Stanford football's struggles under Troy Taylor reflect broader issues within the athletic department, as NIL, revenue sharing and conference realignment expose gaps in leadership and priorities.
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Stanford football’s 59-28 loss to NC State a few weeks ago may have been the breaking point for many fans during the Troy Taylor era, despite the team’s recent upset win over Louisville. The former Cal quarterback and Sacramento State head coach has struggled to make an impact, holding a dismal 6-16 record at the helm of the Cardinal football program. Even a Big Game victory is unlikely to rekindle enthusiasm among the Cardinal faithful.
While Taylor himself has not demonstrated the ability so far to right the ship, Stanford fans are also rightfully pointing a finger at the athletic administration for the program’s demise.
Since student-athletes gained the ability to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL), Stanford’s administration has approached the new pay-for-play era with notable caution. The University only endorsed its NIL collective, Lifetime Cardinal, in April. Additionally, Stanford has maintained restrictive policies regarding the transfer portal, further complicating head coach Taylor’s job. As a result, he has relied heavily on true freshmen this season.
The University has yet to clarify its stance on revenue sharing or how it plans to distribute revenue among its athletic programs. The Daily has reached out for comment.
These factors have left Stanford football in a state of uncertainty about its future. However, the most pressing question remains unanswered: By what standards should we evaluate the Stanford athletic department?
With the upcoming revenue-sharing requirements stemming from the House v. NCAA settlement, it is crucial for those in charge to provide a clear answer to this question.
The impact of Olympic sports at Stanford is unparalleled. The University dominated the 2024 Paris Olympics, earning the most medals of any institution and far outpacing the competition. This success has given Olympic sports a level of prestige at Stanford that is unmatched elsewhere in the country. Furthermore, the University’s decision — and eventual reversal of that decision — to cut 11 sports in the summer of 2020 highlighted the significant political influence many of these programs hold within Stanford.
This influence, however, could potentially result in these sports receiving a disproportionate share of the revenue.
As the last few years have made clear, football remains king across college sports. A program’s prospects for conference realignment are largely determined by the strength of its football team.
If Stanford decides to give football less revenue than its peers across the country, then it’s going to put itself at an even further disadvantage. And if the ACC dissolves, then where would Stanford land in that case? They won’t be attractive to the Big Ten, Big 12 or SEC, which would be the main conferences that have the revenue to support our thriving Olympic sports programs.
The athletic department can no longer be judged solely by the number of Directors’ Cups it wins. While Stanford excels in many non-revenue sports, thanks in part to limited professional opportunities in these fields and the university’s world-class education, this metric no longer reflects the realities of college athletics today.
In the era of NIL, conference realignment and revenue sharing, the primary measure of success should be the performance of revenue-generating sports—particularly football. By this standard, Stanford’s athletic department has fallen short in recent years, as both the football and men’s basketball programs have deteriorated under the current administration.
The critical question now is how Provost Jenny Martinez and President Jonathan Levin ’94 will evaluate the department’s trajectory.
Stanford’s best hope of maintaining a competitive power-conference football program — and by extension, preserving the rest of its athletic department — depends on Martinez and Levin recognizing the decline of football and men’s basketball despite the department’s continued dominance in the Directors’ Cup standings. Without a clear-eyed assessment of these issues, Stanford risks losing its power-conference status entirely, allowing the illusion of success to mask the underlying challenges.
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On Stanford’s anti-student free speech guidelinesThe Daily’s coverage on Stanford’s new free speech guidelines failed to mention how the Faculty Senate’s Ad Hoc Committee on University speech has had zero voting student representatives since its inception, Strawser writes.
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As a former news reporter for The Daily, I proudly and tirelessly helped to cover the process by which Stanford approved the Committee of 12’s (C12) proposals on academic integrity and discipline. I closely examined the Undergraduate Senate’s (UGS) objection to updated Honor Code language over a proposed study into proctoring on campus. I was one of the reporters that shed light on the Faculty Senate sidestepping the UGS by permitting proctoring university-wide — a decision that violated 102 years of precedent of deferring to students on academic integrity. I was in the room when the UGS doubled down on its objections in response to the Faculty Senate’s historic betrayal of undergraduate students, which one senator rightfully described as having “circumvented the democratic process.”
I cite this recent memory in Stanford’s history due to the University’s ongoing free speech conversations sidestepping student voices in very similar ways. Alarmingly, The Daily’s coverage on Stanford’s new free speech guidelines failed to mention how the Faculty Senate’s Ad Hoc Committee on University speech has had zero voting student representatives since its inception. The Ad Hoc Committee — central to the Faculty Senate’s conversations on Stanford’s free speech obligations and the University’s broader approach to freedom of expression — has disenfranchised the entire student body. Students being denied an equal seat when their free speech rights are on the chopping block fundamentally contradicts Stanford’s shared governance model and its supposed democratic commitments.
Shared governance, which positions students and faculty as co-equal partners in university affairs, has the precedent of giving students an equal say (at minimum) on free speech. The C12, which conducted university-wide outreach to formulate the guidelines under which the tensions between free speech and campus conduct are adjudicated, had five student and five faculty members. The Board on Conduct Affairs (BCA), which has the sole authority to initiate amendments to Stanford’s conduct procedures, has six student and six faculty members. The student and faculty panelists that determine the validity of alleged conduct violations are themselves selected by students’ and faculty’s elected representatives, respectively.
Students being on equal footing with faculty isn’t anything out of the ordinary for how Stanford navigates something as consequential as campus conduct. Why should free speech be any different?
On Stanford’s democratic commitments, the Faculty Senate’s designation of Democracy Day as an academic holiday tells students that their professors want them to be engaged in democracy. Stanford requiring freshmen to take Civic, Liberal and General Education (COLLEGE) courses suggests the University is committed to helping them develop the skills necessary to engage with one another in a democratic society.
University President Jonathan Levin ’94, the night before Election Day, signaled to students that the United States is unique in world history regarding the freedom and opportunity that it affords them.
Due to its hypocritically anti-student free speech approach, Stanford can neither claim to be where the winds of freedom blow nor can it “engage in the robust and meaningful exchange of ideas in which all voices are included.” This is how we should view free speech on campus moving forward. When it comes to reasonable conversations on how to regulate, for example, student protests, chalking and dorm materials, we cannot trust Stanford’s overlords and underlings excuse for university governance.
I don’t think that I’m alone in believing in the democratic promise that Stanford could live up to. This promise — cultivating the leaders of tomorrow — matters more than ever as we face society’s unprecedented challenges that transcend national boundaries and academic disciplines. For Stanford to rise to the occasion, giving students the equal role in campus discourse that they deserve is a necessary first step.
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The Big touchdownThe post The Big touchdown appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
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Daily Diminutive #014 (Nov. 21, 2024)Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords twice a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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In Focus: ‘C/o Kancharpelam’ addresses the small town taboo of love“C/o Kancharpelam” pays homage to love and the titular village, grounded in reality while highlighting struggles of a patriarchal society, Satish writes.
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Srithanya Satish ’27 analyzes films that spotlight the diverse and vibrant South Asian experience in her column, “In Focus: South Asian stories through film.”
A modest sex worker. A pacifist aggressor. A 40-year-old virgin. Director Venkatesh Maha challenges all classes, divisions and boundaries in “C/o Kancharpalem” (2018). The movie tells four rural tales of characters trying to find love amid entrenched societal prejudice. Set in the locality of Kancharpalem in Andhra Pradesh, India, the movie delves into the characters whose lives seamlessly coalesce through a multi-linear narrative. With these raw relationships set across age, caste and religion among a caring yet conservative backdrop, we, too, fall in love with the characters’ bold defiance and acceptance in their truthful quest for love and self.
The portrait of love — pure yearning that transcends all generations — is a key tenet to follow in this movie. Innocent, schoolboy Sundaram (Kesava Karri) casts a doting, doe-eyed gaze toward classmate Sunitha (Nithyasri Goru) amid the pouring rain. Eager, middle-aged Gaddam (Mohan Bhagath) overflows in giddy anticipation for a mystery woman who regularly stops by at his local alcohol shop. These heartfelt approaches toward love and companionship invoke a sense that we are all excited little kids at heart.
Yet, this film also parallels the initial light-hearted nature of love with its real-life consequences. Can a 49-year-old finally find love — what would society think? Can a known sex worker find genuine love — what would society do? The suffocating norms and conceptions of society are completely challenged as Maha develops each character to detail the non-conforming nature and universality of love.
The implicitly defined structure of society is adeptly framed by cinematographers Varun Chaphekar and Aditya Javvadi. We see the backs of schoolchildren neatly laid out in an array wearing their khaki-colored and white uniforms, as they sit in the tight, gray classroom. Raju, the 49-year-old unmarried man, sits off to the side of the lunch table at his workplace and in the margins of our screen, as the higher-ranked and higher-caste workers sit squarely in the middle.
These reinforcing long frames, though, are directly countered by the close-ups shots of joy — the triumph of individuality pokes through overarching norms. At the school culture show, we finally see the close-up shots of kids’ joyous and vibrant faces as their peers sing and dance on stage. Radha (Radha Bessy), a new employee at Raju’s company, passionately takes up space and invites Raju to sit at the lunch table through a resounding, moral assertion. She takes control of the narrative, followed by the camera.
“C/o Kancharpalem” ensured to strike the delicate balance of the small town’s understated moments with charged moments of societal contention. Oppressive authority figures stand in front of every character. Sunitha’s father doesn’t let her sing at the school culture show, widowed Radha is shamed by her brother for bringing up remarriage in her 40s, Bhargavi’s (Praneetha Patnaik) father threatens her for wanting to marry a Christian as a Brahmin (high-caste) girl.
I found the blinding rage in these male characters baseless at first — until I realized how they were conflated with pre-existing societal expectations. Glaring double standards struck once again. Radha’s brother’s stigmatization of Raju as a lonely orphan conflicted with his own supposed family values as he violently chastised Radha. Bhargavi’s father’s blackmailing and aggression against marrying a Christian went against his Hindu principles of tolerance and peace. By weaponizing violence, these families became a symbol of order and conformity rather than love.
Radha’s daughter erupts in one scene into a solemn call: “Will a woman ever be able to live life on her own terms?” Her conviction echoed throughout the scene and her blazen voice broke through conceptions of her own youth and self-autonomy. All of the film’s female characters end up boldly breaking through the construct of femininity — whether it means openly drinking alcohol, singing, or falling in love unconditionally. And they do so even if it means retaliation.
Though the various love stories that emerge are challenged throughout the movie, one love is constant — the communal love for Kancharpelam itself. The movie poignantly sets up intricate scenes of village life through a subdued, authentic and tight-knit lens. Extended scene sequences pan to Raju strolling through the blue paint-chipped corners and narrow alleyways of the village. He passes by women cooking fresh fish curry, craftsmen hammering furniture and priests worshiping their local idols. Schoolchild Sundaram and his friend run in the rain, shielded by a dried banana leaf umbrella.
The bright yellows, reds and cheery bells of Bharatanatyam (a prominent South Indian classical dance) are juxtaposed with the hearty church bell toll that rings for the overlooked Christian minority. Even the folksy buoyancy of the music is anchored by the profound lyrics crafted by Raghukul and Vishwa, echoing the simple joys of rural life. Maha reinforces the duality yet common community of people in this interconnected story, by portraying a realistic village life.
“C/o Kancharpelam” is an homage to love and the titular village itself, grounded in reality while highlighting struggles of a patriarchal society. The film’s ultimate hopeful lens toward fate and love makes us appreciate our shared humanity all the more.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
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From the Community | Why you should vote no on SGWU’s tentative agreement with StanfordSGWU's tentative agreement with Stanford will not provide the protections that graduate students need, two graduate students write.
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The Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU) reached a tentative agreement with Stanford last Tuesday. Now, the agreement is subject to an ongoing ratification vote that will expire Thursday. Voting against this agreement is graduate workers’ last chance to get a living wage and protection of fellows’ rights as workers for the next three years.
You can sign a membership card here. Everyone must sign a new card to vote. Upon signing, you will be sent a ballot in the next 24 hours. The deadline to vote is Thursday.
If the current tentative agreement is ratified, thousands of graduate workers paid by research fellowships will not receive the protections against discrimination, harassment and power abuse — which the union’s bargaining committee claimed as a main “bargaining win.”
Winning fellow inclusion is possible, as the University of Minnesota’s Graduate Labor Union did so in their own tentative agreement. Although SGWU’s bargaining committee claims that acceptance of the current agreement will lead to improved negotiations with Stanford on fellow inclusion in the future, there is nothing to imply this. Instead, now is the best chance that graduate workers have to include research fellows in the bargaining unit.
Voting yes on this tentative agreement means accepting that fellows are not graduate workers, even if they often do the same work as research assistants. Voting no, by contrast, will continue this fight, which is the most impactful that organizing can achieve!
When the contract between Stanford and SGWU becomes ratified, you will pay the union 1.44% of your wage if you are a research assistant, course assistant or teaching assistant. This is true no matter whether you are a member of the union or not.
Considering this fact, and considering that rent will increase by 4.5%, 4.0% and 3.5% in the next three years, respectively, the 4.75%, 4.0% and 3.5% raises in the next three years as specified in the current tentative agreement are effectively pay cuts every year.
The stipend in the tentative agreement is about $11,000 below the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Very Low Income Level, according to a table that the union presented in July; this wage gap is 50% more than that of peer institutions.
In other words, Stanford is sending the message that we are not worthy of a living wage. This wage gap is especially harmful to people from low income communities and families with children. The current agreement will guarantee that students remain in poverty without improvement in three years time.
It is important to note Stanford has increased the stipend for graduate workers every year. The average rate of increase in the last 10 years is 4.4%. When adding in union dues or agency fees, the pay raises promised in SGWU’s current tentative agreement over the next three years will be lower than this average rate.
| Past minimum stipend for first-year graduate workers in the Department of Chemistry | 2014 | $34796 |
| 2015 | $36192 | |
| 2016 | $37836 | |
| 2017 | $39444 | |
| 2018 | $41316 | |
| 2019 | $44616 | |
| 2020 | $46620 | |
| 2021 | $48558 | |
| 2022 | $50600 | |
| 2023 | $52092 | |
| Minimum stipend under the tentative agreement, with union dues | 2024 | $53274 |
| 2025 | $55537 | |
| 2026 | $57618 |
45% of the graduate workers participated in the strike authorization vote, of which 89% voted for a strike. The bargaining committee stated in town hall meetings last week that they called off the strike because they thought that those who did not vote were ambivalent as to whether or not to strike.
The truth, however, is that the bargaining committee did not reach enough people during the strike authorization vote. From what I observed, the number of people voting was still increasing quickly on the last day of the vote. More people would have voted for strike authorization if we had continued organizing. In the end, the voting period was arbitrarily set by the bargaining committee, which turned out to be too early.
Now, the bargaining committee is doing something very similar. It has set the ratification vote of the tentative agreement to start and end within ten days of reaching the agreement. This leaves graduate workers insufficient time to have an informed decision on the vote, and gives opposing organizers a huge disadvantage. Other unions, such as the one formerly representing graduate workers at Columbia University, have used this tactic to suppress opposition to bad contracts in the past.
This tentative agreement is not the best offer graduate students could receive — it is simply the best offer our leaders thought they were prepared to organize. We all deserve more, and voting no is the last chance to continue this fight before we lose our ability to strike for three years.
Yizhen Chen is a second-year Ph.D. student in mathematics. Reagan Nicole Ross is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in communications.
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A rivalry rewritten: Rugby’s brief reign in Big GameIn 1906, Stanford and Cal replaced football with rugby in Big Game due to player safety concerns, marking a brief but impactful epoch in the rivalry's history.
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Big Game took an unexpected turn in 1906 when Stanford and Cal battled for the Axe — not over football, but rugby. Concerns over player safety led both teams to replace their storied football rivalry with the English game.
This tipping point came on Nov. 25, 1905, when Union College halfback William Moore suffered a fatal skull fracture during a game against NYU. The tragedy was part of a grim trend. The Chicago Tribune reported that 19 players had died and 137 had been injured in 1905 alone. The article, headlined “Football Year’s Death Harvest,” sparked nationwide alarm.
Stanford and Cal acted quickly in search for a safer alternative to football. By March 1906, the schools agreed to play rugby in Big Game. Former Stanford President David Starr Jordan, a vocal critic of football, supported the shift.
“Some day the college presidents and school heads of this country will perhaps be called cowardly and brutal because they did not put a stop to the dangers of football, a sport that destroys the best in American youth,” Jordan told The New York Times.
