scholars in the field of conservation biology, while highlighting the importance of trust and perseverance in protecting biodiversity.
“I try to emphasize not only the beauty of science, but also recognition of the questions that we need to be paying attention to if we want to maintain this amazing beautiful planet,” Dirzo said. “If you really think about it, what we see is nothing but the product of four billion years of organic evolution. It is this incredible [natural] benefit that we have on this planet.”
After many years of teaching at the National University of Mexico, Dirzo came to Stanford in 2005 with an understanding that he would “serve as a conduit between Stanford and Mexico,” he said.
Maintaining his connection to his native country, Dirzo focuses on the study of species interactions in tropical ecosystems ranging from California to Latin America. His work aims to demonstrate the benefits of ecological science for humanity. Dirzo also conducts significant science education programs with underserved children in the Bay Area and his study sites.
“I personally really admire Professor Dirzo,” said Kenna De La Rosa ’27, an aspiring conservation biologist. “He is just a really inspirational person for me, and seeing him have such a fruitful career path that I only recently discovered is really inspiring.”
While Dirzo’s parents wanted him to pursue a more traditional career as a doctor or lawyer, he could not resist his profound attraction to nature from a young age.
As a biology major at the University of Morelos, Dirzo discovered his interest in plant evolutionary biology and assisted with a research project analyzing rates of deforestation and land use change around a mega reservoir dam that delivered water to Mexico City.
“I thought, ‘Wow, in addition to the beauty of going to these places, we can do something that can be useful,” Dirzo said.
At the recommendation of a visiting professor from the U.K., Dirzo applied for grants to fund graduate school through the British Consul in pursuit of master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Wales.
With a limited understanding of English, Dirzo initially struggled in his program and encountered prejudice in Wales. Applying “twice the amount of effort as other students,” he ultimately finished his master’s degree in record time and completed a Ph.D. focused on the chemical evolutionary defense adaptation system of white clover plants.
“What I brought to that beautiful place was not English, but passion and commitment. I was full of perseverance. I had humility. I had a relentless dedication to listen and that helped a lot,” he said.
Upon his return to Mexico, Dirzo sought to apply his expertise to the complex ecological challenges in Veracruz, only to find that the plants he intended to study were absent from the local ecosystem due to considerable human activity. He discovered that the reduction of the forest was a reflection of the absence of wildlife, a phenomenon known as absent forest syndrome.
“I [realized], if I don’t do anything about the conservation of this place, I will not be able to study the kinds of things that I’m fascinated by, like evolutionary defenses,” Dirzo said. “In some sense, I combined my interest in the evolution of plant and animal interactions with conservation. And that has been my career for the last several decades.”
Dirzo formulated a new term — defaunation — to describe the conditions he and other researchers saw in the forest, denoting the loss of species and populations of wildlife. A crucial driver of global ecological change in the Anthropocene, the term defaunation now appears frequently in conservation literature and has contributed to a fundamental reshaping of approaches to conservation science.
By affecting ecosystem processes and services, defaunation also has critical implications for humankind, according to Dirzo. In particular, the loss of global megafauna has led to the proliferation of smaller animals that are vectors of diseases. As these species have come into closer contact with humans due to habitat loss — a process accelerating under climate change — the transmission of global infectious diseases such as COVID-19 has become more widespread.
Beyond studying the conservation of nature, Dirzo has expanded the scope of his research to analyze the conservation of cultures. Describing the “double extinction process” of both biological and cultural diversity, Dirzo noted the correlation between the loss of species and ecosystems and the loss of languages and traditional knowledge. “My emphasis went from being a very Darwinian plant ecologist to trying to define the impact of humanity on nature and how that is relevant,” he said.
With most of his work focusing on rural communities in the Global South, Dirzo has also served as the associate dean for environmental justice at the Doerr School of Sustainability. “All of these communities have beautiful biodiversity remaining, and they will be impacted dramatically, disproportionately by climate change,” he said.
Dirzo also emphasized the necessity of building rapport and trust with indigenous and rural communities to avoid the pitfall of “helicopter science.”
“You really need to spend time in the community… take advantage of the relationships that people have developed and spend the necessary time to be able to work with them at the speed of trust,” he said.
For the young scientists in the audience on Friday, Dirzo’s insights and experiences were inspiring.
Marty Freeland ’27 has conducted ornithology research in Dirzo’s lab since age 12. “It was especially moving to hear Professor Dirzo share some of the background that has shaped him into such an extraordinary mentor — from his ordeals as a Spanish-speaking graduate student in Wales struggling to learn Welsh and English simultaneously to the process of convincing his family that ecological research is a worthwhile pursuit,” he said.
“[Dirzo] has navigated nearly all the hurdles that his students may face and draws on those experiences to provide limitless support… he shows us by example that it’s possible to meet any challenge with humility and a sense of humor,” Freeland added.
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Pink, packed and proud: ‘Legally Blonde’ dazzles on closing nightPink cardigans, standing ovations and a perfectly perfumed finale — Stanford Ram’s Head’s “Legally Blonde” lit up Memorial Auditorium in style.
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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
This review contains spoilers.
The line snaked from the steps of Memorial Auditorium, past Lathrop and curled around the walls of the Lane History Building. Students, parents and a guy standing behind me telling his girlfriend he decided to cancel golf tomorrow, were wearing pink sweaters, pink spandex, pink wool ribbed cardigans and pink rimmed sunglasses.
“Legally Blonde: The Musical” tells the story of Elle Woods, a young woman who enrolls at Harvard Law School to win back her ex-boyfriend and discovers her own legal acumen along the way. Inspired by author Amanda Brown’s Stanford Law experience (and the 2001 hit film), “Legally Blonde” returned home to the Farm this past weekend. Stanford Ram’s Head presented a three-night run at Memorial Auditorium, with closing night on April 19.
A lighting malfunction on closing night delayed entry 45 minutes past the scheduled start. Once inside, there was still a wait, but crew and performers entertained the crowd by bouncing a four-foot wide pink beach ball around the audience and dancing to crowd favorites like ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”
Memorial Auditorium, large and imposing with its high ceiling, orchestra and balcony sections, is challenging to fill. Every production, from Levin’s Family Weekend speeches to Gaieties extravaganzas, has sought to bridge the gap between performer and viewer — a task the “Legally Blonde” company successfully accomplished.
When the auditorium lights finally dimmed, the show began with the first number: “Omigod You Guys.” The wait had been infuriating, but “Omigod You Guys” was worth it. The Delta Nus (Elle’s sorority sisters) delivered a hilarious performance to kick off the show and continued to interject their absurdly cheerful chorales throughout.
Sam Boeschen ’25 was detestable as Elle’s ex-boyfriend Warner (maybe overly so), and Bryan Defjan ’25 portrayed Professor Callahan with satisfying villainy.
Maya Desmukh ’27 impressed vocally and comically as the New Jersey-Italian hairstylist Paulette. (Why was she so obsessed with Ireland?) The nonsensicalness charmed the entire audience, and Desmukh’s heart had us cheering her on.
Alexander Kim ’28 nearly stole the show as Emmett with his boyish charm and stand-out vocals in “Chip On My Shoulder.” Although the humble character played slightly saccharine at times, his chemistry with Elle still felt genuine and warm, lending heart to the musical’s central love story.
Brooke Besikof ’25, whose Elle Woods performance anchored closing night with stellar acting, vocals and cheeriness, was an undisputed star. From my view in the back of the orchestra, Besikof really looked a little like Reese Witherspoon (who portrayed Elle in the film adaptation) and was reminiscent of Broadway’s star Kristin Chenoweth.
Katie Savage ’26 was energetic and memorable as Brooke Wyndham, the fitness empress accused of murder. The second act started off strong thanks to her opening number, “Whipped into Shape”.
The show was marked by consistently powerful vocal performances and comedic highlights — including Uche Ochuba ’24 as the UPS man, who talked about his “package” while holding his cardboard box… near his box.
With its attention to dynamics and accented hits, the pit orchestra sounded vibrant and larger than its compact setup suggested. Although backstage movement was occasionally visible, the set design creatively transformed spaces: turning a courtroom into a bathroom crime scene, using familiar Stanford bed frames to evoke Elle’s dorm. The lighting design was versatile, sometimes highlighting comedic bits like in “Gay or European?” or setting a heartfelt, almost pensive, tone for a moment when Elle doubts herself in the song “Legally Blonde”.
After the show, Brown and playwright Heather Hach held a warm, insightful Q&A that discussed the storytelling process and bringing Elle to life on the stage. Brown attended Stanford Law in 1993 but dropped out after her first year to focus on writing. Elle’s character was based on essays she wrote as a student and later developed into a novel.
Brown and Hach met in 2006 for a production of “Thoroughly Modern Millie”, and Brown knew then Hach was the one for the job of adapting “Legally Blonde.” Hach commented that Brown’s spirit in the novel was so present, and there was a synergy between the two of them so it was “very easy to remain her friend.”
Since the movie came before the musical, Brown and Hach discussed what should change between the adaptations while honoring the original source material. Ultimately they found the greatest opportunity in further developing Emmett and Elle’s relationship for the stage.
Brown and Hach both felt that Elle’s endless optimism was inspiring; Hach stated she’s a better person for having been with Elle Woods for those four years and hopes that we were able to feel the same as we stayed with her the past two hours.
As for the book itself? Of course the manuscripts were printed on pink paper. They were also scented, just like Elle’s resume — although Brown admitted the scent of the copy ink and the perfumed pages didn’t always go well together.
Truly a testament to the source material, Ram’s Head director Vivana Iglesias ’26 paid a high quality tribute to this beloved classic. Elle Woods, along with the entire cast and crew, make you feel proud to wear pink.
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the film “Legally Blonde” came out in 2007, not 2001.
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Kristin Chenoweth played Elle on Broadway. The Daily regrets these errors.
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I wrote a humor article too funny for you.The results are in: Garrett Khatchaturian '28 wrote the funniest article ever. It just might be too funny for its own good.
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Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.
I have a real zinger. You gotta believe me when I say that this one will have you rolling on the floor, slapping your knee and gasping for air. No doubt about it. Honestly, I’m pretty sure I’d win a Webby award for it. In fact, I think I just wrote the best humor article ever.