Rugby seemed like a promising replacement. Its emphasis on skill and faster, open play appeared less hazardous than the brute force of football. Stanford claimed a 6-3 victory in the first rugby Big Game in November 1906 and held the Axe for two more years. The introduction of rugby, however, was not without controversy.
Immediately after the decision to play rugby, Stanford’s former football captain A. J. Chalmers captured the mood of many players.
“It was rugby or nothing,” he told The Daily. “I know there is a general sentiment among the football men at Stanford against rugby, and I heartily concur with that statement. I am opposed to rugby, but when it comes to a choice of rugby or nothing, I will support the English game.”
The opposition to rugby continued to grow. In 1907, just one year after the adoption of rugby, Stanford players called for a return to the old game, arguing that football was much more exciting for the American public. In 1909, an American Football Association was organized to counter the “invasion of rugby” in California secondary schools. The sport failed to expand beyond California and Nevada colleges, and thus, limited the Cardinal’s interscholastic competition.
Critics also derided rugby’s deviation from American football’s principles.
Yale football coach Walter Camp told The Daily in 1910, “One primary principle of the American game is to retain possession of the ball. Rugby, of course, does not make that the primary principle.”
A significant break from American tradition and spirit, rugby remained part of Big Game only until 1915, when Cal decided to return to football. Stanford would not agree to resume football until 1919, and the two teams did not meet for their annual rivalry between 1915 and 1919. Finally, in the 1919 Big Game — Stanford and Cal’s first football matchup in 14 years — Cal won 14-10. The Daily called it a “defeat that [was] virtually a triumph.” Football was back.
The rugby experiment was short-lived, but left a lasting legacy. Nine Stanford students went on to play in the 1924 U.S. Olympic rugby team that won gold, pulling a major upset over the highly-regarded French team. More importantly, rugby’s role in Big Game reflects enduring concerns about football’s risks.
The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS), the precursor to the NCAA, was founded in 1906 to address football’s dangers. While reforms like the forward pass and neutral zone have since transformed the sport, debates over player safety persist.
Today, the NFL leads efforts to improve safety with initiatives like the introduction of the Guardian Cap and new kickoff rules. However, progress at the college level has been slower due to resource gaps and legal liability.
“Players are bigger, faster, stronger than ever before,” wrote Stanford football orthopedic surgeon Seth Sherman in an email to The Daily. “To protect our players, we must match the intensity of the game with advances in equipment (i.e. helmets, braces) and evolving strategies for sports performance, injury prevention, diagnosis and treatment of injury.”
Big Game’s rugby era highlights a pivotal chapter in the rivalry’s history, born from a bold move to prioritize player safety over tradition. More than a century later, the annual Stanford-Cal matchup remains a powerful tradition that is a symbol of both the rich history and ongoing transformation of collegiate football.
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Music from your brain: Stanford students win Cal HacksSophia Zhang ’27 and Justin Wu ’27, alongside two teammates, won the world's alrgest collegiate hackathon with a project that translates brainwaves into music.
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Sophia Zhang ’27, Justin Wu ’27 and two teammates won first place overall at Cal Hacks, the world’s largest collegiate hackathon, with a project on music generation from brainwaves.
Cal Hacks, hosted annually by UC Berkeley, gathered over 1,500 students this October and gave them 36 hours to create “something amazing,” according to the event’s website.
The team’s project, titled Duet, uses electroencephalography (EEG) technology from the company Emotiv to measure brainwaves and translate them into music. The project relies on machine learning to classify the brain’s various emotional states and create adaptive music that changes with your emotions.
Prior to the hackathon, the team had never met in person. Wu and Zhang were friends, as were teammates Jiahui Jin, a junior at the University of British Columbia, and Wang, a junior who attends Western University. But they found each other on Slack and recognized their common interests. Collectively, the team had experience in competitive programming, video game development and brain-computer interface research. Wu and Zhang study computer science while Jin and Wang study business.
Jin had been working with EEGs before the hackathon and knew that she wanted to incorporate them into their project. The team took advantage of the many EEG startups located in San Francisco, reaching out to them before the hackathon to ask if they could use their devices for their project, with Emotiv ultimately agreeing.
The team was inspired by existing research relying on music to read brainwaves but realized they did not see any projects attempting to do the reverse: creating music from brainwaves.
“We wanted to see if we could revolutionize more traditional ideas and use the brainwaves themselves to generate music,” Wang explained.
Both Wang and Wu are involved in performing and teaching music, and their experiences further informed the project.
“I’ve had the opportunity to teach students with learning disabilities and found that music was a unique way for people with nontraditional ways of communication to express themselves,” Wu said.
The team dynamically allocated tasks based on individual strengths. While they did instantly connect and work well together, the team did encounter a few obstacles during the tournament, such as being almost unable to submit the project on time due to getting locked out.
The team began on a rushed note. They were unable meet each other until 12 hours into their allocated project time due to conflicts with midterms and hectic flight schedules.
“We all barely slept, and in the middle of the hackathon, we went to this random apartment building, passed out on the floor and got kicked out by security,” Zhang recounted. “It was a really fun experience overall, though.”
Zhang was inspired by the “really high creative energy” that all the Cal Hacks participants exuded. Wu was similarly energized by “seeing everyone else working on their projects, which forced us to lock in on ours.”
Jin was most excited to see everyone’s final project and to share her team’s work.
“Being able to explain in detail what we had been working on and seeing other people’s projects was so fulfilling,” Jin said.
Cal Hacks offered $188,960 in prizes, with the first place overall winners awarded Framework Laptops and special Major League Hacking Winner Pins.
Wang enjoyed the creative spirit of all the participants in the hackathon. As someone not studying computer science, he said that he learned a lot from “seeing people building things they were genuinely passionate about.”
The team also provided advice for beginners who are interested in participating in a hackathon.
“Make something that you think is really cool, because if you think it’s really cool, it will show, and the judges will see it,” Zhang advised.
Wang suggested that people with all levels of coding experience would benefit from participating in a hackathon.
“If you’re hesitant to do a hackathon or think you can’t code, remember you can always learn and figure out how to do things, but if you don’t go to the hackathon, you’re losing out on opportunities where you can learn these skills,” Wang said.
Jin’s biggest takeaway from the entire experience is the importance of connection and openness to new ideas.
“People are open to ideas,” Jin said. “If you’re creative and trying to make a difference, which is exactly how our project started, people will be open to hearing your thoughts.”
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The Big entranceThe post The Big entrance appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
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The Big Game pregame: Do’s and don’t’s for geeks (and frosh) to like footballJenny Ballutay’s experiences this month have made the pregame her favorite part of Big Game. Here are some of her best tips and tricks.
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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.
Author’s Note: Don’t do the don’ts, but don’t do the do’s. This is a Humor article, for goodness’ sake. Please comply with all local, state and federal regulations on controlled substances. If you’re from Berkeley, you don’t need substances to enjoy the Big Game. You’re winning. If you’re a Stanford fan, you’re used to disappointment. You don’t need substances to handle it. Once again, this is NOT a bucket list; this is NOT the Rice Purity Test.
Author’s Lawyer’s Note: The individual writing this article maintains no semblance of civil or criminal liability for the activities engendered by the descriptions listed hereafter. Failure to comply with local, state and federal regulations on controlled substances is the sole responsibility of the actor involved.
Watch parties this month have disappointed us all. Let’s fix that.
Whether you’re a proud Stanford student or reluctantly shackled to Berkeley, you know that the only football game you’ll ever care for is coming this Saturday. Thank goodness you haven’t dropped out yet, since there’s nothing like the 127th Big Game to revive that spirit. And there’s no Big Game without a bigger pregame. The Daily values your personal happiness fervently, and the Daily Cal tolerates it. So, here’s a list of Big Pregame Do’s and Don’t’s so you can go big (not go home!) the right way.
It’s important to be thrifty as you enjoy yourself! When preparing for Big Game, there’s no better two-for-one bargain than getting high off the paints, glues and Sharpies you made your quirky slogans with. Better yet, start your arts and crafts session huffing and puffing. It’s hard work procrastinating your homework with posters you’ll forget in your dorm.
As a child, you learned never to double-bounce on a trampoline. That’s because being high in two ways can give you boo-boos. So don’t roll joints up on the imposing Campanile, or the slightly smaller but noticeably girthier Hoover Tower. It’s not safe, and our universities can only handle one loss on Big Game Day.
Want to make a statement that your school will smoke the other team? Smoke them yourself! Loyal readers of the Daily Cal, run to Target and hollow out those miniature Christmas trees on the shelves. Stanford Daily consumers, Zipcar to Walmart and eviscerate a teddy bear. Steal your roommate’s bong and make it festive and competitive!
Stanford: If you smoke in bulk, head to the inimitable ITALIC 99 class in Burbank to build an Oski the Bear-themed fursona head! Not for wearing, of course: for storing your thematically consistent drug paraphernalia.
No, silly. That’s not a typo. You shouldn’t drive under the influence, you shouldn’t bike under the influence and you shouldn’t bet under the influence, either. You might think capitalism is good until you’re seven shots in and your wallet’s on Stanford dominating the PAC-12 this season. What a crash-out. Gambling is not for the faint of liver.
Vodka handles in brown bags? Really? This isn’t your grand-pappy’s pregame.
At The Stanford Daily (and the Daily Cal), we’re not only your trusted news source and we’re certainly more than your crossword: We’re primed to cover up the wrongdoing that happens around us. So go ahead, wrap your bottles up in our papers! It’s the least we can do.
Once upon a time, those incomparables across the Bay went to your high school. In your shameful, wanton past, they were your acquaintances, one-night stands… In a word, your frenemies. And if they weren’t, they could be in your future! So don’t be afraid to hit up (or hit) that friend of a friend this Big Game season. What could possibly go wrong?
So… are you ready to get ready to rumble? See you there, Stanford. Smell you soon, Berkeley. Let’s have a notorious Big Game pregame.
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Police Blotter: Rape, battery and hit-and-runThis article contains incidents that were reported on campus from Nov. 1 to Nov. 18, as recorded by the Stanford University Department of Public Safety bulletin.
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This report covers a selection of incidents from Nov. 1 to Nov. 18, 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 comment regarding the hit-and-run collision at Spilker Engineering and Applied Sciences Building.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for comment on the arrest for possession of a controlled substance at Building 380.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for comment regarding the battery at 680 Lomita Drive.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for comment regarding the possession of a weapon at 600 Campus Drive.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the aggravated injury at Roth Way Garage.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the threat to student safety at Hundred Block.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the rape at Olmstead Road.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the burglary at Escondido Village.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the report of sodomy at Quillen Midrise.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the aggravated battery at Lokey Stem Cell Research Building.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the criminal threat at 450 Jane Staford Way.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the sexual battery at 500 Mayfield Avenue.
Ananya Udaygiri and Rush Bogin contributed reporting.
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Will online courses ever replace college? YouTube CEO, Stanford president weigh the values of educationAs free educational content on YouTube gains popularity, Levin affirmed the power of in-person higher education for fostering mentorship and collaboration.
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In the age when Khan Academy lessons and lectures from top universities are available online, YouTube’s CEO Neal Mohan ’96 MBA ’05 and Stanford President Jon Levin ’94 explored the value of traditional educational institutions at the 2024 Accelerate Edtech Impact Summit on Monday.
Organized by the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, the summit held at Arrillaga Alumni Center followed the success of the inaugural 2023 event, gathering 400 thought leaders across research and industry to cross-pollinate ideas on the design of learning, especially in the age of AI.
Acknowledging the expanding role that YouTube plays as an educational tool in the U.S. and around the world, Mohan shared recent initiatives that seek to facilitate education purposes on the site. “Courses” is a functionality for educational creators to curate playlists of their own videos to organize pedagogy effectively, and “Study Hall” is a set of online course videos that grant college credit, made in collaboration with Arizona State University and education YouTube channel Crash Course. A feature called “Player for Education,” an embedded player that is free of ads, links and recommended videos, allows classroom teachers to control the content shown.
The products are designed to reach people who wouldn’t have had access to such course material otherwise, Mohan said. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the growth of the educational space on YouTube, increasing the number of online learning videos from hundreds to thousands. Now, YouTube covers preschool to higher education, with popular channels like Ms. Rachel and MIT OpenCourseWare.
Stanford also publishes select lectures to its YouTube channel of nearly 2 million subscribers. Stanford’s Graduate School of Business channel has nearly 3 million. Noting a video from a Stanford communications faculty that garnered 48 million views, Levin underscored how technology “opens up an incredible set of avenues for people teaching at places like Stanford and anywhere else in the world.”
Mohan also spoke on the platform’s shortcomings as an end-to-end education experience.
“I do think there’s a limitation to what YouTube can do here. We have a specific role, but by no means are we the full picture.” Mohan said. “It doesn’t provide the actual connection with the professors, the classroom teachers or the certification, but it can be a tool to augment what’s happening.”
Levin agreed with this sentiment, saying that while online higher education programs have built in successful models for teaching and learning, a lot of education is about the broader experience, which includes interactions with peers.
“There’ll still be a whole set of skills where you learn how to sit and sort things out with people, which is such an important skill in life,” he said. “I think this will take a long time to change. So we’ll see some of the things that have always mattered will continue to matter and that’s going to be a great next decade in education.”
Reflecting Stanford’s environment specifically, Levin said innovations in pedagogy induced opportunities unchanged by technological advancements. Notably, Levin pointed to the introduction of the COLLEGE requirement for freshmen as an educational feature irreplaceable by technology.
“At a place like Stanford, I tend to think of educational technology as being a complement to what we do rather than a substitute,” Levin said. Referring to COLLEGE, he said that the required freshman class taught by faculty members is “one of our biggest innovations.”
“It’s a great model of education to sit around the table and talk to faculty who have great things to say,” Levin said.
While YouTube doesn’t have plans to virtualize the interactive experience inherent in traditional education settings, Mohan spoke on the platform’s vision of personalizing learning experiences with AI. On Android, YouTube has already rolled out an interactive chatbot beneath educational videos to guide learners through socratic dialogue.
Mohan is also bullish on the future of generative AI-enabled audio translation, which can match speakers’ intonations and lip movements to engage learners who speak different languages. He said the technology is only months away from launching.
The conversation was the final speaker event of the summit, which included a showcase of cutting-edge research, cross-industry panels, edtech startup competition and a fireside chat with Ben Gomes, senior VP at Google, and Jim Shelton, former U.S. Department of Education Deputy Secretary. The fireside chat was led by Dan Schwartz, dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Education.
Schwartz, who directed the summit, spoke on the Summit’s goal to facilitate discourse between those of different perspectives. Panelists came from different sectors, so both a teacher and a tech entrepreneur could discuss the advent of generative AI intertwined with scale, for example.
“I think edtech could do a lot. It hasn’t been realized,” Schwartz said. “The design of the summit to enable different stakeholders to talk with each other is to get the researchers and industry working closer and realize the really good edtech products that solve the problem of how people learn.”
At the event, there are already signs of such collaborations occurring. The winner of the summit’s domestic startup contest, Xuan Zhao, co-founded Flourish Science, an AI mental health and well-being companion for college students, alongside Julie Cachia Ph.D. ’24. Zhao was a Ph.D. exchange student at Stanford from Brown in 2015 and is now a Stanford research affiliate.
“I can really feel this energy for AI and for education,” Zhao said, after the summit’s close. For her, Levin and Mohan’s discussion of the specific balance between “ed” and “tech” onstage helps her “see a bigger, bigger picture.”
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Geography of My Heart: Hoover Tower and the CampanileDan Kubota contrasts her memories of Stanford and Berkeley landmarks while exploring the road not taken and family legacy.
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In her column “Geography of My Heart,” Dan Kubota explores memories from her favorite campus spots that live rent free in her head.
Confession time: it was the Campanile that gave me that “wow” moment — not Hoover Tower. Sacrilegious to say as a Stanford student, I know. Especially during Big Game season? Crazy talk.
In my defense, the elevator ride and small staircases to the top certainly added to the anticipation. My dad was super excited to show us around his alma mater; we’d made the drive up to UC Berkeley early that day in hopes of avoiding traffic and seeing all the sights. We were there for Cal Raijin’s spring showcase, Okaeri (“Coming Home”), to watch my cousin absolutely slay. It would be my first time watching her perform, but certainly not my last; this would be the performance that planted the seed in my head to eventually audition for Stanford Taiko not even two years later.
We walked through campus as he pointed out his freshman year dorm and various other things, possibly reliving the glory days. I vaguely remember Sproul (the name has a certain funny little character to it) and Sathers Gate (it’s got a look-alike in the Monsters Inc. world!), but nothing quite stuck in my head the way that the Campanile did.