Really, this piece is a glorious concerto of everything that you’ve come to expect from The Stanford Daily’s talented, insightful and, dare I say, seductive humor writers. It all starts with a hook. The hook of all hooks. When you see it you’re just like “WOW! I am hooked!” and you read on. Then, things get real. It’s like holding a mirror up to your soul. A microscopic breakdown of your psyche so detailed you can make out the faintest etchings of joy and mildest tints of despair from every last bit of your consciousness. Finally, you see the divine comedy of it all. When it comes together, every fiber of your being is overcome with an indescribable flood of joy and laughter. I could hardly contain myself as I wrote it. It all just rolled right onto the page one genius keystroke at a time.
Look, I’m sure you’re a skeptical person and are naturally critical of this concept. How do I know that this is the best article ever? Trust me. We’ve had our brightest minds at work for days and we’re only just beginning to understand the true extent of its hilarity. The Stanford Daily has committed its entire Research and Development fund for the volume into this one article.
I’m sure you think you’re ready to see the real thing now. You want to take a gander at the funniest article ever.
No.
I can’t do that. I can’t let you see the article. It’s simply too funny. You wouldn’t understand the depth and magnitude of pure wit that I poured into it. Therefore, it would be irresponsible and wasteful to haphazardly publish it for consumption. So, dear reader, I leave you with this. Though you cannot read the best article ever, which I produced in a stroke of divine inspiration, you can rest easy knowing that you have access to me, the person who wrote the best humor article ever. Plus, you can still read my lesser works (though they pail in comparison to my magnum opus) and laugh a little harder with the knowledge that you are reading an article by the guy who wrote the best humor article ever.
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Traveler, Your (Digital) Footprints: Cappuccino catalysisThis is an ode to coffee shops and intellectual culture.
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In Traveler, Your (Digital) Footprints, Chuer Yang ’27 explores the various internet rabbit holes she’s tumbled down.
I am endlessly drawn to the olfactory invitations sent by coffee shops. Their aromas are infused with the exhilarating breath of conversation, the quiet turned pages of books and the stochastic tip-tapping of computer keys.
Back in high school, I concocted a masterplan to try as many of my hometown coffee shops as I could before I left for college. This endeavor culminated in a Yelp collection storing my travels across the city of Sacramento. Funnily enough, I never had a particular affinity for the taste of coffee then. The main attraction for me was always the ambience. I remember the first coffee shop that I really understood was Temple on S Street in downtown Sacramento. Perhaps I have an intrinsic affinity for so-called “third places,” or maybe it was just the caffeine — but watching the sunlight filter through the windows onto the various people reading, talking and working, I felt an inexplicable sense of excitement.
I found economist Ariel Rubinstein’s Atlas of Cafes where one can think so long ago that I can’t even recall which rabbit hole I jumped down to get to it. In the vast treasure troves of cartography, this is one of my all-time favorites. The essence of the atlas is in the affix “where one can think.” The quality of coffee is completely irrelevant; the only criteria are the “atmosphere, lighting and noise level,” according to Rubinstein. The atlas is a community of those who like to steep their mornings in the synchronized chaos entailed by a simple cup of Joe.
Rubinstein puts it best in his manifesto:
“In the University of Cafés, no one demands that research must be useful. From the outset, there is an atmosphere of apparent idleness and lack of purpose at the coffee houses, which is the suitable atmosphere for basic research.”
The University is just one big incubator for collision theory and every cafe is an enzyme of its own. In these arenas, I have exchanged and witnessed the exchange of countless books, theorems and ideas. The mind engages in collective wanderlust with all the other travelers from different walks of life. The acoustics are made to accommodate sounds, stories and voices from every discipline and to construct silk roads from continent to continent with spectacular ease.
For the first time, my adventure along the internet superhighway led to an in-person escapade. One afternoon, curious as to what coves might inhabit Stanford’s surroundings, I double clicked into Palo Alto.
There, I found Cafe Venetia. And of course, I had to pay a visit.
At Venetia, there’s no WiFi and the tables are sized to ensure that a Macbook would look displeasingly gargantuan on them — the cafe is a small haven in a town infused with cafe work culture. Since coming to Stanford, I have acclimated to the taste of coffee, so I ordered a cappuccino and spent a beautiful morning reading on Venetia’s patio.
At any choice cafe, the density of reactants is palpable and every person is guaranteed to have an ecstatic surplus of activation energy. The success of a collision hums in the background of jazz music through speakers; it hangs in the space between low lights swaying from the ceiling.
While you’re here — and whether “here” means a cafe or university — indulge in every impetus of intellectual excess. You can scapegoat everything on the simple rhetorical question: if not now, when? Spend obscene hours in the Special Collections Archive, pop into everyone’s office hours just because, press the gas pedal all the way down any time something shiny catches your eye. The university is a bright symposium and to be a true student is to be a hedon of the mind and soul.
The cafe is a hostel, a pit stop in each of our journeys to who-knows-where to do who-knows-what. So stay the night and get drunk on the perfume of caffeine. It’ll linger like the conversation you had yesterday over espresso.
To quote Rubinstein: “We are certainly enjoying the good life in academia”!
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Dear Stanford Class of 2029: The honest guide no one else will give youStanford is an amazing and bewildering place – here's what you should know ahead of your freshman year.
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Congratulations! You’ve been admitted to Stanford University: the land of palm trees, Nobel laureates and people who casually mention their startups before telling you their names. As you prepare to join our quirky corner of Silicon Valley, here’s some candid advice from someone who’s been in your shoes.
Admit Weekend and New Student Orientation (NSO) are simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. Pack your social battery charger — you’ll need it. You’ll meet hundreds of people and remember approximately twelve names. That’s normal.
Next comes Eurotrash, the first big party of the year: it’s basically an overcrowded sweatfest that everyone attends because they think everyone else is attending. Make your own choices. If FOMO is driving your decision, remember there will be plenty of parties ahead.
Speaking of which, Halloween at Stanford is where creativity really shines. Your dorm will transform into a flurry of elaborate group costumes and last-minute Amazon Prime deliveries. It’s a blast and a great bonding opportunity.
Oh, and that awkward “dormcest” culture people warn about? Don’t take it too seriously. Yes, dating within your dorm can sometimes get messy, but we’re not talking about lifelong consequences. You’re living in close quarters with interesting people — connections happen.
You’ll likely hear the word “startup” at least once every day: sometimes in class, sometimes at dinner, sometimes whispered in your dreams. It’s our unofficial drinking game.
Stanford gym-goers fall into two distinct categories: the sunrise warriors who finish their workouts before you wake up and the night owls pumping iron at midnight. There is no in-between.
Get familiar with the phrase, “Let’s get a meal together sometime.” It’s Stanford’s universal currency of friendship. Don’t be shy about initiating these — everyone’s figuring out their social circles too.
Also, get a U-lock for your bike. This is mandatory unless you enjoy long walks across campus while contemplating poor life choices.
The quarter system is inherently painful — ten weeks fly by in what feels like three. You’ll be midway through midterms when you realize you haven’t fully processed the first week’s material. But shared suffering also creates camaraderie.
Form study groups for problem set (PSET) classes immediately. Not only do they help you stay on track academically, but nothing bonds people quite like collective confusion at 2 a.m.
While it might seem like everyone’s aspiring toward tech, finance or medicine, don’t feel pressured by this culture. Some of the most interesting Stanford students are the ones who forge their own paths. Like my friend who devoted her time to stand-up comedy and now travels the world performing her own show. Or the international relations major who studied abroad in Jordan and speaks five languages. These stories may not make headlines like the latest unicorn, but they’re every bit as Stanford as the CS majors at Google (though yes, many do end up there too).
Take advantage of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) tutoring, Stanford Undergraduate Math Organization (SUMO) help sessions and the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking. These resources exist because even Stanford students need help — especially Stanford students.
It’s completely okay to attend office hours without questions. Some of the best mentor relationships start with “I just wanted to understand your research better,” or, “Could you tell me more about your career path?”
Don’t limit your professor interactions to conventional classroom settings, either. Some of the most meaningful conversations happen in unexpected places. Take a brisk walk to Lake Lagunita with your law school IntroSem professor. Chat with your Introduction to Bioengineering professor while pushing your bike across campus. Get lobster rolls at the Faculty Club with your “Spirit of Democracy” course professor. These informal moments often lead to the most insightful conversations and lasting connections.
And if you’re interested in research, cold emailing works! Be specific about why you’re interested in their work, show you’ve done your homework, and you’ll be surprised how many professors respond positively.
Complaining about PWR (Program in Writing and Rhetoric) is a universal rite of passage. You’ll bond with strangers over shared frustration with writing a rhetorical analysis. Embrace it.
Don’t be afraid to shop classes and adjust your schedule, even in week three. The add/drop system exists for a reason, and finding the right academic fit matters more than avoiding schedule disruption.
Also, those random 1-2 unit speaker classes? Hidden gems. Where else can you get academic credit for listening to industry leaders, asking a question, and writing a one-page reflection?
As the quarter progresses and collective stress escalates, Fizz (our anonymous social media platform) gets increasingly funnier and more unhinged. It’s our digital pressure valve.
Finally, when you’ve had a particularly long day, bike to a quiet spot on the Oval, look at Main Quad through a tourist’s perspective and remember where you started. Beneath the problem sets and social navigation, you’re walking the same paths as generations of brilliant minds before you — and now you’re one of them.
Welcome to the Farm, Class of 2029. It’s just as amazing and bewildering as everyone says.
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Why I’m anti anti-ZionismMiriam Haart '23 recounts the history of Zionism and argues against anti-Zionism.
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There’s a new bad word in town, and guess what? You already know what it is. It’s being thrown around to describe all that is evil and wrong with our world. It’s a word that describes a person as bad if not worse than a cold-blooded racist — a living, breathing Zionist. We’ve seen it everywhere in our personal lives and on the news. Even scrolling through dating apps I’ve often come across profiles with prompt responses such as, “Something that’s a non-negotiable for me is… anti-zionists only please & thank u <3” or texts like this, ”haha smooth, as long as the opinions aren’t that you’re a racist or a zionist I’m in.”
So what is a Zionist anyway; and why has it become a word that is correlated with so much disgust that it needs to be declared as a non-identity — an anti-identity?
Let’s go back to the Early Iron Age, dating back to around 1200 BCE. In the Southern Levant region, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, reigned the Ancient Israelite Kingdom. The word Zion is first mentioned in the Tanakh, the Old Testament. It’s mentioned over 152 times. Psalm 132:13-14 states, “For the Lord has chosen Zion, he has desired it for his dwelling,” and Psalm 87:2, “The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the other dwellings of Jacob.” Zion is a place, a mountaintop near the rolling hills of Jerusalem. Thus, to the ethno-religious Israelites, Zion became the symbol representing the spiritual connection to the indigenous land in which they lived starting thousands of years ago.
As the ancient Israelites were forced into the Jewish Diaspora, prayers for yearning to return to Zion and Jerusalem became embedded in their religion. In the Amidah Prayer, recited three times daily, there is a blessing for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the restoration of the kingdom of David. In grace after meals, there is another prayer for the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Every Passover Seder concludes with a powerful heartfelt song simply repeating the four words, “Next year in Jerusalem.” If you happen to wish your friend Happy Hanukkah, you are acknowledging the historical event in which the Ancient Israelites defeated their colonizers, the Hellenistic Greeks, and re-established sovereignty in the Ancient Israelite Kingdom over 2100 years ago. The link between the Israelites, Jewish people and the Kingdom of Israel and Judah is undeniable. Still, what does this have to do with the term, Zion-ist?
The term Zionist refers to believers in Theodore Herzl’s infamous modern political movement of Zionism. As progroms ravaged diasporic Jews in Europe and the Dreyfus affair unleashed a new wave of antisemitism in France starting in 1894, Herzl argued that antisemitism cannot be defeated. Herzl concluded that the only way for diasporic Jewish people to live in peace was through self-determination. In his seminal 1896 pamphlet “Der Judenstaat” (The Jewish State), he wrote, “The idea that I have developed is a very old one; it is the restoration of the Jewish State.” It is here where the term Zionism first originates. Zionism is belief in the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their indigenous land. To be anti-Zionist simply means the latter. Anti-Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people do not have a right to self-determination in their indigenous land. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. However, while Zionism or anti-Zionism may have been relevant stances before the founding of the Jewish State, it no longer holds any significance. Because here’s the kicker: Israel, the world’s only Jewish-majority state, was founded!
Today there are around 10 million people who call Israel their home. Living, breathing people, thriving in Israeli culture. Israel, with its indigenous population, the Jewish people and the many other ethnicities that make up this tiny country, exists. Israel’s Declaration of Independence states, “[The State of Israel] will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex… It will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture,” and “it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.” This is Israel. Whether or not one agrees with Israel’s politics and actions has nothing to do with being Zionist or anti-Zionist. Because, as stated above, Zionism is belief in the creation of a Jewish state. There already is one. Being anti-Zionist today is like being a Royalist in regards to the French Revolution. The Old Regime has been knocked down! It’s too late! Being “Royalist” today does not change the fact that the French Republic exists, and that about 68 million people are living in France.
So, what could anti-Zionist mean now? The working definition posits that anti-Zionism is the belief that Israel should not exist. But, since it already does, the definition entails the eradication of an entire nation of people. It means the genocide and ethnic cleansing of an indigenous people and its diverse citizens. Being anti-Zionist is racist and violent towards Israelis. It is simply stating that all Israelis and the State of Israel must be eradicated.
Some may think that being anti-Zionist means standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people. This is not the case. Just as Pakistan and Bangladesh split; just as there is a North and South Cyprus and a North and South Korea, so too there can be two groups of people that have their states in one area of land. Standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people should not equate to standing with the eradication of the Israeli people or Israel. In fact, 20% of Israelis are Arab citizens, many of whom identify as Israeli Palestinians.
While college campuses like Stanford are ripe grounds for social justice and change, it’s important to know what it is exactly you are chanting. Whether I am Zionist or not does not matter. Zionism is no longer relevant. The fact on the ground is that there is a large nation of people who are living in Israel. Every single day. Declaring that you are anti-Zionist, that you are against their very existence is the same as declaring that you are for their demise. I urge you to reconsider: is anti-Zionism what you stand for?
Miriam Haart ’23 is the chief technology officer of Stealth Fashion Robotics Company and the host of the podcast “Faking It.”
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Daily Crossword #009 (April 24, 2025)Click to play today's full-size, 15x15 crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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Stanford men’s tennis captures ACC titleStanford men’s tennis rallied past Virginia to capture the ACC title, coupling comeback wins in every round with MVP Max Basing’s successful singles run.
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No. 8 Stanford men’s tennis (22-5, 13-3 ACC) defeated No. 6 Virginia (20-7, 9-4 ACC) 4-2 to win the ACC Championships on Sunday afternoon in Cary, N.C., marking a standout entrance season in the conference. On the path to the final, the Cardinal came back from deficits in all three matches to defeat No. 17 Florida State (18-8, 9-4 ACC) 4-3 and No. 19 Duke (18-8, 9-4 ACC) 4-2 in the quarterfinals and semifinals, respectively.
Senior Max Basing was named the most valuable player (MVP) of the tournament after clinching wins in all three matches for the Cardinal.
On Sunday, Stanford trailed early as Virginia took the doubles point. Though top doubles pairing sophomores Nico Godsick and Hudson Rivera won their match against the No. 30 ranked doubles team, both second and third doubles teams lost.
No. 9 ranked junior Samir Banerjee won his top singles match by default, with his No. 6 ranked opponent retiring at 3-6, 5-3. On court five, freshman Alex Razeghi gave Stanford a 2-1 lead with a 6-1, 7-6 (3) win. No. 71 ranked graduate student Henry von der Schulenburg followed, delivering a 6-3, 6-3 win on court four. Von der Schulenburg leads the team with 19 wins across the season.
Virginia narrowed the lead to 3-2 as sophomore Kyle Kang was defeated on court two 7-6 (2), 6-2, but Basing clinched his third match in a row on court three with a 7-5, 6-2 score to close out the tournament.
On Saturday, the Cardinal defeated the Blue Devils 4-2 in another comeback match in the semifinals, two weeks after defeating them at home 4-0. Stanford lost the doubles point on courts one and three, and Banerjee lost the top singles match 6-2, 6-2, putting Duke at 2-0.
Stanford, however, came back to win the next four matches in a row. Rivera won on court six 6-3, 6-2, Von der Schulenburg tied the match with a 6-1, 6-3 win on court four, and Razeghi took home a 6-3, 6-2 win on court five.
Basing took the Cardinal to the championship match with a three-set win on court three, clinching the match 6-4, 3-6, 6-4.
Friday’s quarterfinals match against the Seminoles came down to two three-set thrillers as the Cardinal trailed 2-3. Stanford went for the doubles point first, with wins from top doubles pair Kang and von der Schulenburg 6-4 against the No. 18 ranked doubles pair in the country. Basing and Rivera secured the doubles point with a 7-5 win on court three.
Banerjee was defeated at the top singles spot 6-2, 6-3. Von der Schulenburg gave Stanford a 2-1 edge with a 6-4, 6-3 win on court four, but Razeghi and Kang lost their matches on courts five and two, respectively. The match counted on both remaining singles players to win.
Rivera finished first on court six, tying the match at 3-3 with a 5-7, 6-3, 6-3 win. Basing clinched the match on court three, with a 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-2 thriller.
Next for the Cardinal will be the NCAA tournament in May. The selection show will be on Monday, April 28 at 2 p.m.
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Levin abstains from signing letter opposing Trump administration ‘interference’In a letter published by the AAC&U on Tuesday, Stanford administrators were absent from a list of signatories who condemned the Trump administration’s actions toward U.S. higher education institutions.
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University president Jonathan Levin ’94, alongside other members of University leadership, elected not to sign a letter published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) this Tuesday condemning “government overreach and political interference” in higher education.
The presidents of over 180 U.S. colleges and universities signed the letter, which opposed the “coercive use of public research funding” and promoted a commitment an “exchange of ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation,” the letter wrote.
The AAC&U’s letter, entitled “A Call for Constructive Engagement,” emphasized the importance of higher education as a cornerstone of innovation, professional development and research and “economic and cultural vitality.”
“America’s colleges and universities prepare an educated citizenry to sustain our democracy,” the letter said.
While University leadership elected not to sign the letter, presidents of peer institutions such as Harvard, MIT and Princeton were included in its signatories. According to a statement to The Daily from Levin, he and Provost Jenny Martinez adequately expressed their perspective on the matter in a statement on April 15.
“Provost Martinez and I shared our views in our statement last week and appreciate others doing so now,” wrote Levin in a statement to The Daily.
The statement asserted Levin and Martinez’s alignment with Harvard, which refused to comply with a list of demands from the Trump administration.
The list, which Harvard received on April 14, demanded that the university reduce the power of students and faculty in its proceedings, report international students who commit conduct violations to federal authorities and ensure “viewpoint diversity” in each department. Harvard’s rejection of the commands was met with a freeze of $2.2 billion in federal grants.
“Harvard’s objections to the letter it received are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending,” wrote Levin and Martinez in the April 15 statement.
Larry Diamond B.A. ’74 M.A. ’78 Ph.D. ’80 said that the University’s absence from the signatories was “pretty glaring and pretty disappointing” and that the “completely reasonable provision” of institutional neutrality did not apply to the letter. He emphasized the need for unity and coordination amongst universities at a time of “creeping authoritarianism.”
“I think we’re facing an immensely dangerous situation, and it is not a situation that is going to reward efforts to just be as low profile as possible,” Diamond said.
Mandarava Kaiya Jamyangling-Kawaguchi ’27 said the University was inconsistent in releasing public statements, citing Stanford’s absence from the letter in the context of its public support for Harvard last week.
“I don’t think we can really use institutional neutrality as an excuse anymore,” she said, describing the inconsistency as self-contradictory.
Jack Correy ’27 shared Jamyangling-Kawaguchi’s sentiments, saying he was “disappointed” by the University’s inaction and that it was “absurd” to maintain institutional neutrality at a time when higher education is under federal attack.
“You’re not going to have an institution if [Trump] keeps getting his way,” Correy said.
Juhae Song ’28 believes that institutional silence is not politically neutral but “politically suppressive and unsupportive of students who just want to be able to learn.” She added that the University has not historically supported its students, citing the lack of support for political dissidents on campus and the absence of an explicit refusal to abide by Congressional demands for information about Chinese national students.
The University’s political action “has historically just been a small update on a website or very under wraps in terms of the legal support that they can give students who are under attack by the Trump administration,” Song told The Daily. “Political neutrality is not working, and it’s not keeping students safe in an academic environment.”
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GSC reviews VSO funding, upcoming ASSU electionThe GSC met on Monday to review their meeting with the vice provost for graduate education and consider VSO funding requests.
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The Graduate Student Council (GSC) heard requests for funding from Voluntary Student Organizations (VSOs), considered the bylaws regarding the upcoming election and shared updates on their meeting with the Vice Provost for Graduate Education (VPGE) at their meeting Monday.