I mean, how could anything else overshadow the view that was there? The world seemed to melt away as all the towering buildings shrank down to look like toys arranged by some very orderly child. The way that the cars rushed around the little lines of the street was almost comical. More fun still was trying to figure out where different landmarks were — so big in real life and now reduced to little pinpoints on the horizon. I felt like I was stepping into my dad’s world a little more as I squinted to find the landmarks he was pointing out. In trying to see these seemingly ordinary tan and gray buildings and the dots in the distance with a little more excitement, I let go of my apathetic “I’m too cool to be sightseeing with my family” teenage brain to embrace the childlike wonder of it all. Maybe I could call this place home one day, if I dared to dream enough.
~
And then I got into Stanford. My “dream school” since childhood, if you can even call it that. (I was lured by the promise of endless grilled cheese from The Melt if I worked there and books upon books at the Stanford bookstore.)
My dad was fine with it, I’d like to think, albeit a little hurt I didn’t choose his alma mater. School spirit and all that.
I think he’s chill with it now. He told me he was proud of me the other day and cautioned me to not burn myself out, sometime before I moved in again. Like that was going to do anything. Burnout seems to be a constant of my time here at Stanford — come back from break feeling well rested, try to take on a hard course load to make up for what I had to let go of for my well being, burn out again, rinse and repeat.
Would it have been this way had I made my home across the bay?
~
Hoover Tower just didn’t have the same “wow” factor.
Okay, that’s not entirely true; it wowed me in a different way.
It was just supposed to be a check mark off my college bucket list. We HAD to go up Hoover Tower because how could I be a Stanford student if I didn’t go up it at least once during my time here? I had to take advantage of the free admissions while I could, honestly. Of course, I insisted on some photos because we were tourists visiting this attraction for the first time. I propped my phone up on various ledges and surfaces to get the wackiest angles, and my friends graciously obliged. Photos done, I just had to go look at that view; was that San Jose off in the distance? Oh, over there is FloMo (I think I can see my window from here!) EVGR looks so foreboding just rising out of the ground like that!
Mindless, excited chatter aside, seeing our sprawling campus spread around Hoover Tower the way that ripples spread out after the skipped rock sinks to the bottom of the lake was a magical experience of its own. I’m not entirely sure I have the words to say exactly what I was feeling, to be honest. There’s something so bittersweet about seeing something so dear to your heart from so far up, something that’s barely been a physical place of residence for you but is now so much of a home in a way.
Every time I go up Hoover Tower now as a sophomore (wow, so far away from my frosh fall self!), I am reminded of the naive way I was eagerly bumbling around campus. I’m able to let go of the workworkworkyou’resobehindgottacatchup mindset — put that heavy load down. Even if it’s just for the half hour I’m fourteen stories up in the air, I’m able to leave my worries and stresses about school downstairs with my massive backpack and helmet down in those metal cubbies. I can’t totally escape it, but for a little bit, I’m reminded how there’s so much more to life than just work.
~
Of course, I can’t reflect on my memories of both schools without at least mentioning the friendly family rivalry. Aside from my dad, his siblings are all Berkeley alums, and so is one of my cousins! You can imagine how they reacted when I decided to jump ship and choose Stanford over Berkeley. We’ve still got that banter going every time they ask about how college is going and how sports are. (Of course, they all came to Stanford to watch us get creamed and for them to hold onto the Axe another year.) My mom, aunts and grandma on my mom’s side could not be more excited that I’m at Stanford; I’ve taken my mom and grandma on bike tours of campus, complete with taking our bikes on the Caltrain and exploring downtown Palo Alto! (Also, guess who showed up to Big Game with Stanford merch next to my dad in his Berkeley beanie?)
Rambling reflections aside, the parallels I’ve found between the two schools physically embodied in the parallels between the two bell towers make me feel a bit at home in both places. My family will always find community at Cal as alums, as I will when I try to see Berkeley through their eyes, and hopefully also at Stanford as I make my own mark on this campus, writing my story independently of my own family.
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Q&A: Behind the scenes of Democracy Day and Undergraduate Senate initiativesJadon Urogdy ’27, UGS Senator and treasurer, elaborates on his initiatives to protect the Creative Writing program and decrease food costs on campus.
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Undergraduate Senator Jadon Urogdy ’27, who also serves as the co-chair of social science for Democracy Day, helped organize events such as the election night watch party, “All Vote, No Play” and a seminar on how the intersection of computer science and journalism helps promote democratic progress. In an interview with The Daily, Urogdy described his dual role as a senator Democracy Day organizer, elaborating on his initiatives to protect the Creative Writing program and decrease food costs on campus.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
The Stanford Daily [TSD]: As Democracy Day comes to an end, what are some of your main takeaways, and were there any challenges you faced?
Jadon Urogdy [JU]: I think there’s a lot of mixed emotions about the election. Whether we appreciate the results of the election or not, Democracy Day is an opportunity to come together and reconcile and to better understand perspectives across the aisle.
And I think one of the biggest takeaways I had was how much hope I have for the future and for the people on campus, and how much impact that these individuals have on the future. But at the same time, there is a lot of work that we still need to do, a lot of bridging the gap and it’s a great opportunity to reaffirm where we stand as a nation.
As for challenges, it would be a perfect world if everything went the way it was planned. We ran into some cancellations and to some switches in the agenda, but our Democracy Day team pushed on the best we could.
TSD: You mentioned the need to reconcile our differences and better understand perspectives. How would that look for you as an Undergraduate Senator?
JU: As a Senate, we come to a lot of disagreements — we have different visions of how we want to better our Stanford community, and how we can [be a] better body… but I think it’s the same idea that we all want what’s best for Stanford. So I think that’s something that we really hold close as a Senate: the ability to agree to disagree, but still preserve that vision for a wider Stanford community.
TSD: How do you plan on balancing diverse student interests and voices on campus so that everyone can be heard?
JU: We have been starting up our committee work, from the communications committee to the political action and housing… we have have the great opportunity to spend time talking to figureheads in all of these sectors. Whether it be with the Title IX Office or Residential & Dining Enterprise or the Graduate Student Council, we have been doing our best to engage with as many perspectives as possible and focus our efforts on what we’re passionate about through these committees.
We are also working on doing a tri-weekly email… from the ASSU that will be a breakdown of initiatives, and we hope that students will provide their feedback and criticisms on what we’re doing.
TSD: Does the Undergraduate Senate have any executive power in making policy changes?
JU: I think there is a preconceived notion about the ASSU, that we are instant change makers on campus, that we can pass legislation and that change will be put in place immediately. However, unfortunately, that is not the case. Our job is to pass a strong point of encouragement to the administration to change something, however, none of the work that we do through resolutions is strictly guaranteed to lead to tangible change.
TSD: What goals do you have for yourself as a senator for the future?
JU: My biggest initiative right now is working with the Creative Writing Program. We want to make sure that all students, no matter your major, no matter what you are passionate about doing, whether through academia or for fun, are not underrepresented or silenced. We hope to garner more support and and gain more transparency for what is happening with the termination of professors and downsizing of the Stanford Creative Writing Program.
I also want to make sure that the prices stay low for food that is purchased via dining dollars. As someone from a smaller town with less resources, and coming out to California, it has been a tough adjustment, and I understand that a lot of students are in similar positions as myself. That has definitely been a big concern among the student body to afford Stanford and afford the surrounding areas. So we are doing our best right now to make sure that students feel comfortable and feel like they can live and thrive at Stanford.
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Reflections on student art exhibit ‘When The Angels Came’"There is a chaos softened by the pastels tones in the painting, and it’s almost like a dream," Seyahi writes.
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On a fall evening, I climbed up the stairs towards the Stanford Art Gallery to visit “When The Angels Came,” the current exhibit of undergraduate art. As I stepped inside, I was circled by pieces embodying unique life perspectives with dazzling creativity.
I first went towards the right side of the gallery, where I encountered “Waterfront,” four black and white photographs by Franklin Lurie ’24 that captured the wild spirits of the Northern California coasts. I was mesmerized by the fierce soul of the ocean waves as they crashed into the steep coastal rocks.
Where I grew up in Turkey, we are surrounded by seas; when you stare deeply to where the sea ends and sky begins, there is always the horizon, or the start of the coast across, or an island.
But I was surprised to realize when I came to the U.S. that there isn’t such a line in the ocean. Rather it’s a blur: the ocean never ends. Similar to the American Dream, the ocean is limitless — it could go farther, farther and farther, and you are almost lost looking at it. You are a small particle next to these almost omnipotent waters that can end your existence in seconds.
Lurie’s “Waterfront” photos capture the effects of climate change on settlements in the area’s periphery to the coast. Lurie “examines human existence in an environment perpetually shaped by natural forces,” according to his description. These photographs induce its viewer to feel the ocean’s power. The human being is simply “fragile and transient,” as Lurie puts it, next to the ocean.
Leaving the photographs, I approached the eponymous piece of the exhibition, “When the angels came they had guns” by Gregory Medina-Kenyon ’24. Staring into the large tapestry depicting figures that seemed like elongated hands, wings and imaginary creatures in pastel colors, I was reminded of Surrealist paintings by Dali and Miro.
Intrigued by the mystic title, I started reading its description, learning that the artist aimed to uncover how a memory “that has been lost, changed, rendered inaccessible” is represented for people with neurodegenerative diseases. The piece captures how the elements in our lives become abstract in our minds.
The yellow patch at the right side of the tapestry reminds me of the sun; together with the wings depicted next to it, it causes an image of Icarus falling down the clouds to appear in my mind. The figures that reminded me of wings start looking like teeth. The pink figures that looked like creatures start looking like skulls, making me think of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings that depict animal skulls next to flowers. There is a chaos softened by the pastels tones in the painting, and it’s almost like a dream: The objects and the stories are all intertwined, yet personal as they remind me of elements from my life.
The idea of people and places in our lives becoming abstract, captured by this artwork, makes me think of death. When people in your life pass away, they also become an abstraction. They are now shaped by what’s left in your memory, the small fragments of their voice when you think about them, the way they would say your name. They are now just an abstraction.
Insignificant memories of normal days replay in your mind once you think of them. You search through the corners of your mind, looking for more remaining memories, hoping to find something you could go back to. You just want to go back to a day, a normal day, to that voice. And in your mind, you are left with a chaos and confusion resembling the one depicted in the artwork. Staring at the figures in “When the angels came they had guns,” I became immersed in these thoughts.
As I took a few steps to the right, I encountered Sarah Dong’s ’26 “A Moment at the Louvre.” With a fascinating artistic style, the artwork is meta: there are paintings within the painting. Looking at it, in the background, you see the drawing of Delacroix’s “The Death of Sardanapalus” on the wall in the Louvre; then at the foreground, you an artist drawing the same painting, “The Death of Sardanapalus,” while standing across from it. This is a painting of paintings.
As a romantic painting, “The Death of Sardanapalus” has a rather chaotic story. Upon a military defeat, King Sardanapalus, the last king of Assyria, orders the death and destruction of all he owns, from his slaves to his animals and all the treasures he possesses. The painting captures this mass destruction in play.
Dong depicts a young child staring at the painting with admiration and excitement (perhaps clueless about the story it’s depicting) yet captivated by its artistic glory. Similarly, while looking at Dong’s work, I was captivated by her artistic level. There is a beauty in the chaos of bodies scattered around in Delacroix’s original depiction, which Dong portrays masterfully.
I encounter a series of family photographs edited in a way to resemble the idea of the past being forgotten and lost. Titled “Our Home Is Now A Fleeting Memory,” these photographs by Mhar Tenorio ’24 illustrate how immigration shapes the memory of your original home. Tenorio captures the melancholic feeling of looking into the pictures from your past: once you leave, these photographs become the only connection you have left to your past. They become more vulnerable, in a sense, with this added element of being the unique connection to your past.
Tenorio’s edits on the photographs change the forms of his family members, making them spiral, elongated or blurry. I admire how they capture the fleetingness of memories and the inevitability of forgetting as time passes by. Tenorio’s work reminds me of my home and my memories of childhood, and how far, both in terms of location and time, they are.
As I continued walking, I was intrigued by Ingrid Nordberg’s ’25 painting “I, I.” Nordberg captures a girl, which we see only the back of, staring into a huge plaster cast, reminding me of ancient Greek sculptures. It makes me ponder if Nordberg is trying to capture self-reflection. I read the description, and learned that Nordberg adds elements of her Asian ethnicity into the cast, rejecting the established European-centric idea of cast drawing in the arts.
I realize that I hadn’t paid attention to the Asian characteristics in the face of the cast that is depicted, but it became evident to me then. The painting reminds me of looking at myself from the outside, and thinking about all my actions in the past. Do you love that person, or do you blame her for mistakes?
I left the gallery mesmerized by the level of artistic greatness and the depth of the ideas captured. The works in “When The Angels Came” are surprising, intriguing and depict complex ideas about memory, the past and the self — it is beyond worthy of experiencing.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
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Levin celebrates birthday at Presidential FLiCKSThe Sunday FLiCKS screening featured President Jonathan Levin’s presence and movie choice: the 90's classic “Dazed and Confused.”
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The year 1993 was big. The cult classic “Dazed and Confused” hit theaters while University President Jonathan Levin ’94 was in his junior year at Stanford. The Internet, video streaming and even DVDs did not yet exist at that time, he pointed out in an introduction to Sunday’s FLiCKS screening.
“Presidential FLiCKS” marked a stark contrast to that era of limited technology as students gathered in the modern CEMEX auditorium for a screening of “Dazed and Confused,” selected by Levin. Waiting for the film to start, students sat snacking on the free candy and sodas that were laid out in front of the venue.
Then, FLiCKS Director Daniel Rashes ’26 took the stage and explained that the “Presidential FLiCKS” had been in the works since September. The screening also landed on Levin’s 52nd birthday. Before the movie started, the audience sang “Happy Birthday” as a piece of cake complete with a lit candle was brought to the president on stage.
Levin said that he chose the movie because it is “about what it feels like to be a young person and have your life in front of you.”
“He was here till the end,” said audience member Benji Welner ’27. “It was nice to see him enthused. He was an active participant in this.”
After some brief Wi-Fi troubleshooting, the Universal logo and music sprawled across the screen. Toilet paper rolls flew across the large lecture hall, leaving white streamers in their wake. Audience members seated in the higher levels came prepared with rolls to help bring FLiCKS into the spirit of the high school antics featured in “Dazed and Confused.” Throughout the screening, audience members continued to throw toilet paper rolls and paper airplanes randomly around the dark room.
The movie played straight through without interruption, but not without interjection. When a character on screen lamented that some man was “a nerdy scientific type,” a man’s voice from the audience shouted “Hey!” in mock offense. The movie was met with murmurs of recognition when iconic lines were spoken, like Matthew McConaughey’s “Alright, alright, alright” and “You just gotta keep livin’ man, L-I-V-I-N.” People sang along to themselves at each successive familiar 80’s beat that soundtracked the film’s wacky antics.
Audience members appreciated that “Dazed and Confused” featured a well-known cast before most of the actors in it had become famous.
“Ben Affleck was really, really cool,” Welner said. “He’s cool because ultimately he becomes Batman. It was funky to see everybody in their youth.”
“I thought it was a really good movie,” said Nageena Singh ’26, after the credits rolled. Welner added, “I was considering my Letterboxd review, I think I’m going to do four out of five stars.”
Andrei Mandelshtam ’25 commented on the extreme events in the film.
“It was a very interesting movie. A lot of it was really weird to see,” Mandelshtam said. “I think I would have thought it much cooler in high school, but now I just think it was crazy and deranged. It does offer a good social commentary on the [teenage] rebellious phase.”
When audience members filed outside, they were met with a cake station to celebrate high school rebellion, being a young person and, of course, Levin’s birthday.
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‘Times have changed’: A brief history of student activism at Stanford and CalStanford and Berkeley have a long history of student activism, but professors have noted changes in political activism on both campuses that call into question the future of activism.
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Student activism has a rich history at both Stanford and UC Berkeley. Professors at both schools noted that student activism has gotten more divisive since its genesis in the 1960s.
In recent times, the Israel-Gaza conflict resulted in a rise of protests, marches and advocacy at both universities in the past year. At Berkeley, protesters established a pro-Palestinian encampment outside of Sproul Hall, which came to an end after three weeks. While the encampment was willingly called off by the organizers themselves, Cal State, which governs Berkeley and other UCs, announced that they would begin banning encampments and other “unauthorized structures.”