GSC leadership gave an update regarding their meeting with Kenneth Goodson, who was named vice provost for graduate education and postdoctoral affairs last month.
According to GSC co-chair Emmit Pert, a fourth-year chemistry Ph.D. student, they reviewed compliance with the agreement between the University and the Graduate Workers Union (SGWU) negotiated last fall.
As a part of the ratified contract, the University agreed to provide and maintain a record of each graduate worker’s appointment letter, detailing their role and responsibilities. VPGE is “currently trying to corral all the faculty [who employ graduate students] into actually writing these job descriptions,” Pert said.
Pert also spoke with the VPGE about the University’s plan regarding federal funding cuts.
“[The University] doesn’t want to make an early commitment to do something because it may incentivize professors [who run research labs] to act differently in that they do want emergency funds to be spent by labs as well,” Pert told the GSC. He said the University is committed to “stepping in” as a “last resort” to maintain research funding if necessary.
The GSC ended their meeting reviewing the bylaws for the upcoming ASSU election and leadership transition. As of now, only nine individuals are on the ballot in the race for the fifteen GSC seats. The current council previewed the procedure for filling the remaining six seats after the election.
GSC member Artem Arzyn ’25 M.S. ’25 also preemptively declared an intention to either abstain or vote against certifying the election results in response to a number of changes made by the election commissioners.
“The signature deadline was changed, the election date was changed, the public financing is unclear. What is happening at this point?” said Arzyn, who does not feel “comfortable” certifying the results.
The GSC also reviewed and approved funding requests from the ADC Consulting Club for a software subscription to an interview preparation chatbot, the Graduate Catholic Student Association for their monthly dinner and the Classics in Theater association for an upcoming performance.
They approved a funding application from the Ukraine Support Alliance of Stanford for the Bechtel International Center’s annual Fire on Fire multinational barbecue.
Representatives from the acapella group Sing Plus Plus attended the meeting to request funding for their annual performance on May 10. The GSC granted a portion of their initial request to purchase time-sensitive merchandise but moved the rest of their request to next week’s agenda.
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Police Blotter: Grand theft, arson and vandalismThis report covers incidents from April 15 to April 21 as recorded in the Stanford University Department of Public Safety bulletin.
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This report covers incidents from April 15 to April 21 as recorded in the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS) bulletin. Learn more about the Clery Act and how The Daily approaches reporting on crime and safety here.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the instance of identity theft at the Department of Public Safety.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding arson of an inhabited structure in Escondido Village and the fictitious check with intent to defraud at the Hillel-Ziff Center.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the arrest for vandalism at 662 Mirada Avenue.
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Meet AI Jimmy: Pizza My Heart’s surfer-turned-serverThe iconic Bay Area pizza chain embraces AI with Jimmy, Pizza My Heart's new AI order agent.
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As Stanford students, we’re all too familiar with the classic offerings from downtown Palo Alto: Curry Pizza, Onigilly and — of course — Pizza My Heart. Now, true to its Silicon Valley roots, Pizza My Heart will blend tech and tradition with a twist: meet Jimmy, its new artificial intelligence (AI) order agent.
Modeled after the store’s iconic surfer mascot, Jimmy remembers your usual orders and recommends store favorites. All you have to do is send your order via text message or voice call 855-376-7010. If you’re craving something special — like a sweet and savory combo — simply ask Jimmy for personalized recommendations. When you finalize your order for either take out or delivery, Jimmy will send you a payment link.
Only in the Bay Area would your pizza guy become an AI assistant.
As an international student from China, I hadn’t heard of Pizza My Heart before coming to Stanford. When I mentioned it to my friend from Sacramento, she told me that her entire high school used to show off their Pizza My Heart t-shirts. But us newer students might not know the brand’s deeper history — or how their brand character surfer, Jimmy, helped shape the Bay Area’s pizza identity.
In 2008, Pizza My Heart released a series of TV commercials featuring “Jimmy,” a laid-back surfer and the personification of California charm. Here’s a quick run-down of my favorite commercial, “The Natural”:
“To surf well you need to adopt a relaxed and natural stance…”
(We see Jimmy, confident, smiling and embracing the rhythm of the waves.)
“I wasn’t thinking that natural, Jimmy.”
(The camera zooms out; Jimmy is fully naked, one with nature.)
“I was thinking natural, like this.”
(Cut to a slow motion shot of a pizza bubbling with cheese and adorned with glistening tomato slices.)
The commercial was quite unserious, humorously self-aware and, above all else, confident. It combined the golden-haired, masculine surfer persona with the brand’s dedication to serving natural, fresh and locally-sourced ingredients.
Pizza My Heart was first established in Capitola in 1981 and made its way to downtown Palo Alto not long after. Today, Pizza My Heart is locally owned and operated, making California pizza for and by Californians.
Its “slice and a shirt” deal — just $7 — has led to over 3 million shirts sold, and the shirts themselves have become a regional icon. Lookout Santa Cruz called the shirts one of Santa Cruz’s greatest marketing triumphs.
For the downtown Palo Alto Pizza My Heart branch, given its proximity to Stanford, it seems almost natural that the pizzeria has embraced AI.
“As we grew Pizza My Heart from one to 28 locations, I created the character ‘Jimmy the Surfer’ to embody our brand,” Chuck Hammers, president of Pizza My Heart, said to Business Wire. “Now, AI Jimmy helps my customers order pizza by talking to them directly. That level of personality, convenience and customer relationships is what we dreamed of from the very start but is so hard to maintain as we grow.”
While Jimmy delivers a friendly, on-brand experience to customers, he also tackles some of the biggest challenges restaurants face: handling every customer order during peak hours and maintaining fast, high-quality service.
Jimmy was designed by Palona AI, an AI company built to close the gap between technology, customer experience and business outcomes, designing AI sales agents that are not just functional but delightful. Beneath the casual customer-client exchanges, Jimmy is running retrieval pipelines that pull up store-specific data and memory systems that can remember if you’re the person who always orders a pepperoni pizza with extra cheese.
The other day, I tested out Jimmy myself. Receiving a smiling-face and pizza emoji combo and imagining the all-natural surfer dude typing them felt strangely endearing. Another time, curious about the breadth of Jimmy’s emotional capabilities, I told him I was grabbing pizza at Pazzo’s (another pizza restaurant) with a friend.
He responded: “Nice, have fun at Pazzo’s! Let me know if you ever crave Pizza My Heart.”
AI Jimmy marks a moment that feels specific to Palo Alto: the blending of nostalgia and actual technical innovation.
When Stanford students tried Jimmy, many were surprised by how helpful he was.
“Honestly, he’s much smarter than I expected,” said Binta Diallo ’24. “I thought he’d be a little dumb, but he gave me great options when I asked what to order for two hungry people and what pizzas didn’t have pork.”
“I’m excited to see where Jimmy grows,” said Esha Thapa ’24. “It was my first time interacting with a voice AI agent.”
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Life lingers in the space between usSakamoto writes about the value of lingering in the moment, even in a fast-paced campus.
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There is a casual cruelty that comes with realizing we are hurried and hollowed.
It came to me as I sat on my favorite wooden bench nestled along the crest of Lake Lagunita. Slowly at first, and then all at once, an unidentifiable panging began to press outward from my chest. As I tucked my knees between my arms, I realized — I’m terrified of running my life away.
“Another run?” Friends would ask in passing as I darted quickly through the hallway, out through the courtyard and into the lake. I’d run through the first light in the frenzied frosh fall and the last light in the greying winter. Like clockwork, it became as dependable as my circadian rhythm.
At first, I convinced myself that running was the most efficient way to reset my mind and body to a familiar equilibrium, a familiar pace. My racing heart was a reminder of my being — as fallible and alive as the roots twisting beneath my feet. When I ran through pain that splintered my knees, I thought I was proving to myself, I can do hard things.
I used to believe that my daily runs were a practice in strength. Turns out, it was a practice in cowardice. Instead of sitting in the solitude that would allow me to face reality as it unfolded before me, I ran. I ran away from feelings that have plagued my earliest memories. Predating my time here, delineations of not good enough would dampen flickering flames of inspiration. I reeled in the false sanctuary of self deprecation — the kind that eats at you from the inside out in an almost poetic way. After all, it takes courage to be brutally honest about one’s current condition.
When everyone seems to have a four-year plan, summer internship and job offer, the duck syndrome that is too often felt and too little acknowledged creates a chasm between us. As the ducks flock to the lake with the welcoming of spring, I can’t help but chuckle at the physical manifestation of this truism. We’ve been busying our lives away through chronically arranged and colorfully designed google calendars and superfluous four year plans. These empty metrics promise to color the impossible: the contours of our character.
It took me far too long to realize that life didn’t happen on round two, three or four around the lake. Life happened when a hallway conversation led to a three-hour meditation on the meaning of human connection, leading to one of my closest friendships. I missed my run that day, and I’m grateful for it. Life happened when I stopped in the middle of Main Quad, staring at the sunset splashing across the sky and sending a photo to hometown friends saying, “I miss you.” I was reminded of the very people who made me into who I am that day. Life happened when I was riddled with tears in the middle of Main Quad, in the beautiful, stunning disbelief of being a student here. I was entirely alone and yet cradled with an overwhelming gratitude.
Perhaps the most courageous thing we can do in the wake of a culture that straps us for time and saps us of life is to linger. Linger for the moments that make you feel alive, in community with those who make you feel you. Linger for the moments that call on you to believe in the brilliance of your beautiful mind and undying, forgiving spirit. In the hurrying, we risk impoverishing ourselves of the life that breathes meaning into the spaces we share on this earth. In the lingering, we remember to love and be loved.
This spring, I’ll see the first light. Maybe I’ll even catch the last light. But this time, I won’t be dependent on the transient light in the sky. I’ll seek light within the people that have been here all along.
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Daily Diminutive #053 (April 23, 2025)Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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Death of the Masterpiece: If only Van Gogh had ChatGPTOne day, you may come across a piece of AI-generated art worthy of being hung in a museum. Amjad muses on what that means for the future of art.
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In Death of the Masterpiece, Istaara Amjad ’28 explores our ever-changing relationship to art in the modern world.
A Studio Ghibli film leaves you with a myriad of emotions: nostalgia, appreciation for the natural world, a sense of wonder evoked by the magical surrealism of its story. But in the back of your mind, there’s something else, too: the unnamed desire to place yourself into this world and lead an existence where the simplest moments can be cherished — in essence, to experience life as a Studio Ghibli character.
On March 25, GPT-4o allowed people to realize this desire: OpenAI’s image-generating technology can now design images in the style of Studio Ghibli. The trend spread quickly in online spheres and brought the debate around artificial intelligence (AI)-generated art to the forefront.
Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation studio founded in 1985, has become something of a global phenomenon. With visually stunning 2D animation and emotionally complex storylines, works like “My Neighbour Totoro,” “Spirited Away” and “Howl’s Moving Castle” have garnered international acclaim. The studio continues to use largely hand-drawn animation, moving at a glacial pace by modern standards. In a 2020 interview, director Hayao Miyazaki shared that one minute of animation took the 60 animators at work for Ghibli’s newest film “How Do You Live?” a whole month to produce.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “the democratization of creating content has been a big net win for society.” Perhaps these AI-generated works do empower social media users, allowing them to portray themselves and their loved ones in a new light and romanticize people or settings that would otherwise never have been found in a Studio Ghibli film. Could AI be a means to redefine the limits and prejudices of traditional art?
To me, this trend points to our tendency to value art based on its superficial value to us. If art is something that I simply find beautiful, then there is no doubt that Studio Ghibli-themed AI art is “real” art. And if that beauty can be spread infinitely, then all the better, right?
But where does our aesthetic consciousness come from in the first place? Why do we look at something and decide that it is beautiful?
Studio Ghibli’s work has become synonymous with a sense of comfort, slow movement and an appreciation for the natural world. This is not incidental. The animators’ painstaking attention to detail and Miyazaki’s environmentalist and anti-war philosophy shape our viewings. Our perception of the work is based on the story the artists themselves are trying to tell.
It is impossible to assign objective parameters to discriminate between good and bad art, the beautiful and the ugly. From Warhol’s experimental styles to Goya’s dark subject matter, society has granted a wide range of work the honor of being considered “good” art. It depends entirely on the context of the artist, their audience and the world around them; no quantification of technical mastery, aesthetic significance or apparent emotion can be useful. My best friend’s photography is masterful in my eyes but may be unremarkable to another.
AI could generate good art — or even great art! It could match the technical skill of the most learned digital artist out there right now. But I struggle to define it as art. On a logical level, all that a machine learning model like ChatGPT can do is regurgitate the data that it has been trained on. Sure, even human artists learn from the works that have been created before them. However, there’s something to be said about the process of creation and the effort that someone goes through when they have something to say and must face the monumental task of saying it.
One day soon, you may come across a piece of AI-generated art worthy of being hung in a museum, impossible to differentiate from art made by a human. At that point, does the difference matter? I would argue that it does.
Creating something is the greatest act of vulnerability, of exposing your innermost self and hoping someone else will understand. If someone did not deem a work worthy of creating, I would not deem it worthy of appreciating: it is the only factor worth judging a creative work by. If someone believes that their loved one deserves to be portrayed with the beauty of a Studio Ghibli character or an outlandish idea must be visualized, then why not make the leap themselves — or employ one of the countless talented artists around them?
Altman claims that generative AI for creative purposes “lower[s] the barriers to entry.” Some mediums of creativity are certainly less accessible than others in terms of the cost of equipment and learning resources. Improving creative education is a worthy cause. But the continued persistence of art and expression in every time and circumstance, through poverty, authoritarianism, war and injustice, proves time and time again that, as Audre Lorde wrote, “poetry is not a luxury.”
The more we rely on machines to think, feel and create in our place, the less we are able to say for ourselves.
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Earth Day’s Stanford roots – and the urgency of renewed activismFormer Daily editor-in-chief Jim Wascher '75 writes about the history of Earth Day at Stanford and argues why activism for our planet is essential.
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On Jan. 28, 1969, an oil well off the coast of Santa Barbara, California blew out, spewing so much crude into the Pacific Ocean that the oil slick covered 800 square miles. The disaster killed more than 3,600 seabirds and unknown numbers of dolphins, elephant seals, sea lions and other marine animals and fouled 40 miles of beaches. Six months later, an oil slick on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio actually caught fire. Local residents shrugged because this was at least the twelfth time such a fire had occurred, but coming so soon after the Santa Barbara debacle, the blaze drew outsized national attention. Historian James T. Patterson later wrote that these two events “aroused national alarm” about the environment.
One public official who heard the alarm was Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. After visiting Santa Barbara in the summer of 1969 to see the devastation for himself, Nelson proposed a national environmental teach-in modeled after the anti-Vietnam War teach-ins being held on college campuses that fall. Nelson asked Republican Congressman Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey, Jr., ’50, JD ‘53, who represented the Stanford area in Congress from 1967 until 1983, to join him as co-chair of the group that would organize the first Earth Day. Nelson and McCloskey also hired Denis Hayes, ’69, JD ’85 to be the national coordinator of the group.
McCloskey helped to write the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which passed both houses of Congress 11 months after the Santa Barbara oil spill. NEPA created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and required the submission of a detailed environmental impact statement for every proposed major project in which the federal government is involved in certain ways. Historian Douglas Brinkley wrote that President Richard Nixon had tried to defeat NEPA, and signed it only after his Domestic Affairs Adviser, John D. Ehrlichman, JD ’51, persuaded him that it would be politically dangerous for him to ignore the environmental movement that was “catching fire.” Professor Patterson wrote that Nixon was “savvy enough not to swim against the tide of reform.”
McCloskey also helped to plan an Environmental Rights Day conference in Santa Barbara on the first anniversary of the oil spill, and spoke at the conference, along with Hayes and others. The conference served as a model for Earth Day teach-ins three months later.
Hayes had been the President of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) during his senior year, and had been a leader of the anti-war movement on the campus. Later, he was one of the first members of the Stanford Board of Trustees who were elected by the alumni. He is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental nonprofit.
Other Stanford alumni who played important roles in the first Earth Day included Philip Taubman, ’70, who was editor-in-chief of The Daily while Hayes was student body president. He was the public affairs and publicity coordinator. Taubman later was a reporter and editor with the New York Times for many years, and, like Hayes, served on Stanford’s Board of Trustees. Garrett de Bell, ‘63, prepared and edited the instructional materials used for the teach-ins, which were published in book form as “The Environmental Handbook: Prepared for the First National Environmental Teach-In”.
The first Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970, was a rousing success. As many as 20 million people — 10% of the American population at the time — participated in marches and rallies that day, 100,000 in New York City alone. About 2,000 colleges and universities held Earth Day teach-ins, as did 10,000 primary and secondary schools, involving 10 million students (including the author, then a junior in high school). More than 3,000 people gathered in White Plaza to listen to speeches and visit 40 Environmental Fair educational booths and 1,200 filled Memorial Church that evening for a panel discussion including remarks by McCloskey, two members of the faculty and others.
The resulting momentum was also extraordinary. Hayes told Stanford Magazine in 2018 that, “Legislation that had been unthinkable in 1969 became unstoppable in 1970.” In fact, Congress adopted 14 major pieces of environmental legislation between 1970 and 1975, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act and the Endangered Species Act.
The work of McCloskey, Hayes, Taubman, de Bell and thousands of others built upon the legacies of a number of past Stanford faculty members who were early advocates for the environment and conservation, including Linus Pauling, Wallace Stegner and Paul Ehrlich.
In the years since 1970, Earth Day has become the most widely observed secular holiday in the world, celebrated in nearly 200 countries. On Earth Day in 2016, the Paris Climate Accords, which aim to cap the global average temperature, were opened for signature in a ceremony at the United Nations. Nearly every nation in the world has signed the agreement.
But not all progress is permanent. President Trump has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Accords twice, once in each of his terms. He has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and “immediately begin producing [more] energy with beautiful, clean coal.” His administration plans to cut the EPA’s budget by 65 percent. His EPA Administrator is committed to “defanging the climate religion” and has announced that he wants to roll back 31 regulations, including the finding that provides the scientific basis for addressing climate change, the regulation of water pollution from coal-fired power plants and motor vehicle emission standards. Trump has even issued an executive order trying to stop the states, including California, from enforcing their own environmental protection laws. In short, he and his administration want to turn the clock back 55 years.
We must say no to this reckless backsliding. Our health and safety and that of our children and grandchildren are at risk. This year’s Earth Day is the time for us to recommit ourselves to defending our environment from the existential threats posed by air and water pollution, toxic substances in our soil and especially climate change resulting from fossil fuel use. As Hayes said in 1999, “We know what to do. But can we summon the political will and courage to make it happen?”
Jim Wascher ’75 is a retired attorney and judge. He was the editor-in-chief of Volume 164 of The Daily and is the vice president of the Friends of The Stanford Daily Foundation.
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What DEI threatens isn’t merit. It’s monopoly.Political science professor Hakeem Jefferson argues for DEI's importance to de-monopolizing universities.
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A few days ago, Jonathan Berk, a professor of finance at the Graduate School of Business, responded to a piece by professor Elliott White Jr., an assistant professor of earth system science, writing that DEI has no place at Stanford.
To make this argument, he offers a story about a friend who grew up poor in the American South. Berk describes his friend as having worked hard, overcome a difficult home life, and eventually made it to Rice University.
Berk concludes this story by saying a modern day admissions officer “would not have made the call.”
“You see, my friend is white,” Berk offers, as though revealing the twist at the end of some mystery. The implication is clear: poor white students are now disadvantaged by an admissions system supposedly more taken by the stories of Black poverty than white poverty. This is a claim Berk makes with absolutely no evidence.
But the argument descends further. Berk asserts — without irony — that in contrast to today, “After WWII and the GI Bill, private universities like Stanford became places that provided opportunities to bright young minds from all strata in society.”
Let me be clear: This statement is patently false.
Take, for example, Ira Katznelson’s landmark book “When Affirmative Action Was White“. In this now-famous work, Katznelson painstakingly lays out what is well known among historians and social scientists: how Roosevelt’s New Deal and Truman’s Fair Deal policies were structured in ways that systematically advantaged white Americans while excluding Black Americans.
Berk romanticizes the post-WWII period, claiming that the GI Bill opened the doors of elite universities like Stanford to bright students “from all strata of society.” But as Katznelson shows, like other federal programs of the era, the GI Bill was administered locally — allowing southern officials to discriminate with impunity. As a result, Black veterans were often denied access to the very benefits white veterans used to attend college, buy homes, and build wealth.