Protesters at Stanford also hosted an encampment, but unlike Berkeley, it was removed by the University instead of the organizers. This removal came after protesters barricaded themselves inside Building 10, which houses the President’s office, and were subsequently arrested.
“A large number of students, larger than any time since I’ve been in Stanford, were politically aware of how significant [the war in Gaza] was and felt very strongly about their positions,” said Stanford political science professor David Laitin.
Stanford and Berkeley both have abundant histories of student activism. There seems to have been more student activism at Berkeley, as noted by Laitin, who was a student at Berkeley in the late 1960s and took part in a march to the Oakland Induction Center in 1967 in protest of the Vietnam War.
According to Laitin, key differences in student activism movements between the two campuses are “based somewhat on geography.” Because Berkeley is located in a politically active city, protests inevitably spread into the surrounding areas whereas in Stanford, protests are more “geographically contained” on campus. He specifically said that many sit-ins and demonstrations begin at Sproul Plaza and move south into the city.
“The Berkeley political movements looked outward,” Laitin said. Meanwhile, at Stanford, “you could spend your whole day [on campus] and not see activism.”
In many states, Stanford being a private institution and Berkeley being public would change the way the first amendment applies to each school. California’s Leonard Law, however, extends many first amendment protections to private universities as well
Under the Leonard Law, university administrations are permitted to enforce reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner of the student’s speech. Activists at Stanford have criticized Stanford’s free speech guidelines, which were updated this fall.
Professors shared big differences in how political activism was conducted back in the 1960s and today. Laitin noted that students were united in their opposition to the Vietnam War back then, whereas today there is a bigger split between those who are pro-Israel and those who are pro-Palestine.
Berkeley political science and law professor Kinch Hoekstra said that the Israel-Gaza conflict was a cause “that did not unite the student body,” a division he believes to mirror the national situation.
Meanwhile, Aaron Edlin J.D. ’93, a professor of law and economics at Berkeley, said that students these days have different perceptions of consequences.
“When I protested for divestiture from South Africa as part of the anti-apartheid movement in college, we expected to be arrested and prosecuted and were. We did not shirk from consequences but bore them proudly,” Edling said. “Today, too many students think they should be able to violate university rules with impunity and no consequences because they believe their cause is righteous.”
Hoekstra agreed that the Israel-Gaza protests were “passionate,” but believes that these protests were “within the bounds of the campus norms.”
Current political sit-ins and protests don’t stand alone, but are instead rooted in strong activism that originated in the 1960s. 1964 saw the birth of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley when thousands of students protested the university’s restrictions on political activity on campus.
This led to Berkeley, and later more universities across the United States, lifting restrictions on student speech. For the first time, political organization was permitted on campus and political organizations now had the right to hold rallies.
Berkeley also became a central hub for the anti-Vietnam War movement during the 1960s. Groups including the Congress on Racial Equality, Students for a Democratic Society and the Radical Student Union stood against the war, hosting sit-ins and demonstrations. Much of this grew out of the mobilization from the Free Speech Movement. UC Berkeley organized a teach-in event which attracted 30,000 people and “Stop the Draft” Week involved a four-day protest with 10,000 demonstrators.
Similarly, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations took shape at Stanford, reaching historic numbers of mobilization as students protested against the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1969, The April Third Movement (A3M) organized a nine-day sit-in, and 8,000 people took part in the Vietnam Moratorium calling for an immediate end to the war, marking Stanford’s largest political gathering in history.
These protests took shape at Stanford in tandem with a wave of speeches and protests involving Civil Rights issues. In 1964 and 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. gave speeches at Stanford addressing racism and equality, and his impact on the University continued even after his assassination in 1968. Following his passing, members of Stanford’s Black Student Union (BSU) demanded changes to policies and programs that would increase enrollment and inclusivity for Black students and faculty.
Another notable era of protest began again in 1985 in wake of South African apartheid. Thousands of Berkeley students took to protest and hosted a sit-in in Sproul Plaza and renamed the plaza “Biko Plaza” in honor of the killed South African activist Steve Biko. Police subsequently arrested 158 protestors which triggered 10,000 students to boycott class and celebrities such as Kurt Vonnegut came to Berkeley to show support.
Following the protests, in July 1986, Berkeley divested $3.1 billion from companies in business with South Africa’s apartheid government — the largest university divestment in U.S. history at that time. Nelson Mandela called Berkeley students and faculty his “blood brothers and sisters.”
Stanford fell short of this feat, even though students organized large and persistent protests vying for Stanford to divest from South Africa’s apartheid regime. In 1977, over 1,000 students organized a sit-in protest to object to Stanford’s decision to not divest from the South African government. These protests continued into the 1980s, in part organized by Stanford out of South Africa (SoSA), a student-led anti-apartheid movement.
After a 1985 announcement from the University’s Board of Trustees claiming that Stanford would not divest, students laid down behind board members’ cars and parked their cars to block board members from their homes.
Even though the University never divested, they threatened to sell their holding of over $4 million of Motorola Inc. stocks if the company continued to sell to South African police or government, which caused the company to stop.
The Daily has reached out to both universities for comment.
While the Israel-Gaza conflict brought forth many protests, Laitin noted that there seems to be a general decline in student activism as a whole: “Times have changed.”
“Students are more into STEM than they are into the subjects which are more oriented towards taking political stands,” Laitin said. “Students are worried about their careers and the implications of political activism [for those careers]… It’s a very different cultural moment in our country.”
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Give ’em the Axe: The grand heist of 1973In 1973, Stanford students Tim Conway and David Suliteanu pulled off a daring heist to steal the Axe from Cal, culminating in a wild, chaotic chase.
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The 1973 heist of the Axe stands out as one of the most notorious pranks in college sports, fueled by the long-standing rivalry between Stanford and Cal. On Nov. 20, 1973, Tim Conway ’74 and his Stanford Theta Delta Chi fraternity brother David Suliteanu ’75 stole the Axe four days before Big Game.
That year, Cal had possession of the Axe after defeating Stanford the previous season. A determined group of Stanford students, eager to return it to the Farm, crafted a daring plan to infiltrate Cal’s territory and reclaim the trophy. The task was no easy feat — the Axe was prominently displayed in Cal’s student union, under tight security. Conway and Suliteanu knew they needed a clever approach.
Each week during the season, Bay Area sportswriters hosted coaches at a press luncheon to discuss upcoming games. The Big Game luncheon in 1973 was set to take place at Ming’s, a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto, with both Cal coach Mike White and Stanford coach Jack Christensen attending. As part of the plan, Matt Conway, Tim’s brother and a student at San Francisco Law School, would impersonate Coach White over the phone.
Matt Conway called Cal’s student union manager, Mr. Friedrich, claiming that sportswriters needed the Axe for a photo shoot at the luncheon. He explained that he would be picking it up soon with two players. “Coach White” promised to call back later to say he couldn’t make it and ask Friedrich to hand the Axe over to the students.
The plan quickly hit a snag when Matt Conway arrived at the union to find Friedrich absent. He left a message with the secretary, but by the time Tim and Suliteanu arrived, the Axe had been moved to the Berkeley police station for safekeeping. With an officer stationed outside the office, the pair had to wait until Matt called again.
When the phone finally rang, Matt Conway insisted that the Axe be handed over. Cal’s Rally Committee members agreed to deliver it themselves, tailing Tim and Suliteanu to Ming’s in a separate car.
Upon arriving at Ming’s, the duo spotted some fraternity brothers tossing a football in the parking lot. As two Rally Committee members shielded the Axe from the rain, Tim Conway seized the moment, grabbed the trophy and ran. Suliteanu tackled one of the committee members, giving Conway a head start, but the 40-pound Axe slowed him down. He was soon tackled near a pink Cadillac, and the Axe flew from his hands, landing on the car’s roof.
One of the Cal Rally Committee members reached the Axe first, but just as they were about to reclaim it, Conway’s fraternity brothers arrived and wrestled it away, securing the trophy for good.
The Axe was taken to the Theta Delta Chi house, where chaos ensued. After posing for photos, the students hid the Axe under the bed of Suliteanu’s grandmother in her Palo Alto apartment.
The next day, Suliteanu, in an economics class, wrote up a list of demands for the return of the trophy, including $6,000 in cash and a fake ID for the one member of the “Infamous Three” who wasn’t yet 21. Eventually, Stanford sports information director Bob Murphy ’53 proposed a solution: The trio would drive the Axe to Stanford Stadium before Big Game, where it would be handed over to the Cal captains during the coin toss.
Stanford won the 1973 Big Game 26-17, and the Axe was returned to its rightful place.
Since then, the Axe has never been stolen again.
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Asking Stanford: What’s one nice thing you can say about Berkeley?This week, we're practicing sportsmanship ahead of our biggest rivalry game of the year. What's one nice thing Stanford students have to say about UC Berkeley?
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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. This week, we’re practicing sportsmanship ahead of our biggest rivalry game of the year.
I still believe that Berkeley is the “best public university,” despite a recent upset by UCLA in the rankings. — Sharis Hsu
Berkeley students seem to actually believe in something. I love that so many of them get involved to practice their values. They take it beyond the classroom and social media. With how they get engaged, I feel they are the best of what our generation can do for this world. — Sebastian Strawser
Berkeley has made many important contributions to medical science, including the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9, a revolutionary gene-editing technology. — Helen Katz
Oski is, hands-down, the most terrifying school mascot I have ever seen. His sunken eyes, impossibly upturned smile and disturbingly un-bear-like oval head is the stuff of nightmares. I almost have to applaud his designer for being able to concoct such a monstrosity. If mascots are meant to be intimidating, Oski definitely takes the cake. — Kaylee Chan
Berkeley’s history is really cool. It’s where the Free Speech Movement started. It was a hub for the anti-Vietnam war movement, and they got UC to divest $3 billion from apartheid South Africa. Berkeley students are clearly super engaged and better yet, their engagement is effective. Maybe in a past life, I was a Berkeley student in the 1960s. — Sanaya Robinson-Shah
Totally biased here, but Berkeley’s taiko ensemble, Cal Raijin Taiko, is super awesome and cool! Every time I’ve had the chance to meet members, I’ve been blown away by their technical abilities (slay solos and eye-catching movements) and their lovely personalities. Also, seeing them perform feels full circle; my cousin played with them during her time at Cal and watching their performance as a high school junior and being blown away by their performativity and passion for the art form was what planted the seed for me to eventually get involved with Stanford Taiko! — Dan Kubota
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From Miami to the Bay: Big Game features high school connectionsStanford players from Miami's Christopher Columbus High School reflect on their shared history with fellow Columbus alum and Cal quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, ahead of Big Game.
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As Stanford gears up for the Big Game against Cal, an intriguing subplot emerges from over 3,000 miles away in Miami. The rivalry matchup will feature familiar faces on opposite sidelines, all hailing from Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, Fla.
Cal’s sophomore starting quarterback Fernando Mendoza is no stranger to several Cardinal players. Freshman tight end Benji Blackburn and sophomore inside linebacker Miles McGee were Mendoza’s teammates during his senior year. While others, like freshman outside linebacker Dylan Stephenson and sophomore running back Sedrick Irvin, didn’t share the field with Fernando, but instead played alongside his younger brother, Alberto Mendoza, who is now a freshman quarterback at Indiana University.
This Miami connection adds a layer of familiarity — and perhaps a touch of friendly rivalry — to one of college football’s most storied matchups.
For Stephenson, the Big Game offers an exciting opportunity to reunite with a fellow Columbus Explorer.
“Fernando, I hear he’s doing really well,” Stephenson said. “I might have to say Alberto is the better brother of the two. It’s pretty crazy that we’re all going this far across the country playing this high quality of football, and I really can’t wait to get after it.”
The Golden Bears quarterback is in the midst of an impressive second season as the leader of the Cal offense. Mendoza has passed for more than 2,700 yards — nearly 1,000 more than last season — and boasts a 68.6 completion percentage.
Reflecting on the unique dynamic, Stephenson was amused by the prospect of facing a player tied to his high school past.
“It’s funny to think that the quarterback who I will be going after is connected to me by certain ties,” he said. “I’m really just excited.”
The camaraderie forged at Columbus extends beyond the field, making the bond Stephenson shares with Mendoza and his fellow Columbus teammates unique.
“At Columbus, we call it a brotherhood,” Stephenson explained. “I still feel like that stays true to this day. If I need them, I could always count on them to help me out with anything.”
Blackburn, who played alongside Fernando Mendoza during his senior year, has nothing but praise for his former quarterback.
“Really, his character stands out the most,” Blackburn said. “He’s a great player, but when I think of Fernando, it’s his character and how good of a person he is on and off the field. His work ethic and leadership on the field, and also him just being there for you all the time off the field…”
Now, years later, the two will face off in an intense rivalry game.
“It’s definitely cool,” Blackburn said. “We talk a lot of crap about it. We still call each other every once in a while and text and all that stuff. It’s just cool to see him back then, playing with him in high school, and then see how far we’ve come and playing in college now.”
Playing against Mendoza brings a personal layer of motivation for Blackburn.
“There’s already a lot of meaning behind this game in the first place. It’s Cal, so this will just add fuel to the fire. But for me, just wanting to beat Fernando, have a little bit of bragging rights, it adds a little bit to my fire.”
For Stephenson and Blackburn, this year’s Big Game will be their first as Stanford players, and the anticipation is building.
“It’s huge,” Stephenson said. “My family is coming up. I just can’t wait to see what it’s all about. I’ve heard all about it. It’s one of the biggest rivalries in college football, so I can’t wait to just be a part of it.”
“I’m excited for the festivities, to see how hyped the campus gets this week, and for how hyped the game is going to be,” Blackburn said.
Though the players now don different jerseys, the bonds formed at Christopher Columbus High School remain strong. For Blackburn, Stephenson, Irvin and McGee, the Big Game is more than just a rivalry — it’s a reunion.
Despite the sense of brotherhood among the former high school peers, the competitive instincts are still alive and well heading into Big Game.
“I hope we get a couple of good blitzes after him,” Stephenson said about Mendoza. “I want a sack personally.”
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Stanford and Berkeley journalism alumni report on reportingFormer journalism students from Stanford and Cal share the highlights of each school’s program and see where the alums are now.
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The rivalry between Stanford and UC Berkeley extends from the yard lines of the football field to the written lines of the two universities’ papers — The Stanford Daily and The Daily Californian.
At the undergraduate level, the two papers collaborate through brawls like the Ink Bowl and cross-school interviews with sports reporters. The two universities also offer similar journalism programs at the graduate level, with Stanford’s one-year journalism program within the communications master’s of arts and Berkeley’s two-year master’s of journalism.
The mission of the journalism track of Stanford’s master’s in communication emphasizes student-to-student and student-to-faculty collaborations. Stanford program alumnus Simone Stolzoff M.A. ’18 cherished “the ability to take classes across the university, think about the future of journalism alongside multidisciplinary peers.” Stolzoff has been a freelance reporter for the New York Times, The Atlantic and National Geographic.
With Stanford faculty boasting diverse industry achievements, students explore concepts from a range of journalistic fields. “The professors’ dedication to bolstering the next generation of journalists is inspiring, and I am so grateful for their guidance and care,” said Stanford alumna Gillian Brassil ’19, M.A. ’19 Brassil is a congressional reporter at McClatchy and previously worked at the New York Times as a sports reporter fellow.
Stanford students are thoroughly exposed to a vast discipline of journalistic techniques. From professors and visiting lecturers, students learn the “reporting fundamentals that never go out of style,” Stolzoff said.
Through a mix of hands-on projects, “Stanford’s journalism program equipped me with the skills necessary to being a thorough and cutting-edge reporter,” Brassil added.
Berkeley’s master’s of journalism held comparable values in its program’s curricula. Alumna Kate Raphael was drawn to the program because of professors who specialized in health, science and climate coverage. Raphael shared with The Daily, “I had tremendous editorial support to develop my own magazine and investigative stories, ambitious reporting I wouldn’t have been able to undertake alone.”
Over her master’s program, Raphael interned at the Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, where she developed “skills in sourcing, filing public records and reporting sensitive, nuanced stories.” Raphael is currently collaborating with reporters at the program for its multi-year project on child welfare.
Berkeley program alumna Laura Fitzgerald, who is a politics reporter at CapRadio, didn’t considered a career in journalism before the master’s program. “My experience at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism was a game changer. It helped me find a way into a career that I never thought was possible and to harness my past political experience to report on how the government is and isn’t serving Californians,” Fitzgerald said.
Even outside of narrative journalism, alumni of the Berkeley program’s documentary and film track enjoyed intensive training. Nisha Balaram honed a range of practical skills spanning narrative writing, video and audio production, photography and multimedia storytelling, through which she “emerged confident and well equipped to contribute to the world of documentary film.” Balaram is now a documentary film director and producer based in Oakland.
Max Harrison-Caldwell ’24, who now reports for the San Francisco Standard, similarly described studying magazine writing, photojournalism and investigative reporting while pursuing the audio track through an audio capstone project at Berkeley. Harrison-Caldwell enjoyed experience across media, where “from day one, we were doing real reporting and trying to get published,” he said.
Likewise, the Associated Press reporter and Berkeley program alumna Nadia Lathan shared that the program helped her “boot-strap” her career in journalism. “I was able to pick up some data journalism skills by taking multimedia classes, attending conferences and acquiring bylines with different local Bay Area outlets through internships and freelancing,” she said.
Individual professors have also impacted many students’ decision to pursue journalism. Berkeley program alumna Celeste Dennis, M.A. ’24 is a now-independent journalist but a former “career switcher.”
“I had some of the most brilliant female professors at Berkeley who not only made me believe I could do it but role-modeled for me the kind of journalist I want to be. This profession can be tough, but what I learned at Berkeley is that it also can be full of so much joy. And that is what I hold onto as I do this work now in the world,” Dennis said.
For Bria Suggs, the Berkeley program pushed her outside of her comfort zone, which also provided a space for making lasting connections with both professors and peers. Suggs earned her degree in audio journalism and is now an NPR politics podcast intern.
Some master’s students were also involved with their respective universities’ undergraduate papers. Such was the case for Brassil, whose first newsroom was The Daily and where she first “fell in love with reporting.”
“I’ve got fond memories of chasing breaking news across campus at all hours and seeing other reporters find their journalistic passion,” Brassil said. “I love watching Daily journalists take on crucial and ambitious projects, at Stanford and in their careers beyond the Farm.”
Across at Berkeley, Mitzi Pérez-Caro recounted taking photos for “everything from city council meetings to concerts” as a senior staff photographer for the Daily Californian.
Now a high school teacher in Richmond, Pérez-Caro shared that her experiences with the undergraduate paper and the graduate program taught her skills she teaches her students today.
Asking interviewees to return momentarily from their professional world back to Stanford and Berkeley, The Daily asked alumni from each program to write sample ledes for the upcoming big game:
“Stanford flattened Cal in a scrappy battle to reclaim the Axe on Saturday, prevailing in the first Big Game since the Pac-12 dissolution.” – Brassil (Stanford)
“Bears defend turf against Stanford Axe at 127th ‘Big Game.’” – Lathan (Berkeley)
“Who will hold the fire? The Bears and the Cardinals face off once again.” – Pérez-Caro (Berkeley)
“At this year’s big game, the band won’t be the only ones making noise on the field.” – Stolzoff (Stanford)
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You can get an Infinity Ticket to see Coldplay at Stanford. Here’s how.The British pop rock band will perform at Stanford Stadium on May 31 and June 1. Here is how you can get a limited $20 Infinity Ticket as a student.
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As Stanford Stadium prepares to welcome Coldplay this spring, Stanford students will be eligible to purchase $20 tickets this week to attend the concert. The band offers these reduced-price Infinity Tickets in an effort to increase accessibility to their “Music of the Spheres” World Tour, set to stop by campus on May 31 and June 1 of 2025.
Stanford Live and Stanford Athletics secured a limited number of Infinity Tickets and are working on additional ticket opportunities, to be announced in 2025.
To receive a chance to purchase Infinity Tickets, Stanford students can enter a lottery that opens at 6 a.m. PST on Tuesday and closes at 8 a.m. PST on Thursday, a date set in order to abide by the ticket sale timeline arranged by the tour. Lottery selections are randomly made and winners will receive an email by end-of-day on Thursday.
Upon receiving the email, each student is limited to a maximum of two Infinity Tickets for either day’s show. Tickets must be purchased in adjacent pairs of seats, with locations that may vary greatly across the concert venue. Seat placements are revealed on the day of the performance, when attendees go to the box office to pick up tickets.
Further instructions to enter the lottery can be found at the Stanford event ticketing site.
The British pop rock band began their most recent and eighth concert tour in March 2022 and is scheduled to conclude performances in September 2025. Tickets for 2025 tour dates officially went on sale this year on Friday through the Ticketmaster website.
In July of 2000, the ensemble debuted with “Parachutes,” which remains their most popular album to date, at 13 million sold. Coldplay has since produced 10 albums, which includes their most recent “Moon Music,” released on Oct. 4 of this year — a week before the artists added 2025 concert dates to their world tour.
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Rumored Tree and Bear affair breaks fan-fiction sites worldwideOcheze Amuzie describes how the mascots' torrid lover affair has brought the fan-fiction world to its knees.
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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.
Three major fan-fiction websites were down for millions of users last night following an unprecedented influx of new accounts writing “fics” of UC Berkeley’s Oski the Bear and the Stanford Tree. After photos leaked of the rivalrous pair leaving a fundraising dinner at Stanford’s Faculty Club arm-in-arm the night before the Big Game, Archive of Our Own (also known as “AO3”), Wattpad (“Where stories live”), and Fanfiction.net (the “original Millennial training grounds”) all crashed, resulting in what’s been called the “greatest erotic media blackout of this generation.”
The global glitch shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s had their eye on the Bear and the Tree, whose not-so-subtle antics have been captured by the paparazzi time and time again. For years, football fans and fanatical fujoshis alike have been speculating about the nature of the relationship between the two mascots. Since 1892, the pair have been engaged in what onlookers have described as a “playful, bordering on smutty” working feud, encircling one another in an intricate mating dance to claim ownership of “the Axe.” Fans (of dark romance, not football) wonder if this intimate, cyclical ritual is simply a living metaphor that represents and makes material their forbidden passion. But that’s all, um, conjecture.
Over time, curiosity about “Californication” — the name given to the “ship,” short for relationship, of Oski and the Tree — has evolved into an intricate extended universe containing a respectable oeuvre of increasingly sexually gratuitous work. Despite criticism from environmental activists, animal rights groups and privacy advocates alike, the fandom shows no signs of slowing down the sheer volume of written and visual art it has been producing, the vast majority of which is so obscene it’s been banned from most platforms (even Tumblr).
Despite the media storm, the pair themselves have kept mum on the situation. Some hope this latest wave of fan enthusiasm will push the two to DTR once and for all.
But if the Tree’s recent comments on the rumors have been any indication, a more reserved approach can be expected. Earlier this week they said, “While I totally respect Oski, the storied history of the Big Game and all our fans out there, I don’t believe that I, or any celebrity figure, is under any obligation to define or defend their relationships.” The Tree cited Chappell Roan’s recent spats with paparazzi as inspiration for their pushback from the media pressure, saying in a Tiktok video, “You’re just a random b*tch. I’m just a random b*tch. I didn’t sign up for this.”
While each of the sites is now back online and the relationship between the two mascots remains “fuzzy and shady,” one can only hope that the unstoppable force that is fangirl imagination — that which has mobilized armies of tween girls to pen lengthy speculative fiction pieces since the dawn of the written word — will continue to spur even the most closeted of us to live authentically.
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‘The band always wins’: LSJUMB gears up for Big GameAs the LSJUMB prepares for the 127th Big Game at UC Berkeley, band members old and new look forward to an exciting musical showdown.
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This week, the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band (LSJUMB) is preparing to bring the bang and the boom to the 127th Big Game against UC Berkeley.
The LSJUMB kicked off Big Game Week with the annual Bearial on Monday. While the band played a eulogy, Oski — the Cal mascot — was beheaded and impaled on Claw Fountain.
Stella Chung ’25, the LSJUMB manager, said all planning for Big Game — including costumes and songs — have been kept secret. She encourages Stanford students to come and see what the band has in store.
The planning of routines, Chung said, is “in progress,” but she said that they “usually poke fun at Cal Students, Oski and other silly topics” and will stick to similar themes this year.
Chung said new members can join the band just days before the Big Game kicks off, provided that they have joined for one previous event and the mandatory field rehearsal on Friday at 5 p.m.
Plenty of new members have also been welcomed this year, including Brady Barnes ’27, a sophomore who plays alto saxophone. For Barnes, the band is a fun, low-pressure environment.
“Everyone is super welcoming and friendly. I’ve loved it so far,” Barnes said. “This is my first year in band, so I’m not super experienced, but they’ve made it super helpful and easy to learn.”
Barnes said she is excited to see how the costumes come together, as every instrument’s section wears a different get-up for the game.
She said the band will likely play “Hail, Stanford, Hail” and their fight song “All Right Now,” in addition to whatever the band feels like playing, as the setlist varies game to game.
Steele Billings ’26, joined the band for the very first time at Monday’s practice, less than a week before Big Game.
Wielding paint cans and drumsticks, Billings doesn’t let the novelty of the experience deter him.
“I’m planning on bringing energy by being as hype and excited as possible during our performance, even though I’m probably not going to know what I’m doing,” Billings said. “But I’ll be happy to dance around and have fun out there.”
Despite not having played in the band before Monday, Billings looks forward to playing for Big Game.
“I think it’s just gonna be really cool to be a part of the band, which is such a special, quirky part of the Stanford football tradition and experience,” he said. “It’s always something I’ve wanted to do — I feel like doing it at Big Game, and especially at Cal, will be a super unique environment.”
Even with the Stanford football team’s 3-7 record, the LSJUMB hopes that their songs and passion keep student morale high. And even if Stanford loses this weekend, “The band always wins,” Barnes said.
“No matter what, we’re winners,” Barnes said. “I mean, we’re gonna rock out, we’re gonna have a good time, and no matter what, we’re gonna beat Cal.”
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Is the Stanford-Cal rivalry actually playful?Much of the Stanford-Cal rivalry exists beyond the annual football game, bleeding into conversations of school prestige, relevance and reputation.
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It’s the year 1960, and you are a Stanford student walking to lecture on a crisp morning. Suddenly, you hear a rustle from above. The leaves? Maybe a squirrel? When you look up, your eyesight is flooded with a blitz of leaflets falling from the sky. Close to 10,000 papers litter the Stanford campus. You reach down, pick one up and read the bolded text: SURRENDER.
There could only be one possible culprit: UC Berkeley.
While most Big Game weeks do not feature a Cal fraternity renting a plane and showering Stanford with intimidating pamphlets, demanding the University to “surrender,” the decades-long rivalry has endured many eras. For example, also in 1960, when Stanford students allegedly stole the coveted “Axe” trophy from a Cal safe, a Stanford student was stripped of their clothing and the Stanford student body president was battered with cans of beer. Without a doubt, the rivalry was fierce.
Recently, however, some have noted that the famed rivalry has grown soft. Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle cited the switch to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), which he said is a reason for a newfound solidarity and a cooling of tensions amongst the universities. While the football side of the rivalry has softened, other aspects have only escalated. For instance, when searching stanfordrejects.com, the browser redirects you to Cal’s official website.
This competition between college prestige has turned a football rivalry into something deeper. As acceptance rates to elite universities like Stanford and Cal continue to decline, the fever around college prestigiousness has only soared. Stanford students frequently shout “safety school” towards Cal at the Big Game, and one can only hypothesize that these comments may nettle Cal students a bit more than before.
Every student at Stanford or Cal understands they attend a renowned college, and for many it is this selectivity that led them to accept their admittance letter. The influence of this rivalry on either university’s prestige subliminally challenges many students’ decision to apply or commit. It certainly carries more weight than a football team losing a single game. From personal experience, one of my high school teachers — who did not even attend Cal, but was a fan of the athletics program — called me a “pussy” from afar after I committed to Stanford in the spring. I laughed at his brash humor, though the comment raises an interesting question: How playful is the Stanford-Cal rivalry? And where do students draw the line between seriousness and fun?
Allegedly, when Stanford was constructing Hoover Tower, the University inquired about the height of Cal’s tower, the Campanile. Cal responded with a fake measurement to ensure that the Campanile would remain the tallest. While there appears to be nothing genuinely hateful about the rivalry’s history of “tricks,” the fact that one of them directed the architecture of Stanford’s most recognizable landmark must be more serious than taunting chants at a football game.
Another recent development has also intensified the rivalry. In the last several years, both universities have become well-known for their “start-up” cultures. Most students at Stanford and Cal are not football players; many more of them want to be start-up founders. So, has the rivalry trickled into this professional arena?
Kia Kokalitcheva, a San Francisco based technology and business reporter at Axios, wrote for VentureBeat in 2014 about her disappointment, as her alma mater, UC Berkeley, “lag[s] behind” Stanford’s start-up success. That year, Cal announced millions of funding to invest in startups, which Kokalitcheva said was the school’s attempt to “catch up” with Stanford . If the football rivalry is indeed dying out, maybe both schools will no longer duel at Cal or Stanford stadium but instead in this new “startup arena.”
With the rivalry now permeating these professional spheres, has it become more serious? It is reasonable to assume professional reputation is chief for many students at Stanford, and matters more to these students than the record of football or other athletics. The new additions of college prestige and startup success to the Stanford-Cal rivalry undoubtedly carry darker undertones. However, if a bit of real competition pushes both universities’ athletics and academics to improve, that’s a rivalry worth having.
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Unpacking Big Game’s 127-year historyThe genesis of Big Game, one of the oldest and most dramatic rivalries in college football, came from former President Herbert Hoover.
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The inspiration for the first Big Game came from none other than former U.S. President Herbert Hoover — then student manager of the Stanford football team — and his friend Herbert Lang, the student manager of the Cal football team.
On March 19, 1892, Stanford defeated Cal 14-10 in the inaugural matchup. Amusingly, the game started late because Hoover forgot the ball. With attendance doubling the printed tickets, both schools agreed to make it an annual tradition. The term “Big Game” became widely used in the early 1900s.
One of the darkest moments in Big Game history — and American sports history — was the Thanksgiving Day Disaster of 1900, the deadliest accident ever at a U.S. sporting event. The tragedy’s roots trace back to the 1897 Big Game, when a section of a roof collapsed under fans. Miraculously, no one was killed, and only one person required hospitalization.
In 1900, however, disaster struck when fans climbed onto the roof of a glassworks factory to watch the game. Early in the game, the roof gave way — unnoticed by the players — sending people plunging into the furnace and onto the ground below. The collapse claimed 23 lives, most of them children and young adults, and left over 100 others injured or maimed.
Moving forward in the Big Game timeline to 1906, both Stanford and Cal switched from football to rugby in order to reduce the sport’s violence, a decision mirrored by many West Coast teams over the following decade. From 1906 to 1914, all Big Games between Stanford and Cal were rugby matches.
However, in 1915, Cal returned to football, leading to an unusual arrangement: Cal played Washington in the Big Game for football, while Stanford faced Santa Clara University in rugby. This split continued until 1918, when Stanford switched back to football, reviving the traditional Big Game rivalry. Having been without a football team for 12 years, Stanford suffered a crushing 67-0 defeat to Cal in their first matchup.
No retelling of the story of Big Game is complete without discussing The Play — as the events at the end of the 1982 game came to be known. In a nail-biter featuring future Hall of Famer and Super Bowl champion John Elway as Stanford’s quarterback, Stanford led 20-19 after kicking a field goal with just four seconds remaining. However, an unsportsman-like conduct penalty on Stanford pushed back their subsequent kickoff, setting the stage for Cal’s miraculous finish.
Needing a miracle, Cal players executed a series of laterals — passing the ball sideways to teammates to avoid being tackled. During one of the laterals, the Stanford sideline mistakenly believed a Cal player had been tackled with the ball, prompting the Stanford band to rush onto the field to celebrate their presumed victory. The final Cal player to possess the ball rushed the final twenty yards to a touchdown, weaving through the Stanford band, and colliding with a trombone player in the end zone.
As referee Charles Moffett recalled years later, “When I raised my arms [to signal the touchdown], I thought I had started World War III. It was like an atomic bomb had gone off.”
Stanford would get their revenge eight years later with “The Payback.” Down by one point after scoring a touchdown, Stanford successfully recovered an onside kick inside Cal territory, then took advantage of a Cal roughing the passer penalty to kick a walk-off field goal.
Between 2010 and 2018, Stanford dominated the Big Game, winning every matchup during that span. A key contributor to this streak was running back Christian McCaffrey ’16, who is now a star for the San Francisco 49ers. In the 2015 season, McCaffrey’s sophomore year, he shattered several Stanford rushing records while leading the Cardinal to a 35-22 victory over Cal and a third-place national ranking — the program’s highest in 75 years. The following year, McCaffrey led the nation in all-purpose yards per game as Stanford’s high-powered offense scored 45 points in yet another win over Cal.