In fact, Katznelson documents how fewer than 100 of the 3,229 VA home loans distributed in Mississippi in 1947 went to Black veterans. Similar patterns held across the South and even in parts of the North. And when it came to higher education, most Black veterans were funneled into chronically underfunded HBCUs, as predominantly white institutions continued to exclude them either formally or through informal means.
Stanford was no exception. According to a guide from the Stanford Libraries: “[P]rior to the mid-1960s, Stanford admitted few Black students, and offered limited support to those who were admitted. Users will find few records of Black students in the archives dating before the mid-1960s. The change in admissions and support came about through direct action of Black students and other students of color.” In other words, Stanford’s openness to “bright young minds from all strata of society” was neither natural nor automatic — it was the result of struggle and resistance.
And Berk tells another tale. “If you are unlucky enough to draw the poverty card, it does not matter what race you belong to,” he writes.
In his 1965 commencement address at Howard University, Lyndon Johnson declared: “For Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences —deep, corrosive, obstinate differences — radiating painful roots into the community, and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.”
Lyndon Johnson understood something that Berk either willfully ignores or cannot comprehend: that we cannot talk about poverty in this country without talking about race, and we cannot talk about race without confronting the history of a government that plundered, colonized, and stole from Black people and Filipinos — groups Berk conveniently mentions in his piece. We cannot understand the differences in upward mobility between a young Black person and a young white person — both growing up poor —without reckoning with the legacy of redlining, exclusion, and the enduring racial wealth gap.
We are a university. And at our best, we are a university committed to truth and to truth-seeking. If we are to be a university of the future, we must commit ourselves to bringing the best and the brightest to our campus — from wherever they hail — and we must acknowledge the sad reality that markers of difference still so heavily shape who gets to enjoy the privileges of this place.
Sure; it may sound inspiring to say, “It doesn’t matter where you start in this country.” It may be the kind of thing one says in a talk to a group of CEOs or from the stage of a TED talk. But it is not fact. It is fiction. It is running away from an inconvenient truth. It is ideology posing as insight. It is narrative attempting to substitute for evidence and history.
Here’s the truth: White Americans — white men especially — who didn’t need to compete against a broad-based pool because of gender and racial discrimination; who have long enjoyed access to neighborhoods and networks, jobs, clubs, and government programs that systematically excluded others; and who continue to enjoy the presumption of expertise even when they are far outside their depth — have long been the original beneficiaries of race and gender-based affirmative action in this country.
So when we look around and see that Black students are underrepresented on this campus relative to their share of the population… when we see that so many of our students come from circumstances of wealth and privilege… when we know that some portion of our students benefit from legacy status… we must say plainly that affirmative action — a DEI program — comes in many forms.
And, therefore, it makes sense that so many are so vehemently opposed to so-called DEI programs they perceive benefit those long locked out of places like Stanford.
These folks often say that they are concerned that DEI threatens merit. The real horror they confront is that DEI threatens monopoly.
Hakeem Jefferson is an assistant professor of political science and faculty director of the Program on Identity, Democracy, and Justice at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
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Stanford students react to new Vice PresidentOn Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order announcing a new Vice President in an effort to win public approval.
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Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday ordering that all federal buildings fly the U.S. flag and respective state flag at half-mast following the recent death of Pope Francis. University president Jonathan Levin ’94 announced later that he would respect the executive order on campus in hopes it would increase federal funding for the university.
“They have a couple billion to spare since they took it from Harvard. Why not give it a shot to take a few hundred million while we’re at it?” said Levin.
The death of Pope Francis has come with shock around the world as he passed following the major Catholic holiday of Easter.
Former Vice President JD Vance met with the late pope on Easter Sunday to exchange Easter greetings. Vance was one of the last world leaders to meet with the pope following his passing just hours later.
People around the world quickly pointed out the suspicious nature of the death after the two convened on Sunday.
“He was totally fine before the two met,” said an anonymous Stanford student, in fear of academic repercussions. “I can’t help but notice [Vance] might have killed him.”
Trump heard the criticism loud and clear: the growing concern of having a sitting VP as a murderer. Fears grew that it would impact his ever increasing approval ratings.
As apparent in the image above, Trump surprised guests at his speech with a familiar figure known dear to all of our hearts: the Easter Bunny. Later in Monday’s speech, Trump announced that the Bunny was not there in fact to celebrate Easter a day late, he was there to replace Vice President JD Vance.
“I think it’s a great way to show political unity in a time of great divide,” another Stanford student said.
“I did not know [E. Bunny] was a right-winger, but he makes some damn good eggs if I’m being real. I am just glad it’s not Gracie Abrams,” said Chris Vinasco-Gomez ‘28.
This comes after Trump’s tariff policies have greatly impacted the economy. This new pick may show a promising future for the Trump administration.
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‘Present the science in a helpful way’: Jeff Dukes tackles climate change in conservative statesThe minds behind the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment, including Stanford scientist Jeff Dukes, cast aside partisan divides to meaningfully connect with conservative voters and bring the conversation of climate change to the forefront of voter concerns.
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Jeff Dukes, a senior staff scientist in the Stanford Carnegie Institution for Science, brings attention to climate change in historically conservative states. From rates of carbon sequestration to prevalence of invasive species, Dukes’ research “[helps] people better understand how particular actions and choices are likely to influence the environment,” according to his lab’s website.
From 2014 to 2021 Dukes directed the Purdue Climate Change Research Center in Indiana, a state where Republicans hold a veto-proof supermajority in both houses of the legislature.
During this time, Dukes led the creation of the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment, an annual report which outlined how climate change was projected to specifically impact Indiana residents in the following areas: climate, health, forest ecosystems, urban green space, agriculture, aquatic ecosystems, tourism & recreation and energy.
During his time at Stanford, Dukes also contributed to a nation-wide climate assessment in 2023, similar to Dukes’ work in Indiana. However, the 2023 assessment appealed to a broader audience, bringing attention to climate change across the nation.
Incremental change is crawling through the state legislature, as Indiana created its first climate action plan in 2024. The plan directly cites a Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment 16 times.
According to Dukes, the annual Indiana reports were successful at sparking conversations where previously there had been few climate resources.
Indiana policymakers “didn’t want to have to think about [climate change] early on, and they were actually interested later,” Dukes said.
Sarah Pittock, an advanced lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR), who taught PWR 91NSC: “Intermediate Writing: Introduction to Science Communication” last quarter, said a unique challenge of science writing is “you have to distill [the science], not just translate it.”
According to Pittock, one main way to effectively distill is to appeal to “application,” making clear to the reader how this specifically applies to their life.
In line with this advice, the team devised the reports by asking Indiana residents what questions they had about climate change, and providing answers to those questions. The goal, according to Dukes, was that, “we [wouldn’t] be handing out a report that nobody asked for.”
“I tried to just present the science in a helpful way,” Dukes said. The reports get granular, presenting not just temperatures and precipitation trends — but how many snow days are expected, a projection of the number of mosquitos and predictions for how poultry and corn yields will fare.
After the reports’ release, Dukes embarked on an extensive press campaign. Climate change was “not a big topic of discussion in that state at that point,” Dukes said. “And a big goal of ours was to change that.”
How did Indiana — the second largest coal consumer in the nation after Texas — receive these climate science reports?
“If you turned on the news, or you opened a paper [or] went to a local news site — you would see something on climate change more often,” said Melissa Widhalm, who was operations manager for the team. Publications would often cite the reports in their coverage, Widhalm added.
“Our reports certainly helped other institutions within Indiana to work on climate change, because they could then cite our reports as a backdrop for the things that they were trying to do,” Widhalm said.
Both Widhalm and Dukes emphasized that Indiana residents understood climate change was a threat. The reports merely provided a credible place to turn to for answers. “Most people in the Midwest understand that climate change is happening and are reasonably sure that fossil fuel use has something to do with it,” Widhalm said.
According to Pittock, when communicating to those who distrust science, it’s essential to be respectful of their identities and make it clear they’re being supported, not shunned by science.
The report authors echoed this humility in communication. According to Rose Filley, former managing director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center, the team made an effort to know its audience and employ clear language to convey its message.
“Talk to them in a clear way that’s not going to include scientific jargon, that’s not going to make them feel excluded just by your language,” Widhalm said. “Be warm and clear about why they should care about your information and speak with them in a way that is bringing them into the fold — not talking at them — showing that you’re interested in what they think.”
Widhalm also outlined the challenges in communicating climate science to politicians and described getting invited to talk about their reports to the Indiana legislature. “There’s a full house. I don’t know if that was because of me or because of the lunch. Probably because of the lunch,” she said.
Widhalm said the Indiana legislature was “polite” when she spoke to them. “I didn’t get pushback on [the talk]. They seemed to absorb the information at the time.”
But only a year later, Widhalm recalls seeing the same legislators making “fairly dismissive comments” about climate change in the news. According to Widhalm, this was not an isolated phenomenon.
“The way it’s structured in most parts of the country makes politicians beholden to the most extreme elements of their own party to make it to the general election, and so you’re not going to end up having a politician who’s going to talk openly about wanting to address climate change,” Widhalm said.
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Palo Alto City Council member proposes dark sky ordinancePalo Alto City Council member Greer Stone's regulation would target light pollution through nightly curfews and by requiring lower-temperature bulbs in Palo Alto.
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The Palo Alto City Council is considering a city ordinance which would reduce light pollution by limiting the types and operating hours of outdoor light fixtures. In an April 7 meeting, the Palo Alto City Council unanimously passed Council member Greer Stone’s motion to consider “new outdoor lighting regulations” in the municipal code.
The motion instructs “staff to return to the council” with a draft of the final ordinance.
The proposal would establish a midnight curfew for outdoor lighting and restrict the temperature of light sources to lower temperature bulbs that emit orange, not blue, light.
Other elements of the ordinance include limits on how much outdoor lighting can spill over onto neighboring properties. Light fixtures would also need to be shielded, meaning an opaque cover must block light from escaping upward into the sky.
If adopted, the regulations would immediately apply to new buildings, while private residences would have up to 10 years to adapt their light sources.
The proposed ordinance also makes exceptions for parking lots, gas stations and similar areas that require lighting at all times.
Limiting outdoor lighting has benefits for human health, energy costs and the environment, but policymakers must also weigh concerns about public safety.
Because Stanford is located in unincorporated Santa Clara County, if the Palo Alto City Council passed the ordinance, it would not apply to the campus.
Rohan Parekh, a second year master’s student in materials science and co-president of Stanford Energy Club, said that light pollution both negatively impacts human health and is energy-inefficient.