Going into the 127th Big Game, Stanford has lost four of the last five matchups but nevertheless maintains a 66-53-11 record overall. While most of those losses were by one score, the Cardinal endured a humiliating 41-11 defeat in 2021. Stanford has yet to return to its McCaffrey-era dominance in the Big Game. Regardless of whether they reclaim the iconic Stanford Axe, this matchup will continue one of the oldest and most storied rivalries in football history.
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Overheard at Stanford: ‘Men destrAHOYed this nation’Hansen gives a personal review on what she thinks are must-watch feminist movies.
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Overheard at Stanford is a biweekly column written by Linden Hansen ’27. Hansen takes notable quotes she hears around campus and develops them further — whether they be insightful, astonishing or humorous! No matter what, they are guaranteed to represent the pulse of the student body.
“Menstruation. Menstruation. Menstruation. Men destrAHOYed this nation.”
— My friend Morgan. Overheard all the time.
I’ve wanted to write this piece for a little while, and I also think the world must familiarize itself with Morgan’s slam poetry. Are these movies feminist? I don’t know. They are to me. Let’s talk about it.
Ah, feminism. It is a quintessential talking point of our time. The agenda has morphed and changed and wilted and blossomed over decades now. When did it start? The dawn of time? When cavewomen fought cavemen for a flicker of light in the dark? Was it Simone de Beauvoir, bringing voice to housewives’ rage in “The Second Sex”? Or the #MeToo movement? Was that peak feminism?
And more, what does feminism mean to us in the zeitgeist of popular media? How is it expressed artistically? Cinematically? Film has proved itself as a safe haven for commentary on many socio-political movements, and feminism is no exception. Its unique capability to insert the viewer into a specific situation — or into a characters’ point of view — is unmatched by other arts. We have much to learn about women’s points of view. So, without further ado, I present to you: a rundown of must–see feminist movies.
Not made with the typical feminist messages in mind, I know. But still, this was the first movie where I felt my girlhood identified on the screen. Giggles, dress-up, and sleepovers give the film a youthful spirit, and a hazy blue filter paints it tragically dreamlike. Two young girls (Tracy Freeland and Nikki Reed) fall madly in love with the spontaneity of life, something I too was infatuated with, growing up. But their newfound exploration manifests in the glamorized medium of self–destruction— debauchery and scandal crash down on their worlds. Amidst life in the fast lane, the consequences of the girls’ actions give heed to the delicate balance between healthy quests in delinquency and outright self-harm (through substance abuse, sex, thievery, etc.).
But ultimately, while painting a haunting portrait of a troubled girl’s coming of age, trust and community prevail in the end. The film’s feat is even more outstanding upon learning that it’s based on the director’s experiences with her stepdaughter, Nikki Reed, who also happens to be the film’s supporting actress. Even now, I’m no longer thirteen, and the movie resonates.
On the other hand, this one is feel-good by all measures. An eclectic cast (Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning, Lucas Jade Zumann, and Billy Crudup) fumbles around an equally eclectic estate in search of inspiration, identification, and purpose. To quote my friend’s Letterboxd review, “If you want to watch a feminist movie, watch this one, not Barbie.” She’s right. Three women, all traversing different walks of life, do their part in raising a teen boy (Lucas Jade Zumann) in his most formative years. His attentive mother (Anette Bening) is endlessly concerned. Her quirky border (a fiery, red-haired Greta Gerwig) gives vague philosophical advice. And his elusive, book–reading love interest (Elle Fanning) serves as a manic-pixie muse. What’s more— they all practically live under the same roof! It’s a one-of-a-kind experience to behold, a slice of life at its best. By the end, you’ve seen a little piece of yourself in each character. Both your faults and praises.
A phenomenon that needs no introduction, I hope. Every time I think to myself ‘Who am I? Why am I here?’ and the imposter syndrome creeps in, I stop, breathe, and remind myself: Elle Woods did it. She did it all— dropped the toxic man, claimed her education, foraged through animus, and donned a chic outfit in every scene. She shows us that attention to typical girl-ish things does not guarantee ditziness. She proves that hard work pays off, and academic or professional success is attainable for women with seemingly contrary backgrounds.
Plus, Reese Witherspoon just has to make the list. Stanford drop-out. Actress icon. Business baddie. Shameless bookworm. We know her, we love her, and she deserves to be here.
Pride and Prejudice holds a special place in my heart. I was indoctrinated at a young age, when my parents pressed play one movie night long ago. I might be biased (I’m the oldest of four girls) but I think this is one of the all time purest portraits of sisterhood, besides the obvious Little Women pick. The Bennet sisters care deeply for one another (one could make an exception for the capricious Lydia), sacrificing suitors and wealth for the sake of their friendships. Decisions which, at the time of the books’ release, might have been considered progressive. Elizabeth Bennet is unconcerned with status— she would rather hold staunch to her integrity than submit to a glamorous man.
Furthermore, the setting is spectacular. The old English countryside captivated my senses, and my sisters and I played pretend tea-time or go-to-the-ball for years after. Still now, we rely on the film as a comfort. We cuddle up, traverse space and time, end up in the Longbourne sitting room, and pine after Mr. Darcy’s cold mystery once again. There is something to be said about emotional depth in a plain world. The English pander aimlessly around Derbyshire in search of marriage and wealth, and it feeds my need for period-piece melodrama every time.
And please, please, please read the book. “Jane Austen reads like a soap opera,” a friend once gagged. True. But, this soap opera is strikingly relevant, and modernly humorous.
Possibly my favorite movie of all time, so I’ll stop at nothing to plug it. Luckily, for the purpose of this piece, it features a brazen heroine. Chihiro is naïve and pampered in the opening scenes of the movie, but soon supernatural forces propel her into a hostile spirit world. Ghibli movies rarely disappoint visual appeal, but Spirited Away is next level. The viewer is quite literally whisked into a magical world where every graphic is immersive. Japanese delicacies are tangible on your tongue, bathhouse steam tingles on your skin, and Chihiro’s search through the formidable unknown— you feel it to your core. I just love the scene when Chihiro speeds by train across a vast reflective plane of water, orange clouds aglow both above and below her, as the soundtrack plays peacefully..
Themes of love and loss are seamlessly woven throughout the film, a tremendous accomplishment for a children’s movie. And because of its mature themes, the story lends itself to both youth and adult moviegoers. And, fun fact, upon a Google search just now, I learned that this movie was actually the inspiration for the Billie Eilish song, “CHIHIRO.”
With that, thank you to the cinema for representing us. I hope these recommendations prove fruitful, and teach a little something about women’s stories. Happy viewing…
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Hasan Minhaj is done with the cancel, but keeps riffing on the cultureHasan Minhaj’s new Netflix special “Off With His Head” signals that he is done with cancel culture, but hasn’t flipped into antagonistic trolling.
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Hasan Minhaj’s comedy has long been about displaying introspective content in fresh forms. From his work on “The Daily Show” to “Patriot Act,” he has aimed to inform audiences about current issues, not without doing some light damage to the reputations of various figures and corporations. In the past, he has been successful. But after a New Yorker article fact-checked his comedy and blemished a mostly spotless career, his jokes have shifted perspective.
Minhaj’s new Netflix special “Off With His Head,” released in October, dismisses the situation as a “dorky controversy” (which it probably is), though its effects do seem to ripple in the new special’s jokes and structure. Minhaj used to tell us sweeping personal sagas about cultural difference; their punchlines were the dramatic, heart-wrenching center of each special.
This time, there is no unifying theme, only distinct topics loosely orbiting the topical division of the U.S. This time, the jokes are just jokes. There is no bigger story here, and Minhaj does not lecture. He wobbles and stumbles alongside us as we watch politics unfold and observe unexpected cultural phenomena. In this special, we see a more traditional comedian, and a more experienced one. His delivery is spot-on — I was laughing and even clapping along with the audience, despite the screen separating us.
Minhaj sets the mood for the evening by poking fun at San Jose, where the special was filmed. He gestures to the front rows and says, “Los Altos, Palo Alto, Stanford area. Yes, you definitely drive a Tesla. I can see it. The one percent right here. And way the fuck back there we have the 99%.” The joke is met with roaring laughter because with a Bay Area audience, he is probably onto something. Minhaj toes the line between absurdity and truth, which is a key part of what makes his comedy successful. His initial jokes set a precedent of lighthearted audience interaction and creates an air of authenticity that does not waver.
In the meat of the special, Minhaj aligns himself with comedic tradition by riffing on individual audience members and making fun of politics. After an offhand comment about a controversial topic, he says, “That really divided the room. That’s every issue in America now. Everything is binary now.” He gives viewers time to make assumptions about what that binary is, but clarifies that the two sides are not Republican and Democrat. You have two choices: “It’s insane people… and insufferable people.”
In 2024, we want to be like Hasan Minhaj: We want to rise above division and make fun of everyone’s bullshit. Instead of becoming comedians ourselves, we savor Minhaj’s commentary. Minhaj himself points out that he used to be insufferable. He reminds us of the time he corrected Ellen DeGeneres’s pronunciation of his name as a guest on her show. “My life is perfect, and I’m out here arguing with Ellen over vowels,” he jokes. It can feel good to correct people, to speak truth to privilege and to damage another’s reputation. But “Off With His Head” does not indulge. In this special, Minaj self-reflects, and he reflects America back to us.
A central focus of the special is cultural differences. Minhaj explores the ins and outs of “Beige-istan,” a term for ethnic communities outside of the Black-white binary. And his observations are ones you could only hear in America.
“White people, you’re not even the best at racism,” he says. “Try explaining George Floyd to an Indian dad.”
Minhaj’s somewhat shocking but undeniably fresh perspectives lend themselves well to solid comedy. It opens up the room for audiences to laugh at his observations. While Minhaj used to make commentary in service of a larger cohesive story, now, he does it because it’s funny.
Mid-special, Minhaj levels with the audience. “Let’s say what we can’t say at the DEI meeting. Let’s just get it out.” Minhaj uses the hypothetical but relatable example of a DEI meeting as something that his show is not. Clearly, Minhaj is done with cancel culture, but he has not flipped into antagonistic trolling. When he jokes that this comedy show is not a DEI meeting, he is not dropping a buzz word to ignite conservatives, he is telling his culturally diverse and majority liberal audience that tonight, it is simply not that deep.
In my view, the special as a whole exemplifies something important about comedy’s niche in our democracy. It has its own rules that differ wildly from the rules of the professional world, the home, the college campus or the political stage. I would even say comedy is an indicator; to know how society really feels, look at the jokes we tell and consider the jokes we laugh at. It tells us something when Dave Chappelle fans laugh hesitantly at his jokes mocking trans people. It tells us something when Tony Hinchliffe’s Trump rally joke about Puerto Rico meets viral backlash. It tells us something when audiences roll their eyes at social cliches that comedians have exhausted.
There are a lot of things that make comedy funny, and a lot of things that make it unfunny. In my opinion, a fresh and non-hateful perspective is key, and Hasan Minhaj has delivered that from the beginning. But we do not all need to have the same sense of humor. We do need to keep in mind what people are laughing at, because Minhaj is right, comedy shows are definitely not DEI meetings.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
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CS, math course enrollment rises in fall 2024As was the case last year, COLLEGE 101 was the most-enrolled course, with CS and math courses rounding out the rest of the top 10.
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Computer Science (CS) and math classes dominated the most enrolled undergraduate courses this quarter, a steady rise from last academic school year.
Seven of the top 10 undergraduate courses were listed as CS courses, up from four last fall. Over half of the top 20 most enrolled undergraduate courses this quarter were in the CS department, as popular introductory courses like Psych 1 dropped from the list.
This year, students enrolled in courses in early September, a little under three weeks before the quarter started.
In the graphics below, hover over each bar to view the full course title.
COLLEGE 101: “Why College? Your Education and the Good Life” has the highest enrollment, as was the case last year. This course — which is required for freshmen not enrolled in Structured Liberal Expression (SLE), Education as Self-Fashioning Seminars (ESF) and ITALIC: Immersion in the Arts — explores themes of a liberal arts education in broad contexts, such as its relations to future careers. Many students enrolled in this course take its sequel, COLLEGE 102: “Citizenship in the 21st Century,” in the winter as a means to complete the university’s first-year COLLEGE requirement.
STEM course were among popular demand. Seven of the top 10 undergraduate courses by enrollment are in CS, continuing a trend of the department’s popularity. The most popular CS course is CS 148: “Introduction to Computer Graphics and Imaging,” taught by Professor Ron Fedkiw. The class covers optics, shading, rendering, geometric modeling and texture mapping. Students create an image using ray tracing for their final project.
The third- and fourth-most enrolled undergraduate courses are CS 106A: “Programming Methodology” and CS 106B: “Programming Abstractions,” — the first courses in Stanford’s introductory CS sequence. CS 106A is taught in Python and expects no prior programming experience. Historically, approximately half the students enrolled are freshmen, according to Carta. Upon successful completion of CS 106A (or the equivalent), students may take CS 106B, a more technically advanced course taught in C++. This course introduces data structures and algorithms.
Stanford’s undergraduates are required to complete Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing requirements. Students must complete a number of courses across eight Ways domains, such as scientific method and analysis, applied quantitative reasoning, creative expression and exploring difference and power.
This quarter, the largest number of students are enrolled in courses meeting the formal reasoning Ways (or, WAY-FR) requirement. Courses in this domain include MATH 51: “Linear Algebra, Multivariable Calculus, and Modern Application” and SYMSYS 1: “Minds and Machines,” among many others. The latter is a gateway course for the symbolic systems major and provides an overview of the interdisciplinary study of cognition, information, communication and language.
The second highest enrollment is in the social inquiry Ways, or WAY-SI. The university instated this requirement to propel students “to understand human behavior and exercise responsible citizenship.”
The wide range of student enrollment across Ways requirements is not directly a result of student interest in a given domain but also a factor of differences in the number of course offerings and class sizes each quarter.
Among Stanford’s graduate-level courses, GSBGEN 208: “Leading with Values” has the highest enrollment with 844 students. This first-year MBA course is taught by Neil Malhotra M.A. ’05 Ph.D. ’08, the Edith M. Cornell professor of political economy and author of the book “Leading with Values.” Students delve into ethics and become attuned to “grapple with questions about the role of business in society.”
The second-most enrolled graduate course is CS 238: “Decision Making Under Uncertainty” (cross-listed as AA 238), which equips advanced students with an understanding of autonomous systems. Stochastic dynamics, Bayesian networks and reinforcement learning are topics discussed.
The graphics below provide a breakdown of course enrollment within three graduate schools: the Graduate School of Business, the Law School and the School of Medicine.
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Teland La to reclaim Guinness World Record with chopstick prowessSurrounded by friends and spectators, Teland La celebrated his final birthday at Stanford by attempting to break the Guinness World Record for most grains of rice eaten in one minute.
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About 100 students gathered in White Plaza on Sunday afternoon to support and spectate a birthday celebration for Teland La ’24 M.S. ’25, where he sought to break the Guinness World Record for most grains of rice eaten with chopsticks in one minute.
La picked up 62 grains. He first broke the record with 27 grains in April 2022, when he was a Stanford sophomore. That record was beaten in February 2024 with 37 grains, which La said he reclaimed on Sunday.
La’s Sunday attempt has yet to be adjudicated by Guinness World Record. It may take up to 12 weeks for the video to be reviewed and validated by Guinness World Records.
La said he did not care much when his first record was broken by someone else and he did not take Sunday’s attempt very seriously. He said he wanted to do something special for his last year at Stanford.
“It was much less about the record and more about just having fun, getting people together for my birthday. Afterwards, we celebrated, and we all hung out together and watched stuff, and it was nice,” he said.
He said it was funny and surreal that the event drew such a large crowd, with many people recording him. Flyers about the event were posted around campus and posts were made on Reddit, Fizz and Instagram. Nikhil Lyles ’24 M.S. ’25 said he spontaneously helped La put up the flyers in an after-midnight decision.
“I was really happy for [La], and it definitely felt pretty special since he was doing his reclaiming attempt on his birthday,” Lyles said.
Despite beating his first record by 35 grains, La did not practice that much for the event. La said he occasionally practiced at restaurants when he wanted to mess around, and also for a half-hour minutes before the event.
Luke Virsik ’24 M.S. ’25 was one of the timekeepers in 2022 during La’s first record breaking moment. He said it was cool to see La doing something special for their last year on campus.
“So it’s kind of coming full circle, right?” he said. “That was our first year on campus, and this is our last so it felt like we were doing something we’ve done before, but doing it better.”
Carolyn Ky ’24 M.S. ’25 said she has not spoken much to La since their sophomore year, but she decided to come to support him after seeing an Instagram post promoting the event.
“It’s just nice to see students just do very random things for the sake of just trying it out,” she said. “One thing that I know about Teland is that he does outlandish things all the time. He’s someone who pushes himself, I think, to make the most of opportunities around him.”
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How About Now: ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ preemptively rebels against teen-comediesDirector Nicholas Ray’s “Rebel Without a Cause” is a tense film that sets the stage — and a high bar — for later teen films, writes Barrett.
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In his column “How About Now,” Mason Barrett ’28 reviews classic films through a modern lens.
This review contains spoilers.
This may be a surprise, but I, the writer of a classic film review, am not the epitome of cool. In the history of cinema there have always been films that allowed nerds like me to vicariously experience coolness: “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Back to the Future,” “American Graffiti.” However, long before we saved Ferris, Jim Stark was possibly the coolest teen in cinema.
Released in 1955 with director Nicholas Ray at the helm, “Rebel Without a Cause” follows Jim Stark (James Dean) during his first day in a new town. Jim tries to keep a low profile, having had to frequently move because of all the trouble he would get into. When a group of his peers forces him into a life-threatening game of chicken, in which two people drive cars at a cliff and see who can jump out to safety last, their ringleader Buzz (Corey Allen) dies and Jim spends the rest of the night on the run with his new friend Plato (Sal Mineo) and new love interest Judy (Natalie Wood). The night comes to blows when Plato attacks their pursuers with a gun, resulting in an epic showdown at the Griffith Observatory.
The pacing of the film doesn’t feel strange at all, but the unrealistic speed at which characters develop and events occur within the time frame of the film is off-putting. During the film, Judy loses Buzz, a person she presumably had some sort of intimate relationship with. By the end of the film she has confessed her love for Jim. This rapid turnaround happens within a single day and night, which is ludicrous to watch. Her entire character is confusing at times as her motivations and goals seem to change throughout the film with little reason. Her entire development is absurd and sacrifices logical progression, just so that Jim can “get the girl” in the end.
I don’t want to misrepresent this film as a teen-comedy. It’s a drama and an intense one at that. Jim’s conflicts with his parents aren’t played for laughs. Buzz is intimidating but not a cartoonish buffoon.
Jim’s story is a tragedy, heightened by the astounding acting of James Dean. His frustration with his parents, his discomfort with his new environment and his loss are all too real and painful. Plato is also a curious character: his innocent disposition, tragic homelife and obsession with Jim make him fairly likable, despite his introduction as a puppy killer. Both Jim and Plato’s characters are fascinating to watch and their actors do a wonderful job earning our attention and sympathy.
My greater focus on characters than plot is not without reason: the plot is an exaggerated fantasy. In the course of about 24 hours, Jim lands in a police station for drunkenness, gets his tires slashed, engages in a knife fight, partakes in a game of chicken where his competition dies, goes on the run with two people he met that day, confesses his love to one of them and nearly saves the other in a standoff with the police.
The film is not about a coherent and logical plot — it’s the tragedy of a teen struggling to fit into a world that rejects him and a home that irresponsibly indulges him. This is what separates “Rebel Without a Cause” from a film like “Back to the Future.” Despite the similar red jackets, hatred of being called a “chicken” and the similarly named bullies, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) exists in a comedy whereas Jim exists in a teen-tragedy. This is the beauty of “Rebel Without a Cause:” in other teen films, the teen rebels against the powers that be. Jim doesn’t rebel against anything. Instead, he tries to lay low in a world that rebels against him, truly making him a rebel without a cause.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
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Daily Diminutive #013 (Nov. 19, 2024)Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords twice a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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Stanford Founders club hosts inaugural Demo DayThe Stanford Founders organization hosted its first Demo Day, showcasing nine startups founded by graduate students and recent grads.
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Stanford Founders — the University’s first student organization focused on pioneering an interdisciplinary approach to entrepreneurship for graduate students — hosted its inaugural “Demo Day” on Thursday night. Graduate students across all seven of Stanford’s schools came together to pitch their startups to venture capitalists.
Stanford Founders has 1,150 active members from over 100 countries and provides its members a myriad of resources, including tailored events focused on nurturing entrepreneurial skills, co-founder matching, sector-specific mixers and resource-sharing for startup growth.
Demo Day startups ranged from a co-founder matching app to artificial intelligence, applied to medicine, education and finance.
“Startups are not just for ‘business people’ anymore,” said co-President Hunter Zhang M.S. ’25.
Students across departments came together to form teams and prepared three minute pitches for a panel of investor judges: Keith Bender from Pear, Joanna Litcher from Emerson Collective and James da Costa from a16z.
“We invest quite heavily in the Stanford ecosystem in particular,” Bender said.
The demos were followed by a networking session during which each team of founders staffed a table, where anyone could stop by and ask questions.
Stanford Founders President Johnny Chang M.S. ’25 said the organization began with a group of ten graduate student founders sharing resources through WhatsApp. The group grew from an initial ten to 600 members in three months, Chang said, eventually pivoting to in-person events that catered to innovators in finance, AI, energy and sustainability, healthcare, aerospace and defense and more.
Chang said he recognized a pressing need for a cross-department student organization dedicated to graduate student entrepreneurship.
“The GSB has many resources, but there were none really for graduate students across different disciplines,” Chang said.
One challenge for student entrepreneurs is the ability to find a responsible co-founder, Zhang said. Stanford Founders takes a new approach by hosting matching events that connect talents across different disciplines, rather than confining the scope of entrepreneurship to the Graduate School of Business (GSB), he added.
The group’s vice president of Healthcare, Chris Bradbury MBA ’26, said talents are lost in the consolidation of entrepreneurial resources in the GSB, making the process of accessing those resources inefficient and in need of overhaul. Stanford Founders is working with a slate of organizations on campus to try to and diversify Stanford’s entrepreneurial ecosystem .
“Many of the organizations here have the same mission: to help founders go from zero to one,” Chang said. “But right now there isn’t that much collaboration across different organizations.”
Chang added that the most successful startups usually have founders with relevant industry expertise.
Chang sees a myriad of opportunities to create a connected ecosystem where people who have kickstarted their product at Affiliated Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (ASES) or Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) can come to Stanford Founders mixers to meet other founders, take advantage of investor (VC) office hours and attend Demo Day.
Zhang added that Ph.D. students often lack the inspiration to go out and become entrepreneurs, even if their idea is promising.
“If they come to events, they may become inspired after talking to VCs and innovate from zero to one through their Ph.D. research,” Zhang said.
Stanford Founders club plans to host Demo Days quarterly going forward, so that all of Stanford’s best teams can pitch to investors, Chang said. The goal is to expand the organization to include undergraduates and potentially the wider Bay Area community.
Ultimately, though, Stanford Founders’ goal is to nourish curiosity in all its forms, according to third-year Ph.D. mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Francesco Marchioni M.S. ’25, the group’s VP of Aerospace and Defense.
“The initial focus is on the journey of building, rather than the finished product,” Marchioni said.
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For the Tree: Stanford athletes fight for sustainability in athleticsStanford's EcoAthletes are making their mark on the campus and beyond, helping to bridge the gap between sports and sustainability.
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A group of athletes sit huddled in a small room on Stanford’s campus — strategizing. They’re not watching film from their last game or discussing their upcoming match. Instead, they’re tasked with facing their greatest opponent, one that follows them off the field — climate change.
This quarter, 22 students enrolled in “Earth Systems 26: Sustainability in Athletics,” a course that takes students through a speaker series of professionals who work in the intersection of athletics and sustainability. Although the name may suggest the class is solely composed of Stanford athletes, there are a wide range of students taking the course.
“It’s actually extremely diverse, which is really cool,” said Sophia Sanders, a TA for the class. Sanders is a senior studying Earth Systems and a driver on the women’s water polo team.
Nora Goodwillie, the other TA for the class, echoed the value in having athletes and non-athletes in the classroom.
“I think it’s also very powerful in the fact that we also have non athletes, master students, post-doc students, to be able to communicate what they learn to the rest of the world and hopefully create action,” said Goodwillie, a Stanford rower and junior studying Human Biology.
The class is taught once a school year and both Goodwillie and Sanders have been teaching assistants for the course since spring 2023. Both athletes were introduced to the course through Student Athletes for Sustainability (SAS), a club that works to encourage a partnership between Stanford athletics and sustainability initiatives. Earth systems lecturer Suki Hoagland has taught the course since its creation five years ago, when SAS members first approached her with the idea. Although she helps oversee the course, the teaching assistants take a leading role, running the day to day operations of the class.
The spirit of student initiative that first created the class translates into some of the work within the class today. In addition to the speaker series, the class also has a project element. If taken as a two-unit course, students are tasked with creating a sustainability action project.
A few years ago, one of these class projects had a tangible impact on Stanford’s campus. The project changed the way fueling — a grab and go station for athletes to grab food between practice — worked by changing the plastic bags and cups at the station to compostable products. With the support of the fueling station nutritionist, they were able to get the fueling station green business certification.
“That was a cool one because the club pushed it forward,” Sanders said. “It ended up resulting in [the fueling station] being more green.”
Students who take the course for one unit are not required to do a project and solely attend the presentations of the speakers who are invited to the class.
The speakers have professional experience with sustainability in athletics. Sanders and Goodwillie met one of this quarter’s speakers, Alayna Burns — a forward on the Stanford field hockey team — at the sustainability-focused Green Sports Alliance Summit hosted this past summer. Sanders, Goodwilli and Burns were the only student-athletes at the conference. Burns, who spent her undergraduate career studying economics at Duke and playing field hockey, recently transferred to Stanford to play her fifth year and studies management science and engineering.
Burns is very familiar with conversations concerning athletics and sustainability. During her speaker event for the class this quarter, she spoke about her work with sustainability at Duke.
As an undergraduate at Duke, Burns spearheaded multiple environmental advocacy initiatives on campus including a shoe drive in 2023 which collected almost 600 pairs of shoes from sports teams to be recycled and repurposed by various organizations. The shoe drive now happens each semester on Duke’s campus.
Burns also worked to create a sorted waste system within the athlete dining hall at Duke. When she visited Stanford, Burns was excited to see they had a unique and sustainable waste system in place.
“[I] kind of was inspired when I came here on my visit for Stanford and saw their athlete dining,” Burns said. With the help of others, Burns was able to impact the way students threw away their waste after meals.
Much of the work Burns did at Duke was supported by a non-profit organization named Eco Athletes that connects a global network of athletes across professional and collegiate levels who have a passion for the environment. They encourage athletes to use their platform to make an impact while providing guidance for their sustainability initiatives.
The non-profit encourages collaboration and, as Burns found out, that support might just come from the opposite coast. In 2023, Duke and Stanford teamed up to compete in the EcoAthletes Collegiate Cup Competition. Within this competition, college athletes across the country receive credit for the exercises they complete. The logged exercises are converted into money which is given to projects that offset carbon emission. Athletes typically compete with a team comprised of athletes from their university, against other universities. However, that year Stanford and Duke competed together and placed 2nd in the competition.
“[The competition] started a Stanford and Duke bridge that I wasn’t even realizing I was forming, that would end up really meaning a lot in the future when I wanted to come here,” Burns said.
The organization is actively hosting events and supporting athletes across the world. Recently, EcoAthletes ran an initiative aimed at increasing the number of voters in the election, a sentiment illustrated by their catch phrase “vote like your climate depends on it.”
In total, Stanford has five Ecoathletes, including Sanders, Burns and Goodwillie. Although many people may not initially see the connection between sustainability and athletics, these athletes have worked to prove the two can go together.
“It can be really, really powerful when you unite people within your sports for a certain cause, because you have more of an influence than you realize,” Burns said. “Other athletes across your community might be looking for that one other person who’s taking that courageous step to start a movement.”
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Sophia Kennedy and Zofia Dudek are Stanford cross country’s dynamic duoTeammates Sophia Kennedy and Zofia Dudek share a unique friendship rooted in passion, ambition and a little bit of chaos. On Friday, the duo propelled the Cardinal to a runner-up finish at the NCAA West Regionals, clinching the team's 32nd consecutive appearance at the NCAA Championships.
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Sophia Kennedy and Zofia Dudek are a force to be reckoned with, pushing each other — and Stanford women’s cross country — to greater heights.
The two Midwest natives — Kennedy a sophomore from Indiana and Dudek a graduate student from Michigan — are on the forefront of the Cardinal’s campaign to the national stage. Together, they’ve helped keep Stanford top 15 in the national rankings all season and led the team to a runner-up finish in its first ACC Championships.
When asked to describe their relationship, Dudek laughed and said, “I bring the chaos. Sophia’s just organized. She’s on top of her s—.”
Kennedy, turning to Dudek with a grin, replied, “You bring out my fun side.”
The duo’s chaotic good energy might be exactly what keeps them inseparable — even during races. In three of the five meets so far this season, Kennedy and Dudek finished consecutively, never more than four seconds apart. Notable performances included a 2-3 finish at the Gans Creek Classic, which secured Stanford’s team win, and a 10-11 finish at the ACC Championships.
“We feed off that energy of pushing each other to be better, in a hand-holding way rather than an aggressive way, which is really special to find,” Kennedy said.
Even in races with large fields, the two can often be seen running shoulder-to-shoulder, stride-for-stride. Their friendship extends beyond the course, too, in practice, team dinners and weekend team adventures.
“It’s really helpful to have someone there, who you know you’ve been training with and is where you’re supposed to be in the race. If you see [they’re] a bit further up, you can try to get there,” Dudek said.
Dudek came into the 2024 season with a wealth of experience, including three consecutive West region team titles and All-American individual honors at the 2022 NCAA Championships. She even served as Stanford’s No. 1 runner for the entirety of her junior year.
Now, in her final collegiate cross country season, Dudek is focused on using that experience to set a positive example for younger teammates.
“It’s just so surreal being the oldest one on the team now because I remember being in her [Kennedy’s] position and having my older teammates lead the way,” Dudek said.
While reflecting on Dudek’s leadership, Kennedy said, “I’ve just been able to really feed off of the excitement and the passion and the happiness that Zofia brings to every workout and every race.”
Kennedy, in just her second collegiate season, has already embodied the passion and composure of an experienced veteran. As the daughter of two-time Olympic distance runner Bob Kennedy, she made her statement near the end of her freshman season, running as Stanford’s No. 3 at the 2023 NCAA West Regional and Championship races. Kennedy carried that momentum into the 2024 season, where she earned her first collegiate cross country win at the season-opening San Francisco Invitational.
This season, both Kennedy and Dudek have shown remarkable consistency in the face of tough competition. However, the duo has eyes on an even bigger prize: a team podium finish at the NCAA Championships.
In the NCAA West Regionals on Nov. 15, the Cardinal — ranked No. 3 in the West — needed a top-two finish to secure an automatic bid to the national stage. For Kennedy and Dudek, their goal in the 40-team show was simple: “get the job done.” Kennedy and Dudek finished 6th and 16th, respectively, to propel the Cardinal to second place, clinching the program’s 32nd consecutive appearance at the NCAA Championships.
With the Championships less than a week away, Kennedy said, “We want to have our best day on the day that matters. And then hopefully our whole team is in the same position together, which is one of the best feelings.”
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Made a mixtape, hope you like it: Fiona Apple“This mixtape contains songs that try to do the same for Fiona Apple. They are weird and beautiful and terrifying, but aren’t we all?” writes Altarejos.
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In her column “Made a Mixtape, Hope You Like It,” Amanda Altarejos ’26 curates a “mixtape” of modern music for older artists. Listen here for a playlist “for fiona apple.”
In an interview with NPR, Fiona Apple is heard as an “unapologetic woman.” Her alternative voice speaks and screams and cries and whispers to unapologetic women everywhere, feeling everything, everywhere. Her most recent release, “Fetch The Bolt Cutters,” is an album of liberation — she demands to be let loose.
The rest of her discography is similar, and that is why I love it. She invites you to feel it all with her and to be proud that you do. This mixtape contains songs that try to do the same for her. They are weird and beautiful and terrifying, but aren’t we all? Fiona surely seems to be.
Despite the harsh title, “Norman Fucking Rockwell” is a soft caress of pointed disappointment with a “god-damn man child.” Similar to many of the songs in Fiona Apple’s 1996 album, “Tidal,” sweet, tender sounds undulate beneath lyrics that narrate the thoughts of a defiant and loving and hating woman; she is all of those things because she can be. It’s time to let loose.