Light that artificially brightens the night sky disrupts humans’ circadian rhythms, or their natural sleep-wake cycle. Artificial light, particularly blue light, can disrupt the production of melatonin, the hormone that causes sleepiness.
According to DarkSky, a pro-light ordinance nonprofit, artificial light also disrupts nocturnal animals’ behavior and can disorient birds.
Nightly curfews would also reduce yearly energy consumption.
For Parekh, seeing the night sky is another advantage of light curfews. Growing up in a city, he found it a “bummer” that he could not see the stars.
An October 2024 preliminary study of a light ordinance by the city council’s Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) predicted no “direct fiscal impacts on the City budget.” Parekh also said that installing lower-temperature bulbs or adding motion sensors are relatively inexpensive.
“You can’t really put a price on human health,” Parekh said.
He further noted that public safety is the number one concern about light curfews. Some streets may require 24/7 lighting, while businesses like restaurants and nightclubs require artificial lighting late into the night.
Bay Area communities with dark sky ordinances include Brisbane, Cupertino, Portola Valley and Woodside. Brisbane adopted its dark sky ordinance in 2024, which applies to new and existing outdoor light fixtures. All lighting in the city does not need to be in compliance until 2039.
Stone did not reply to a request for comment.
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Her POV: ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’ calls to speak ill of the living before they dieAn audacious take on the culture of silence, "On Becoming a Guinea Fowl" examines the weaponization of cultural norms to fulfill patriarchal desires, Cleveland writes.
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Content warning: This article contains references to sexual violence.
In an interview with Le Cinéma Club, Zambian-Welsh filmmaker Rungano Nyoni said her film “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” (2024) does not question Zambian traditions. Instead, it examines the weaponization of cultural norms to fulfill patriarchal desires, serving as an audacious take on the culture of silence that surrounds familial abuse and how protecting a child’s privacy can cause devastating long-term impacts.
“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” explores the funeral rituals observed by a Zambian family after Shula (Susan Chardy) discovers the body of her Uncle Fred on the side of the road. It begins as a dark comedy and morphs into a psychological thriller as Shula discovers the web of secrecy among her elders that protected her abusive uncle and grapples with the difficulty of reckoning with his legacy.
In addition to directing, Nyoni also wrote the film’s screenplay. The opening vignette illustrated her ability to leverage minimal dialogue to build a rich audiovisual tapestry and convey multilayered storytelling. Before Shula comes across Fred, she is driving home from a costume party in a black Mercedes-Benz. Donning her oversized Missy Elliott costume from the rapper’s “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” music video, Shula taps her fingers along to the Nigerian afrobeat 1979 hit “Come On Home.” Her reverie demonstrates how popular culture has traveled across time and space, shaping Shula’s orientation to the world.
The bulk of the action takes place at Shula’s mother’s home. Spurred by her cadre of nagging aunties, Shula adopts a reticent yet dutiful posture toward the work of preparing meals and running errands. Luckily, her labor is shared among her cousins, including the free-spirited Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela). Nsansa’s character provides comic relief as the cousins hide from the aunties in the pantry to gossip, drink from a flask and make fun of Fred’s wife for her outlandish displays of mourning.
The pantry serves as a cloistered space separate from the histrionics transpiring in the rest of the house. Impromptu meetings allow the cousins to share childhood stories about Fred, and while the initial tales are humorous, they then take on sinister notes, a nod to the importance of making space for people to reveal painful truths. The whispered confessions and public expressions of grief produce mental dissonance in Shula, who begins experiencing nightmares and flashbacks as a reflection of this turmoil.
Several characters are talked about before they appear, and we begin to form an impression of them through Shula’s point of view. However, the physical introduction of Fred’s wife is shocking — without spoiling too much, she is an indictment of Fred and the extent to which people were complicit in his crimes.
A key theme in “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is that rituals can bind us to behaviors that are out of sync with our feelings. Nsansa insists that Fred’s body should be covered until the ambulance arrives to retrieve him. After we learn about his attempt to molest her during childhood, it is difficult to reconcile her concern for his dignity with his monstrousness. Moreover, though the women are positioned as looking at each other across a generational divide, there are echoes of the younger generation repeating patterns under the guise of tradition. Shula bristles when told only the elders are to discuss Fred’s death, and yet she comfortably directs her younger cousins to serve the men first after the girls and women have spent hours preparing the meal.
Nyoni’s direction is also noteworthy, as she often places the viewer directly in several scenes. From shots simulating a backstage passenger’s viewpoint to multiple perspective shifts, the viewer is continually interpolated as a witness. This technique invites questions about the roles we play in our own families. Are we passive bystanders, or do we testify against the wrongs that are committed?
The film also cleverly reveals the sociopolitical contours of Zambia. At one point, the power in the house goes out and the room lights up with the glow from dozens of phones, a stunning display of how technology can provide individual solutions that dull our sense of injustice at systemic problems.
After slowly ratcheting up the tension, “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” ends on an explosive note. The title is explained in a way that underscores why the audience is placed in the middle of many scenes. Though after a second viewing, I was convinced of its veracity, there is some ambiguity as to whether the final scene is real or imagined. What remains unambiguous is that “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is one of the best films I’ve seen this year — and a call to speak ill of the living to reduce the harm they commit before they die.
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Sponge: Thoughts on passivityAt a school that so deeply values action, is there space for the passive learners among us?
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A sponge, my AP English Language & Composition teacher described me in my letter of recommendation. Evy is a sponge, just so eager to learn and absorb all sorts of knowledge.
As an anxious individual who did not break through the stereotype of the quiet Asian kid, who admired those who spoke up but did not trust herself to possess enough knowledge to contribute to discussions, this certainly did not feel like the most directly positive compliment. I couldn’t imagine many people would enjoy being compared to sponges. With this awareness of how she perceived me, I re-evaluated all of my actions from a sponge-like lens.
Communicating between club members, being a conduit for knowledge rather than a knowledge contributor themselves, Sponge.
Reading books, consuming media, Sponge.
Absorbing neighboring conversations, noting what people are wearing, Sponge.
A soft and open-minded person, Sponge.
Perhaps the habit can be traced back to a sandbox childhood, where my hours could be occupied spectating ants spilling out of domes punctured several times over by destructive curiosity. And the next day, squatting to inspect its aftermath, or lack thereof — a seamless bandage indistinguishable from the rest of the grainy complex.
A simultaneous source of awe and disgust the anthills brought – awe for its regenerative properties, its impressive urban density and disgust for its triggering of trypophobia. A safe twig-length away, I squinted at the granule composition, the fine, porous weaving of black specks and clear silica, tapped the top to observe its structural integrity. I brushed it iteratively to see how far I could pare Wall before I hit Ant.
Other days, I’d feel the morning dew on our grass, watch crystalline spheres merge into rivulets traveling down verdant blades. Or I’d prod the ground in our yard with the pole of a broken shovel, creating dirt clouds. I wish I could say early case studies in my backyard inspired me to be a myrmecologist, biologist, or some sort of natural scientist. Frankly, I did not know those professions existed, and instead, my knowledge of anthills, like most other knowledge, stops at blunt qualitative observations.
Perhaps even that was too intellectual of an example to start off with, and a better one would be the hours spent Ripstik-ing up and down the driveway, carving S’s through the wind with the wheels jolting on the concrete seams as my only indication of time’s passing. Or the ungodly amount of time I spent on our back porch staring into the thickets of forest and attuning my ears to hear different bird chirps. Or sitting in the glass office room during autumn thunderstorms, relishing the concept of protection amidst a turbulent natural reset.
Such passive learning rather than inquiry drove my awareness of the world. All other intake of information, books, videos, school content, I similarly memorized or observed with no contest of thought, believing the world to be an objective truth collected through whatever bits and pieces I was given. In the liminal state of non-commitment to a topic of study and lack of self-pioneering, perhaps what I am saying is I lack a visualization of belonging. I can not imagine my parents talking about their ant scientist daughter. Or someone exceptionally good at any of the extracurriculars that I more or less quit: piano, tap, ballet, swim team, math team, and tennis.
Or perhaps what I am saying can be best demonstrated by the Tybee shoreline, a sight that can keep me occupied for hours in its magnetism of rumination, when the water laps at your toes, pulling a veil over your tracks. Confronted with air lashing against your face, the outstretched sky, and no history to trace back to, there is an infinitude of directions to advance and an equal appeal to stay stationary.
I could fool myself by saying I philosophize at the beach and mull over alternative lives, consider our purpose as humans more than to bask in the immensity of nothingness. But sometimes I do fool myself, and stirred by the dark, mysterious oceanic force dictating the magnitudes of pushing and pulling, I am endowed with an inactionable type of agency, an artificial motivation that almost always dissolves steadily once I am back in the car. But before that, I hold on for as long as I can to the Yes, I will call that person to check in. Yes I will finally read this, learn this, achieve this, dream big. Yes, I will go on more adventures.
Or on the west coast, a new home, the waves knocking their heads against the crags, a type of conscious forgetting.
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Getting off The Farm and into the treesThis spring, take a good nature walk or run on one of the many trails near Stanford's campus.
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Spring quarter is in full swing, and Stanford students are itching to get out of class and into the sunshine. While the Dish offers nice views for a quick walk or run near campus, these trails near Stanford can be a nice alternative for those wanting to explore the beautiful nature surrounding the university.
Rancho San Antonio County Park and Open Space Preserve offers trails for hiking, horseback riding and biking, as well as space for picnicking and model aircraft fields. Reviews on Google describe it as a “beautiful outdoor space” and a “fantastic destination for outdoor activities.” Trails of all difficulty levels offer sweeping views of the surrounding hills, as well as access to Deer Hollow Farm. Parking can sometimes be full, especially on weekends, so plan to arrive early to secure a spot. With 25 miles of trails throughout the area, Rancho offers a range of activities and breathtaking natural scenery just a short drive from campus.
Bordering open land owned by Stanford, the Pearson Arastradero Preserve features over 10 miles of hiking, equestrian,and biking trails, making it a great option for those seeking to get outside and explore Palo Alto. The preserve and its surrounding area are habitats for the California puma, leading to regular sightings of pumas and coyotes within the preserve. Beyond the offered trails, Arastradero Lake is a quick 20-minute walk from the parking lot and open for fishing year-round. The park opens at 8 a.m., but closing hours vary depending on the time of year. From now until May 16, the preserve will stay open until 8:30 p.m. A mix of rolling green hills and forest, this area is perfect for Stanford students looking for a quick excursion off campus, as the park is less than a 10-minute drive from campus.