“He Loves Me Yeah!” is a cheekier response to the tumultuous first EP “Fetch The Bolt Cutters, I Want You to Love Me.” Fiona is feeling existential in her body, and she angrily wants someone to love her. Webster provides a playful response: she affirms that her “baby” loves her, and yeah. When heard live, Webster’s screaming of “yeah” is warmly reminiscent of Fiona’s own weird noises that are sprinkled throughout her albums.
Fiona seems to be unafraid of intimacy, both with another and with us, the listener, regarding love. She has pride in her desires and struggles, yet confidently shares them out loud. In “The First Taste,” she confesses that it was “her aim to get caught” and consumed by her lover. This late night thought permeates the narrator of Phoebe Bridgers’ “Demi Moore.” Longing has become too much – their need for closeness triumphs over however terrible that consumption may be.
Let us all be angrily proud of our bad decisions with man-children who write “bad poetry” and little boys who don’t know why we “don’t feel so good.” I hope Fiona can find a home in this fellow unapologetic woman’s monologue. The song is a brash march of drums and a screeching guitar that melts into Mitski’s own screaming, making it all the more satisfying and beautiful to listen to.
Mitski just gets it. She says that she’s “not the girl” she “ought to be,” and neither is Fiona, who has an entire song dedicated to feeling like a “criminal” in the face of a “delicate man.”
Again, Mitski’s ability to blend despair and confidence could be a musical home for Fiona. Mitski feels strong in “Liquid Smooth” as she dares others to touch her at her prime, right before she falls. She knows who she is and isn’t afraid of it. Fiona does, too.
If the Fiona Apple type of girlhood had a moment where things always remained just fun and flirty, “Bad Girls” by Blood Orange would narrate that montage. A short break from the intensity of the other songs on this mixtape, “Bad Girls” is the background of a night of possibility – of bad relationships, good ones, drinking, staying at home. It’s all the same, and we’re all so drawn to it.
Fiona has confessed in “Criminal” that she hopes to be punished for being careless with men. She is bad. She knows this. Mitski knows this. Ethel Cain’s “Gibson Girl” knows it too. She is aware of male desire and takes control of it, because “if it feels good, then it can’t be bad.” And that is what I want for Fiona – for her to feel good. To feel true.
Editor’s Note: This article includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
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Reviewing the (musical) roster: Stanford versus Cal’s live music venuesWhether you traveled to UC Berkeley to see Gracie Abrams, or made your way to Stanford to see Clairo, both campuses boast lively and distinct music scenes.
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The booming voice of the Big Game announcer seems to pierce through the November air: “Today, houses stand divided, and families split apart.” The division isn’t exclusive to literal houses, though. What about the audiences, families forged through musical bonds, standing in the houses of theaters across the Bay?
Both UC Berkeley and Stanford students frequent concerts, sometimes near their own campuses and sometimes crossing the Bay to listen to a particular artist. In honor of the football spirit, prepare to meet the star-studded roster of music venues each school has to offer.
Playing for Stanford University: The Arbor
Playing for UC Berkeley: The Backroom
The Arbor is Stanford’s worst kept unintentional secret. The Arbor, whose Instagram bio simply reads “student run student music,” is a production company on-campus which puts on student music shows in the patio behind Tresidder Memorial Union. Many assume that the guitar player, or the salsa music group, or the DJ playing near Treehouse is there by default, but nope — that is Stanford’s one and only The Arbor!
In winters, The Arbor moves indoors to CoHo’s miniature stage, giving the cafe a cozy vibe no matter what music is playing. Many students will take off their noise canceling headphones and vibe to the music as they work, or simply put away their work and enjoy the moment. However, this cozy, indoor vibe lasts all year at UC Berkeley’s The Back Room!
The Back Room, opened by UC Berkeley local musician Sam Rudin in 2016, occupies what used to be The Freight and Salvage: a music venue “deeply rooted in that aspect of Berkeley’s culture that embraced freedom, justice, acceptance, collaboration, and innovation.” Open to all ages, the venue, according to its website, strives to keep the “cozy ambience” of The Freight and Salvage as one dedicated to “acoustic music.” Similarly to The Arbor, there is no rule against alcohol at performances, but the venue itself sells limited pre-packaged snacks, as well as water and soft drinks.
Stanford Highlights: On-campus, music venue in dining area, student-led, indoor-outdoor.
UC Berkeley Highlights: Off-campus, strictly music venue, independent, indoors.
Playing for Stanford University: Bing Concert Hall
Playing for UC Berkeley: The Cornerstone
Judging by size is not always a safe bet, as UC Berkeley’s The Cornerstone demonstrates. Though its 13,000 square feet are dwarfed by Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall’s 112,600 square feet, its sound system is one of the best in the Bay area, with a Three-Way SUBCOMPACT Live Array System. The Cornerstone, whose large stage holds over 500 people, is usually a standing-room only venue, except for the VIP Mezzanine with views of the entire space.
In contrast, Bing Concert Hall’s 842 seats are surrounded by an acoustic system designed by Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics. In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, that’s the same team that worked on the sound system in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Calif. Both venues opened in the same decade, with The Cornerstone having opened in 2017 and Bing Concert Hall having opened in 2013.
Though both venues are state-of-the-art, their line-ups of artists and performers vary. While Bing Concert Hall is no stranger to the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) and the San Francisco Ballet Company to name a few, you’d be hard pressed to find these performances in The Cornerstone. Rather, The Cornerstone’s upcoming performances include more casual performances, such as singer-songwriter Donna Missal on Dec. 8, pop-funk musician Molly Grace on Dec. 11 and “Gimme Gimme Disco,” an ABBA inspired dance party on Dec. 28.
Stanford Highlights: Seating available, performing arts and music performances, on-campus.
UC Berkeley Highlights: Standing room only, music performances and dance parties, off-campus.
Playing for Stanford University: Frost Amphitheater
Playing for UC Berkeley: The Greek Theater
In early September, dozens of us migrated to UC Berkeley to see Gracie Abrams. In early October, dozens of UC Berkeley bears made their way to The Farm to bear witness to Clairo’s Charmed Tour. The artists that these venues bring are big, and Stanford and Berkeley might well be evenly matched here.
The Greek Theater at UC Berkeley, opened in 1903, takes advantage of the Bay’s extended summer months in order to host a variety of artists and personalities. Aside from Gracie Abrams, The Greek has housed artists like Bob Dylan, Adele and John Legend in its past line-ups. Though amphitheaters are indeed a Greek invention, The Greek isn’t just named “The Greek” because of the origins of theater. Built with funds donated by William Randolph Hearst, The Greek is inspired by Greek architecture, with some Roman touches thrown in.
Frost Amphitheater, in contrast, wasn’t inspired by any particular civilization, but rather bases its design on the rolling foothills that surround Stanford’s campus. Though Frost opened in 1937, it sat largely dormant between the 1980’s and the 2010’s, as it was deemed “not entirely suitable for large-scale events.” Reopened in 2019, Frost has hosted artists Mitski, Glass Animals, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.
Stanford and UC Berkeley Highlights: Outdoor venues, on-campus, incredibly popular artists.
Conclusion:
The venues have battled it out, and the facts above are what they are. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the decision of which music one prefers is incredibly subjective. Standing room or seated, mosh pit or couches, the choice is completely yours. But, if you still can’t decide whether UC Berkeley or Stanford’s music venues have your heart, then take this into account: Coldplay chose Stanford’s campus to host their Music of the Spheres World Tour, not Berkeley’s.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
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Two ‘Big Game(s)’: Stanford by day, Berkeley by nightStanford and UC Berkeley have been football rivals for years, but how do both schools compare during regular season gamedays? I spent a day at both to find out.
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For fans of college football, College GameDay is an institution. Every Saturday, the ESPN broadcast travels to the biggest game of the weekend to host a pre-game show. Students at the host school camp out starting in the middle of the night, often with cheeky posters as they compete for TV time. The hosts discuss the odds of the game, pick favorites to win and heckle each other over their choices. One lucky student even gets the chance to attempt a field goal, and if they make it, they win $25,000. Talk about U.S.A.
Despite the weekly presence of GameDay host “Stanford Steve” Couglin ’82, Stanford University has only hosted College GameDay once, back in November 2011, during a very different era of Stanford football. By and large, the show is an SEC and Big 10 event, with big names like Ohio State, Alabama and Florida topping the list for most frequent appearances.
But the world of college football is crazy and ever-changing. We’ve withstood and adapted to the birth of the transfer portal, the advent of NIL, and a geographically-blind conference realignment. Never count out the unexpected.
On Oct. 5, for the first time ever, College GameDay was to be hosted at the University of California, Berkeley for their matchup against (at the time) #8 Miami. It was an interesting choice. Were there no better games that weekend? But also, would there ever be a better time for me to go?
Oct. 5, — the first gameday of the academic year (the quarter system amazes me), and I had not one, but two games to see.
At 12:30 p.m., I would be in Stanford Stadium cheering on the Cardinal against Virginia Tech. At 7:30 p.m., I would be in the student section of California Memorial Stadium, parading as the enemy, watching the underdog Golden Bears take on the Hurricanes.
When it comes to school spirit, I don’t believe in modesty. I wholeheartedly believe that Stanford is the best university in the world. That being said, I am also not living under a rock — I never said we had the greatest football atmosphere in the country.
It’s hard for me to know what gamedays looked like during the Jim Harbaugh, Andrew Luck era at Stanford. Based on pictures of full stadiums under the lights, I have to imagine they were a bit more inspired than they’ve been during my time here. At the Virginia Tech game, which I had anticipated to be the liveliest home game we’d have all season (it was only Week 3 – there were no midterms to be used as excuses!), the student section was still nowhere near full. The rest of the stadium was positively empty. And it was a beautiful day! Virginia Tech fans had traveled out to our campus in impressive numbers to watch, what was for them, an away game, and it was as if no one at Stanford (besides the most dedicated members of Greek life) had gotten the memo. At the pregame tailgate on Ueland Field, there had been no music, which made me acutely aware of the lacking energy. Needless to say, when the Cardinal were down 14-0 at the half, people started to vacate the scene. The eventual score of 31-7 was both the result of poor play calling and a loss of what little home crowd advantage had been there to begin with.
When my team loses, I am usually too disappointed to have much to say. But that day I had places to be, so I changed out of my Stanford red and into neutral clothing (never blue) for the ride up to Berkeley. In the car, my friends buzzed about the gameday atmosphere, the parties we could hit before the game, and how excited they were. I was a little bit sad that they hadn’t shown the same enthusiasm for the Stanford game. But when we got to Berkeley, it was pretty obvious why they were excited.
With over three hours until kickoff, the row was filled with students dressed in blue and gold. Every house had a banner mocking UMiami — you can picture all the “Daddy’s money” jokes imaginable — and music was blaring out of closed-door parties. Students who had attended the pregame show had been up since 6 a.m. and were rallying like they’d just woken up. College GameDay had picked Cal as a wildcard destination, and they had absolutely risen to the occasion. Plus, they’re on the semester system, so they did have midterms, and they’d still shown up.
My only other visit to Berkeley had been for Big Game my freshman year, and I hadn’t gone to any parties. This time around, there was so much to notice and contrast with the Stanford gameday experience. There are things I don’t envy, like the exclusivity of their party culture, or the fact that they have to pay to attend home games. But I do envy how much they seem to care. We don’t have the student body size of Cal, nor do we have local restaurants or bars to grab a quick bite before the game. We don’t have as good of a sound system in the stadium, which allows for a dance party in between every play, or the firework show at halftime. The student body size and campus infrastructure might be out of our control, but surely better speakers can fit into our budget.
The game lasted for four hours, and I didn’t find myself bored for a single minute. Despite leading by nearly 20 at the half, Cal ended up losing to UMiami in a performance that solidified Cam Ward in my mind as a Heisman candidate. I wasn’t sure whether to be glad, since it was Berkeley, or sad, like everyone else around me who’d been excited to rush the field. Still, I had a great time, my friends and I ate Taco Bell a few blocks away from the stadium, and on the way home we all agreed that it was the most fun we’d had all year.
I’d like to point out something for the naysayers who claim that Stanford’s lack of school spirit comes from their lack of wins: Cal is 5-4 overall and 1-4 in conference play. They are not a ranked team! And yet their student body shows out for them in masses and treats gameday like a holiday. Never in a million years would I trade going to Stanford for crossing the Bay, but I think we can learn something from our rivals about energy and atmosphere. I promise we won’t lose anything academically by having a little more fun on Saturdays.
All this to say, especially with Big Game being hosted there this year: Beat Cal.
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Stanford must learn from UC Berkeley’s political cultureWith the Stanford political culture falling victim to the techno-futurist aspirations of Silicon Valley, students have a lot to learn from that of UC Berkeley in order to become the best advocates for change possible.
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Though I attend Stanford, I grew up more on stories from UC Berkeley. Through three generations, Cal proved a pivotal place for my family members. Like any university, it is formative in its students’ lives and careers. But perhaps more than any other campus in America, it is the birthplace of many students’ political passions and adventures in activism.
I grew up hearing about Cal not just because it was where my grandmother, mother and, eventually, my sister went, but because it is where their political viewpoints — fundamental to their identities — were shaped.
For many Stanford students, their opinions towards Cal are somewhere along the line of apathy rooted in the belief that the Stanford-Cal debate is not worth having. Perhaps it is because my familial connection to Cal runs deep, but I reject that attitude. Stanford may have a multitude of advantages over Cal, but that does not mean — as many take it to — that we are superior across the board and have nothing to learn from them.
Case in point: Cal’s political culture — activism for which it is both so celebrated and so critiqued — is far more vibrant than ours. Cal is the campus of Mario Savio, and his tirades against “the machine,” which kickstarted the ever important free speech movement in the 60s. It is the campus of some of the 1980’s great anti-Apartheid protests. It was the sight of massive Occupy Wall Street demonstrations barely 10 years ago. Whether you agree with the methods or the causes, it is hard to deny that passion courses through the blood of Cal’s political culture, and simultaneously that politics is sewn into the fabric of university culture in a way it simply is not at Stanford.
Cal’s political culture is not flawless. Perhaps it is not even healthy. The activist culture can be dogmatic, exclusionary and downright hateful. The fliers created against their esteemed law school dean, Erwin Chemirinsky, proved that. That is a part of their culture that does not belong here, there, or anywhere. But stripping away the techniques — confrontational as they are — there is something to be said for the passion of their political environment.
I was at Tressider Memorial Union as the election played out. As the crowd jeered at the news of Ted Cruz’s re-election to the U.S. Senate, I thought about how dreadfully similar the depressed environment must have been to 2016 and how euphoric the campus would have likely been in 2008. In this election, many Stanford students seemed to care (evidenced by their anti-Cruz groans), but simultaneously many were simply indifferent.
After the election, a protest took place at Cal. One had taken place in 2016 as well. In 2016, “love trumps hate” marches occurred at Stanford. Nothing similar took place now. Moreover, the dialogue I heard around campus — even in political settings such as the Stanford Political Union — seemed to be as much passively interested as actually invested. Some students seemed to care about the outcome, but others simply seemed interested in how it would play out, as though watching a football game in which their favorite team was not playing — not seeming to understand the old Obama refrain that “elections have consequences.”
A certain level of indifference will be present at any university, but it is something that we must work to minimize. Protests are not a necessary prerequisite for political engagement, but they are indicative of its presence. Stanford does not need to have large marches and confrontation but it should have dialogue and a sense of political investment. Politics should not be your entire life — you should be able to talk to and be friends with someone you disagree with — but it should be a part of your life. Government and politics pervade every industry, and to not care about government or who runs it is to blind yourself to the realities of the world.
Why does the activist culture here at Stanford feel different than Cal’s? I have a few theories.
First, Stanford’s students are generally wealthier than Cal’s. Consequently, they have historically been less vulnerable to the malicious whims of politicians and felt less of a stake in the country’s political future.
Second, Stanford’s unique relationship with Silicon Valley attracts a breed of students filled with technological optimism and often focused on making it rich. People are focused on changing the world, but not on the why. This is not conducive to political engagement and dialogue. Through its courses, the University must work to instill in students a strong sense of investment in the future.
But if Stanford truly wants the winds of freedom to blow, it must help people figure out not just how to change the world, but also why that change is important — and whether or not that change is good in the first place. Relative to Cal, we are a collection of disengaged individuals that are somewhat interested in politics but still lack a true political culture. Luckily for us, across the Bay we have both a model of what to be and what not to be. Hopefully, we bring the best parts over.
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