Russian Ridge boasts a stunning open ridge-top complemented by panoramic views of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Trails are open to hikers and equestrians, and designated trails allow for bikes. During the spring wildflower season, poppies and lupine bloom all over the preserve. Gumweed, mule’s ears, farewell-to-spring and brodiaea bloom in May and June.
Spending time on these nearby trails offers more than just a break from classwork. These areas all offer recreation opportunities to recharge mentally, soak in some California sun and reconnect with the natural beauty that surrounds Stanford. Whether you’re looking for a peaceful walk among wildflowers or a more challenging hike with sweeping views, getting off campus can bring a fresh perspective and a much-needed pause. This spring, take advantage of these parks and see what’s just beyond the classroom.
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Women’s Community Center hosts 20th Gender, Equity and Justice SummitAround 80 guests, including local Bay Area activists, gathered Saturday at the Black Community Services Center to discuss "healing, hope and connection toward liberation."
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Around 80 guests, including local Bay Area activists, gathered Saturday for the Gender, Equity and Justice Summit at the Black Community Services Center, connecting students across disciplines with mentors working for social justice in reproductive rights, healthcare, queer Asian Pacific Islander (API) power and more causes.
The Women’s Community Center (WCC) hosted the event, which campus groups including the Black Community Services Center, the Feminist and Gender Studies Department and others co-sponsored. According to coordinator and WCC intern Lily Forman ’25, the summit — themed around “Embodying Healing, Hope, and Connection Toward Liberation” — has been in the works for months.
Participant Tobi Bankole ’25 saw the gathering as “super timely.” In recent months, the Trump administration has moved to repeal and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts across society, limited access to gender-affirming care for children nationwide and backed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a congressional bill that complicates voting for millions of individuals, including married women.
Originally called the Stanford Women’s Leadership Conference, the WCC has held a student-led event aimed at promoting gender equity and justice annually for the past 20 years. The summit’s name changed to the Gender, Equity and Justice Summit in 2019 to be more inclusive.
“The students have worked really hard over the last year to put [this event] together,” said Faith Kazmi, associate dean and director of the WCC. “Especially in these times, I think it’s wonderful to have this kind of gathering to have people connect, network and learn about how they can use their talents to make a change in the world,” Kazmi added.
Keynote speaker Prentis Hemphill — a therapist, somatics teacher, political organizer and author — spoke about the importance of embodiment in “new and dangerous” times.
“I think it’s honest to say we’ve ventured into a new and dangerous time where chaos is going to be… with more of us, more often,” Hemphill said.
Hemphill opened their talk with a breathing exercise. They admitted that, despite their efforts to bring levity to the lecture, “it [was] not gonna be super light.” Over their 45-minute talk, Hemphill spoke about the “difference between what we say we believe and what our body actually does in moments of pressure.”
Despite Hemphill’s frequent allusions to fears amid the current political climate, summit participants still laughed along with them as they recounted the difference between their and their wife’s “fight, flight or freeze” responses. While hiking, Hemphill said, they had stepped on something soft that hissed up at them. While Hemphill ran, their partner froze and “studied” the snake.
“I was showing you that [running] was an option,’” Hemphill said to their wife in the aftermath of the rattlesnake run-in, they said. Hemphill tied examples like this one to the importance of understanding how one’s body reacts to stress and fear in a politically tumultuous era.
“I think that in a time where a lot is up in the air, it was really great to have a keynote speaker who focused on somatics, embodiment and how you’re supposed to feel in times like these,” Bankole said.
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Clinical associate professor Jennifer Pien weaves storytelling with medicineClinical associate professor and director of the “Pegasus Physician Writers” Jennifer Pien is drawn to the individual stories of patients.
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For Jennifer Pien, clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, “storytelling didn’t come naturally,” she said. Instead, Pien is drawn to the “landscape of words and their beauty and how they connect together to create a mood, an emotion, an atmosphere.”
Pien’s journey into storytelling started when she was young. “I enjoyed a little bit of the writing when I was in my childhood, but I kind of set it aside,” Pien, who intended to pursue a career in medicine, said.
But when Pien started applying for medical school, her interviewers asked why she was interested in medicine. She answered: “I was really interested in the individual stories of patients and really wanting to help support them in their well-being and care.”
However, it wasn’t until Pien reached a midpoint in her career practicing psychiatry that she — facing burnout — decided to take a poetry class.
“I was sort of forced to write, and I think it reminded me of the joy of the writing process itself,” Pien said.
After taking the class, Pien “embarked on a process of novel writing.” One of her first stories was inspired by her brother, an artist who came of age during the 1980s, and geopolitical events in Hong Kong and China.
When Amy Collins, Pien’s nonfiction literary agent, first met Pien, she said she “fell in love” with Pien’s stories and “wanted to represent her speculative novel so badly.”
“Her prose was rich and evocative,” Collins wrote to The Daily. “Jenn somehow reaches into what we feel and fear and draws it out of us. Her writing is both comforting and compelling.”
Pien’s other literary agent is Connor Smith, with whom she co-founded Hesperides Literary, a literary agency. According to Smith, Pien is “a writer who, when she gains full access to the creative sanctuary in her mind, pours beauty and song onto the page at a pace so freakish that it makes me question whether she has made an infernal pact with some authority of the underworld.”
“She plays adeptly with language and mythology and history and beauty and horror, conjuring scenes that are as surreal and dreamlike as they are meticulously substantiated with cultural and historical research,” Smith said.
Beyond her own pieces, writing led Pien to seek out other resources, including the Pegasus Physician Writers at Stanford, a community of current and aspiring physicians dedicated to creative storytelling in medicine. The program is housed under the Medical Humanities and the Arts branch of the School of Medicine. Pien is now its director.
Through monthly meetings and workshops, Pegasus’ mission is to “foster emerging voices — whether that’s in our younger student cohort or an emeritus faculty member who’s never written a book who now dreams of doing so — and providing a community with skills, resources and support for a path towards publication,” Pien said.
Pegasus supports writers in finding literary representation through editors and agencies, as well as in launching books to a wider audience. In addition to physicians, Pegasus supports undergraduate and graduate students interested in creative writing.
“There’s a strong interest in learning about physicians, learning about their experiences with patient care, peeking behind the curtain of what it’s like to be a medical professional,” Pien said.
To cater to its wide-ranging community, Pegasus supports journals, symposiums, readings, workshops, seminars and collaborations with other institutions. Among its journals, Pien is the editor in chief and a founding member of The Pegasus Review, a medical literary journal launched in 2018 for the 10th anniversary of Pegasus.
Moving forward, Pien hopes to emphasize opportunities within Pegasus for undergraduate and medical students. For example, the organization started a student-only group, Pien said.
“We were worried that some of the hierarchical elements that can sometimes be part of the medical care system would infiltrate into the group,” Pien said. To address this, the student-only group offered intimate writers’ workshops and retreats.
Pegasus is also collaborating with the Oxford Review of Books, a student publication published in the U.K. and now in association with Stanford, Pien said.
Since joining Pegasus, Pien has appreciated its community of students, trainees, residents, professors, published authors and new writers.
“It was just really a wonderful way to meet a fun, rich, diversified sectional view of the medical community,” Pien said. “I’ve developed lifelong friendships as a consequence of these communities.”
Pien’s personal goals include “continuing to enjoy the creative writing process, finding time for it and creating long-form novels that I would be proud to bring to the world,” she said.
Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, a psychologist, adjunct professor at Stanford and member of Pegasus, wrote to The Daily that “Dr. Pien has an amazing sense of seeing and appreciating the beauty and wonder of each person.”
“She understands how the process of co-creating illness narratives helps health care providers to recognize the individuality of patients, ” Murphy-Shigematsu wrote. “And she believes that honoring the stories that grow out of our patients’ lived experiences benefits not only them but also us as professionals.”
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Inaugural Three-Minute Thesis competition celebrates graduate researchAt Stanford’s inaugural Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, ten Ph.D. candidates had just three minutes to effectively explain their research and captivate a non-specialist audience.
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The average thesis defense lasts around two hours. However, last Thursday, ten Stanford Ph.D. candidates had just three minutes to make their case.
At Stanford’s inaugural Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, graduate students across four out of seven University schools faced the challenge of clearly, concisely and compellingly presenting their research to a non-specialist audience in under three minutes. Favour Nerrise, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in electrical engineering, took home the grand prize and People’s Choice award, earning $5,500 for her presentation on artificial intelligence and early brain disease detection.
Tamri Matiashvili, a fourth-year student in economics, placed second for her presentation on the first-ever female physicians from the Russian Empire and their lasting impact on the medical field. Kristen Abels, a fourth-year student in chemical engineering, placed third for her proposal for a more sustainable method of lithium recovery. Matiashvili and Abels earned $3,000 and $1,000 in prize money, respectively.
“I really wanted to challenge myself to be able to deliver a scripted speech, which is something we never learn,” Matiashvili said.
University president Jonathan Levin ’94 emceed the fast-paced event, which featured a panel of five Stanford faculty judges. Among them were Dean of Research David Studdart and applied physics and chemistry professor W. E. Moerner, a 2014 Nobel laureate in chemistry.
Following a video pre-selection round in late January, ten finalists were chosen to work with oral communication coaches to refine their pitches for the live event in Hauck Auditorium. With an engineering background, Nerrise was especially motivated by the challenge of communicating her work beyond its technical contributions.
“Our mentors who helped us develop our speeches really encouraged us to think differently,” Nerrise said. The coaches pushed candidates to consider why non-experts should consider their work, Nerrise added.
In addition to the strict time cap, finalists were only allowed one static slide to support their pitch. To add a fun twist, each finalist chose a walk-up song, mimicking the energy of a baseball game entrance. Picks ranged from “Memories” by Maroon 5 to “Life is a Highway” by Rascal Flatts.
A professor at the University of Queensland created the Three-Minute Thesis competition in 2008, inspired by the three-minute shower timers used during a severe drought in Queensland, Australia. Since its inception, the competition has spread to over 900 universities in over 85 countries worldwide.
Other topics spoken about at the event included cancer treatment, the American dream, computer-animated hair, plant stem cells and infrastructure in tropical rainforests.
“Particularly [in a Ph.D.], you’re just narrowing down the most specialized knowledge, and to be able to broaden out and figure out how you can communicate that out to a broad audience in a way that excites them about research is an incredible skill,” Levin said at the event.
“Having this event here at Stanford is really a nice way to give this group of students a chance to go through that experience of working on communicating out the work that they do,” Levin said.
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